So you’ve decided to become a t-shirt entrepreneur and are getting ready to lay out your plan for success.  One of the first decisions you are going to make is what the heck to actually sell – besides t-shirts, mugs, etc I mean.

There are limitless models for you to follow and many types of designs to sell.  But one of the things that rarely enters into the mind of new t-shirt entrepreneurs is whether they should dive head first into an already competitive arena with hundreds (if not thousands) of established shops or focus on some niche audience that, while smaller, might have little or no competition.

While you should do what you love and have a passion for, you also have to realize that if you are going to be a serious t-shirt entrepreneur (and not a t-shirt hobbyist) you have to have a plan for making money at it.

So what should you do?

First let’s create a fictional animal that we’ll call them Snuggly Buggly Bears.  Snuggly Buggly Bears are popular pets.  People love them!  And so do you.  They are your personal passion.

You LOVE Snuggly Buggly Bears and you draw Snuggly Buggly Bears and can turn out hundreds of high quality designs.  But in Google alone a search for “Snuggly Buggly Bears T-shirts” turns up over two million sites currently in existence.  That is a heck of a lot of competition.

Sure, I’ll guarantee you that if you have even only a moderate knowledge of SEO and marketing you can leave 97% of those sites in the dust.  So that leaves you with only about 60,000 others to worry about.  With harder work you will probably be able to even knock off 97% of those that remain but still leaving you with 1,800 other sites to deal with.  And with a good marketing campaign and great knowledge of SEO you can probably knock off another 97% of them finally sniffing the light of day and having only about 54 other sites to seriously compete with.

That’s what happens when you enter to a competitive marketplace.  Even if you are big fish in a big ocean, it is still a big ocean and your piece of the overall pie (although I have never seen pie in the ocean) is still relatively small.

Even if you have a kick butt plan to tackle the vast ocean you may still only see 2% of the total market share.  But the GOOD news is that if the ocean is large enough even 2% can be enough to quit your day job.

But maybe you’re passion is not just for Snuggly Buggly Bears but particularly Blue Snuggly Buggly Bears.  You see in Google that Blue Snuggly Buggly Bears has only 500 sites selling those specific items.

So the lightbulb goes on.  Everyone loves Snuggly Buggly Bears and while Blue Snuggly Buggly Bears are not everyone’s cup of tea you know based on some quick research that 15% of people that own a Snuggly Buggly Bear own a Blue Snuggly Buggly Bear.

A little more research shows that 5,000,000 people own Snuggly Buggly Bears so that means that there are 750,000 people who own Blue Snuggly Buggly Bears.

So the choice now has to be made.  Compete with two million sites for 5,000,000 potential customers or compete with 500 sites for 750,000 potential customers.

You still have more research to do before you make your final decision.  Maybe the lower competition of the niche market for Blue Snuggly Buggly Bears is attractive on its face BUT maybe the top 10 companies selling T-shirts in that niche are well established with large marketing budgets and loyal customer bases built from years of business.  Can you compete with them?

Maybe, even though there are two million sites targeting Snuggly Buggly Bears in general the companies at the top are easier to knock off.  Maybe everything I just said is actually reversed.  In the end you’ll have to decide which strategy best fists you passion, your budget and your overall business model.

What?  Did you think I was going to give you the answer to the life, the universe and everything?  Sorry.  But that is not the way it works in the world of entrepreneurs.

In the end you have to decide.  You may make the wrong decision but you’ll be wiser because of it.  Or you may make the right decision and be able to tell your boss good-bye!

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J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts, Uber Gamer T-shirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.