Last Updated on 04/18/2022 by Dean
You’re a Twitch streamer and want to start selling merch to your viewers? You came to the right article.
In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about how to create and how to sell merch as a streamer.
We’ll cover everything from how you can create the merch and how you can sell merch without upfront investment.
All your questions will be answered in this article.
Are you ready? Make yourself a cup of coffee and let’s get started.
💰 This article is part of our how to make money on Twitch series.
How you can sell merch as a Twitch Streamer
Selling merch for your stream is a lot easier than most people think.
You might assume you need to hire a designer right? That you need to get a contract with a factory, hire a printing partner, make upfront investments, etc? None of this actually true!
In this day and age, anyone can sell merch online, without any type of upfront investment.
This is done through a process called Print on Demand. Print on Demand essentially means you have a printing service that prints and ships products for you on demand.
These companies are specialized in printing merch on demand for streamers, youtubers, and other types of content creators.
Here’s a quick example of how this works:
Tom’s girlfriend is a huge fan of your stream. He ends up buying a hoodie from your shop for her upcoming birthday, the hoodie is priced at $50. Once purchased, your print-on-demand partner will then print the design that Tom chose on the hoodie and ship it to his address. Your printing partner will take $20 for the printing and shipping of the product and you will receive $30 from this purchase.
That’s how simple the process of selling merch is!
You don’t have to worry about purchasing inventory or shipping a product, this is all done for you.
Platforms that offer print on demand merch
Teespring
Teespring is one of the most commonly used print-on-demand platforms due to its simplicity. You can have a Teespring shop set up in minutes. Your shop will have the .teespring.com extension which has been trusted by millions of people already.
Teespring allows you to decide how much you want to charge for a product. If you want to charge $50 or $100 for your merch, you can!
Setting up and running a Teespring store is completely free.
Streamlabs
You likely use Streamlabs already as broadcasting software or you’ve at least heard of them when you first got started on Twitch but did you know they help streamers out with merch as well?
If you visit streamlabs.com/merch you can set up your own merch shop in minutes! Another cool thing about streamlabs is that it will integrate directly with your stream. If someone makes a purchase, you can set up alerts for it!
Unlike Teespring, Streamlabs has a $12 monthly fee to use the service.
Streamelements
Stream elements is the new guy on the block when it comes to print on demand services. They provide a similar service to Streamlabs: a print on demand service designed for Twitch streamers.
StreamElements is completely free with no monthly fees.
Printful + Shopify
The merch options I’ve featured above allow you to sell your merch through a print-on-demand platform. This means you will always be selling your merch from mystore.teespring.com or a similar domain.
If your intention was to start a merch store on your own domain and have even more control over things such as handling customer service, creating email campaigns and so on, you can set up a shop through Shopify and Printful.
Shopify is the #1 platform when it comes to eCommerce, they make starting a webshop easy! Printful is a print on demand supplier that integrates directly with Shopify.
When setting up a shop this way, you’ll be able to completely customize the look of your store. You can make it look as professional as you can but you will have to handle customer service yourself and deal with complaints and such which is something the other platforms I’ve mentioned such as Streamlabs and Teespring take care of for you.
Running a Shopify store will cost you $29 per month.
The choice is yours, but if you’re looking for a quick and simple solution, Teespring and Streamlabs are the way to go.
How to design merch for your shop
There are two ways to go about designing your merch: do it yourself or hire someone else. If you’re on a budget you can use websites such as PlaceIt or Canva to create a design yourself.
If you’re not creative or need a more professional solution, you should hire someone to do it for you.
How to hire a merch designer from Fiverr
One of the best places to find designers that will help you out with any budget is Fiverr.
Fiverr is a freelance marketplace where you can hire freelancers starting at five dollars. It works as follows:
- Type in your keyword or keyphrase for example ‘merch’
- Pick a freelancer based on their pricing, images, description, and reviews
- Message them if you have questions
- Order the package you need
- Submit your order requirements
- ..wait for the result!
Obviously, the results will depend on the price you pay. Don’t expect amazing results when you’re paying just 5 dollars.
How to set up your merch shop
With Streamlabs
Setting up shop with Streamlabs is very easy. Simply head on over to streamlabs.com/merch and sign up with your Twitch credentials.
Once signed up, you’ll be taken to the dashboard of your new shop right away and you’ll be able to add graphics to products and list them on your shop as shown below.
With Teespring
Teespring works almost identical to Streamlabs (and so do most of these services). You sign up through teespring.com/signup and you’ll immediately be taken to the store dashboard.
From there, you can pick the types of merch you want to upload (e.g a t-shirt) and add your graphics to them. Afterward, you can add a title and description, set a price, and publish it to your shop!
With Stream Elements
In order to set up a Stream Elements shop, head on over to streamelements.com/merch and sign up with your Twitch credentials.
Once login in you will instantly be taken to the dashboard where you can select products and add your designs.
Streamlabs vs Teespring, which is the best?
Both Streamlabs and Teespring work very similarly, with the only difference that Streamlabs is designed for streamers.
Streamlabs is NOT free and charges $12 per month, that’s a big difference from Teespring which is completely free. For this reason alone, I would say that Streamlabs is not small-streamer-friendly and should be avoided.
The only real ‘benefit’ you’ll get from choosing Streamlabs over Teespring is that you can enable alerts, but is that worth $12 a month? You tell me.
Products are also slightly cheaper on Teespring than they are on Streamlabs.
Streamlabs vs Stream elements Merch, which is the best?
Wondering whether you should go for Streamlabs or Stream elements? Let me quickly make up your mind…
Running a merch shop from Streamlabs will cost you $12 a month, doing the same thing on Stream elements is completely free.
The average profit on a t-shirt with Streamlabs is $6, on Stream Elements, it’s $11, that’s almost double!
With both Streamlabs and Stream elements, you can set up pop-up alerts on your stream whenever someone purchases your merch.
Clearly, Stream Elements is the way to go. You’ll get the same benefits from Streamlabs but with higher profit margins and no monthly fees.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article has taught you that selling merch as a Twitch streamer is very easy and requires no upfront investments.
In just minutes, you can have a fully functioning merch store and sell hoodies, t-shirts, and mugs with your logo/branding on it!
The best platforms to sell merch on are Stream Elements and Teespring, both are easy to set up with good profit margins and no hidden monthly fees.