Create and sell your own custom mugs online

Designing and creating your own mugs can be a good source of revenue. If you can catch the right mood you could sell thousands of units making it a great passive income stream. The secret is to use drop shipping. This frees you from the demands and responsibility of holding stocks as everything is created on-demand. Now you know the basics let’s look at how you can make your own mug and sell it.

The custom mug market

Mugs are one of those items that are often bought for someone else. They are a perfect choice of gift when you do not know what to buy, or you want to add a novelty item to presents you have already purchased. Often, the custom message on the mug talks to the recipient and so sales tend to be good.

At the moment, with tropes flying around the internet, there is plenty of inspiration to create brilliant custom mugs. Anti or pro-Trump messages could be a winner, for example, and there are plenty of others too.

You can also draw on popular TV and films. It is all about tapping into the right vein.

The nuts and bolts of drop shipping

Dropshipping is ingenious. It is simple, and the better suppliers let you ship worldwide. Although each supplier has its own way of doing things, basically it comes down to this:

• You choose the mug design. These can be one colour or use a second colour as a design.
• You upload or use supplier tools to make the graphics. This is where your creative magic comes into play, and you create your own mug.
• Order dispatched. Your mug at this point is good to go. You simply spread the word about your creation and let people buy it. They are made on-demand and dispatched by your supplier, often to countries around the world. All you have to do is watch your bank account increase.

Tips on marketing your mug

Of course, once you have your mug ready to go, you have to get the word out to make sales. Here are a few ideas.

• Tell your friends and family – As well as buying a few of your mugs for themselves, they will hopefully spread the word about your mug. They may even cajole a few sales from their close friends.
• Social Media – Spread your new mug across your social media channels. Ask friends and family to share your mug on their social media accounts. This can greatly increase the reach, and you make more sales.
• Social Media ads – Ads on Facebook are relatively cheap and can help you reach a mass audience around the world. For a small outlay, your ad could be put in front of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people.  

Demographic targeting options on Facebook are far-reaching, so if you had a Trump mug, you could find the right audience to market it too.

• Your own website – If you have a website you could put a nice ad for your mug on it. This may yield results depending on the time of year and the kind of audience it attracts.

Making your own mug is fun, and if you do it right, it can be very profitable.

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