Kuang’s journey to success: from music industry executive to full-time Teespring seller

Kuang is a Bronze Level seller from Thailand. Before Teespring, Kuang worked for over a decade in the technology industry and dabbled in internet marketing. After graduating with a degree in IT and Business from Chulalongkorn University, Kuang got a job with a large company and found himself in a well-paid position. He continued to advance in the business world and eventually became an executive at a prominent company in Thailand’s music industry. Despite having everything he thought he wanted, Kuang realized that his current career path couldn’t offer him the one thing he truly desired—more time to spend with his family.

Kuang decided to make the necessary changes to his career to give himself a work-life balance. The problem was finding a job that would provide both financial freedom and time to dedicate to his personal life. He decided to focus on growing his online business with Teespring in 2015. Today, Kuang enjoys financial freedom and is able to spend more time with his daughter. He now has time to travel and enjoy his hobbies too. Teespring enabled Kuang to finally live the life he truly desired, and he’s kindly agreed to share some insight on his journey to success and tips to help you succeed too.

Could you share your Teespring journey? How did you get started?

I heard of Teespring from an article shared on Facebook two years ago; it was a story about how Teespring was changing sellers’ lives and how they could work anywhere in the world. It sounded too good to be true, but the concept definitely got me interested. Soon after that, I had a chance to take a Teespring course from Azzy (one of Thailand’s top Teespring sellers).

At first, I didn’t take it seriously because I had a full-time job…six months later, I got a chance to take the course again. This time I decided to take it seriously, but it was difficult balancing selling online while at my full-time job. The second campaign I launched ended up being a winner, and after that, I was hooked. I began launching campaigns more often but I didn’t have time to do proper research for my designs and niches. It took me 8 months and I’d spent $2,000 on paid ads. In month 9, I found another winning design. But this time, I’d learned from my experiences and with only one campaign, I was able to regain the $2,000 I’d spent in just a few days. After that it became clear if I kept trying, no matter how difficult it seemed at times, it would all be worth it because my efforts would pay off in the end.

Many successful sellers have daily habits and/or schedules. Do you have any habits that you think are important to your success?

Even though I work from home now, I still work like I have a full-time job. I usually focus on selling for 8 hours a day—my hours are flexible of course, but I like to have a routine each day where I spend a certain amount of time on researching new designs/niches, monitoring ads, launching new campaigns, etc. I enjoy this kind of work because selling on Teespring is mostly creative.

Where do you get ideas for the designs? And how do you perform market research?

I spend a lot of time monitoring Facebook and Pinterest because you can easily find people sharing engaging content and ideas. Usually for designs I will review my most popular and engaging posts (on Facebook) and adapt them into new designs. I also aim to offer fresh designs to the market by researching new niches.

When researching a new niche, I will browse various e-commerce sites to see what designs are trending. I tend to focus on niches I’m already familiar with or that are related to other niches I currently sell to. After that, I will check Pinterest to see if there are other people selling products for this niche as well. I like to see the kind of design messages that are popular (searching for shirts on pinterest is super easy). After that, I will analyze the niche using Facebook’s Audience Insights to see if there are enough people in this audience. I will only consider selling to a niche if it has between 200,000 to 400,000 people—because if it’s really big (greater than 400K ), it means there’s probably a lot of competitors already. The next step is to research new design messages that aren’t currently being sold for that niche on Teespring and other sites.

Can you share any insight on your top buyer countries and audiences?

All I will say is my current top-buying country is the U.S.A., behind that is Europe and Australia. Most of my customers are female.  😉

How do you determine when it’s time to scale an ad or campaign? Could you share tips on how to create an effective advertisement?

When creating a new niche/Facebook page, it’s hard to determine which designs will generate the most engagement with your audience. I spend a lot of my advertising budget testing various Facebook posts (featuring design-related content/messaging), especially on new niches during the initial stage when I’m building my page’s following (as I mentioned earlier, if I keep at it, I’ll regain my investment in the end). Once I’ve got an idea of what this audience likes and have determined the top 5 – 10 most engaging posts/design messages for that niche, I will create a new post and share it on the page. I will then monitor my audience’s reaction and if that post gets more than 50 shares within 24 hours I will take that idea and make it into a design to sell on Teespring products.

My process works something like this, for example: once I create my Teespring campaign with my new design, I will start on Wednesday night and invest $5 on promoting that campaign. Since the design “concept” I previously shared on my page was so engaging, I’ll usually get at least one sale within the first 24 hours. If by Saturday I still have no sales, I will close that campaign and kill the ads. If there is a sale, I will gradually scale up the ad spend and add more interests to expand the target audience.

The new T2 updates consist of acquiring buyer emails, flat pricing & more profit, new products, customized storefronts, and many other features. Which feature do you think is the most exciting and why?

I like that the base cost of products is now cheaper because I can scale up my ad budget to maximize my sales. I am also excited for the new products, and I’d like to be able to customize/launch them myself (hopefully this feature will come soon).

Is there anything else you’d like to share with the community?

Selling products with Teespring has become my full-time job and I plan to continue expanding my online business over time. Teespring has changed my life—now I can live and work the way I want to, and that gives me more time to spend with my family and friends. This is more valuable to me than anything else in the world.

 

Ready for your own success story?