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There is no age limit to entrepreneurship. You can start a business when you’re seventy or when you are seventeen. What matters is that you should have a sound business plan and a strong will to succeed. For a sound business plan, you should have a business theme. You can’t just go around starting a business without knowing what to make or sell, or who your customers are. For all the kids out there trying to pay their ways through college; a business without too much investment and with very little risk would be the best way to start. There are so many options out there, but at this point, with recession and all that, starting a custom t-shirt business would be a great idea.

The internet is loaded with many t-shirt printing companies and websites that print and sell t-shirts. In fact, online t-shirt printing business is one of the fastest growing businesses today. So, make use of the facility of the internet and your ingenuity to start your own custom t-shirt business. This way, you’ll not need too much of an investment, and you won’t have to search for your clientele because everybody loves t-shirts. So, how do you start a custom t-shirt business?

There are two ways you can go about it—the hard way and the easy way. Let’s look at the hard way first. You’ll need some capital first to buy an iron, transfer paper, an inkjet printer, printing and designing software, heat transfer equipment, t-shirt blanks, and of course, a computer. The process of making the t-shirts is simple. You need to create your designs on the computer and have them printed on the transfer papers. Then you print the transfer the designs onto the blank t-shirts using the heat transfer machine. Give it a good iron down after an hour and voila! Your t-shirts are ready to be sold. Now comes the hard part. You’ll have to market your t-shirts among your friends, or do your hawking on the streets. This method is a good idea, but a tad too cumbersome and tiring, but a good idea for the never-say-die attitude entrepreneurs.

The easier way is to go online. You don’t need any investment except for setting up a website. Getting a domain for free is not a problem, but you’ll have to hire someone to design the website to make it look attractive. There are so many online companies that are into custom printing of t-shirts. Find the one that can give you a good deal. Most online shops will give good rates on bulk orders. Select designs from their websites and select the quantity you want. Get your ordered t-shirts and post pictures of them on your website.

Have a few of your friends pose for you wearing your t-shirts, and take their pictures. This will give your online business a professional look and feel. Use social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, and MySpace etc. to promote your products. You can do your own marketing, or hire a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company do it for you. These guys can bring in more traffic to your website and thereby, more customers. What you’ll be doing here is that you’ll be buying the t-shirts at rock-bottom prices from the online t-shirt printing companies and reselling them on your website. Since, you’ll be buying in bulk from the online printing shops; you’ll get the t-shirts very cheap, and you’ll reap the benefit of a nice margin when you sell them on your website. You don’t even have to invest on buying blank t-shirts because you can get your t-shirts from the online printing companies itself.

In summary, starting your own custom t-shirts business is a lucrative idea, provided, you’re willing to use your imagination and put in a little hard work. Easy way or the hard way, whatever you do, just remember to do it right. No successful business empire was built in a day, so, you’ll just have to keep churning out wonderful and imaginative designs on your t-shirts until you strike it big. Who knows? One day you might be the proud owner of a billion dollar online custom t-shirt business!