I get so tired of seeing people complain about Merch being saturated. We are a long way away from that, and in this podcast I explain why.
The top-selling “Funcle” shirt is a great example of how there are numerous ideas you can drum up and target to very specific people.
If you are not selling on Merch, you are doing something wrong. Period. We are a long way away from saturation, thankfully.
If your strategy is to just copy what everyone else is doing then yes, you might feel that it’s saturated. But if you take the time to come up with creative ideas, Merch is wide open!
When I hear people say things like “Merch is saturated” or about any other Marketplace, I think that it’s more about wording and mindset and how those two things influence each other. For instance when people go on Merch or any other Marketplace and they search their ideas, keywords or niches and they see how saturated those are and/or the lack of sales that they got, if they say or think “oh merch is saturated” after saying they will get frustrated and disappointed and their mindset will shift to being pessimistic, especially if they had their heart set on that Niche, idea, or design. But if instead they changed their wording and say “oh this “Niche” is saturated”, these “keywords” are saturated, this “image” is saturated, etc. When people change their wording even just a little it can make a big difference in their mindset. If you think this “Niche is saturated” then you will start to think maybe I should find a different niche or find a sub niche or a micro niche. If you think oh these “keywords” are saturated” then you’ll start to think what are some other keywords that are related? Maybe I should do some research on some other keywords or get creative with my keywords. ect. ect. Just a simple change and how people word things can lead to either searching for solutions, getting creative and being proactive or it can lead to frustration and a pessimistic mindset. People do this all the time with many different things, when a lot of times it can just be a simple change in your wording to have a huge effect on your perception and mindset. So be careful on what you say and how you say it, even with just yourself it can have a huge effect on your outlook and results. So Stop and ask yourself, Is the way I’m wording things setting myself up for success or failure?
Faith! I love the way you think and I love your post. I have always been so interested in the psychological aspects of success and failure and I have ALWAYS believed they start with how we think. Imagine someone starting MBA and focusing on all the reasons they can’t succeed (I don’t know software, it’s too saturated, I don’t know how to do keyword research). Pretty soon they’ve psyched themselves out because they are focusing on all the reasons they CAN’T succeed.
On the flips side, someone else might start saying, “OK I don’t know how to do any of this but let me just learn one thing and go from there.” How you approach this mentally (and ANYTHING in life) has such a big impact on whether or not you fail. Honestly, I can usually tell who is going to struggle just based on the things they tell me initially. And it has nothing to do with their skills or lack thereof. It’s their negative mindset.
And as you said, we can apply that philosophy to ANYTHING in life. Unfortunately many people never realize they have more control over their destiny than they ever think. It starts with their outlook. We all have a choice of which side of the fence we will be on every single day with every single decision. Thank you for stopping by and dropping this gem of a comment! I couldn’t agree more!
After listening to your podcast for a while I noticed that you’re getting frustrated with people’s mindset and I completely understand. understand. That’s why I felt compelled to leave a comment. I am a strong believer in the saying that success is 90% attitude and 10% knowledge. You might have noticed that with many other success coaches and trainers (for many topics) the majority of their content addresses mindset, cuz they know how important mindset is for success. But for me unfortunately most of the coaches and trainers that I’ve had experience with (in different fields not T-shirt sales) I felt that they focused too much on mindset and not enough on the knowledge portion, the nuts and bolts of the how to’s. They were probably at a ratio of 95% mindset and 5% how to. And I think that that’s way too high. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been enjoying listening to your podcast cuz you focus the majority of your content on the how to portion. but as you’re noticing a lot of people need mindset training and have never received that type of training before, it’s not even something that’s occurred to them before. so I’ve been asking myself this question for a while now “What is a good ratio for trainers and coaches to use for their mindset portion and the how to portion of their training program?” If success really is 90% mindset and 10% knowledge does that mean trainers should Focus 90% of their content on mindset and 10% of their content on knowledge? I think that this is a real interesting question and should be studied a bit with tests. But for myself since I do aspire to be a coach I have decided that with my program I’m going to use a 50/50 ratio as a starting point and then test and feel out the results of my program from there. Hope this helps
And because so many people have not received that training, they often are uncomfortable with hearing how much mindset plays a role. For some, it’s easier to blame external factors (saturation, etc.) because our egos don’t want us to believe that it may actually our thinking that is part of the problem. Being introspective is not easy for some. I really wish more people would understand how important that is.
When I think about the many years I’ve been online, I’ve always believed this will come easy to me. I don’t say that to brag but I can see how it helped me. And on the flip side, I can see how my negative thoughts surrounding certain things have prevented me from succeeding in other areas of my life not related to the biz. It works both ways.
Good luck with your coaching. I can tell from just this exchange you will be good at what you do. Success is definitely composed of the mental and the actual how-tos. Like you said, it’s about teaching the balance. Good luck to you!