One of the best ways to get your fans excited is to offer a cool piece of limited edition merchandise. There’s a certain percentage of your fans who will buy anything you put out…you just need to give them reasons to buy.
There’s no limit to what you can offer
Here at Nimbit, we’ve seen artists have success with everything from t-shirts, to shot glasses, handwritten lyrics, original artwork, thongs, even mexican wrestling masks. There’s no limit to what you can offer, other than your creativity (and maybe some laws in your local jurisdiction).
It’s great promotion
Creating a unique item for sale gives you a chance to show off your other creative talents, or collaborate with local artists which can further increase your reach. Depending on how unique it is, your merch can become a conversation piece for your fans, they might wear it or display it, which will further promote you as an artist. Another benefit of selling merchandise is you can usually create it rather quickly, and that can give you something to offer your fans during the stretch between music releases.
All the benefits sound great, don’t they? If you want to be successful with your merch there are Three Laws you have to follow:.
LAW ONE – Stay True To Yourself
You need to make sure what you’re selling is true to your band’s image and something your fans want. If you make Norwegian electro pop music, the wrestling masks may not cut it. If you’re a gospel group, the thongs and shot glasses may be out.
LAW TWO – Multiplicity aka 1+1=3
One of the best things you can do with merch is create bundles of it with your music. We’ve found artists have increased sales by as much as 40% by including a shirt, hat, autographed items, etc. And their fans love them for it.
LAW THREE – Fans want Something Special
Make sure the merch you’re offering is a limited edition or if you can, a one of a kind item. Exclusivity makes things special, and who doesn’t want to do something special for their fans.
The Best Way to Sell Your Merch
With a NimbitPlus account, you can sell all the swag you’ve ever dreamed of: shirts, stickers and hats, posters, books, thongs and the wrestling masks – you name it and you can sell it. You can sell physical and digital merchandise to fans using the same storefront and shopping cart. You can create bundles. You can do presales. Best of all, we handle the warehousing and shipping…saving you a drive to the post office or a call home from the road to fulfill your orders.
Ready to start selling merch? Sign up for NimbitPlus today and get started.
17 Comments
how much does it cost to warehouse our merch. I have found info on what cut you get on physical sales. i can not find anything on how to warehouse our products with you and if it cost anything. We are looking for a place to host our music and merch
Hey Mike,
There is no additional fee for warehousing. It’s included as part of your subscription to NimbitIndie ($12.95/month) or NimbitPro ($24.95/month).
Nimbit charges a 20% commission on all sales through our storefronts, and that includes the 3.5% credit card processing fee.
Let us know if you have more questions.
Thanks,
Carl
Does Nimbit help users actually create products to offer for sale? In other words, if an artist signs up for Nimbit do you help the artist create T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, and other merchandise they can then turn around and offer fans?
Or do artists have to find their own platform for creating such merchandise and then Nimbit just helps the artist sell it?
Does Nimbit have its own platform for creating products, warehousing them, and shipping them – in addition to selling them via a Nimbit store front. (Similar to how CafePress.com allows people to create and sell product but CafePress warehouses and ship for the person.)
Thank you.
Hello Barbara,
Thanks for your question.
Nimbit does offer CD & DVD Manufacturing: http://www.nimbit.com/production-services/
And we also have an in house graphic designer who can help you create your artwork for your CDs or DVDs.
We do not manufacture other types of merchandise.
We do provide storefronts and promotion tools to help you sell your products.
We also offer warehousing and fulfillment, so you can ship us inventory of products you created elsewhere and we will store and ship those products for you when you get a sale.
Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Thank you for your previous reply.
In this article:
http://www.nimbit.com/jsr-and-nimbit-take-direct-to-fan-to-next-level-for-nationally-touring-artists
it seemed to imply Nimbit and JSR were partnering to offer a platform in which artists could integrate both the production of and marketing/selling of merchandise to fans. JSR handling the production of T-shirts and such things and Nimbit integrating those products into artist storefronts and selling platforms.
Does such a partnership still exist? If so, where can one read more specific details.
Or, since the article is old, is this integration/partnership with JSR no longer the case? The only option now being for artists to produce merchandise themselves and then send to Nimbit for warehousing and distribution as you previously mentioned.
In any case, if you could provide more info as to warehousing and other details on this matter I would appreciate it.
Thanks!
Hello Barbara, I’m sorry we missed your previous comment. We experimented for awhile on some projects with JSR but it’s not something that we’re currently offering.
So yes, the current option is for artists to source manufacturing for their own merch, then send us a quantity to warehouse, pick, pack and ship. There are countless merch providers to choose from who can create merch for you and I’m sure most would split shipments so you can have some items on the road and some in our warehouses.
Hello,
We are opening a new record label where we want to be incontrol of everything we do. We’ve been looking at many online services as Nimbit, but had a few questions that we werent able to find on the web site or on the various youtube tutorials.
First question was; if we were to up load an album for sale or a single and a client request to buy the physical CD, does Nimbit worry about producing the CD on the spot to send it directly to the buyer or do we as a label have to stock up on our CDs first to send them our selves? How does this process actually work?
Second question was; What kind of commission does Nimbit get from each sale? for example if we sell a T-shirt or a CD whats the percentage they take from the total price?
Also does Nimbit already come with various formats of T-shirts and Sweatshirts that we can upload our own images onto directly from our Nimbit page?
Thank you for your time and service
Best Regards
sorry just read the comments above… lol
Where is your warehouse located? I am in L.A. and was hoping it was in the vicinity so i could bring my merchandise directly to you and save some shipping costs.
Hey Jay,
Our warehouses are just west of Boston.
I think an awesome product to market for a band on your nimbit webstore would be those sound activated t shirts that light up to music. I saw so many people buy those at the last concert I went to and it was pretty neat. You should look into companies that make custom light up t shirts. This is a great marketing technique and could make you lots of money selling your merchandise.
Does nimbit integrate with toto merch or another fullfillment company?
Hey Robert,
Thanks for your question. Nimbit currently handles fulfillment ourselves. We are looking at ways to integrate with Fulfillment companies in the future.
Do you have a warehouse in germany or elsewhere in the EU? If not, what do the customers pay for shipping? And what do we (the artists) pay for shipping let’s say 100 t-shirts to your warehouse in the US? Thanks!
Eric, thank you for your question. we do not currently have warehousing options for Nimbit customers in Europe. Things are shipped to/from our warehouse in the states. This is a issue we recognize for European customers and a situation we’re looking to resolve.
Just chiming in to see if there is some progress regarding warehousing in europe?
You might want to pay attention to our announcements at Musikmesse this month. You’re not going to hear what you want, but you will see we’re moving in the right direction.