In addition to a plethora of social media and music marketing solutions, musicians these days can also take advantage of various merch store solutions (ie “band merch”) to help grow their brand. Band merchandise can be a great way to earn extra and residual income to help fund upcoming recordings, shows, and promotions. Band merch has the potential to provide significant revenue streams, which is a big reason why your band may want to consider setting up a merch store. the synergistic combination of revenue from sales and marketing from viral merchandising is an attractive tactic in today’s catalytic but complicated music market.
Now, you may be intimidated to start selling t-shirts, hoodies, posters, and other promotional items. who wouldn’t, especially when money is tight and cash is king. Selling merch is nothing like selling music, and you may not know where to start, especially when trying to design your band’s logo or finance manufacturing. don’t worry. there are plenty of solutions out there! With one of these online merchandising store solutions, you can literally set up your online store in an hour. just remember, when loyal fans wear your gang’s swag, it will “posterize” your brand and create viral momentum. what costs you $5 to make will not only make you $10 when sold, it will also spawn a marketing machine that walks and talks around the world!
Let’s take a look at 10 online merch store solutions independent musicians can use.
1. dizzy
dizzyjam one of the online merchandising store solutions dedicated to musicians. It’s completely free to sign up for dizzyjam. dizzyjam provides a unique shop url like bandname.dizzyjam.com, manages the printing and shipping of orders, generates embed codes with lots of customization, sets up a facebook shop to allow direct sales to your fans, and sends you the profits every two months through paypal.
2. miminto
myminto is another online merch store provider popular with independent musicians. myminto has a free plan to get you started. however, it also has three paid subscription plans that provide additional features and benefits. With the free account, a band can have up to 100 products and 10 pages for their myminto store, which is more than enough for any band. On the downside, the free plan does not include a mobile store or digital product sales and does not allow the band to use a custom url for the store.
3. fourfour
It’s probably not as easy on the eyes as its more famous competitors, but fourfour is packed with features. fourfour is completely free to use. You can sell your branded t-shirts, posters, mugs, and even music tracks through a fourfour store.
4. buy
shopify is another great merch store solution for independent bands and musicians. You can start with a 14-day free trial, but you must choose a paid plan to continue using the service. It’s very quick and easy to set up a store with Shopify and with the themes they provide, you can have a beautiful branded store in minutes. You can sell your music, other downloadable products, and business items through Shopify. you need to use a shopify app like printful or merchify to sell clothing items.
5. bandazoogle
With bandzoogle, you won’t just have a store: bandzoogle provides an all-in-one web presence platform for bands and musicians. With Bandzoogle, you can create an awesome website with a store, a blog, and even an email marketing tool. there’s a 30-day free trial and you have three subscription plans, starting at $8.29/month.
6. lots
If you want to sell a wide range of trade items through your gang shop, galloree may be the perfect solution. Although it is not a service dedicated to musicians, it offers a very wide range of different merchandising products including t-shirts, girls’ and babies’ clothing, bags, skateboards, device cases and skins, tumblers, art prints, sportswear, hats and accessories. even socks. it’s completely free to open a shop with galloree.
7. direct merchandise
merchdirect helps your band sell anything directly to your fan base. you can sell your music or merchandise or tickets. In fact, with MerchDirect, you can offer any type of fan satisfaction. In business since 1999, merchdirect can be an affordable and convenient store solution for your band.
8. district lines
Do you want to open a well-designed store with a variety of merchandising items? districtline may be the solution you are looking for. You must apply by completing a form to open a store with Districtline. however, once your application is approved, there will be a lot of hassle related to processing, manufacturing, inventory management, and product promotion.
9. gomerch
If your band has a large following, gomerch can be your store management and merch distribution partner considering gomerch’s strength in managing album/product release campaigns. gomerch is a sophisticated and complete solution that includes pre-sale vip offers, pre-order campaigns, social media management, email marketing and branded clothing & product manufacturing.
10. artist gap
Although it’s still in beta, artistgap is a promising online merch store solution for bands. it’s very easy to set up a shop with artistgap and everything else i.e. printing, packing and shipping is handled by artistgap.
Based on your requirements, you can choose from these top 10 merchandising store providers or search for more. If you are already using a merch store provider, please let us know by leaving a comment about which service you are using for this purpose and what you think of that service.