Hi everyone and welcome back to another print on demand video. Recently, if you have been around, I made a post asking what were your biggest questions in regards to print on demand? There were over 350 comments with really good questions
about print on demand. I found that some of them
were repeat questions and other ones, you guys were able to like them and push them to the top, meaning that they were
really important questions. When everything was said and done, I boiled this down to the top 50 questions that you guys had in regards to print on demand. So in today's video, I wanna start answering
those questions for you. Now, 50 questions is a
lot to answer in a video. I actually spent yesterday recording it and it was a super long video. So what I'm going to do is break this up into two videos and make it easier to digest for you. Today's video is going to be answering the first 25 of these questions and whether you are new to print on demand or if you have experience, I still think you're going to be getting a lot of value from these questions because some of them, I simply haven't talked about on the channel before. So with that said, I think this video and the next video are going to be one of the
really big staple videos for you if you wanna learn a lot about print on demand very quickly. So without further ado, I wanna get right into these 25 questions and start getting you guys' answers. But very quickly, I just wanna say, if you
are new to the channel, welcome to the channel. My name is Greg and I'm
an online entrepreneur, sharing the resources that I wish I had along my journey. So if you're interested
in making money online, feel free to look around the channel and consider subscribing. Secondly, to all of you guys who are returning to the channel, as you guys know, I really appreciate all of your support. So thank you for all the support you've been showing me. I know I say it in every video and that's because I mean it. Thank you guys so much. So with all of that being said, let's go ahead and jump
right into this video. Starting with the first question. The first question is, I'm new to print on demand and I'm overwhelmed by all of the videos that are on the channel. Where should I start? The short answer here is, recently, I've actually been
getting this question a lot. So I spent a ton of time putting together one fully updated comprehensive
print on demand tutorial. I'll link this down in the description, but I'm trying to put it on the face of the channel or somewhere where it's
easy for you guys to find. It's called Something to the Effect of Full Print on Demand Tutorial and on the thumbnail, it says, start here. This is where I would
recommend for you to start or anyone who is new to print on demand, because it will walk you through adjusting videos like this and screen recordings all the way from the idea of starting in print on demand, all the way to scaling your business. Then once you've watched this video and you've started to put
this process in motion, then you can go through the playlist and the other videos
throughout the channel and you can find the details breaking down certain aspects of the process that you may want more information on. Moving right along, let's get into question number two. And this is why do you
recommend Teespring, Redbubble and Merch by Amazon, as opposed to some of
the other big players like Printful, Printify and Etsy. Now there's three main reasons that I recommend Teespring,
Redbubble and Merch by Amazon. First is that they are completely free. You're never going to be charged to upload a design to sell. There are no monthly fees. There are no listing fees
or anything like that. The second reason is because they do all the marketing for you. Some of these other sites, you have to upload your designs and then you are responsible for getting people to see them. If you don't do any marketing yourself, you're not going to get
any views on your listings. On the three sites that I recommend, Teespring, Redbubble, Merch by Amazon, they actually traffic
to your listings for you so it turns it into a very
passive business model. And the third reason is that Teespring, Redbubble and Merch by
Amazon are all non-exclusive. So if you create one T-shirt design, you can upload that exact same design to all three of these sites. It creates three separate listings and you get three different versions of marketing done for you. So you get triple the exposure and it just leads to a
lot more organic sales. Moving right along to
question number three. This is on Teespring. Why are there high
shipping costs right now? So this is actually temporary and it's just current to the time and the world climate
that's going on right now. Teespring has posted a notice to sellers on their website just saying that in order to keep their
operations running smoothly, they had to temporarily
increase their shipping rates. Now, yes, this is an inconvenience but it is temporary so it's going to pass and you can rest assured knowing that people still are making purchases. I'm watching steady sales still come in and Teespring has made a statement saying that their website traffic
is higher than ever and sales are continuing to come through. So don't be discouraged by
the high shipping price. It is temporary and it will go away. Question number four, can I use quotes from
people in my designs? This is a great question and it brings us into copyright, trademark and right of publicity and privacy. Now this is the first time in this video that I'm going to mention that. A lot of these questions I have answered in much more detail on that other videos on this channel. So I've made a video about
copyright infringement and print on demand before, which goes into a lot more detail, but surface level for
you in broad strokes, my short answer for you would be no, I don't recommend using quotes from people in your designs simply because it opens
you to protected content and it then brings in the risk of your designs being taken down and your trust score lowered and all of the things
that come along with that. Simply I would avoid designs that have quotes from celebrities or famous people altogether because you don't know which ones of them are going to take action and what your design taken down. Moving into question number five. And this is, can we use celebrity
images in our designs? If it's a direct image of the celebrity, no, you can not use it because they're protected
by all of the things we just mentioned before. If it is considered fan art, where it's content where
you created yourself, so you drew the image of them, or you altered it or you modified an image to make it your own, then you technically own
the copyright on that. So although fan art in itself is slightly a gray area, the general rule of thumb
that I would give you is as long as you are creating or customizing that image, you can use it. Moving to number six. This is, do we have to pay for the item when it is ordered? This is a really good question and it is commonly confused. If you are using Teespring, Redbubble and Merch by Amazon, the
ones that I recommend, you don't have any fees
like I mentioned before. This also means, you do not have to pay for the items when a customer orders them. On some of the other print on
demand platforms out there, when a customer orders a product, they charge your card to pay for the item and then after the
customer's item has shipped, you get your money back plus the profit. So that's where this confusion comes from and just know that if
you're using Teespring, Redbubble and Merch by Amazon, you will never have to
pay for any of the items. The customer's payment pays for the entire cost of goods sold. You don't have to pay for anything. Question number seven, can we promote T-shirts with Facebook ads or Google ads like drop shipping? This is a good question. And although you can have
success using paid advertising to sell T-shirts, I do not personally recommend it. The main reason is that
it's not beginner friendly. So I would say the vast majority if not 99% of beginners, if you're spending money on a paid advertisement to sell T-shirts, you will get a lot of views, you'll get a lot of clicks, but it's very rare that
you'll actually get a sale. So my recommendation is no, I do not recommend using paid
Facebook ads or Google ads to try to sell T-shirts
like drop shipping. Alternatively, watch the footprint on the mandatorial I
was mentioning before, that will be linked in the description and that will show you how to do your marketing completely free so you're not paying for any ads. Question number eight, this is a good one and it is how much competition
is on print on demand. This is a great question because if you are going into
any new business venture, it is smart to look around and say, hey, how saturated is this? How many competitors are there? So this is a cool answer. And I don't know that
I've talked about this on the channel before. And that is that yes, there are a lot of people
in print on demand. That is by no surprise and it's because it's a
really good business model. However, there are not many people in print on demand doing it properly. The vast majority of
people in print on demand, they're going to create a couple designs, upload them, run paid ads to them and find out that they're
not profiting from it because of what I just explained. And then they're going to stop altogether because they lost money and they're not making
money in this new business. This is by far going to happen to most people in print on demand. And not many of them are going
to use the proper strategy and stick around for the long run. This is why you see a
lot of designs out there, but people aren't
actively creating new ones because they don't know
the proper strategy. So with that said, if you're doing print on demand properly, you're using the right strategies and you're in it for the long run, you can absolutely succeed no matter how many
temporary competitors try to get into the space. Number nine, is print on demand still good to start with now? The short answer here without going into too much detail is yes. I've been talking to a ton
of people in the comments and you guys have been
sharing your experiences where you've started a week ago, you already got your first sales and it's starting to snowball. I hear this in the comments
probably once per day and when I see a really big success story, I like to pin it to the top of that video. So I can absolutely say from all of you guys
that I've been talking to in the comments, using this strategy is
still working extremely well for beginners getting
started in print on demand. Number 10. This is, can you lower
your price of your items in the beginning in order to get those first few sales and get the ball rolling? Yes, technically you can do this. However, I think it's more work for you because once you get past
those first few sales, you have to go into all of your listings and change the prices back to normal. Psychologically, a
consumer may be more apt to buy your design over someone else's because it's a few dollars cheaper. However, I think it really comes down to just making great designs and people will pay the
normal price for them. So I would say it's kind of a wash here. If you wanna try this out, you can try lowering your
prices in the beginning, but just know that it's
going to slow you down down the road when you have to go back into your account and change the price on all those listings back to normal. Number 11, how long does it take until
you get your first sale? This is one of the most
common questions I receive and it's because starting
a new business venture, you want to start seeing success so you can reassure yourself
that it was a good decision. Just know that on average, it's somewhere from a
few days to a few months until you'll see that first sale come in and things start to happen. This largely depends on
what niche you're going into and how competitive it is. And a little bit of luck of getting in front of the right person who's ready to buy in
those first few days. So with that said, I've heard from some of you
guys getting your first sales literally on the first
day that you've started. That is very rare, but it's very awesome. So don't be surprised if it takes somewhere
like a month or two months to get your first sales started. With that said, my
biggest challenge to you is if you are in this phase, it's kind of the waiting phase to get your first sales, I really recommend just staying as positive as you can and optimistic and really just pushing for the light at the end of the tunnel because once those sales start, the ball will start rolling. Question number 12. Can you do print on demand
from anywhere in the world? The short answer here is yes, you can do print on demand from any country or region in the world. And if you don't have an option directly to select your country in
an application or on a site, I'll show you at the end of this video how you can get around that and still apply for that site. Question number 13, can we use T-shirt quotes on our designs? The short answer here is no. T-shirt quotes, movie quotes, song lyrics are all protected content. The people who came up with them are able to profit on them and unless you have written
consent from that person, you are not able to
profit from them as well. Number 14, I'm not getting sales and I'm even using the Instagram strategy. My answer and my
recommendation comes back to how long it takes to get your first sales. So I would say, just keep pushing. It sounds like you're probably in the beginning first
couple of days or weeks when we have doubts about
if it's going to work, keep pushing, be positive and a couple of questions
I would ask you back are, how many designs have you made? How long have you been
posting on Instagram? How many posts have you made there? Have you tried out different hashtags to get more people looking? And overall it comes down to, how long have you been doing it? How long have you been trying? And I recommend keep pushing
until those sales come. Number 15. This might be one of my favorite questions that you guys have asked. So thank you for asking. It's a really good question. The question is, why do I
share these tips online? Wouldn't that create more
competitors to myself and print on demand? The short answer here is
I get a lot of fulfillment from sharing this
information with you guys and talking to you in the comments. Otherwise, if I kept it all to myself, I wouldn't know any of you guys and I wouldn't talk to any
of you guys in the comments. And there was a book that really
changed my mindset on this. Initially, I thought the same thing. I'm just going to be
creating more competitors and I will get less sales, but I actually haven't
seen that correlation. In the beginning, I shared
a lot of my own stores and yes, a lot of those
designs were copied. So I learned my lesson and I don't share my own stores anymore. And I've had no issues. I read a book a couple of years called "The Go-Giver" by Bob Burg. And I highly I recommend anyone who's asking this question of why share this information
to read that book. It's a short read, but it really moved me and got me to start
sharing this information with the rest of the world. Number 16, how do you send
T-shirts to influencers without being scammed? So first things first, I would not recommend
actually sending an item to an influencer, that would be along the idea that they wear the item and
they take a photo with it. I don't think that's your
best way of doing a shout out. Rather I would create a mock-up of a model wearing your design, send that image to the influencer and just pay for a shout out that way. This is going to be a lot safer and I think a lot more cost effective if you are going to use Instagram or social media shout-outs. Number 17, which of the
three print on demand sites should I be promoting Instagram? So this is a good question in regards to when you make your items on Teespring, Redbubble and Merch by Amazon, which link do you put on Instagram because you can only put one link. The answer here is that
that Instagram page is solely for Teespring. Teespring has what's called a trust score so we need to drive a
few of our own sales. Merch by Amazon and Redbubble,
they don't have a trust score so they start doing marketing
for you right off the bat. So keep that in mind
that the Instagram page is only for Teespring. Additionally, once you
get those first few sales and your trust score on Teespring, you no longer have to do
Instagram pages at all. Number 18. How do other print on demand
sites compete with Amazon? This is a really good question and it comes down to Amazon being so big that how do other sites compete? The answer here is that
other sites compete with advertising and
their organic traffic. So sites like Teespring and Redbubble get a fraction of the
traffic that Amazon gets. However, they have organic traffic from SEO built up over years that both of those sites are literally getting millions of visitors to their site every month. So although Amazon is the biggest, the other ones definitely bring in literally millions of people to their site every single month. Number 19, is the Teespring
trust score account wide. The short answer here is yes. On Teespring, you can get
your sales from anywhere, any of your listings,
any of your storefronts. You just have to get those
first two to 10 sales yourself. Once you get those sales, then you get your trust score and it is for your entire
account on Teespring. So all of the listings you
currently have your account, no matter where they are
in whichever storefronts and all of the future listings that you upload to Teespring will all have that trust
score marketing done for you. Number 20, how do you find a good niche to sell T-shirts in? Well, you're going to
need a niche research tool specifically for print on demand. There are a ton of different types of keyword
research tools out there, but many of them are going to be using
general Google search data. The one that I personally use is called Merch Informer because they use solely
print on demand data. You type information about
a keyword or a niche, they're going to run the numbers on just print on demand search data and tell you if that is a
good niche to go with or not. So the short answer on that one is use a good niche research tool that's specific to print on demand. Number 21. What kind of laptop do I
need for print on demand? So I don't know these specific specs that you need on your laptop, but it just has to be powerful enough to load the print on demand websites and your design software along with your niche research tool. I would venture to say, you can
get an entry level computer, but definitely just try out these sites and if they aren't
loading properly for you, then you may need to upgrade your computer to something faster. Number 22, how many designs
is considered a lot? So if you guys have been
watching this channel, I always say that the key to
succeeding in print on demand is creating an uploading
a lot of great designs. So this question comes in
and how many is that a lot. this a lot for you is going
to be different than for me, it depends on your financial goals. I would say the first goal that I would set for everyone out there is to create at least 50 different designs and upload those 50 designs to all three of the websites. That'll give you a total
of 150 listings out there. Once you've done that, then you can kind of step
back and look at the business and see how it's going. But if you've only
created a couple designs, I'd say, keep pushing yourself until you've hit at least 50 and then look at where your
financial goals are from there. Your next goal may be 100 and then 500 and then 1,000. You can keep going as big as you want to and create as many designs as you need, depending on what your
specific financial goals are. Number 23, my design was
taken down immediately. What happened? This is probably because
of copyright infringement. These print on demand sites
all have filters in place so if they see something as
copyrighted or trademarked, it will be removed immediately. Sometimes a design that's
copyrighted or trademarked will slip through, but then
it will be removed later. However, if your design
was removed immediately, it's likely because it had
protected content on it. I would go back and look at that listing and look in the design, the
title and the description and see if anything is copyrighted. If you want a way to search this formally and see if something is protected, you can go to tmsearch.uspto.gov and then you can type
in a word or a phrase and see if two things, see if it is actively protected and if it's protected on apparel. If it is both of those, that means that was the
reason that it was taken down. Question 24, Payoneer
or PayPal for Teespring. When you're in Teespring
and you go to the settings, you connect how you want to be paid out. But they give you two options, they have Payoneer and PayPal. What's the deal with both of those? So the answer here is they
used to use only PayPal but since PayPal is not available in every country or
region around the world, they've integrated also with Payoneer. So it just gives you an option. If you live in a country or region that does not support PayPal, then you can use Payoneer to be paid. And lastly, question number 25, for both Payoneer or PayPal, do I need a personal
or a business account? This is a short answer. You only need a personal
account on both of these. You do not need to create a
business account on either. Now there were a couple of extra questions that I really wanted to
throw into this video because I think they will help
a lot of you guys right now. So there are two bonus questions I wanna throw in here for you. The first one is Merch by Amazon does not have my country
in the application, what should I do? This is what I mentioned
previous in the video. So if you are in the application, you don't see your
country or region there, you can go to payoneer.com, which we were just actually talking about, create a free account and then go to their
US payment service tab. This will give you banking information for a US located bank. This way you can go
back to Merch by Amazon. You can select United States as the location of your bank and put in the bank details
of that Payoneer account. I've seen a lot of
people succeed with this so I highly recommend you try it if your country or region is not in the application
on Merch by Amazon. And last question, this is
the last one for this video is on Merch by Amazon,
they ask for a tax ID. What if in my country or region, I don't have one of those? If you don't have a tax ID, then just put in any identification number that you do have in
your country or region. If Merch by Amazon needs more information or a different ID number, they will contact you for the application. So guys, that's the first video. There's going to be a part two to this. I just wanted to separate them so you can digest all of the information a little bit better. So keep an eye out for that video. Once it's ready, it will be linked down in the description of this one, but I hope this video
has been helpful for you. And as always, if you have any questions that were answered here
and you need more details, let me know down in the comments and feel free to look throughout
the entire YouTube channel. There are actually a ton of videos with details on a lot of common questions throughout this channel so feel free to search through the channel and you might find your answer there. All right, guys, that's it for this one. I hope you enjoyed it. And I will see you all in the next video.