BEGINNER'S GUIDE to Starting a Print on Demand Business That Make's More Than Your Full Time Income

if you've been thinking about starting a print Onan business or you've just gotten started you're still in that early stage and you're not really getting a ton of traction in today's video I'm going to be showing you a complete road map of all of the decisions think about and choose when you are first starting a print on demand business now with so many videos and tutorials out there and just a lot of information sometimes it can be really hard to get a good idea of what are just the basic things that you really do need to think about to get started in this business now I've been at this for a number of years as a successful print on demand seller so I've really been able to figure out what is the barebones system that you are going to be able to actually grow a very successful and profitable Business Without a ton of extra stuff so let's just jump right on into it now the very first decision you are definitely going to need to make when you are wanting to become a print on demand seller or even grow your business beyond what you're doing right now is figure out what platforms you want to sell on now right away this seems like a very straightforward question but there definitely is a lot that goes into a decision like this now the way I see it there's kind of two different types of print on demand platforms that you can sell on the first one is going to be a little bit more passive while the other one definitely involves a bit more work but they both have their pros and cons so on the side of things where it's a little bit more passive are the sites like merch by Amazon or Amazon am merch you have Zazzle T and red bubble so on all of those sites you are basically just creating the design uploading the product and writing things like the title in description and then the platform that you were selling on is going to do everything else everything from making the item shipping it packing it storing it and then dealing with all of the customer service if someone doesn't like the item and chooses to return it so that's really nice because you aren't fronting any money to actually purchase the products that you are selling and if a customer doesn't like them you are not doing any of that customer service and so the actual platform or website you're selling on like Amazon is going to eat the cost for you now some of the drawbacks are for a place like merch by Amazon because it is so desirable to sell with them they have a very extensive application process and a lot of people sadly just don't get accepted now I do have a video with some of my best tips for how you can help your chances of getting accepted but even if you follow all of those to a tea it doesn't guarantee that you are going to get accepted or it's not going to take you a number of different times applying to be able to participate in that program but if you do find that you get accepted it can be super profitable and one of the lowest barriers for actually getting tons of items up and making lots of sales now on the other hand the other more passive platforms to sell on like Redbubble T public or Zazzle because they don't have an application process and you don't have to front any money they are a lot more competitive there is a low barrier of entry for tons of people to get started on them and so the platforms are really flooded with a ton of sellers with some being better than others so if you really are just trying to kind of dip your toes into the print on demand thing you definitely can try one of those sites but you just might not be able to build as profitable of a business as if you were selling somewhere else now my other Top Choice is going to be selling on a platform like Etsy however this is definitely going to involve a bit more work but in return this can be much more profitable than a place like Redbubble so if you are selling on Etsy Etsy doesn't have the capability in and of itself to actually make these items for you it's basically just operating as a Marketplace so you are going to in turn need to partner with a manufacturing company that is going to actually produce these items for you so you are kind of acting as the middleman that is going to get these items from somewhere else and then list them on Etsy so someone can purchase them so you're still not doing the work of printing packing shipping storing your items but you are going to be doing the work of actually purchasing the item UPF front so your manufacturing partner has prices for all of their items so for example if you wanted to sell a t-shirt on Etsy you might have to pay around $10 to your manufacturing partner to actually purchase the item but then you can turn around and sell that item for $2 or more Dollar on Etsy and then you are going to pocket the difference every single time that that item sells now there are tons of different manufacturing Partners out there and some are definitely better than others you'll have to think about things like the pricing the turnaround time and the quality so to make things easy I'm just going to share with you the partner that I use I love them their quality is amazing their pricing is amazing and that is printify now the really nice thing about printify is that they actually have a ton of different manufacturers on their website so that means that you can sell hundreds of different types of items so if you want to just sell t-shirts you can totally do that but if you wanted to venture into other types of products like mugs tote bags tumblers journals and a lot of other different types of products you could do that all with printify and they've made it really easy to seamlessly integrate your Etsy shop with your printify store so everything runs really organically now I do have a full tutorial of exactly how to set up your Etsy shop and your printify account so that they're linked together and you can receive orders through that so I will link that video here for you to watch after this if you just want to see how you would actually go about that process but if you are going to go the route of selling on Etsy you definitely want to be making sure that you have a great production partner who is vetted and you know has really good quality and their items aren't going to be too expensive all right so once you have the platform that you want to sell on and you're not just limited to one place you could definitely sell on more than one platform that's personally what I do and what I recommend a lot of sellers do so once you figure out where you want to sell the next step is you're going to need to figure out how you are going to research the niches and products that are going to be sold on your shop now a lot of times new sellers they tell me that you know they have an idea of a shop something that they personally like and they just want to go ahead and make a shop with that now sometimes that can work for people but a lot of times I find that these shops that people want to make are just way too broad or too competitive so say you're really into animals and cats and so you wanted to have a print on demand shop that was completely dedicated to items about cats I probably would advise against that just because that really broad cat Niche is so so competitive so as a print on demand seller you always need to find a way to figure out how you can sell something with a lot less competition now the best way to do this is actually to use some kind of research tool I know it's really tempting to just think that you can figure out all of the niches and trends that you want to sell on your own but a lot of times you just end up wasting tons of time either scrolling the bestseller pages on Etsy or Amazon or you waste time by making items that end up not selling at all because maybe they are just way too competitive so I want to recommend a few different research tools that you could Implement to actually find designs day after day now the first one that I ever us is called merch Informer now this is based completely off of the sold data from print on demand items on Amazon and what it's going to do is it's going to show you what items are selling daily what items are ranked really low in the best seller charts what you want to be looking for what items have recently started selling super well that way you can figure out what niches might be a good place to Target now the other research tool that I use all the time is called Sal Samurai now this is more geared towards Etsy Sellers and it's going to show you the information about products that could be good choices to sell on Etsy and it will also give you some great SEO information so depending on which platforms you have chosen to sell on you might want to think about which research platform would fit better but I think personally that both of those different research platforms can really be used interchangeably through a bunch of of different sites so typically if something is selling really well on Amazon if a niche is doing well there it's pretty safe to assume that a similar Niche is going to also sell well on Etsy and vice versa now I also do have a really great free tool for you guys I have found a ton of success in targeting the niches that are basically a cross between two really popular things so sometimes a popular thing so let's say for example the holiday of Christmas if you just made a Christmas generic design that is going to be way too hard to compete in there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of designs on Etsy being sold that are just generic Christmas designs but the way that I found to really get into those competitive niches and make a ton of profit is by Crossing that with something else that is also popular so instead of just making a generic Christmas design you could make a Christmas beagle owner design or a Christmas dentist design or a Christmas granny design so anytime we can sub Niche and get a little more specific with the audience we're targeting there is a greater opportunity for us actually to make sales now I have something really cool for you guys I've actually created a full workshop for you that you can go through this entire cross niching process I showed you how to use my free cross niching guide book you're also going to get that if you sign up for that free class and I'm going to show you how you would take that from concept all the way to design so if you want to join that just go ahead and click the link below to register and I'll be sending you an email with all the information to watch the workshop shortly now the next step in this process once you figure out how you are actually going to find the niches that you're going to Target is you need to decide what products you are going to sell now there is not one type of product that is always going to do better than others across the board and depending on what platform you're selling on they're going to have more limitations based on what you can sell so if you are are able to get an Amazon merch account if you're selling on Amazon you are only going to have a small catalog of products that you can sell from and typically on Amazon I find that people get the most attaction selling T-shirts so if you are a beginner on Amazon I probably would recommend that you really stick with those apparel items and try to make your first sales that way before expanding into a lot of other products now on the other hand if you are selling on Etsy integrated with printify really the sky is the limit with the kinds of products that you can sell so they definitely have your classic apparel items like hoodies t-shirts sweatshirts that kind of stuff and so that can be a great choice for new sellers but another strategy tons of new sellers have used to actually break into competitive niches and really get their stores going and profitable really quick is to pick more of a unusual product type so say you see that a niche is selling really well on one of your research tools what you could do if you're integrated with printify on Etsy is you could take that idea from a T-shirt and then you could go ahead and put it on some Tumblers or a blanket maybe on a product that there's just way less competition on but one thing that I do want to caution against is getting too overwhelmed with selling tons of different product types this is a huge mistake that I see tons of new sellers making is they spread themselves really thin trying to upload all sorts of different products to their shop my best recommendation for new sellers is really just stick with two or three product types and try to focus tons of your energy on getting lots of products uploaded in those types so some really good ones to start with are things like t-shirts hoodies sweatshirts mugs those all make really good beginner friendly products but you also could pick a couple other more obscure products too if that's going to work for your shop type now definitely another thing you want to think about if you are purchasing items on printify is if you want a printify premium account or just their free one now both of these can be really good options and it's super nice that you can get started on printify with selling their items just with a free account but you're going to end up paying a little bit more for the wholesale cost of the item now if you get printify premium you're going to get up to 20% discount on all of their wholesale items which is great because that means you're just making more profit on every single sale and the math typically works out to if you plan on making more than 15 sales every single month usually it's worthwhile to get a premium account but if you're not sure about how this all works and want to just go ahead and get started make sure you sign up for a free account down below too now once you know what products you are actually making is my personal favorite step in this whole process and that is actually making your designs now when we think about being a print on Dem man seller often this is the step that a lot of people are jumping to and this is what they think it's all about but there really is so much to think about before we even get to this point in the process so there are so many different design Suites and tools out out there and it can get really overwhelming to figure out what one is the best for a print on demand seller now the ones that I use I like because they are personally tailored to being a print on demand seller while I think canva is a really great resource and I do use canva for some things I've been opting to use KD a lot more as my design Suite because it's made specifically for print on demand sellers so the first thing that that means is anything that you create on their platform is going to be free and safe to sell on any print on demand site you have full commercial usage over the designs and Graphics that you make using their Suite now the other really cool thing that I like that since this is tailored towards print on domain sellers is they have thousands of different templates especially for t-shirts to really just drag and drop a few different elements maybe change some text and you have a fully professional looking design that you can use and upload now if you're a beginner sometimes your design skills might not be really practiced yet so it's super helpful to have a tool that has a lot of templates that can kind of be like training wheels as you're figuring out what makes a good design but even years into this process I still find myself using templates all the time just because it's really quick to make a great design with something like that they also have some awesome AI image generators too so that is just another perk of using a place like KD now another Suite that I also like is place it you can make designs on that platform form as well and they also have a number of different templates but on place it in addition to getting the design Suite you also get access to their full catalog of mockups too so that's just an added thing to think about when you're deciding which Suite might be best for you now really the design Suite that you choose isn't going to matter as much as just making sure that you understand how to use it and it's easy enough that you're going to be able to make new products every single day without getting overwhelmed so definitely think about what fits into your business best and don't feel like you have to have every tool out there just pick what works for you and what you're going to stick with using now another couple tools that I did want to mention can be great additions to these design Suites if you choose to go this direction so one of them is going to be Crea a Fabrica and this just gives you access to hundreds of thousands of fonts to use on your print on demand items as well as millions of different downloadable graphics and designs that you can also use and this is definitely one of the lower cost subscriptions out there I think it comes in around like $5 a month so this is a great way to get additional print on demand Assets Now the other kind of design tool that I definitely wanted to mention is if you think that you are going to be selling personalized items which can be a really profitable Market especially on a place like Etsy I want to mention hello custom which is a tool that automates the full personalization process now a lot of times it seems like so much more work to start selling personalized items on Etsy so that's why a lot of people stay away from it but with hello custom you are going to be able to set up what parts of your design you want to be customized and so whenever you get an order from Etsy it's going to automatically make that new artwork for you so that you don't have to be thinking about creating new designs every single time an order comes in that whole process is automated for you so I'll also link all their information down below and you can get a free trial with them if you do want to just try it out and see how it could work for your business if you are selling personalized items now once you have all of those decisions made and you figured out what platforms you're going to use what research tools and design tools you're going to use you are really on your way to actually growing a really successful thriving print on demand business you've laid all the foundation in the groundwork now it just takes you consistently uploading great niches with good designs every single day now if you want my complete road map for how I would grow my print on demand shop all the way to six figures in 2024 I would definitely recommend watching this video next that's going to lay out that full process for you thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in my next video

Channel: Hannah Ebeling

Views: 12,198

Keywords: Merch by Amazon, How to make money online free, print on demand, selling tshirts, merch by amazon 2023, print on demand for beginners, print on demand for beginners 2023, selling shirts on amazon, merch by amazon for beginners, best tools for merch by amazon, how to get accepted to merch, Merch by amazon tier 10, how to tier up fast in merch by amazon, best print on demand sites, How to start an etsy store, etsy print on demand, etsy tips, print on demand niches, t shirt niches

Id: 35aZzFY2waE

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024