Hey, everyone, welcome
back to another video. In today's video, I'm
going to be breaking down, who are the best print on
demand companies out there? Now, for those of you who don't know, I've been a print on demand seller for just about 10 years now,
so I've used a whole spread of different print on
demand fulfillment services. Now, in this video, I
have put together a list of just the top eight
print on demand companies that you really need to know about. I've left out all of the fluff,
so by the end of this video, you will know exactly who you want to use and you'll know why. So the very first thing to understand as you are getting into print on demand is that not all print on demand websites should be treated equally. Now, I don't mean this to throw shade on any particular website. What I actually mean is
that some websites are using an active print on demand
business model, and other websites are using a passive print
on demand business model. Now, if you haven't heard of
the difference between these, essentially, active print on demand is, you create your own website
as a print on demand seller, you bring your own traffic
and your own buyers, as a print on demand seller,
you pay for each order upfront, and you handle all of
the customer service. Now, as we go through this video, I will highlight which
print on demand companies use this active business
model, and then also, I'll explain which ones use
the passive business model. So what the passive print
on demand business model is is essentially you create
your print on demand designs, just like active print on demand, but instead of uploading
them to your own website, you upload them to the print
on demand website themselves. Now, these passive print
on demand websites, they have their own marketplaces, which means they're
bringing their own traffic. People already come to these passive print on demand websites, and they're searching
through all the listings to purchase things, so
you don't have to do your own marketing, you don't
have to do any advertising. Also, the customers are going to pay for the full order upfront, so you don't have to front
the money for every order, and lastly, these passive
print on demand websites, they handle all of the
customer service for you. So that is the massive difference between active print on demand
and passive print on demand, and as we go through these eight different print on demand companies, I'll explain which ones
follow which model. So now that hopefully
we are on the same page about active versus
passive print on demand, now let's start off with the passive print
on demand companies. Now, there are four passive
print on demand websites we're going to cover in this video. There are several other passive
print on demand websites out there. These are the only four that I think you should
really be focusing on, because they're just going to give you the best return on your time. So switching over to the computer here, let's start with the first one. So this is Amazon's print on demand, and it's specifically called
Amazon Merch on Demand. So although this looks
like a very basic website, this is actually the official
page of where you sign up to be a print on demand seller for Amazon. So a couple important things to know about selling
print on demand on Amazon, first is that Amazon gets
a ton of organic traffic, so when you create your listings and you upload them to
Amazon for print on demand, you don't have to worry about marketing, you don't have to worry about advertising. Now, secondly, Amazon Merch on
demand is 100% free to start and free to use for the long term. You don't have to pay any monthly fees, you don't have to pay any listing fees. It's entirely free. Now, the third thing is that the catch to it being entirely free is
that you have to actually apply to be a seller on their platform. Now, they are the only
print on demand website where you have to actually
apply to be a seller, and the reason that they do this is because if it were
totally free for just anyone to come and start uploading
print on demand designs to Amazon's marketplace, their marketplace would
get flooded in a hurry. Now, a very quick note
here, if you do need help with this application on what to put here or how to fill it out, I'll put a link to a video in the description that goes through the whole application
step-by-step with you. Now, with that being said,
you can't really see much about how the program looks
or how it works on this page, so let's go actually over to Amazon, and if you type in something
like "funny fishing shirt" or you type in any type of T-shirt, you're going to see a
bunch of these results. This is all done with
Amazon Merch on Demand, and these are perfect examples
of print on demand shirts. If you are just starting as
a print on demand seller, this is where I would be starting. Just get your application in. Hopefully, you get
accepted on the first try. Don't worry if you don't get
accepted on the first try, 'cause you can always reapply with different email addresses. However, what's cool about these passive
print on demand websites is that you don't have to
choose just one of them. They are non-exclusive, so you can upload your designs to Amazon, but you can also upload
to these three other ones that I'm about to show you. So with that being said, let's move on to the second passive
print on demand website that I recommend to you if
you're just getting started. So this is the second passive
print on demand website I recommend, it is called Redbubble, and again, this is what
their marketplace looks like. So this is for funny fishing shirts, and it looks very similar to Amazon once you click on one of these. You're going to get the
same type of listing here, but the important things to know here are that Redbubble gets
their own organic traffic. Again, you don't have to worry about marketing or advertising. It is entirely free for you to join, and it's actually very easy to sign up, so you don't need to go
through an application process like you do for Amazon Merch on Demand. You literally just sign up,
you put in your email address, you create your username and password, and you are ready to
start uploading designs. Now, with everything that is free and looks too good to be true,
there's typically a catch, so the catch with Redbubble is that, when you open a brand-new free account, your account is going to be categorized in the standard Redbubble accounts. Now, beyond the standard accounts, there are two additional
tiers, let's call them. There is the premium account
and there is the pro account. Now, these are not paid
subscription accounts or anything like that. They are just labels on seller accounts, and essentially what that means is, when you're in the standard account or you're a brand-new seller, you're going to get a
smaller margin on each sale. Now, the way to advance in the tiers and get into the premium
and the pro accounts, where you're getting the
full-size profit margin for yourself, is just
to upload good designs and/or to get sales. The reason that Redbubble
put this into place is that people who are
opening brand-new accounts and they're trying to cheat
the system and use bots or use automation to
upload thousands of designs right off the rip, those
accounts are not going to be treated the same
way as established sellers uploading legitimate designs, and kind of an insider tip
here, kind of a trick to get you to the premium and pro accounts faster is when you create your
new account on Redbubble, focus your first few designs
uploading into trends that are going on right now. In some cases, before
you even get any sales on those designs, when Redbubble sees that you are uploading good designs that are based on current trends, they will just automatically
upgrade your account to a premium account. Okay, just like that, let's move on to the third passive
print on demand company, and what that company is is TeePublic. So TeePublic looks almost
identical to Redbubble. This is their marketplace here,
and just know that Redbubble actually purchased
TeePublic several years ago, so they are basically
the same company here, but they both get different
traffic to their marketplaces, so as a passive print on demand seller, take advantage of this
and upload your designs to both of them individually. Real quick here, the important things to know about TeePublic,
one, they're going to get all of their own organic traffic,
just like the others. Two, they are entirely free to use. You're never going to have
to pay for anything here. Three, they are very easy to sign up on, possibly even easier than Redbubble, and then four, they do
have a tier system as well, so as we were talking about for Redbubble, they have a similar one on TeePublic. They call it their
apprentice and their artisan. So just like Redbubble,
treat it the same way. When you start out, you
are going to be labeled in the apprentice category. Just focus on uploading good designs, and it will automatically
change to artisan over time. Now, the biggest question
that you may be having about TeePublic is that
when you upload your designs and you're in the apprentice category, you can't find them in the search results. Well, two things to know here
before you kind of panic. One, just because you can't
see them on your account in these search results does not mean that everyone else in
the world can't see them in their search results. It's kind of weird how this works, but some people can see
'em in search results, some people can't, and secondly,
just because your design is not listed in these search results does not mean that it won't get sales. With all of the offsite marketing that TeePublic is going to do for you, if you're uploading good designs,
there are still good odds that you are organically going
to get sales just rolling in before you can even see
those designs listed in the marketplace, so just rest assured, kind of ignore all of the panic
noise out there about this. If you are uploading good
designs, your account in time will get switched over to artisan, then you're going to get
the full exposure here. You're going to get the full-size margins, just like we talked about for Redbubble. And just like that, we are
onto the fourth passive print on demand company,
and that is Spreadshirt. Now, Spreadshirt is
definitely the smallest of these passive print on demand websites, but there's actually some things that are really impressive about them. So first, they're going to get all of their own organic traffic. Second, they are 100% free to use. You never have to pay for anything. Third, they're going to
be another very easy one for you to start selling on. Now, as you can see, their
marketplace looks the same as the other ones we've been looking at, but the things that really
stand out about Spreadshirt is that one, they have an
excellent product catalog, and secondly, they have
really good customer service, so if you need help as
a seller on Spreadshirt, you can actually call them and talk to someone live on the phone. This is something that, as
a print on demand seller, is pretty hard to find
anywhere from any company, so that's definitely
something worth noting. So all in all, those are the four passive print on demand
websites to know about. You can upload your designs
and sell your designs on all four of these at the same time. There's nothing wrong with that. You're just going to get more
exposure on your listings. Now, with that being said,
let's now switch over and talk about the active
print on demand websites. Now, just before we get into these active print on demand websites, just know that whichever one
of these you're going to use, you're going to have to
create your own website to integrate these into. Generally speaking here,
you're probably going to be using Shopify to
create that website, because all of these
are going to integrate with that so seamlessly. So right off the rip, if you are going to do active print on
demand, just keep in mind that you're going to have
to pay monthly for Shopify. So the first active
print on demand website is called Printful. Printful itself is not going to actually get any organic
traffic because it's not one of those passive print
on demand marketplaces. However, using Printful
is entirely free to do. Just keep in mind that you
are going to have to pay for your website, however
you are hosting that. Now, when it comes to the actual catalog of products you can
print on with Printful, Printful has a massive
catalog, but this also goes for the other active
print on demand websites I'm about to show you. They have a ton to pick
from that you can print on. However, with that being said, Printful is the most expensive of them, so if you are looking for
really high-quality prints, Printful is going to be the one to use. Now, this is because Printful does all of their printing in-house, so it's actually at their
own fulfillment centers. They are the one printing it and shipping it out to the customer. The other two active
print on demand website that I'm about to show you, they don't do their printing
in-house like Printful, so if you are going to go the
active print on demand route and you're just looking for
the absolute best quality, Printful is the one that
I recommend for you. However, if you're looking for something a little
bit more affordable, I have another website to show you. So this is a print on demand
company called Gelato. They are a little bit
newer to the scene here, however, they are still a very good option for active print on demand,
so with that being said, they are not going to
have any organic traffic because they're active. They are free to use, just like Printful, however, you still do have to pay for all of your products upfront for every order that you get. Now, with that being said,
the catalog of products that you can print on is
massive, just like Printful. However, something that is different between Gelato and Printful
is that, as we said, Printful does all of
their printing in-house. Gelato actually outsources your printing to third-party fulfillers. Now, this means that Gelato
is not actually printing your orders themselves, but
they are routing that order to someone that they
trust to print the order and ship it out to the customer. Now, this is where things start to get a little bit shaky here. It's a little bit more affordable to use Gelato compared to Printful, but you may run into some quality issues because Gelato themselves is not actually the one printing it. They are not the one
running the quality check. They're not the one shipping
it out to the customer. However, with that being said, it is a little bit more
affordable than using Printful, so with that being said, that brings us into the third active
print on demand website, and what this website
is is called Printify. Now, if you've heard of Printful, you've probably also heard of Printify. They are the two biggest names in the active print on demand space. Now, everything basically stays the same when comparing these three
active print on demand websites, but the main differences are basically, Printful is going to do in-house printing. It's going to be the most expensive. Gelato is going to outsource
your printing automatically. It's kind of middle ground expensive, and then Printify is going
to outsource your printing, however, you get to pick
who it gets outsourced to, and that allows you to pick how much you are spending on each item. So when you are using Printify,
you get to manually pick who is the vendor that's
going to receive your orders, and all of those vendors will show you how much they charge for the order. So if you're looking for
the most affordable way to do active print on demand, that's where I would recommend Printify. Now, just keep in mind here,
you get what you pay for, so although you can get
the biggest profit margins in active print on
demand by using Printify, you may run into some
print quality issues, you may run into some
delayed shipping issues, and all of that is just going to be more customer service for you. So all three of these active
print on demand websites are absolutely good choices. It's just going to be tailored to, what type of business
are you trying to run? Now, there is one more company
to cover in this video, and it doesn't fall into
active print on demand or passive print on demand. It's kind of a hybrid of both. So what this website is is Etsy, and you have likely heard of this before because they are turning
into a household name, and you can actually do
print on demand on Etsy, and the reason that I say it is partially a passive
print on demand website, partially an active
print on demand website is because Etsy has a marketplace, so they actually get a ton of traffic through their marketplace, so they're bringing their own
traffic and their own buyers. However, Etsy themselves
don't do any of the printing. They don't do it in-house,
they don't outsource it. They leave that up to you as the seller, so what we need to do as a
seller is we need to integrate one of the active print on demand services that we just talked about
to our Etsy account, so that way, we can get
exposure on all these listings, and then when someone purchases one of these designs, it gets routed to our active print on
demand fulfillment service and they ship it out to the customer. Now, I will say there's a
couple really big catches to using Etsy. The first thing is that they do have fees. Now, if you look up their fees here, you go to types of fees, you're going to see that
there is a setup fee of $15 to set up your store, then there's a listing
fee that is 20 cents for each item that you list, and then each item
expires every four months, so that is going to automatically renew. It says it right here. Etsy's automatic renewals feature will automatically renew your listings at the end of a four-month listing period, charging you another 20 cents for each one of those listings,
and then on top of that, they're going to have a
transaction fee of 6.5%, and just know that every order
that you receive on Etsy, you are going to have to pay
for upfront because it's going to an active print on
demand fulfillment service. So let's say that your cost on a T-shirt to have printed is $10, and
you are charging $20 on Etsy. When you receive an order through Etsy, you will have to pay
either Printful, Gelato, or Printify the $10 to
print the order and ship it, and then afterwards,
Etsy is going to pay you your full $20 from the
customer minus all of the fees. Now, personally, over the years, I have moved away from
active print on demand, just because it is so involved with the customer service
side and the advertising side. Instead, I have switched to
the passive print on demand, where you can just focus
on creating more designs and uploading them to the marketplaces. This, in my opinion, gives
you such a better lifestyle, and you can really enjoy your life more than being glued to your phone. So for those of you who are
interested in the passive route of print on demand, I have a
full tutorial I can offer you. I'll link it down in the description. You can find it here on
YouTube totally for free. For those of you who are interested in the active print on demand route, I don't have any full
tutorials to offer you, but I know there are several
good ones here on YouTube that you can find. So guys, hopefully this
video has been super helpful, saves you a lot of time. If you have any questions, just let me know down in the comments. I'd be happy to help you out, or if you have any specific videos you'd like to see in the
future, just let me know.
