Don't Use Print On Demand in 2024 (The Truth)

don't use print on demand don't do it don't use print on demand that's what they all say right well let me tell you something they're not wrong but they're not right neither so in this video right here I'm going to let you know why you should not use print on demand why you should use print on demand and how you actually should use print on demand what is up my name is Rich I am a full-time e-com seller been doing this since 2014. I've used print on demand a lot in my business even fulfilled in-house I've gone through a lot of the struggles with building an econ business especially in the apparel space done well over seven figures and I've even helped students reach six and seven figures themselves so what is print on demand to begin with these are companies that allow you to White Label their products typically it's a blank product like a t-shirt or a canvas and you can upload your design and they will print and ship it to your customer for you so some reasons why you should not use print on the main and for one is going to be quality control a lot of you all seem to want to have that control you want to see how your T-shirt feels how it actually looks printed before it goes out of the door you want to control every aspect of the packaging and you just want that you know clear state of mind that you are actually getting that product shipped and hand it to your carrier for you now one big thing that I have noticed is that a lot of people come into the comments and they always say things like the quality is so bad I just want to touch on this and say that it's not necessarily true I've shipped out thousands and thousands of t-shirts I know people who use solely print on demand for their seven and even they figure businesses and the thing is when it comes to Quality bad reviews always shout louder than good reviews it's more likely that if you go to a restaurant and you have amazing experience you get great food great customer service you probably won't even leave a review but the moment that you get some kind of bad service or some kind of bad food or something went wrong you are more inclined to leave a bad review 0.5 that's just the nature of how things go and the same thing is happening in the print on demand space I see sellers try to start off and then they have the same types of issues for me myself I personally see this as a myth there's been so many times I've sent out thousands of t-shirts and I've never even ordered and sampled to myself now that is another thing if you do feel really badly about this you know feel free to order yourself a sample but remember you are going to be your own worst critic a lot of you are going to look at a T-shirt and see one small misprint I won't even say misprint it's just something that is very typical and you want it to be a one it has to be perfect now this is where you're kind of overthinking the entire thing I see lots of people doing this whenever they first start off and they are nitpicking every single little thing and this is holding them back from starting or even scaling their actual business now the next reason why you shouldn't use print on demand is because of limited creative ability a lot of these places aren't going to have screen printed puff because they can't print that one off easily and now they might not have something like patches on a t-shirt everywhere because it's not necessarily easy to print patches one off for your actual garment when it gets really creative you can't get the inner lining of your hoodie dunk you can't get custom printed Pockets you can't get over the sleeve prints like coming all the way across you are going to be limited in your creativity now there are some things that you can do like a full-size print some people allow all over prints a lot of these companies have embroidery so don't think you are limited in that aspect you can be quite limited if you want that full creative control if you want to go really crazy on some types of garments but the beauty of print on a man is you don't always have to solely use print on demand you can mix this in or for your own products on on your store if you want to have those crazy quality apparel decorated items you can still print and ship this yourself or Outsource it and ship it yourself and have certain products on your store that is print on demand now some reasons why you shouldn't use print on demand it's really easy to start is super simple it's really easy to go to any of these pin on demand platforms these websites and integrate it with your website and they integrate with lots of different platforms nowadays and it makes it really easy so that whenever you get an actual order they print and ship it automatically so that's a whole nother Department that you don't necessarily have to worry about and learning that game because those are whole other departments where you have to actually learn when you do it yourself printing or Outsourcing then fulfillment then shipping and how to get the best shipping rates and so on but the con of this as well is the fact that it eats into your profit margin that is one thing I probably should have mentioned when it came to why you shouldn't because you you're not going to have that crazy crazy profit margin as if you are doing it yourself which brings me to my next topic of why you should use print on demand a lot of you all are so worried that it's eating so much into your profit margin that you don't even want to do it the thing is you can get way more sales to make up for it because now you can just focus on selling only and you won't have as much time being taken away when it comes to printing shipping or Outsourcing and fulfillment and especially if you're starting off by yourself and as a small team these are some time that you really need to focus on just sales and marketing at the core of this you want to focus on that don't worry about the profit margin just yet you want to use print on demand as leverage to get as many sales as possible and the thing is with these companies they can print and ship and handle it for you whenever you are focused on just getting sales now at the end of the day it's up to you as a business owner once you get those sales in you can sit there and look at it and digest and see which products you want to focus on so that you can get that profit margin back say this item right here is selling a lot and is going on print on demand instead we want more of that margin back let's take this one in-house and let's figure out how we can Outsource or produce this ourselves and fulfill it ourselves so you have to use it as leverage you're always so concerned that it's eating too much of your profit margin that you're not looking at the bigger picture sales another reason why you shouldn't use print on demand is product availability they have hundreds and hundreds of products on here that you can actually use now when it comes to doing things yourself or you know trying to Outsource it's hard to find certain products that you want to purchase and most of the time when you're Outsourcing you have to do a moq which is a minimum order quantity sometimes you have to order 36 hoodies or 36 t-shirts with 36 mugs when it comes with print on demand and you don't even know if your audience is going to purchase these products just yet then instead of you being so concerned about carrying inventory you can test your audience you can put a mug out there and see if people like it or not and if they don't like it you can do away with it easily instead of being stuck with 36 mucks but guess what if you actually sail through it or print on a man now it gives you the idea of hey maybe we do want to focus on this as a product so it's really easy and simple for you to be able to test your audience with different types of products when it comes to doing print on the Maya now one other thing is the fact that it is really easy to go International it's really easy to go Global because some of these print-on-demand companies have multiple multiple print houses across the globe so now even if someone is ordering something in Australia sometimes they may already have a print house in Australia and it gets print and shipped directly from Australia and a lot of people want to sell in the US market this works in that way as well a lot of people who are are in India and want to sell in the U.S market they can use a U.S print provider and sell to the U.S market so really think about that as well it's easier to take your brand or your business Global or print on demand now how you should actually use it I already touched on it you should use it as leverage access to things that you don't typically able to use in-house you can test different products and if you are just starting off don't look at that small thing known as profit margin yes it is a big concern but if you never even sold anything what's the point of having profit margin when you're incapable of getting sales focus on getting sales and increase your profit margin at a later time use print on demand as leverage test as many different products as you can test the market see what you can sell and then once you are done focusing on sales and marketing you can go and look in different departments that you want to leverage so that you can get your profit margin back print on demand is not the reason why you're not getting sales just really think about your business model if you are selling T-shirts as a brand or you're just selling it as a t-shirt seller if you're doing it the way that I typically do it by selling on Amazon and that's the end just selling generic style t-shirts or do you actually have a cloning brand but at the end of the day you should be using print on demand as leverage for your business you don't necessarily have to use it solely although I do know of a handful of people who just solely use this print on demand because they don't want to build a team in-house for product fulfillment for creation for outsourcing and so on it's really easy to build a team online and have that automated now on the other hand I know of companies who use this print on demand alongside of themselves also creating products designing and shipping in-house but they also use print-on demand as leverage for testing points to test and try different products now that you know how you can use print on demand for your business remember this a lot of you guys may be struggling to get those first few sales or even to scale remember remember it's not exactly easy however it is simple it can be easy in the long run once you keep on doing it and you start to understand and know when and where you should put this to use it's not necessarily hard either this is not rocket science it's really simple and it's straightforward and once you really start to understand the game remember there's a learning curve to this just like anything and everything else but once you learn it it's going to be really easy for you to leverage it

Channel: Hustle Ninjas

Views: 257,328

Keywords: print on demand t-shirt business, print on demand, print on demand shopify, truth about etsy print on demand, the truth about etsy, the truth about selling on etsy, print on demand 2023, side hustles 2023, ecommerce business, sales tax on etsy, how much can you make on etsy a month, etsy fees explained 2023, etsy offsite ads, etsy profitable niches, the truth about etsy pod, the truth about selling etsy pod, etsy print on demand, etsy digital products

Id: cpELhM3AJfs

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2023