OUTDATED Print on Demand Tips to STOP in 2024

with multiple years of print on demand experience I have definitely seen my fair share of Trends come and go suggestions tips people are throwing out come into fashion kind of and then be thrown out now there are all sorts of people that are still recommending some of these tips I'm going to be sharing with you but they are completely outdated so in this list I'm going to be telling you what you should stay far away from in 2024 if you are starting a print onaman shop or you already have one but maybe it's not as successful as you would want it to be maybe it's because you're trying some of these really outdated tips now I definitely don't want to waste any of your time so let's just jump right into this list of tips you should stay far away from this next year now the first one is something that definitely may have worked maybe five or 10 years ago for print on demand sellers but it is not going to be a strategy that is going to get you success in print on demand and that is treating holidays as niches in themselves so a lot of print on demand sellers myself included talk about it's really important to sell holiday themed designs however I think a lot of people get confused and they think that they should just be selling some generic holiday design so maybe for Christmas coming up they are just wanting to sell a Santa shirt or something that says Merry Christmas just a really generic design that goes for the whole holiday same thing with something like Valentine's Day they just want to make a Valentine's Day heart design on a pink shirt and they think it's going to sell really really well but the reality of it is that holidays in and of themselves are not a good Niche to taret they are just way too broad and they kind of transcend the category of Niche it's kind of more than that so what you really should be doing instead of just maybe making a generic St Patrick's Day design generic Easter designs is next year you really want to focus on being hyp specific and cross niching those holidays with other niches now this is a strategy I talk about all the time on my channnel here and I've actually actually created a free downloadable resource for you guys down below my cross Nation guide if you want to download that but what I teach is that if you want to be targeting holidays which is still a great holiday you need to include something else that will have people looking for that specific type of item and going to have less competition so instead of just creating a generic Easter design maybe you create a Easter design for a beagle owner or if you want to create Mother's Day designs you can cross that with something like at interest so maybe sewing or crocheting or baking so anytime you have a holiday I really think it's important to capitalize on getting less competition by Crossing it with something people are actually really looking for you can waste a ton of time making these very generic designs that's a big mistake I see so many new sellers making is they're just made 10 20 30 generic Christmas designs and none of them are going to sell because they're competing against hundreds of thousands of other people so definitely leave behind just making generic designs and make sure if you are targeting holidays you are crossing them with something else that is going to make your design have less competition now the next outdated print on demand piece of advice or Trend that I have seen a lot of people still really promoting is really really focusing on scalable designs so if you aren't familiar with a scalable Design This is the type of shirt where it could say something like world's best teacher and then by swapping out the word teacher with mom or dad or pet trainer or librarian you have a bunch of different Niche possibilities now this still can be a good type of product to create I definitely have created my fair share of scalable designs but I definitely find that a lot of people suggest making hundreds and thousands of scalable designs to be able to really increase the numbers of your shop so print on demand it really is a numbers game you want to have a ton of designs posted to your shops to make sure that some of those are going to become best sellers however we want these to be very high quality designs that aren't just thrown together scalable designs I think that when this strategy was first really being implemented and successful not a ton of people were making these scalable designs but now it seems like everyone is using some kind of automation software and they're just creating thousands of scalable designs and uploading them to every platform every single day so there is just so much competition for these generic kind of designs so instead of doing that I think you should really prioritize making Unique one-of-a Kind designs even if that's going to take a little bit more time than creating a scalable design like this now one way you can really take advantage of the time saving ability of say a scalable design is you can take advantage of using templates that you either have from a site like KD or something or you can create your own so this just means that if you have a standard font or style of shirt that you're coming back to time and time again that you can kind of save a template version of that and then anytime you have a new phrase or a new Niche you can just plug that into the template that you have saved so you're not recreating the design over and over again because you're just reusing some of those templates that you go to over and over again so if you're thinking if you should be creating some scalable designs this next year I definitely would just skip it and try to focus on researching really good one-of-a-kind niches with less competition instead of just trying to get as many designs out and hoping that maybe one or two of them sell with those scalable designs now the next piece of really outdated print on demand advice is going to be doing your Niche research and then finding trending designs and just making your own copied version of that now I think when there was just way less people selling print on demand this may have worked really well if you found a trending phrase that was selling you could just make your own version of that so maybe you just use slightly different font or you just changed the design a little bit posted it maybe on a different color shirt but in reality the design was just so similar to the one that was already bestselling so nowadays there is so much competition in print on demand so if you see a bestselling design chances are a bunch of other people also saw that and they are just creating almost exact copies of what is selling well but this isn't really a great strategy going into 2024 because if a product already has made sales say on a place like Amazon it's going to be in those top pages it's going to probably have some reviews it's going to have sales and so a lot of times people are not really scrolling down the page they're just clicking on one of the first listings that they see especially if it looks really similar to a lot of the other listings they're going to go with the one that has those five-star reviews so if you just try to do exactly what you saw somebody else do the chances are your product is not going to get any sales so when you are doing your Niche research if you see a phrase or a niche that is selling really well instead you want to be thinking about how you can transform that and create something really new and oneof a kind so maybe this isn't all text design white text on a black shirt and so you want to maybe add a big colorful graphic use some different style font maybe colorful lettering put it on a red shirt instead of a black one so that can be a strategy you can actually use to capitalize on finding one of those trendy but also putting your own spin on it so that way if someone does see yours it doesn't look exactly the same as the one that is already selling well so people could be incentivized to purchase yours if yours is completely different if it's really doing something better than anyone has done before so this year leave behind just copying designs that are selling well and try to find your own way to stand out and improve on every single trending phrase in nich you find now the next thing that you really need to make sure you are not doing an 2024 because it's going to get you nowhere is if you have a subscription service to a place like creative Fabrica or even if you have something like canva or KD if you are tempted to just download those bundles of like pre-made Graphics that they have of templates that are on Creative Fabrica and post them to your shirts and just upload a ton of those as really easy designs you are doing a disservice to yourself and the same thing on a place like KD or canva they have a bunch of amazing templates that you can use but you're doing a huge disservice to yourself if you're just downloading them as is or with practically no changes whatsoever so even though that might not exactly be against any rules in K's terms of service you could just use their pre-made templates as they are but if you had that idea chances are hundreds of other people have done that same thing and already uploaded them so again we are trying to actually Stand Out by doing something new so if you're going to use a subscription service like creative Fabrica which I do personally love I'll have them linked down below as well as Kel but you want to be downloading graphics and then adding your own text your own other elements combining them with other Graphics to make something totally new because if you download this pack of maybe groovy Halloween graphics and slap them on shirts you're competing with a bunch of people that have those exact same Graphics too so again they're going to go with the ones that have already sold when a customer goes to purchase they're probably not going to scroll back and pick yours because they've already seen it so if you really want to stand out and make seals you need to be transforming the tools that you use now you definitely do not have to make everything from scratch but just by combining different things changing colors making your own combinations can be a huge benefit to your shop now this next tip I definitely heard a few years ago a lot of people preaching about doing this but it certainly is not a piece of advice that I would be following in 2024 and Beyond and that is to be copying titles and descriptions from other products in the nich you're trying to Target now I've heard it said before that you know you don't want to redo all of the work that someone else has already done so you can just take what they are doing and you can copy it on the product that you are posting so not only do I think this kind of really isn't fair to the original Creator who made that description and title they probably put a lot of thought into it but more than that it's just not doing yourself any services so once again their product has been posted longer than yours it probably has sales on it so if you are posting the exact same title in description copied from them on your product chances are that the algorithm is going to lead people to the product that already has sales instead of yours so you want to be finding any way you can to try something a little bit new to improve the SEO that other people have used so I definitely think it's fine to look at other listings to see what they're doing with their SEO with their description what keywords they're using and you can certainly take that as inspiration use some of those elements in your own listing that's certainly what I do I kind of take the information out there and I create my own version of what has really done well but I never ever copy exactly word for word what I have seen other people listing products with so if you have been doing that strategy I definitely would stop that in 2024 now the next piece of advice that I think we definitely should leave behind in the new year is actually trying to make your prices as low as possible to compete with a lot of other people so on Etsy on Amazon it's really common for a lot of new shops to price their items super super low because they feel like they can't break into the market unless they price their products super super competitively now this just runs into a few different problems now one of them is there is always someone who is going to be able to sell their products a little bit cheaper than you so if we are all just trying to put our prices as cheap cheap as possible it's kind of a race to the bottom where no one is making any true profit but the amazing thing about print on demand is we can stand out and make really unique products that aren't out there anywhere so what I have found in my own business is that when people are shopping for things like gifts which is what happens to be a lot of print on demand items it doesn't really matter if something cost5 or $6 more and this thing is cheaper if they find a shirt or a mug they really connect with and they can't find that exact thing anywhere else they're going to pay the extra $5 for that specific one that they want so if you are just trying to compete with the lowest of low prices that doesn't even guarantee that people are going to pick yours if they find a design that they connect with more they're probably going to purchase that one so the strategy that I really like to implement is kind of going for that median price range so when you are attempting to create a product in a new Niche I take a look at all the products that are selling well in that niche I kind of take note of the lowest prices and some of the highest prices and I try to pick somewhere in the middle so people do like to feel like they are getting a deal they're not paying top dollar so I would stay away from pricing your products as high as possible even though some really established shops can do that but I definitely wouldn't be pricing my products really really low either typically on apparel item I like to be able to make at least $5 profit when everything is said and done so I make sure to keep my prices in that range even for really really new products that I've just listed now another strategy that I see a lot of people have questions about is there are some people especially on Etsy that they kind of like to game the system and make their prices appear lower now one way that people do this is by having different items listed within one listing so maybe they have a bunch of family shirts and sweatshirts but they also have listed like a baby onesie or a baby t-shirt which is significantly cheaper so that when people are looking at Etsy the item appears to to be like $8.99 but when you actually click onto the listing you find that all of the shirts are priced $25.99 it's only that little baby onesie that has the design that has that low price so I don't really like to suggest people implement this strategy I think in some ways it actually can't annoy the customer when they thought that they were going to get this really great price they clicked on it for that reason and then they found out that the price is the same if not higher than a lot of the other listings too so if you're thinking about if you should do this strategy I really do not suggest it now the next tip that I definitely think that you don't have to follow in 2024 is kind of twofold so there's definitely two sides of the coin when it comes to this question or issue and that is if you should have a niche shop or a general shop for your print on demand business to be successful now there are a lot of people that say that in 2024 you're going to have to only do a niche shop to be successful no longer can you just post a bunch of different niches in one shop and have traffic regularly coming to you making purchases but I still really don't think that is the case I definitely do love to have a niche specific store it allows you to do some things that maybe you wouldn't be able to with a general shop so if you want to try your hand at a niche specific store you have a very good idea that is proven to make sales I think you should go for it in 2024 just go all in on that one particular Niche but if you really don't feel like you have a good strategy a good Niche that you know is going to sell well I know that General shops still do really really well so that means you can be posting designs and products from a bunch of different niches and the reality is that most of the time when a person is purchasing one of your items they're not even clicking on your shop they're just purchasing directly from the listing page and then they never even see the other items you have to offer so I think either way you go you really can't go wrong so definitely don't let anyone tell you that you have to try one strategy or another to be successful both of them can be highly successful I would just say that if you are going to go for a niche specific shop you need to have some kind of validation that that Niche is doing well so either you have made sales in that niche in your own shop or you have done extensive research to prove that this could do really really well for you now there are so many other things that I wish that I knew when I first got started in print on demand so if you are starting a new shop or just not getting any traction I would definitely watch this video next it's going to have tons of things you can Implement that I wish I had known a lot sooner in my journey thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in my next video

Channel: Hannah Ebeling

Views: 75,236

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: hC0QdnZnMIQ

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023