Print on Demand MISTAKES that DESTROY YOUR GROWTH!

over the last 4 years I've turned a small side hustle into a thriving successful full-time print on demand business but that doesn't mean that that didn't come with any mistakes along the way in fact I've done so many things wrong and had to figure stuff out as I went but I want to let my mistakes be your opportunity to start with a leg up in this business there are so many things that I see new sellers still doing even though they are really hurting your business so in today's video I'm going to share with you seven the biggest mistakes I see a ton of new sellers still doing and if you can avoid these and just start off on a better foot right from the get-go that means you are just going to be that much more successful way faster so let's not waste any more time and just jump right into it now you may have been able to guess what this very first one is going to be but this is in fact one of the biggest mistakes so many new sellers tend to make and that is not doing their due diligence and checking trademarks and copyright now I know check trademarks can be one of the most frustrating parts of running a print on demand business but this really is going to make the biggest difference in making sure you are building a sustainable business that is here for years to come not just for the next few weeks now trademark searches they really don't have to be super mysterious and hard and there are tons of free tools to do this the one that I always use is just going to be the trademark electronic search system on uspto.gov this is going to help you search all of the trademarks in the United United States which is my biggest Marketplace that I sell in so a lot of times it's really tempting when you come up with a new idea or a phrase to think well I've never heard a brand use this before I think this is completely original I'm not even going to worry about checking that to make sure it's safe but you would be shocked by the amount of just really obscure phrases and trademarks that there are out there so I always encourage you to plug in that phrase and make sure you are free and clear to use that this can be one of the biggest reasons that new sellers lose their account in the first month or two is they are just uploading designs without even really thinking about them and not knowing that those are really infringing on other people's trademarks so maybe Etsy or Amazon gets wind of that and then they just close your account down completely so if you can avoid that you definitely want to do it but along with that I also see a lot of people making the mistake of yes they are checking the trademark of the title that they are putting on this design they are checking the trademark for the actual words that are maybe going to be on their shirt or mug but they're not trademark checking the keywords that they are filling in the description with so even though it's a lot of work if you are using certain phrases or keywords I always recommend checking that whole description if you're putting bullet points on this item checking those as well it does take a lot of work but it is worth it because you're not going to have to face that item being taken down and then all of that work is a waste anyways so do the extra step and just check that on a trademark Checker website now the next huge mistake that I see a ton of new sellers making is not pricing their items high enough now this seems really counterintuitive sometimes a lot of new sellers are like well I don't even really care about making profit I'm just going to price my items as low as possible and yes that is one strategy but it's not typically what I recommend to new sellers I have found that in my experience print on demand items are typically being bought because they are super unique so someone is not going to be able to just run over to Walmart and get a pickle ball dentist shirt but that might be something they're able to find on a place like Etsy or Amazon so if someone is looking for something really unique if they fall in love with that design typically it's not going to matter if that item is going to be $15 or $19 since that is the only one of them out there it really matches what they're looking for they are going to pay a few extra dollars that's not going to make a huge difference and the other thing I see people running into is they are not truly calculating the cost of all of their fees that go into print on demand now I have a full video right here that talks about all the costs that are involved in actually getting started in print on demand and the things you should be looking out for but a lot of times people are going to their manufacturing partner and they're like oh this item is going to cost me $11 if I sell it for 15 I'm going to making $4 of profit but then they're not factoring in the over 6% selling fee for Etsy they're not factoring in that 20% listing fee they're not factoring in if there are ads or off-site ads being placed on that item so very quickly that profit actually gets cut down to way less and you might find that you're actually losing money by pricing your item that l low so it's always important to check the pricing of your items one of the places that I use to check my price is in the sale Samurai tool I'll link that down below with a discount code now this is a full Etsy tool but just one of the things they have is a pricing calculator that really helps you get a good idea of how much true profit you're making on every item and then to piggyback right off of that mistake one of the other biggest mistakes that I see is new sellers not finding a production partner that can sell their items for a low enough cost now it's really tempting sometimes to maybe just go with the first production partner you see or someone you've heard that other people are using but you really need to do your comparison and research for how much the items that you are selling are actually going to cost on that manufacturing partner now I have used for years printify as my production partner but one of the things I like about them is they have multiple different manufacturers that all are selling different items or items at different price points with different colors so you can really kind of shop around and figure out which manufactur partner is going to be the right one for you now I love printify because they truly do have some of the lowest cost items out there especially if you're using the right manufacturer on their site so I definitely can't recommend them enough but I've seen so many new sellers confused why they can't even seem to make a profit because they're using a manufacturing partner that is charging way more than other people for a simple t-shirt or mug if you've never used printify before I'll also link them down below they're totally free to use you just set up an an account and it links seamlessly with Etsy but they're definitely who I recommend and use myself now the next mistake that I see way too many new sellers making is a big one and this really isn't helping you advance in your print on demand journey and that is when they are doing Niche research they find designs that are maybe trending or selling well and instead of taking that and kind of running with the concept and reinterpreting it they are making an exact almost copy of what is already selling well so for example say you were using the research tool merch and former and you saw that a design with retro groovy text that said one groovy mama is selling really well so you go and you make a design that looks almost identical same colors same kind of font the same phrase but even though it's not an exact copy it's really doing nothing different what I recommend that you do is take the items that you see are selling well and use that kind of as inspiration for something you could do differently so maybe that phrase is selling really well so you put that phrase in a different kind of font on a different color shirt and sell that or maybe you just go okay this style is selling well instead of one groovy mama I'm going to do something else with this groovy retro theme for mother's day so I'm a big proponent of seeing what is doing well and you don't always have to reinvent the wheel but you take inspiration from those bestselling items and put your own spin on it that really has been a thing that has set my print on me shops apart is I'm not just trying to Piggy back off of the designs that are currently trending I'm always trying to find a new way to reinterpret and do something different than everyone else and I see time and time again that the print on demand sellers that consistently do that are the ones that end up being really successful now before moving on to the next mistake that I see tons of new print onom and sellers making I also wanted to mention that I actually have a completely free over an hourong workshop for you guys all about one of my favorite Niche research methods it's linked Down Below in the description it's basically just a class that I am teaching on how to use my cross Nation guide which I also am going to be sending to you guys for free and it just allows me to go a little bit more in depth than I'm always able to in YouTube so if you want some even more free guidance from me I definitely recommend registering down below for that free workshop and I'm going to be sending you my guide book along with several other free downloads throughout the next few days if you sign up for that I highly recommend it I had a great time making it for you guys and have gotten some awesome feed back on it being really helpful for all of you now one of the next huge mistakes that I see so many people making is only selling trending designs and never selling Evergreen designs now if you don't know what an evergreen design is this basically is going to be a design or a niche that can not only sell today in May 2024 it could also sell a few months from now or even a few years from now these kind of things really don't go out of style so think about things like careers we're always going to have doctors and dentists and teachers we're always going to have moms and dads certain hobbies are always going to be around but trending designs are not always going to be able to be sold so a lot of times I say new print on demand sellers they really want to make a quick Buck they want to capitalize on something that is really hot right now and make a bunch of sales which is not necessarily a bad thing I think that every once in a while jumping on a trend can be a great boost to your shop but for example recently we had a big solar eclipse and there were a ton of people that basically made entire shops just full of solar eclipse shirts and yes they did make a ton of money at the time capitalizing on that really really popular Niche but now that the eclipse has come and gone their shops are pretty much back to zero so if you spend all of your time as a new seller just trying to make designs for trending things or events that are going to come and go once those are all over you really have nothing to show for it but if you are making Evergreen designs yes sometimes the process of building up your shop can be a little bit slower but every single time you grow your shop or an item gets more interest that is going to be huge later down the road because that item is never going to go out of style so I definitely recommend having both Trends and Evergreens but not only just relying on Trends now one of the other big mistakes that a ton of new sellers make and I really don't blame them for doing this because it's an extra step that a lot of times they don't know how big of an impact it makes and that is not creating your own mockups now if you do sell with a production partner like printify they are going to provide you some mockups that are generally pretty good but the reason I don't recommend using those is one because so many other people that also sell with a place like printify are using those exact same mockups and two sometimes they just look a little bit generic and we want to really be able to make something that is one going to look real and two is just going to be super appealing in the niche that we are actually selling in so I know mockups can take extra work they can be an extra cost to get some kind of service to make them or to buy mockups but it's really worth investing in because this is the first place that people are interacting with your items usually when people are shopping they are just scrolling through pages on Etsy or Amazon and that first thumbnail mockup photo is really what's going to determine if they click on your item or just scroll right past they're not reading that title they are not going to scroll through all your photos if that first one doesn't catch them now there's a lot of different ways to make mockups and I have a full video on a bunch of my mockup tips right here but typically I like to use some kind of subscription service where I'm paying only one small monthly fee and then I get access to an entire library of different mockups the one that I really love and recommend is place it I will link them down below but anything you can do to just make your items stand out a little bit more is going to be huge and actually getting new sales now one of the next big mistakes that I see so many new sellers making is just not doing their due diligence and using a research tool to find trending niches or Evergreen niches a lot of times when we're new to this we're like oh man this is so easy I'm just going to make t-shirts that I really love and that I think people would enjoy so you find yourself just making like generic catmom shirts or really generic teacher designs and there's nothing wrong with that but typically those are going to have so much competition and it's going to be way too hard to make sales in something like that so I really love using a research tool my favorites are definitely merch Informer and Sal Samurai both of them I'll have down below but using a research tool is just going to cut out a lot of the time that it takes to find what is a good Niche for you to focus on now another way you can do this is just by scrolling a lot of the first pages of best sellers on a place like Etsy or Amazon but typically that is going to take so much time and it's really hard to know how many actual sales that type of item is getting so using a research tool is really going to break down all of that info for you so you can see how often this is selling when this started to really take off you can understand some of the keywords that they used so using a research tool is really a game changer and I think this is one of the biggest things that helped me really grow my business super fast is pretty much from day one I was using Merchant former to try and find the next Niche that I was going to Target and make my designs for now there are tons of other mistakes I see so many new sellers making so I actually have this video here if you want to hear some of the other ones that I definitely think you should avoid thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in my next video

Channel: Hannah Ebeling

Views: 3,831

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: bzf5fQrqNDw

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2024