Sell Mugs on Etsy with Printify! Product Review & Tutorial 2023

if you sell print on demand on the etsy platform and you're not selling mugs you're missing out on a huge sales opportunity in the united states especially mugs are still a really hot gift item all throughout the year not just during the fourth quarter so there is a huge opportunity and hundreds if not thousands of different niches that you can get into and still make a lot of sales and mugs are a great opportunity because they don't have some of the issues that apparel items have like someone buying the wrong size and wanting to return or exchange it it's a little bit simpler with mugs i like to use printf for my print-on-demand mugs in my etsy shop and today i've actually got three different styles of mugs from printify that we can take a look at we'll review the quality of the print the quality of the product and then we'll take a look at how to research niches for mug designs so stick around and let's dive in so that you can make more sales in your etsy shop [Music] all right so we're gonna start things off by reviewing three different styles of mugs that you can get through printify and these are all from the print provider district photo on printify now there are a variety of other providers on printfi that provide the same types of mugs as well as some different ones and we're going to look at that in just a moment i wanted to get them all from the same provider just to show you a sampling of mugs that could come from the same provider to make things a little easier for your shop but we'll again we'll talk more about the other providers in just a few minutes but and the first thing we're going to look at is actually the thing that you probably won't see very often and that's the packaging so one of the things that can happen with mugs where unlike apparel where people buy maybe the wrong size or they change their mind they want to return it kind of frequently with apparel items the only thing that can happen with mugs really that's not so great is that they can arrive damaged and the packaging is one of the things that can help a mug actually arrive in good shape so i have two different packages here one came from district photo and that's this one here and one came from my locker and that is here all three of the mugs that i have including the two in the packages they all came from district photo i just happen to have a box from my locker to show you the difference between the two providers in terms of their shipping so first let's look at the one from district photo okay this is the package that your customer will receive from district photo now in our overhead shot you can see there's actually a hole here which i don't know if i'm a huge fan of this because something could kind of poke its way in here into this package and uh and damage the mug so i don't don't love this hole that's here but in general this is you know maybe not the prettiest package being just a styrofoam cube but it actually does a pretty good job protecting the mug so let's take the lid off and let you see what it looks like on the inside so it's actually got this little slot again we'll go to the overhead here we've got this little slot here for the mug's handle that keeps the handle a little bit more protected keeps it from moving around that hole is only on the the top not on the bottom there's there's no hole in the bottom for some some reason it's just on one side now just for the sake of comparison here is a package from my locker and the difference is inside it's got this plastic protection here for the mug set the box aside and you can see that the mug fits right into this and there's even like a slot for the handle where inside the box this is the protection for the mug so instead of being a styrofoam that sort of form to it the form is on the inside of the cardboard box and so that's maybe a more traditional looking package but i think they both do an equally good job at protecting the mugs so just wanted to provide that comparison so that you know kind of how the customer will receive the packaging from two at least two of the providers on printfi so we've got our three styles of mugs here and in full disclosure print if i did compensate me for these three sample mugs so that we could do this video and take a look at the different mug styles and kind of consider the business opportunity so thank you to printfy for that and so let's start with the most basic of the mugs here and that would be your 11 ounce white mug so take a look at that design i got all of these designs from vexels the graphic service that i use to come up with a lot of the design elements for my print on demand products and so this is kind of a funny sloth that says not today nope not today and it's kind of a sleeping funny looking sloth and this is a design that works equally well on t-shirts and apparel items there is a label get a shot of that in the overhead on the bottom this this rectangular label can can be a little bit difficult for the customer to remove actually had a couple of people mention that in their reviews that they thought it was hard to remove the label but other than that i would say you know good good print quality um it's fairly crisp it's aligned the way i aligned it came out nicely it's got a nice gloss finish to it the next option is kind of just a variation of the same theme the 11 ounce black mug but this is also from district photo also has a nice glossy finish colors are pretty bright they look pretty nice on there and this is yet another kind of funny work hard and be kind well not funny but positive message type of a design that i picked up from vexels to apply to this sample and just overall i i would say quality wise it's on the exact same level as the white mug you know really no surprises there comes out looking nice and this is a great way for you to offer your designs that feature lighter colors on a mugs the last kind of mug we're going to take a look at today is a stainless steel enamel camp style mug and in the last few years these have gotten pretty popular as gift items especially in the united states they're popular because they kind of are all purpose mugs they're very sturdy they're very solid they don't break and by the way that's a really nice feature about them as far as customer service issues these ceramic guys even with good packaging they they can break right so the customer could receive one with a handle broken or a crack or a chip these steel ones they just don't break so you're not going to get as many customer service issues at least not related to damage with these and again i think the print came out quite nicely on this this is another graphic from vexels says life is better by the campfire exactly the kind of design that sells well on these style mugs you know kind of an outdoorsy thing you might use around the campfire i think all of these are great options for any etsy seller doing print on demand my favorite of course is the white ceramic 11 ounce mug it's just a classic size it's very popular district photo offers a fantastic price that's really competitive for you to offer on etsy but all of these are great and i have all of these styles in my etsy shop now because there are some other choices so let's jump over to the printify catalog take a look at those choices and then we're going to talk about pricing strategies as well as some design strategies for the types of designs that work really well on mugs so let's dive into that now all right before we jump into the printify catalog and we talk strategies and prices just want to point out one thing about the sales opportunity here with mugs and we're going to look at some search volumes and things like that later but i thought it would help be helpful just to talk about what did this translate into for my shop last year so in 2021 i sold 784 mugs they weren't all the exact same 11 ounce white mug there was a variety in there of different sizes and shapes but a lot of them were that 11 ounce white mug so that was about 20 of my total sales for the year and my mug listings make up about 19 of my total listings so what that means is that you know that 19 of my listings made up equally or slightly better than their percentage of total sales so it's absolutely worth my time in making those mug listings and in fact the profit margin that i'm getting on the 11 ounce white mugs is 39 percent when their regular price and 34 when i put them on sale for 10 off this is a higher profit margin than my apparel items in my shop which average somewhere in the low 20s for profit margin so that i can keep the prices competitive so what this means is those mug sales were actually more valuable to me than the other 80 of sales that came from my shop because the other 80 were on items that have a lower profit margin and the 20 percent that came from my mug sales had a higher profit margin all right we're in our printify catalog and if you go to the catalog in the top menu and you go over to the home and living section look for the mugs and once you come to that section you may want to filter it based on where you need to have your orders fulfilled by using the fulfillment locations filter i've selected the united states so we're only looking at mugs that are available from providers in the united states a quick disclaimer also any prices that you see here are going to be printed by premium prices because i have a printf i premium account so they may differ slightly if you don't have a printf premium account and as always prices are subject to change in the last year especially prices have changed quite a bit on print-on-demand products so just keep that in mind you know there's no guarantee that these prices won't change tomorrow so we're gonna we're just gonna look at a couple examples to give you an idea of the sort of profit margin and the costs involved so we're going to stick to some of the examples that we saw in the products that we took a look at a little bit earlier so first we're going to look for a plain white ounce 11 mug in the catalog here now we have a few different choices and the way these listings work is a little different than on the apparel listings where you've got a product and then like dozens you know on printify not dozens but you know like 10 12 print providers that all are offering the same product at different prices it's a little bit different with mugs some of these are listed out separately by provider and there are a couple that are grouped together for example this white 11 ounce mug is from provider colorway and their cost right now is four dollars and two cents but then if we scroll down you'll see that there are other options for 11-ounce white mugs and here is one it says it's three print providers but two of them are in other countries so when i look at it it's going to show me district photo only because that's the one in the united states this happens to be the supplier that i use currently for my 11 ounce white mugs and their cost currently with a premium account is 3.56 and their shipping cost is 4.79 now if you click on more details on any catalog item in the printify catalog you'll see the full explanation of of pricing for all sizes and this one is only 11 ounce so there's only one price but then there's a shipping tab that shows you the breakdown of shipping cost based on where your order's going and this is really good information because this is what you need to know to properly set up your shipping profile when you're figuring out how much to charge for shipping if you do sell internationally like if i wanted to ship you know a mug from district photo to somebody um in another country like canada i would need to know exactly what that shipping cost is so i can build that into my shipping profile but if you plan to use a mug provider that is in canada like duplium who currently have 11 ounce and 15 ounce white mugs in the printify catalog then you would instead want to go and look at their listing for their mugs and base your pricing for canada shipping off of their shipping cost not district photo so make sure that you're paying attention to who you plan to use for those international orders if you are doing that if you're just going to be offering your listing domestically to to your country then you only need to worry about the shipping cost for that country and then basically don't include any other country in your shipping profile in etsy that's what controls uh who sees that listing okay so let's do a real quick example of calculating the profit margin and a price for this so we have three 356 and 479 cost i like to use a calculator like the allura etsy fee calculator sales samurai if you use sales samurai for your keyword research also has a pricing calculator built in but because you have to have a paid account with sales samurai to use that i'm going to use the allura one because it is free and there's a link to it in the description if you want to go check it out no charge you don't even have to have an account with allura to use this etsy fee calculator and so for example on these mugs we have a cost of 835 which i put over here in the cost field and i currently sell my white 11 ounce mugs for 13.99 plus three dollars in shipping and by the way i do charge for shipping on my mug listings in my etsy shop even though i do free shipping for all of my apparel items i explained why i do that in my video about the etsy free shipping guarantee so if you haven't seen that video check that out i'll put a link in the top corner of this video right now but anyway let's get back to this example so my total proceeds from the sale are going to be 16.99 because i 13.99 plus three dollars right 16.99 so we'll hit calculate here and this is telling me that my total profit is going to be 6.58 total fees 2.6 cents and a profit margin of 39 percent for me this is a lot higher than what i'm getting on t-shirts sweatshirts and hoodies because to competitively price those products with the way prices have increased in the last year on apparel items i'm lucky if i can get 22 to 25 profit margin on my apparel and still have it at a good competitive price so this is a really nice profit margin to sell an item that actually has a pretty good sales volume and high search volume now even if this was on sale for uh for 10 off we're still going to get a pretty good profit margin so what that would be is um let's see i think that would bring it down to 1259 plus three dollars so we'd be talking about 15.59 instead of 16.99 and my profit margin now is down to 5.31 for profit and margin at 34 so that's still a very healthy profit margin even if i'm putting my mug on sale for 10 off now if you are to use one of the other suppliers for an 11 ounce mug the price does vary uh between suppliers so just keep that in mind and you also want to do the same thing go through the same process for uh say the 15 ounce mug if you're going to offer that option in your shop so like 457 and 7.99 the shipping cost is significantly higher 15 ounce mugs are heavier and mugs in general are already heavy so all suppliers are going to charge more for a larger mug because of that extra weight so we have to go through the same process for each type of mug in each size mug that we offer there are also great options in printifies catalog for things like accent coffee mugs so if you want to add a little pop of color you can do that you can even offer these in the same listing if you follow the methodology that i showed in another video that i have where i walk through how to create a combination listing using products that you create in your etsy shop it involves matching up sku numbers from a draft listing that you create here and then adding those as product variants into your etsy listing your orders will still sync and you can include things like a basic white mug and then different accent mug colors in one listing instead of having to list them separate so again i'll put a link to that video in the description and up in the corner right now in case you want to check out my process on how i create those combination listings using printify all you have to do with these things is use a calculator tool like the allura calculator or the one available in sales samurai and figure out what your price margin is and then just take a look at some competition on etsy and that's a good segue to check out some competition on etsy and see what types of designs you can use on mugs because i also want to show you a little bit about how easy it is to come up with designs for mugs so first and foremost let me just back up all the comments i've made about how many searches there are on etsy for mugs we're in sales samurai this is the keyword research tool that i use if you're interested in it i have video on on this as well so check out my video on how i use sales samurai to identify lower competition niches for designs but if you just run a search on a really you know not long tail word like mugs you're going to come back with you know a lot of listings 50 000 competition but also 26 000 searches per month so there are a lot of searches happening every month on etsy for four mugs and then this is just to illustrate how many uh thousands of searches are happening on etsy every month that include the word mugs so if you look at the suggested keyword terms here you're going to see thousands over 20 000 for the different variations and misspellings of the word mug but then you'll start to see you know things emerge here here's a category a more specific category of mugs a more specific niche called affirmation mugs and so that's things like positivity sayings people are searching for that on etsy over a thousand times a month and there's an awful lot of different types of mugs or different design styles for mugs that people search for at high volumes every month not all of them are high competition and a tool like sale samurai can help you identify which ones you want to create designs for so now let me just talk a little bit about creating designs for mugs one of the reasons i love mugs as in addition to all the ones i've already stated is that you probably already have designs if you've been making designs for t-shirts sweatshirts and hoodies and you haven't really been selling mugs you already have designs that work really well on mugs and here's just an example if i if you search for cat mug on etsy's website you're going to get 105 000 search results right now but just scroll through some of these results and see how like what the range is really now look at the variations here for cat mugs we've got all of these different designs some of them are purely text based some of them are purely graphic based some of them are a combination of text and graphic but one thing that you should notice look at designs like this one it's too people-y outside right funny-looking cat funny saying that looks like a design that would be like right at home on a t-shirt right so if you created a design like that to sell on a t-shirt take this same design same print file even and slap it on a mug put it on both sides of a mug and there you go now you've got a complimentary product that features a design you didn't have to to go and remake or make a new design and it will sell on a mug you have you already have designs i guarantee it if you're already selling print on demand you have designs that will work well on mugs all right so here we are inside the designer view on printify all i did was i copied a a sample listing a draft that i already had in my store to use this to show you this design so i had created a personalized mug in a video that i did recently about how to sell personalized items i just copied that listing because it's a white 11 ounce mug from district photo and now we're going to use that same draft to show you how you can just throw a design onto a mug that you already have so here is one of the graphics i actually used for one of the samples we looked at earlier it's the sloth one that says nope not today this is a t-shirt png file it's 4500 by 5400 pixels it's made to go on a t-shirt it's the right size for that but that doesn't matter because it's basically it's too big compared to what we need for the mug but we can size it down and it does that for you as soon as i added this from my library you know it fit it to the size of the canvas and now all i have to do is resize it to the print area and for mugs these dotted lines are really what you need to pay attention to because that is your inside the first set of dotted lines is the safe area that is where your print will definitely be outside the first set of dotted lines this rectangle here all the way to the second dotted line or the solid line that is the bleed area and that's where your print will most likely be if you have a design out there but there's no guarantee it could get cut off depending on exactly how centered you know that that print wrap is on the mug so you want anything that has to do with your design that you like really really need in there to be within that first little area of the the safe area and then you have vertical lines here to help you center it on either side of the mug so what i'm going to do is i'm i'm actually making this bigger because the graphic was kind of small in the in the center here so i made it bigger and now i'm going to try and do my best to center it on either side of the mug it's okay if your center line goes past in in either the left or the right direction goes past the vertical line here and you'll see why in a second when you look at the preview so first i'm just going to check my preview view and see if that looks good it looks to me like maybe it's a little bit too far away from the handle like it won't look nice and centered on there so i'm going to go back and nudge it over a little bit further just until i get to the edge of that that safe area line and so we're going to click on copy and it gives me the exact same size but all i have to do is check the placement so let me go back to the original let me select the original and it is minus 25.31 from the top so i have to line it up to the right edge like i lined up the other one to the left edge and now i'm going to put the top measurement i go back to preview i double check that the other side looks good but we'll go ahead and click save product which is probably behind me on the screen and now the great thing is mock-ups for mugs are less complicated generally i do go and add at least one maybe two slightly more realistic looking mock-ups i use place-it for my mock-ups and they have some nice mug mock-ups but i don't have to go in and create you know like four or five different mock-ups um and then delete the ones that printf i sent over because these are good representations of the final product i'm i probably would delete the halloween one if it's not a halloween themed mug i'm not spending as much time on mockups as i am with apparel items so there's another benefit all right so that's it for this video thank you to printfy for the sample mugs that we took a look at earlier and i hope that if you're selling print on demand in your etsy shop and you haven't been selling mugs i hope that this information was enough to convince you that there is a big business opportunity when it comes to selling print-on-demand mugs so i hope this was helpful for you let me know in the comments if there's anything about selling mugs that you have questions about or if this video was helpful for you and if you don't mind take a second give me a like and subscribe on the video because it helps the youtube algorithm recognize uh that this information is helpful and get it out in front of more people i would really appreciate that thanks everybody and we'll see you in the next video don't forget to check out podinsights.net for information about our podcast and posts with lots of different resources for print-on-demand selling thanks everybody see you next time [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: POD Insights

Views: 74,359

Keywords: printify mug review, printify mugs, printify, sell mugs on etsy, etsy printify, sell print on demand, printify mugs review, printify and etsy, selling mugs on etsy, pod insights, etsy print on demand, etsy mugs, print on demand, sell mugs online, print on demand mugs, print on demand etsy, etsy shop ideas, printify tips, printify reviews, printify etsy, printify reviews 2022, printify product reviews, Printify mug tutorial, print on demand 2023, printify and etsy 2023

Id: SB_BpXDj5Rk

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 06 2022