The Brutal Truth About Print On Demand 🧐

it's time to talk about the truth of print on demand the Pod scene started to rise in popularity post 2010 and really just skyrocketed around 2020 for obvious reasons I think we can all remember print on demand is actually a pretty old idea that dates back to the 17th century even back then there were already print providers supplying Fabrics to Consumers on behalf of another company or entity but now we have a much more robust and in-dept list of products and capabilities here in the 21st century and the print on demand industry promises big rewards with no need for a home screen printing shop working with suppliers or hiring a bunch of people to help you you can create some designs start a Shopify or an Etsy start selling products with little to no startup costs but is there a catch well I'm going to let you decide that for yourself after I lay out three important truths for you then I'll give you my personal take on print on demand at the end of the video and invite you to join in the conversation so truth number one is that PR demand is not passive or at least not at the beginning I think a lot of people believe that PR demand is some sort of of getrich quick scheme that they can utilize by throwing up a few products and then watching the sales roll in and honestly at one point many years ago you probably could have done that since the amount of competition was lower a lot of people in the early 2000s were obviously focused on regular full-time jobs so a lower percentage of the population was focused on building a side hustle or a full-time Etsy but there is a massive difference between making a few quick sales and building something that will last for years to come even during the early years the most successful sellers were putting in tons of work to get their products seen and sold on a consistent basis and this is where the word passive income can rub people the wrong way sometimes the promise of making tons of money by putting up a few products and letting the drop shipper automatically fulfill your order is a wonderful dream and it is possible with the right amount of work building a print on demand store requires researching products and product Styles figuring out your target audience creating designs that will cater to your desired audience and a ton of backend work that a lot of beginners Overlook because it's this backend work that makes your products show up to people in the first place and each one of these individual steps takes a pretty hefty amount of time because if you cut corners or skip any of them you're going to be left with a pretty poor product that nobody really wants to get your print on demand shop to the level of truly being passive it will require some upfront time investment to do things the right way and show people your products that you know they will want to buy even once that's done you still need to consistently invest in your print on demand shop to offer new products provide a variety of design Styles or adjacent design Styles and the claim that print on demand is a passive income stream is not inherently false but it's also not fully true either more accurate description would be that the product fulfillment is passive since you don't have to do any work to actually print package or ship your product to the customer so pod is a gateway to passive income but only if you do the work to make it passive moving on to truth number two print on On Demand is a low-risk business model now this is actually a good thing for you but it's also a good thing for everyone else print on demand requires zero production or manufacturing you don't have to manage any inventory manage a brick and mortar store or do any work in delivering the product to your customer this makes the Pod business model extremely low risk and very attractive to a lot of people so without these headaches you can focus a lot more on setting up your e-commerce shop or starting an Etsy or Amazon and you can focus energy on branding your shop with a certain look can feel in addition to not having to manage inventory or handle production pod also allows much easier scalability flexibility Global reach so let's unpack each of these briefly pod businesses are highly scalable because as your business grows you can easily expand and increase your product offerings without the need for additional infrastructure or overhead cost all it takes is modifying some of your existing designs replicating that process to offer more products all again with zero risk because there's zero cost just adding another product and no I'm not talking about Etsy listing fees I'm talking about the ability to add another product from a print provider now what about flexibility with print on demand you have the flexibility to experiment with different products different design Styles and marketing strategies without any real significant financial commitments and again I know there are Etsy listing fees and I know Shopify or Squarespace has domain cost but these costs fail in comparison to the cost of trying to test out a product that you would physically have to order and hold hold even if it doesn't sell you would be holding on to it because in the Pod World online if a particular product or design doesn't work you can just quickly pivot and try something else and if a particular product or style seems to work really well you can potentially create multiple print on demand stores to increase visibility and revenue so the scalability and flexibility of pod is actually endless so long as you're willing to put in the work and you have the ability for Global reach with PR and demand because most providers offer worldwide shipping allowing you to reach customers across the globe without the need to have a physical presence in multiple location and obviously without having to handle or ship the products yourself now obviously this is a great thing for you but I already mentioned it's a great thing for everyone else pod offers the same capability to anyone that wants to join the game and only the people that will put in the work will win the easier something is to do the lower the bar of Entry meaning the more people will do it but the percentage of people that will keep at it diminishes greatly the statistics actually show that print on demand is not oversaturated despite what people think and I've been thinking about putting a video specifically together on that topic so let me know if you want to see that down in the comments where I can dig into some of the hard data and actually show you some statistics that you have the same capability as pretty much everyone else all right our last truth is that successful pod requires marketing efforts the quick set it and forget it mindset is not going to work despite what people think similar to truth 1 pod requires extra effort to drive traffic and jump start sales SEO and proper imagery and stuff like that is super important but a large majority of successful sellers use these other tactics from social media ad campaigns email marketing and a lot more to get visibility on their products and drive more sales these marketing efforts also Foster more brand recognition and loyalty through customer engagement not to mention how you can leverage your audience and ask them what they want either on social media or somewhere else maybe that looks like a poll on Instagram stories or sending out a survey via email marketing efforts include a lot more than just sharing an image of your product and hoping that people will buy it so marketing is not just a supplementary or optional aspect to your pod business it's pretty much critical to the growth and success of your shop now before I tie all these points together and give my personal thoughts on PR on demand I want to mention how vital the design is for the success of your pod shop back when things were getting started maybe you could get away with slapping some text or a really weak design on a shirt and you might get some sales but that's really just not the case anymore and you need to make sure that your creative is absolutely on point so that there is no guessing whether someone will want to buy it and that's why I want you to use KD for your designs I've already mentioned that pod is not really passive in so much as there is a lot of different elements that take a lot of time including making the designs for your products now unless you're skilled with Advanced programs or if you have a bunch of spare money to hire a designer this might be a pretty big hurdle for you but KD is one of if not the leading design tool for print on demand we have thousands of ready-made templates brand new AI art features Vector editing DPI control and so much more that will help you take your pod shop to the next level and we have so many people succeeding using KD for pod and there are many of our fantastic collaborators on YouTube teaching you exactly how to do that along with us on our own channel so consider using KD and if you want to try it to its full power I've got a promo code down for you in the description or in the comments to take some money off your first purchase okay on to my verdict about the brutal truth of print on demand I've talked to many successful print on demand Sellers and for many of them it has completely changed their lives some got started very early years ago some got started in 2020 and some have got started within just the last year and all of them are pretty much making a full-time salary off of one or multiple stores so if anything the myth that you can't make any money with PR and demand should be dispelled in fact I think I'm going to make another video going through the top five myths of print on demand show you some stats to to back them up but the secret sauce here to why these people are making money is just the sheer volume of time that they dedicate to the shops so it's it's not even a secret it's it's pretty much obvious the more you put into something the better you're going to get at it and the more that you're going to get out of it so what I've determined for myself is as long as you have the right mindset and the right attitude towards PR on demand it will open up a lot of doors for you to make supplemental or full-time income if you want it to I also had a faulty view of print and demand back in the day where I thought I could put some designs on products throw them on my website and traffic would just automatically appear it wasn't until really diving in and learning how things work that I started to re-evaluate how my pod shop is and start to see some more sales come in but this only happens when you really buckle down and invest in the quality of your shop so is print on demand worth it I think yes can you make money with print on demand absolutely is print on demand easy maybe there are some parts that are super challenging some parts that might be a breeze like using KD for example to make your designs is print on demand for everyone it certainly can be the same ability is available for everyone that wants to play the game you just have to be smart enough and strong enough to get to the next level now if you want to see how I go about finding relevant product niches creating a design and then listing it on my shop I have this video right here with the entire process you can check out it's in the cards up here I also have other videos helping you find your Niche if that's something that you are struggling with and don't forget to check out some of our coffee with KD episodes where I interview some of the most successful creators and pod Sellers and ask them what they're doing to achieve and now I invite you to give me your thoughts down in the comments or join our Discord the link is down below because I'm interested to know what you think about pod I increasingly see comments complaining that pod is oversaturated and I just don't believe that's the case you know a certain topic or a specific design style could be oversaturated but the concept and Empire of pod as a whole is is nowhere close to oversaturated so anyway comment down below don't forget to subscribe subscribe and we will see you in the next [Music] [Music] video

Channel: Kittl

Views: 9,543

Keywords: kittl, kittl design, kittl tutorial, kittl print on demand, kittl app, kittl ai, kittl design tutorial, print on demand, print on demand business, print on demand tips, the truth about print on demand, the truth behind print on demand, is print on demand worth it, is print on demand oversaturated, is print on demand profitable, how to start print on demand, print on demand review, print on demand shops, print on demand strategy, print on demand 101

Id: QiYTwhndstE

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2024