How to Make Money with Print on Demand!
Print on demand is a great business model that almost anyone can do. The question is "How to make money with print on demand?" This is an important question because without money your print on demand business will fail.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 20% of businesses fail in the two years, 45% in 5 and 65% in 10 years. The way to think of money is as energy for your business.
If you're making money then your business has energy to keep running and continue to make more money. So, can you make money online? The answer is yes you can, but it's going to take some work.
What is print on demand?
Shopify defines print on demand as
"Print on demand is a process where you work with a supplier to customize white-label products (like baseball hats or tote bags) with your own designs to sell them on a per-order basis under your own brand."
This makes Print on demand a great option for those with little start up capital and it solves the problem of storage among others. If you're working with companies like Printify or Printful. They handle the process of printing, packaging and shipping, leaving you to focus on building your business.
How can you make money with print on demand?
There are three main ways to do print on demand and each method has its pros and cons. The key is to find the way that fits you the best. Some setups are easy while others may require you to learn some basic skills.
Even if you can't do it yourself the option to hire someone to do the work is always there. Websites Fiverr have freelancers that will help you for a reasonable price.
3 different ways to make money with Print on demand.
1) Print on demand platforms
The easiest and quickest way to do print on demand is through a Print on demand platform like Redbubble or TeePublic. As with almost anything that is quick and easy there will be a lot of people doing it. The good news is that most are not doing it well. So if you're serious then you need to master your craft and do the things the majority are not doing and you'll stand out.
How do POD platforms work?
Pod platforms print your designs on their products and take a commission from you. Which is reasonable because if you use this method you don't maintain a website, print, package or ship the product.
The platform does all the work, all you need to do is set up a store, upload designs and pick products to sell.
The setup
The setup is easy, usually you sign up to be a seller on websites like Redbubble, Teepublic or Zazzle. The process is similar to setting up a Facebook page with differences depending upon the platform you are using.
- Pro tip: Don't limit yourself to one platform do them all. Each platform has a different personality and some designs sell better on different platforms.
Upload
Next, upload you design. A great skill to have in print on demand is designing but if you don't have such skills you can always do text based designs.
Designs that are text only like "Best Dog Dad Ever!!" can make you money just as well as a piece of art on a coffee mug.
Customize
After the upload you just select which products you want your design on. Each platform has slightly different selections that range from t-shirts to clocks to tote bag and home accessories.
- Pro tip: Customize each product your design is on. It may upload in a funky way. So, size the design on the product and also select the color of the product that looks the best.
The last step before publishing the product to your store may be the one most overlook. Make sure that the product's description is done well and you have the proper hashtags or it will be very hard to get your product views. Without views you wont get sales and we're in the business of making money.
publish
Finally, you publish your product. Make sure your profit margin is to your liking and then you're done. You can self promote and share your store on social media which I suggest but that's up to you.
This method is great for beginners because it gets you exposed to the online market with very little risk. You'll learn how to describe your product and select your niche'. If you're just starting out then I suggest doing POD this way so you can get into your stride.
2) Create Listings On Global Marketplaces like eBay, Esty, Amazon and Wish.
Each Global Marketplace has its own rules and setup process, cost and fees. We wont go into a detailed setup in this article. Also, the difficulty to be approved of each market place varies as well. Esty's approval time is same day while Amazon can take two weeks.
I found that Printful is the best Print on Demand service to use when integrating with these marketplaces.
How To Easily Make Money Online With A Legit Business
Wish
Wish is the #1 mobile shopping app in 42 countries with over 500 million users worldwide. No listing or subscription fees, you pay a percentage of your revenue. This means that if you're not making sales you wont be losing money with added fees.
The set up time takes about three days do to the approval process and your products will need to be reviewed. Once you're a trusted store you can just upload your products.
Steps of Integration
- Create an account with wish and Printful
- Connect accounts
- Create publish
- Setup your shipping
Etsy
Etsy has over 33 million customers and $3.9 billion in annual merch sales. The Printful-Etsy integration saves you time and you can connect your store with relatively few steps and hardly any wait time.
Etsy charges 5% transaction fee + $0.20 fee to publish products. So, the up front cost to sell on Etsy is small but can ad up if you're not carful.
Steps of integration
- Open an Etsy store
- Connect it with Printful
- Push products to your Etsy store
- Publish your products
eBay
Opening an account on eBay is free. eBay charges 10% of every sale made and a $ 0.35 listing fee. You can only setup flat-rate shipping on eBay. Each product you add to your store will be synced with eBay's marketplaces across the world.
If you're new to eBay you'll have a limit of 10 product variants within a listing and a total of $500 in retail value.
Compared to Wish eBay's integration is slow with a lot of back and forth between Printful and eBay accounts.
Steps of Integration
Listing the steps for setup in bullet points would be miss leading so watch this YouTube video.
Amazon
The juggernaut that is Amazon is a beast to setup and integrate with compared to the other market places. That being said, Amazon is the world's largest online marketplace. Allowing you to sell your customized drop shipping products to more than 197 million people per month around the world get on their devices and visit Amazon.com..
Their is a cost to using Amazon to sell your print on demand products. It's going to cost you $39.00/month + referral fees. Also, the time it takes amazon to approve your application is about two weeks.
Steps of Integration
- Sign up as Amazon seller
- Give Amazon your GTIN
- Connect your Amazon seller account with Printful
- Add and sync your products with your Amazon store
3) Set up your own POD ecommerce website
This was the method I started off with and there is a learning curve. I would suggest this method for those with a clear plan and adequate recourses. One thing I always remember is that if you don't know how to do something you have 4 choices.
- Give up
- Avoid it
- learn how to do it
- pay someone to do it.
If you want to make money with print on demand, you'll need to stick to numbers 3 and 4.
How to set up my own POD site?
From my experience the most stream line way is to set up a website with Shopify and then integrate with Printful.
Printful really makes it simple to publish your products to your store. They also have their own mockup generator but I would suggest using a third party mockup generator like Place-it.
Popular ecommerce website hosting
- Shopify
- WordPress
Popular printing providers
- Printful (my favorite)
- Printify
Check out our article Printful vs Printify
What can I sell using Print on demand?
What you can sell with print on demand all depends on the method you choice and the print providers. The products range from T-shirts, socks, and hats to home accessories.
Summary
I hope you got the answer you were looking for. The explaining how to make money with print on demand is a complicated. I hope the methods listed above shined some light o what you need to do. I answer to Can you make money with print on demand is yes. It all depends on the time you put into finding the right niche, products for your costumers.
