Easiest Way To Start Print-on-Demand in 2024 (From Scratch)

Summary

This video provides a step-by-step guide on how to start a successful print-on-demand business from scratch, based on the creator's proven strategies that have generated over $1.7 million in sales. It covers essential aspects like selecting evergreen, profitable, and versatile products, creating appealing designs, and optimizing for sales on platforms like Etsy. The video also highlights different design methods, including handcrafted, pre-made, and AI-generated designs, and emphasizes the importance of using the right print providers, SEO, and mockups to boost customer trust and increase sales.

Takeaways

• 🚀 **Starting a Print on Demand Business**: The script outlines a strategy to start a print on demand business from scratch, which the speaker has used to grow their own successful businesses.
• 🌟 **Product Selection**: Choose evergreen products with enduring demand, high profit margins, and universal appeal to ensure long-term success.
• 🎨 **Design Creation**: Emphasizes the importance of understanding customer psychology and creating designs that resonate with their passions and interests.
• 🔍 **Market Research**: Suggests using platforms like Etsy for research to identify successful products and designs, and to understand customer preferences.
• ✍️ **Design Methods**: Offers various methods for creating designs, including handcrafted, pre-made, and AI-generated designs, with simplicity being key.
• 🤖 **AI Design Tools**: Highlights the use of AI tools like Mid Journey for generating designs quickly and efficiently.
• 🛍️ **Print Providers**: Discusses the importance of selecting the right print provider, with Printify being the speaker's preferred choice due to cost-effectiveness and quality.
• 📈 **Sales and Profit**: Stresses the need for a good profit margin and analyzing successful shops to understand potential earnings.
• 🌐 **Online Marketplace**: Recommends starting with Etsy for its large customer base and organic traffic, which is beneficial for beginners.
• 🏪 **Shop Presentation**: Advises on making the shop trustworthy and professional-looking to attract customers and build a premium brand image.
• 📊 **SEO and Marketing**: Explains the importance of using effective SEO keywords and high-quality mockups to improve product visibility and sales.

Q & A

What is Print on Demand (POD), and how does it work?

Print on Demand is a business model where products like t-shirts, mugs, and posters are only printed and shipped when a customer places an order. This allows you to run the business without holding any inventory and only spend money after making a sale.

What are the four components needed to start a Print on Demand business?

The four components are: 1) a product to sell, 2) a design to place on the product, 3) a website to list the product, and 4) customers to buy it.

How should you choose a product for a Print on Demand business?

When choosing a product, you should ensure it's evergreen (has long-lasting demand), offers a good profit margin (around 30%), and is versatile enough to accommodate different designs targeting various niches.

Why is choosing an evergreen product important?

An evergreen product ensures that the product will sell not only today but also continue to sell in the future, minimizing the risk of working on products that may become irrelevant over time.

How do you determine the profit margin for your Print on Demand products?

Aiming for a 30% profit margin is a good rule of thumb. For example, if it costs $11 to print and ship a poster, you can sell it for $20-$50, ensuring that you make a decent profit after transaction fees.

What is the role of design in the success of a Print on Demand business?

Design is crucial because customers are primarily interested in the artwork on the product. A great design tailored to their passions or interests will attract more buyers, while a poor design can lead to failure.

How do you research successful designs and products?

Platforms like Etsy provide valuable data on what sells well. You can check a shop’s reviews, which can indicate how popular certain products or designs are, to gather inspiration and understand market demand.

What are some methods for creating Print on Demand designs?

There are three main methods: 1) handcrafted designs, 2) buying pre-made designs, and 3) using AI-generated designs. A hybrid approach, combining these methods, offers the best chance for success.

Which Print on Demand provider is recommended, and why?

Printify is recommended due to its cost-efficiency, which allows sellers to keep more profit from each sale. It is favored over other providers like Printful and Gelato for its lower pricing.

Why is Etsy a good platform for beginners starting a Print on Demand business?

Etsy is beginner-friendly, provides free shop setup, and already has a large customer base of over 95 million active buyers, making it easier to generate organic traffic without heavy marketing expenses.

Outlines

00:00

Introduction to Print on Demand and Business Strategy

05:02

Choosing the Right Product for Print on Demand

10:05

Finding and Creating Winning Designs

15:05

Choosing a Reliable Print Provider

20:07

Setting Up an Etsy Shop and Why It’s Ideal for Beginners

Building Trust and Optimizing Your Etsy Shop for Success

Using Effective Product Mockups and SEO to Boost Sales

Using Etsy Ads and Resources for Long-Term Success

Keywords

💡Print on Demand (POD)

Print on Demand is a business model that allows sellers to create custom products like t-shirts, mugs, and posters with unique artwork, which are only printed and shipped when a customer places an order. This eliminates the need to hold inventory, making the business low-risk and allowing entrepreneurs to run their business entirely online. In the video, the creator emphasizes POD's flexibility and scalability, allowing it to be mostly passive.

💡Evergreen Product

An evergreen product is an item that remains relevant and in demand over a long period. The video recommends choosing evergreen products, such as t-shirts, mugs, and posters, because they consistently sell well and are not tied to short-term trends. By choosing evergreen products, sellers ensure that their efforts can yield returns for years to come, reducing the risks associated with trend-dependent items.

💡Profit Margin

Profit margin refers to the percentage of revenue that remains as profit after all costs are deducted. The video emphasizes aiming for a 30% profit margin, which is considered a healthy target for a print on demand business. For instance, if a poster costs $11 to produce and can be sold for $20 to $50, a significant profit can be made even after transaction fees are deducted.

💡Customer Psychology

Customer psychology refers to understanding what drives customers to make purchasing decisions. In the video, the creator explains that the key to creating successful designs is understanding customers' passions, such as their careers, hobbies, or pets. This approach ensures that the products resonate emotionally with buyers, making them more likely to purchase.

💡Design Research

Design research involves examining existing products and market trends to identify what types of designs are popular and in demand. The video suggests using platforms like Etsy to perform research, as Etsy provides public data on sales and reviews. By analyzing successful shops and items, sellers can generate design ideas that are more likely to attract customers.

💡Mockup

A mockup is a visual representation of a product, showing what it would look like with a specific design. In the context of the video, mockups are used to display products like mugs and t-shirts in a way that appeals to potential buyers. High-quality mockups help build trust and make the product more enticing, serving as an essential part of marketing in a print on demand business.

💡SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO refers to the process of optimizing product listings to rank higher in search results on platforms like Etsy. The video advises using relevant keywords in the product title and tags, drawn from successful competitors' listings. Good SEO practices help increase the visibility of products, making them more likely to be found and purchased by customers.

💡Etsy

Etsy is an online marketplace known for handmade and custom products, and it's recommended as the most beginner-friendly platform for starting a print on demand shop. The video highlights that Etsy provides a large amount of organic traffic, reducing the need for paid advertising and allowing new sellers to gain exposure and generate sales more easily.

💡MidJourney (AI Art Generator)

MidJourney is an AI tool that generates artwork based on text prompts. The video demonstrates how MidJourney can be used to create unique designs for print on demand products, such as t-shirts or mugs. Using AI-generated designs is presented as a cost-effective and efficient way to create appealing artwork without needing advanced design skills.

💡Hybrid Design Strategy

A hybrid design strategy involves combining multiple design creation methods, such as handcrafted designs, pre-made designs, and AI-generated designs. The video suggests using this strategy to maximize chances of success by building a diverse product catalog that appeals to different customer preferences. This approach ensures a wider variety of products, increasing the likelihood of generating sales.

Highlights

The speaker shares a complete strategy to start a print-on-demand shop from scratch, emphasizing that this method helped them grow their own six and seven-figure businesses.

Print-on-demand allows selling products like t-shirts, mugs, and posters with unique designs without holding any inventory upfront, making it a low-risk business model.

The four main components needed to start a print-on-demand business are: the product, the design, a website to sell on, and customers to buy it.

Three criteria for selecting a winning product are: it must be evergreen, have a good profit margin (around 30%), and be versatile enough for different designs.

The speaker emphasizes that competition indicates demand, and suggests choosing evergreen products like t-shirts, mugs, and posters that have a proven track record.

When researching successful shops, it’s important to analyze their monthly stats to understand their profitability and to learn from their approach.

Good design is crucial to success, and the key is to target designs that resonate with customers' passions, interests, or hobbies.

The speaker suggests using Etsy for product research because its sales data is public, making it easier to identify best-selling products and trends.

One effective method of creating designs is the traditional handcrafted design, which often involves simple text and creative fonts inspired by top sellers.

Pre-made designs can be purchased for a low cost and modified slightly to differentiate them, allowing sellers to save time and effort.

AI-generated designs using platforms like Midjourney can be an easy and effective way to create unique artwork, especially when paired with the right prompts.

A hybrid approach combining handcrafted, pre-made, and AI-generated designs offers the best chance of success and enables creating a diverse product catalog.

Print providers play a critical role in the business; the speaker recommends Printify due to its competitive pricing and reliable service.

Etsy is recommended as the most beginner-friendly platform for selling print-on-demand products, as it has a large, built-in customer base.

SEO keywords are essential for ranking on Etsy; sellers should use keywords from top listings to optimize their own products for better visibility and organic traffic.

Transcripts

trying to start a print on aand business

can be overwhelming with all the

different steps and strategies it can be

hard to know where to even start so

today I'm going to share my exact

strategy for how to start a print on

demand shop completely from scratch I've

used this exact strategy to grow my own

six and seven figure print on demand

businesses so if I had to start over

today from absolute zero this is the

exact strategy that I would use I've

been sharing strategies that get results

on my YouTube channel for the last year

and it's helped you generate over $1.7

million so if that sounds interesting

make sure to get subscribed and let's

get into it PR On Demand is a business

model that allows you to sell various

products like t-shirts mugs and posters

with unique artwork on them but the

items are only printed and shipped when

a customer orders that way you don't

have to buy any inventory up front and

you can run the entire business from a

laptop the only time that you have to

buy a product or spend any money is

after you've already made a sale this

also means that if done correctly this

business can be mostly passive allowing

you to scale it when you have the time

and keep earning income while you're

traveling sleeping or watching more Alec

videos there are four components that

you need to get started the product the

design to go on the product a website to

sell it on and customers to buy it

component number one picking a product

this is the easy part but if you get it

wrong it can ruin your business so how

do you pick there's three things that I

look for in a winning product number one

make sure that the product I'm selling

has and will continue to be an evergreen

product I don't want to put a ton of

work into or make a bunch of designs for

a product that's going to become

irrelevant to find Evergreen products we

have to look at what's already been

working at the end of the day nobody

wants to buy a blank product so we're

primarily selling the design that goes

on the product if there's competition it

means there's demand I've only ever sold

longtime bestselling products like

t-shirts mugs and posters because

they've been proven to work for years my

first successful product was the

standard white mug and while it might

scare a lot of people away because of

the huge amount of competition I saw it

as a huge opportunity with a ton of

demand picking something that's

Evergreen just means that it'll sell

today and it'll continue to sell into

the future number two the product has to

make a good profit there's no point in

doing this if you're not going to make

good money I always aim for around a 30%

profit margin so when I sell posters

they'll cost me about 11 bucks to get

printed and shipped to the customer

depending on the size so since they'll

easily sell for around $20 or even up to

50 in some cases that means that even

after all of the transaction fees I can

still easily make a 30% profit margin I

always analyze successful shops like

this to see how they're actually doing

when I look at their monthly stats we

can can see that they're not doing too

bad at all and then if they're making a

30% profit margin or so they're easily

doing $110,000 a month and this was

literally just some random shop that I

just found 30% is just a rule of thumb

though because if you're able to sell a

lot more units with a cheaper product

like a mug you'll be able to take a

smaller profit margin since you'll

usually be able to sell more items

number three the product has to be

Universal now I sell Evergreen products

but I use the design that are on the

products to Target different Trends and

niches we'll only get good sales if our

designs are good but our product has to

be versatile enough to upload all

different kinds of designs to it if I'm

going to sell a mug I need to be able to

sell it to all different kinds of

professions interests hobbies and Trends

if it's an evergreen product that can

make a good profit and allows you to

upload Universal designs you'll be set

now you can have a great product but

without a great design you won't get

very

far the reason that most sellers fail is

because they don't understand customer

psychology customers don't care about

your products but they do care about

things that they're already passionate

about this could literally be anything

their career their Hobbies their pets

their Hometown and with print on demand

we can make products for all of those

interests so to make Banger designs we

have to start with one of these ideas

which could be literally anything thing

so how do we know where to start who do

we make designs for first this can be

the most difficult part of the business

and if you don't do it correctly you're

almost certain to fail I'm speaking from

experience because my first products

were terrible we want to start by doing

some research to see what customers are

buying and to do research my favorite

platform is to use Etsy because all of

the sales data is public now from a

glance we can quickly see what shops are

doing well based on their total review

views and then when viewing a listing we

can see if that particular item has

gotten any reviews on its own you could

also use different marketplaces like

Amazon but not all of the data is public

which is why I like Etsy on Etsy when

I'm doing research I just need to search

for the product category that I'm

selling in so perhaps I'm selling a

candle Now by looking at these results I

can quickly spot the top performing

shops that have gotten thousands of

reviews usually shops will get about one

review for every 8 to 10 sales that they

get so looking at the reviews is a great

metric to track success I'll click

through one of these shops that has a

high review count and make sure that

they're selling the product that I want

to sell their shops should kind of be

themed around it then I can come down to

the bottom of the page to this reviews

section and this will show me what

people are actually buying and then

liking enough to leave a review on a few

of the ideas here are teacher candles

divorce candles and even retirement

candles so if you wanted to sell candles

but you were worried about the huge

amount of competition if we target a

specific idea like divorce candles the

competition is significantly reduced by

doing this process enough you should

come up with a huge list of design ideas

and with that list there's four methods

that we can use to turn those ideas into

actual designs the important thing to

keep in mind is we're not here to

reinvent the wheel simple things work

best just take what's working and add a

little bit of zest method number one is

the traditional good old-fashioned

handcrafted design from this candle

example most of the top candle shops

sell basic text designs just with

creative fonts now if you don't know

what saying to put we could come over to

chat GPT and write a prompt like this to

generate a list of sayings that we can

put on our candles so maybe we'd use

this one scent of Freedom retirement

Edition then we just have to put it

together so it looks nice and this is

pretty easy to do as well see we could

look at other popular designs to get

inspiration we could use the arched

two-line style from this bestseller with

this modern Sleek looking font from this

bestseller then if I just took this and

put those two elements together we don't

get a design that looks half bad we

could use this strategy to make several

different variations of the same saying

to increase our chances of getting sales

with that saying these are super easy to

make in just a few minutes using a free

program like figma and I've got a full

design tutorial so if you need more

detail you can check that out but the

text designs are so simple because we're

literally just typing them out and don't

underestimate simple designs even the

simplest single font designs can become

bests sellers this design right here has

over 100 reviews which means it's likely

sold around a thousand times my

best-selling handcraft raed designs are

always stupidly simple even though

handcrafting designs actually isn't too

difficult a lot of people still find

this the hardest method so if you're

looking for something a little bit

easier to do you could try method number

two buying pre-made designs this seller

has made thousands of dollars from this

item and they don't have any complex

design skills because they just bought

this exact design pre-made for

$5 you can use this exact strategy

whenever I find a winning product like

this Halloween shirt for example I can

just rightclick on the image since I'm

in Google Chrome the Google Chrome

browser and I can hit search with Google

Lens this will search for the exact

design across all other areas of the web

where I might be able to find the

original source file which I could then

buy for a few bucks and then use it in

my own shop if it's already being sold

on a t-shirt I could also sell it on a

t-shirt just using a different mockup or

I could sell it on a different product

entirely Reinventing the wheel and

trying to get too creative will leave

you without any sales you have to take

what's working and just make it a little

bit different even with dozens of other

shops selling this exact same design it

can still work for new shops and there

are entire shops dedicated to selling

pre-made designs just like this now for

those of you who don't have the money to

spend on buying a ton of pre-made

designs you could try method number

three

AI generated designs I personally use

mid Journey but now there's a lot of

different AI generators that you could

use and this is by far the easiest

method for generating art all I have to

do is learn how to craft a great prompt

and the image generator will take care

of the rest using the same product

research method as before I found this

pumpkin shirt that's probably sold at

least a few thousand times considering

it has hundreds of reviews Now using

that mid Journey AI I talked about I

simply wrote out a prompt describing the

type of graphic that I wanted and it

generates me several variations from

here inside mid journey I can just

upscale the image and all that's left is

to remove the background using a free

background remover and I'll be able to

sell products using this graphic but now

with the power of AI we're also able to

create designs that can cover entire

products maybe you're considering

running a mug shop and in your product

research you found this floral mug

that's selling pretty

well inside mid journey I could ask for

the same style of image and indicate the

aspect ratio that I'd like it to be in

so it'll cover the entire mug this will

spit out a version of the image that can

be perfectly sized to fit specific

products like this white mug now all

three of these methods for making

designs work but by far the best method

to ensure success is to create hybrid

designs going with this method allows

you to take advantage of handmade AI and

pre-made designs all in one shop giving

you the best chance of success with pron

demand we want to make the most amount

of designs possible to widen our chances

of actually getting sales so by using

all three methods in a hybrid strategy

we'll have the best chances for Success

this will allow us to build out a big

catalog of products that can sell for

years even the products that I made way

back in 2020 which was 4 years ago now

still continue to sell and make me

passive income to this day by using

these four strategies you should

hopefully see that making artwork isn't

too difficult after all and you'll be

left with a ton of designs however even

with the best product and the best

designs if your print provider sucks

you're almost guaranteed to fail the

print provider you choose will dictate

how quickly your customers get their

products the level of customer service

you get as the seller for orders with

defects and shipments lost in the mail

and ultimately how much profit you get

to keep from all of your sales print of

gelato and printful are the kind of top

three print OnDemand providers and I've

used all three of them for my own print

on demand businesses over the past years

now they all do have their own pros and

cons But ultimately to this day I've

stuck with printify I could go over

several reasons why they're my favorite

but just on cost alone you can see that

printify always outperforms their

competitors that means that with every

order I get I'm keeping more of that

sale as profit I've used PR for years

now and they've genuinely been the best

to work with they've enabled me to keep

hundreds of thousands of dollars in

extra profit since I'm selling tens of

thousands of products but we're still

left with another issue which is getting

all of those designs that we've made

onto the product that we're selling in

printify if you have 20 mug designs that

you created in bulk it could take you

quite some time to get them onto the

mugs that's why I invested over $20,000

to build the printify product uploader

program this program allows you to

upload as many designs as you want at a

time and bulk upload them to whatever

product you're selling on autopilot so

there's no user input required you could

start your uploads go make a cup of

coffee and when you come back all of

those designs will be uploaded to the

product you selected pream and ready to

go this is a massive timesaver so when

you're done watching this video I'll

have a link where you can get my

automated printify product uploader

program completely for free now with all

of our products ready to go on printify

we need a place to sell them online and

there's several options

here as a beginner you've probably heard

about a lot of different options that

you could go with but hands down the

most beginner friendly and easiest way

to get started is to open a completely

free shop on Etsy we want to sell where

the customers already are Etsy has over

95 million active buyers and they drive

more than enough organic traffic to

their website than you'd need to grow a

six or seven figure business Etsy is the

best place as a beginner when you're

just first getting things figured out

and once you're in a comfortable

position and have some cash coming in we

can talk about scaling to Shopify Etsy

drives so much organic traffic to my

businesses that I wouldn't even have to

use Shopify if I didn't want to plus

printify is an Etsy approved integration

which means that we can connect it to

our shop and publish all of our products

ready to sell setting up an Etsy Shop is

super easy to do and I've created a

quick start guide which will walk you

through everything that you need to get

your shop open and started from coming

up with the business name to creating a

branded email getting your shop open and

ready to sell this guide will walk you

through it by following this guide and

using the links in it it'll get your

shop set up completely for free in under

10 minutes again at the end of the video

I'll give you all of these resources

including this free guide now you might

be wondering why we aren't using

Redbubble Teespring or Society 6 or any

of these other free to use print on

demand marketplaces and the short answer

is because they don't work that well

I've posted over 2,000 products for sale

and over the past few years I've made a

grand total of

$232 so not a very worthwhile process if

you ask me the issue is that these

websites just don't drive enough traffic

to be profitable and if you do end up

making sales you'll lose most of your

money to the fees now once your Etsy

Shop is open there's a few things that

we can do to the design of the shop to

help it feel more trustworthy and

generate sales what exactly should a

trustworthy shop look like well here's a

good example of one first just notice

the logo that I've got in the corner

it's a super clean logo that really

isn't anything too special again this

could be made using AI or just using one

of the templates that you get from canva

I made this particular logo using canva

next look at the banner on the top of

the shop this just displays basic

information about the shop it makes it

look really clean and more than anything

it just conveys the vibe of the brand

right it's premium modern custom and

that's what the banner is for to convey

the idea of quality and trust this is a

great example of what a lot of beginner

Shops look like it's all over the place

they're selling products that don't make

any sense and nothing about this shop

really conveys trust the mockups look

bad and lazy and the designs look really

sloppy this shop is the same story or

they've got a little bit better idea

because they're only selling mugs but

they're infringing on copyright and none

of their mock-ups look good again and

nothing about this shop feels real or

communicates trust both of these shops

kind of feel like those junky gift shops

that you find around a tourist trap we

want to go for something that feels more

Boutique where it feels like we

specialize in our items compare this mug

shop with one like this this and

hopefully you can see the difference

everything you do from the logo to the

banner to the mockup images it all needs

to build up this image of a premium

brand when you do this and you really

focus on making your shop look

professional and premium it really helps

with component number four getting

customers getting random people online

to see pick and buy our products out of

everyone's seems like a hard task and it

sort of is if don't know what you're

doing we have to get into the potential

customers head and have them imagine

that they've already bought the product

we're selling out of everything that

we've covered by far the most underrated

aspect of the business is the mockups

these are the images that display the

fictional item as if it were real since

we're not ordering every product that we

make to take a photo of it the mockups

basically have to sell the product for

us the mockup images are the marketing

for our pron demand and products

whenever you go through and look at the

top shops in any category selling any

product they've all figured out what

mockups to use to get the most amount of

sales these mockups or similar ones to

the best sellers are how we build trust

and the first step to actually

converting these random Shoppers online

into paying customers now it's really

common for these bestselling mockups to

be available for purchase right on Etsy

or similar website for just a few

dollars or if your product permits it

you can try generating similar looking

mockups using AI to actually get your

designs onto your product mockups you

can either do it manually by hand which

admittedly can take quite a while or you

can use free bonus number three the

Photoshop mockup script this allows you

to generate hundreds of mockups on

autopilot without any user input with

this program not only can you use your

bestselling mock-ups but it's also way

faster to use than anything else like

place it which those mockups don't work

anyway once again this will be available

at the end of the video free of charge

now here's where everything finally all

starts to come together we've picked and

made designs for our product we've

gotten them uploaded and ready to sell

in our Etsy shop we have mockups chosen

and made and now we have one more

important task which is getting our

products to show up when someone

searches for them all we have to do is

put good SEO keywords or search engine

optimization

in our listings this will help get them

to rank in the Etsy search engine we'll

simply search for the type of product

that we're selling with the design idea

that we want to rank for so maybe this

floral mug then we just look at the top

listings here because they have the best

SEO keywords we can simply open up one

of these listings and then look at the

keywords that they've put in their title

section and all the way down at the

bottom of the page in this tag section

it's these little bubbles are each a tag

we can reuse these keywords from Top

listings in our own listings these

keywords are already proven to work

which means using them will give us the

best chances of ranking on the first

page of search results organically now

we could decide to pay for Etsy ads but

the ads will only perform as good as the

product is and they'll still only show

the ads depending on the SEO that you

put in the product just relying on

organic unpaid traffic you can get

almost the same exact results as if you

were paying for Etsy ads the only

downside is that you have to wait a

little bit longer for all of your

products to rank organically in search

you might have noticed that I ran zero

Etsy ads well basically zero I only use

the free traffic on Etsy I'll pay for my

own traffic on a Shopify website but I

don't need to do that on Etsy as

promised you can find a link down below

to get access to the Discord Community

the quick start guide the printify

product uploader and the Photoshop

mockup script all completely for free

because you finished the video leave

your questions down below I hope you

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