7 Simple Steps to Your Own Print on Demand Empire

 

Print on Demand is a marvelous concept.  On the one side you have the retailer who has to do the creative side of things and on the other side you have the supplier who does everything else.

 

Are you the sort of person that has good ideas for products?  Do you think ‘that would look great on a t shirt’? Do you think of yourself as someone that knows what looks good and what doesn’t? Then this might be the ideal business for you. 

 

The Print on Demand business is the ideal project to get somebody who is unhappy in their current situation started on the road to having their own business full time. To use a term I have heard quite a lot in recent times - it is ‘The ideal side hustle’. I say a side hustle because there are so many people that dream of quitting their day job and see starting a business in their spare time as the way out. Most people don’t ever find their way out and some end up swapping to something that still feels like a job but with more hours and more worry. This is different gravy.

 

Print on Demand is different because

​

• It is very easy to produce a product

• There doesn’t need to be any financial investment to get started

• There is no stockholding to worry about

• No premises needed

• No staff to pay

• No pressure for consistent sales if it is a side hustle

• You can have your own business up and running in 24 hours

 

Those were not the seven steps. Just a different list of seven reasons to think about getting involved in the Print on Demand business.

Let us get on to the seven steps to get your Print on Demand business up and running. Here we go.

​

 

STEP ONE - FIND YOUR NICHE

The Print on Demand business model is based on people’s affinity with something.  A sport, a pastime, their dog, their family - it can be any number of things as long as it is relatable to their lives. If you want to sell somebody a t shirt with a slogan on it then that person must have reason to want to buy it. They must see something in the words that corresponds to something they recognize as part of what they have a passion for or interest in.

 

Your first job is to choose a niche that many people relate to, so that any artwork designs you come up with later have a specific audience. It needs to be specific because the more specific people’s interest is the more likely they are to buy your product. For example, people who like football are more likely to buy a t shirt with artwork relating to the team they follow on it rather than a design about the subject of football in general. Another example is that people who like dogs are more likely to buy something that relates to a particular breed than just dogs in general. 

 

It helps if you are interested in the subject too, because you might come up with some good ideas if you understand the niche properly and thoroughly. It is not compulsory though, because you can easily research what sort of artworks are selling in the niche and come up with your own version of the winners. Search the term on Pinterest and you will see what I mean.

 

 

STEP TWO - FIND YOUR AUDIENCE

If you have chosen your niche well then there will be communities of likeminded people dotted all over the internet showing enthusiasm and passion for the interest you have in mind for your POD business. You need to go out and find them in forums and on Reddit, Instagram and Facebook. Go anywhere your intuition tells you they might be and study what is going on.   Read and absorb what they talk about and give yourself the best chance of coming up with something that is currently relatable to them. You must design a POD product to match these people’s passion and it must be good enough for them to dust their wallet off and give you some cash. It could be sentiment, or it could be humor. You need to gauge what artwork is required.

 

 

STEP THREE - CREATE YOUR POD DESIGN

Creating good POD designs used to be a problem. I certainly used to feel compelled to pay somebody with graphic design skills to do my artwork designs for me as I didn’t feel I was very artistic. Luckily things have moved on and technology has made it very simple to come up with something that looks good. Also, it took me a while to realize that sometimes simple art designs sell better than complicated ones. 

 

You don’t have to be a wizard on Photoshop anymore to have a successful POD design. There are simpler programs you can use on your computer and even simpler apps you can use on your smartphone or iPad if you have one.

 

You can see in the picture a screenshot from my iPhone in which I have literally thought of a slogan I believed was worth a try and typed it into my app. The app has a selection of templates and arranges the words for you in lots of different aesthetically pleasing formats so that it couldn’t be easier to come up with something eye catching.

 

The checkered background is essential and is a sign that the image has a transparent background which is necessary to print your artwork design onto any POD product. Honestly, that was two minutes work and I can add that design to 20 different types of POD product. I added it straight from my phone to Google Drive and now I can use on all my devices wherever I am. I can make a print on demand product while I am on the train if I want to.

 

​

STEP FOUR - FIND A POD SUPPLIER

There is no shortage of Print on Demand suppliers. Choosing your first supplier might be the task that takes you the longest time in this process.  There is a lot to consider here. Your selling price and profit will depend on the base price you work off from your supplier, so it is essential to be working with a good starting price. The one drawback with Print on Demand is that the uniqueness of your artwork design and the flexibility needed to produce one t shirt, or one mug makes it necessary to charge a bit more. So, comparing different suppliers base prices is important. I do a spreadsheet to work out who is cheaper for each product.

 

You should also research their reputation where possible because you want the quickest conceivable turnaround on your order. When your customer pays you cannot keep them waiting too long, as you don’t want to be fielding complaints and refund requests.

 

If it is your intention to list your POD products in third party marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy, then you should look for a supplier that has an online integration already in place so that you can avoid the task of passing orders and money on to them when it can all be done nice and simply without you having to lift a finger.

 

You will probably have in mind what types of POD products you want to sell by now. If you decide you just want to sell clothing, then choose a supplier that majors in T shirts, Hoodies and vests; you will probably find they have a better base price. If you decide to sell a bit of everything maybe mix it up and get two or three POD suppliers. The good thing is it doesn’t matter because you will never owe them any money because your orders are paid by your customers directly.  

 

​

STEP FIVE – POD PRODUCT SET UP

Each of you suppliers will have their own system for applying your artwork design to their POD products. Not only that but their system will take your design add it to one of their products and create not only a picture of it, but also provide artwork templates for you to fill out with a description and price. In a few minutes you are out the other end with a great picture of your POD product on its own unique sales page. You can do this as many times as you like on as many products as you like and there is no cost to you. Make just one POD product or make yourself a shop full it is entirely your decision.

 

It is a very easy system to use. In the picture below you can see a transparent image being added to a coffee mug mockup. Once you have your sales page then you are ready to start selling.

 

​

STEP SIX - SELLING YOUR POD PRODUCT

As with anything else online just because you have a sales page doesn’t mean anyone will ever visit it. Shops on the internet can be compared to physical shops. If you were thinking of opening a physical shop you wouldn’t open one at the top of Mount Everest, you would want one somewhere that had lots of people around all day. Having a sales page can be like being at the top of a mountain. Nobody will come and visit just because you have a page. You need a page that people are going to look at and not one of the millions of pages that nobody ever looks at.

 

There are several ways to get people to come and look at your page. You could join some of the groups of people that you researched in Step One and make some posts as part of their community. You can set up your own ecommerce store and link to the sales pages your supplier has created for you. You can pay for advertising to get people to your sales pages. That is obviously the fastest route, but you will obviously have to spend a little bit of money. The plus here is that you will see if your POD designs work much quicker than the other methods. You can add your Pint on Demand products to bigger marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy that have a large volume of traffic that you can feed off. 

 

All the above will work to some degree. You will need a Facebook Page for the niche if you decide to advertise on Facebook. Don’t stop when you have a good artwork design make sure you get it in front on people

 

​

STEP SEVEN - ENHANCE THE PROCESS

When you have got comfortable with the process, you need to keep thinking of ways to improve what you are doing and making yourself more profitable. The more you design the better you become and recognizing what will work in a market and what will be a flop.

 

Make better mockup designs for any POD images you use in advertising. The supplier mockups on the sales pages are rarely good enough to work well in an advertisement.

 

When you have got your basic POD business system set up and have got a few sales under your belt you can tweak the structure a bit and try to get your order values up with some upsells or cross-sells. Some of the supplier POD systems will offer the opportunity to present a second product at a discount as your customer checks out. This can be helpful, if successful, particularly if you have paid for advertising. The extra revenue from the second item can be helpful to offset the cost of advertising.  

 

You should take advantage of the people that have shown an interest, even if they haven’t bought anything, by placing a pixel on your page that records the identity of your visitors. You then advertise to these people as a set of individuals that are more likely to become buyers than anyone yet to show an interest.

 

You should also make use of the email addresses of anybody that buys from you. As you create new POD products or artwork designs then these are the first people you should let know. Dropping previous customers an email with an offer is probably the most likely way to get an order.

 

​

CONCLUSION

The Print on Demand business is something that anybody can do very simply.  It can be set up and running in no time. You can do it in your spare time. You can do it with hardly any investment. You don’t need any special skills. There is no pressure. It is difficult to lose money. Your supplier does all the heavy lifting for you.

 

You just need one good POD design and to deliver the traffic to the sales page.