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Launch Your 2024 Print-on-Demand Business with Printify
Introduction to…
this is probably going to be one of the most valuable print on demand resources for beginners. we’re going to go step by step as to how you can start a Print-on-demand business for yourself; over the past year I’ve posted tons of content covering how to make individual products, how I generate all my sales, different marketing methods, and how I’ve done everything, but I’ve never really made a completely beginner-friendly start-from-scratch guide that you can use if you’ve never done print on demand before, so that you can do the same. this is the 2024 most up-to-date method, so if you’re getting started out, you should have the best odds of success now and into the future; get right into what print on demand is and clear up any confusion you might have about it.
Print-on-demand is a dropshipping business model
Print on demand is a dropshipping business model where you find a blank product to sell on a website like printify; there are other websites, but printify is the biggest, most popular, and best one. for example, you might want to sell a standard Custom t-shirt, a super popular product, but for example, it costs about $13.50 for printify; once you choose the product, you have to upload some artwork or design to it to make it unique.
Opening a Print-on-Demand Store on Etsy
you have to open up a print-on-demand store on Etsy, which is a platform that allows you to create a store on their marketplace where you can post your products for sale and collect orders and payments; your Etsy print-on-demand store is where you can sell the Custom t-shirt to customers for a higher price than it costs you–maybe $25. we’ll cover this in more detail later, but you can advertise your products on Etsy directly or on social media, and when someone orders the product from your Etsy print-on-demand store, they’ll pay that $25; printify will take the order information from the customer, print the design on the Custom t-shirt, and ship it directly to them. since the customer paid you $25 and you gave printify $13.50, you made $11.50 in profit.
Scaling Your Sales
from there, as your ads perform better or you get more traffic to your product listings, you’ll make more and more sales; I’ve had multiple stores where I’ve been able to scale into the hundreds of thousands and even into that seven-figure range, so don’t worry–you’re not doing this for $11, it’s a scalable business. that’s it; it really is a simple business model. it is a bit more difficult in practice, so everything that you need to know to go out and start making that Wi-Fi bread for yourself is explained here.
Selling Your Products Online
it starts by having a place to sell your products online; I teach Etsy print on demand, which is where you’re opening a store in Etsy’s Marketplace. this is where you’ll be able to publish your print on demand product listings for sale; Etsy is the perfect place to start your business because, instead of having to pay for Shopify’s monthly subscription, Etsy is $15 one time, making it much cheaper especially if you’re starting out, and they have millions more customers than other print on demand websites like Redbubble, Teespring, or Society 6. because they drive so much traffic to their site, marketing your products to the people already coming to shop is a lot easier; not only is it 20 cents to post a product for sale, but when you’re selling on Etsy, you get to leverage their brand and reputation to get sales on your shop. even if you’re thinking about opening a Shopify website down the line, I think Etsy is the perfect place to start out and get some sales coming in without having to open and manage a website or create a ton of ads or waste a bunch of time on a platform that isn’t going to work.
Choosing a Product to Sell
once you’ve decided to start on Etsy, you have to pick a product to sell; Etsy allows you to use suppliers like printify to fulfill your print on demand orders, so you can look at their catalog to find products to sell. since the products are blank, you’ll be making and uploading your own designs to the products to separate them from the rest of the competition; I always choose already proven, bestselling products such as Custom t-shirts, mugs, and posters, but I know other people who have had success selling many types of products as well, so it’s important to pick one product and stick with it until you get good at selling it. once you get good, you can open a new shop and start selling other products; there’s a misconception with print on demand that if you sell Custom t-shirts, for example, you’re competing with everyone else who’s selling that product, but in reality, you’re selling the design that goes on the product more than the product itself. So, while it seems there is more competition, this is why picking best-selling products from Pry catalog is usually going to get you the best results instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, get super creative, and then having to make designs for some kind of unusual product.
Designing Your Product
Once you’ve chosen your product, the most important job is to make good designs for it; this is the sticking point for almost everyone trying this business. Now, to be clear, you do not have to be a professional designer to get this to work; you have to figure out what kind of design will sell on the product you’re selling and then how to make or get that design. But you also have to understand why customers are buying print on demand products in the first place; it’s not because you have some ultra rare product, it’s obviously because of the design on the product. This means that we have to make designs that people like and enjoy enough to buy; market research is how we figure out what designs people want, what designs they’re already buying, and then how to make our own variations. All we have to do is figure out what’s currently working for other shops, build out our own versions of that product, and then sell it to the same audience. If you aren’t doing product research, then the product designs you make aren’t going to be relevant to anyone and you won’t get any sales; if you’re making products that you think are cool but your customers don’t, then your shop isn’t going to perform well.
| Section 1 | Section 2 |
|---|---|
| Introduction | What is Print-on-Demand? |
| Opening a Print-on-Demand Store | Scaling Your Sales |
| Selling Your Products Online | Choosing a Product to Sell |
| Designing Your Product | Order Fulfillment & Conclusion |
Types of Product Designs
Now, there are only three types of designs that you can make for your product:
Text Designs
Simply designs made out of text, which are the most popular option. This usually involves a saying that’s stylized with an attractive font. These designs can be extremely simple using basic fonts and layouts or they can be more complex using combinations of fonts, icons, and different elements. The key point is that the saying is what people are buying the product for, so it needs to be relevant to the customer’s interests. You can even sell the same design in completely different styles to target various groups.
Graphic Designs
These are typically artistic images or graphics that some people may find intimidating because they believe they need to create the image from scratch. However, after selling tens of thousands of print on demand products, it’s clear that you can hire a freelancer, use commercially available designs, or download graphics from a subscription website. The newest and best option is to use AI to generate these elements.
Combination Designs
This involves combining text and graphic elements. Making a great design to sell on your product is extremely manageable, whether it’s a simple text design, a mix of text and graphics, or purely graphic elements. The process of creating the design is surprisingly straightforward: figure out what’s currently selling, assemble your own version of the design using a program like Figma, and then upload the design to the product you’re selling on a platform like Printify. To enhance the appeal of your design, you can place it on an attractive mockup—a method that has already proven successful across many shops—even if your design is rated 4 out of 10, a well-crafted mockup can make it appear as solid as a 7 out of 10. The tricky part is getting that product to sell, and that’s where marketing comes into play; marketing is about getting the products that you made in front of the people for whom they were created. If your market research shows that your product looks good, you’ll have no trouble selling it; however, if it looks bad, your products will not gain views or sales. There are only two requirements: your product must be seen by the right person—the person for whom it was made—and that person must experience an emotional response when they view it.
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising involves paying to place your products in front of customers while they shop, which may indicate whether they like them. This usually involves giving Etsy a daily ad budget to push your products to the top of search results or paying to drive traffic from websites such as Pinterest or Facebook—wherever your target audience spends time. The method I prefer is using free organic traffic. Instead of paying for ads, this strategy relies on posting additional products for sale with optimized keywords so that the Etsy algorithm knows exactly who should see them. Using this strategy means posting more products with the aim of ranking on the first page of search results without payment; this is the strategy I teach my students, and they have achieved significant success with it. I have scaled shops to over seven figures using nothing but organic free traffic.
Advertising vs. Organic Traffic
It is important to remember that there are no shortcuts: if you choose to pay for ads, do not underestimate the cost, and if you opt for free organic traffic, do not underestimate the number of products required to rank high in the search algorithm. Furthermore, if you decide to pay for ads, it does not guarantee that your products will sell or that your designs will be marketable; this reinforces my preference for the organic approach, as it improves your product creation over time. Eventually, if you persist with either strategy, customers will begin purchasing your products, leading to smooth, steady sales growth. Products that sell will naturally rise in the algorithm, increasing daily revenue.
Order Fulfillment
When a customer orders, they provide Etsy with their address and payment; Etsy forwards the order details to your Printify account, where Printify prints the design on the sold product and ships it directly to the customer. Simply click submit on the order, and Printify will manage fulfillment. Since Printify handles all fulfillment, you can scale indefinitely, resulting in increased revenue over time.
Your Final Task
Your job is to make good designs, upload them to your product on Printify, and post them in your Etsy print-on-demand store to sell. It is simple in principle and a little more difficult in practice, but it is worth the effort in the end.
Conclusion
Starting a print-on-demand business in 2024 is a beginner-friendly and scalable opportunity, especially when leveraging platforms like Etsy and Printify. Success hinges on creating market-relevant designs, conducting thorough product research, and utilizing effective marketing strategies, whether through paid ads or organic traffic. With persistence and the right approach, this model can grow into a profitable and sustainable venture.