10 Things To Do BEFORE You Start Print On Demand
If you're thinking about starting Print on Demand, this article is going to save you a ton of time and hassle down the road. In this article, I have 10 tips that will help you avoid the common mistakes that new Print on Demand sellers make. And it will help you get your Print on Demand business off the ground successfully.
Now, I've been selling Print on Demand for over seven years now, and these are the things that I wish someone told me when I was just starting out. This is going to be one of those articles that will take just a few minutes to read.
Read it all the way through just one time and and then throughout your entire experience with Print on Demand, you will know all of these things and be able to avoid these mistakes from the start. So with that being said, let's go ahead and just get straight into this article.
10 Tips To Do BEFORE You Start Print On Demand
Tip 1: Research Your Niche
The first thing you need to do is research the niches that you're interested in going into for Print on Demand. Now, what most people don't realize is you are not limited to just one niche for Print on Demand. You can go into multiple different niches and that's exactly what I recommend doing.
Just make sure that the niches that you're going into have a passionate audience within them, not something that's very vague or very surface level. Make sure that you get down into these sub niches where people are committed and people have an opinion about them. Not only that, but if you go too general with your niches, you're going to have a lot of competitors.
Typically, people starting out in Print on Demand go into these very big popular niches. So there are tons of different designs you'll be competing with. What you want to do is narrow that down into sub niches that are within those big niches, that's where you want to create your designs.
For those of you who need a good starting point on how to find these sub niches, I have a step by step tutorial on how I personally do it. You can get free from here.
Tip 2: Understand Your Target Audience
What most people don't do as Print on Demand sellers is think about who is in this target audience or this niche or sub niche that you're going into. What are their interests beyond that general niche, and even what kind of problems do these people face.
This seems like so much extra to be thinking, but it allows you to create designs that really resonate with people on a personal level and that's why they're going to buy your design over someone else's.
So once you dig into this and you figure out all of this information, include and kind of integrate all of those things into the phrases and the graphics that are in your designs.
Tip 3: Choose The Right Platform
Choosing the right platforms to list and sell your print on demand designs on is probably the most crucial thing that you can do in print on demand. Not many new print on demand sellers know that you can actually list your exact same designs on multiple different print on demand websites. And that way you're going to get the organic traffic from all of these different sites and you're not limited to just one.
Now, in addition to that, there's actually a huge difference between active print on demand and passive print on demand. Active print on demand websites like Printful, Printify, these are websites where you have to drive your own traffic. They're basically just giving you the ability to create your website where you can sell your designs on.
On the other side, passive print on demand websites like Amazon Merch on Demand, Teepublic and Redbubble, they do everything for you. They bring their own traffic, so people are going to see your listings without you doing anything. They handle the customer service, they print and ship the products, they do everything.
So I think it is so important if you are a new print on demand seller to figure out what are those top four or five passive print on demand websites and then upload your same designs to all four or five of them.
This one little tip here is something that could totally change your print on demand business from not working and not getting sales to totally exploding with organic traffic. That brings us into tip number four.
Tip 4: High Quality Designs
This is super important, that is creating high quality designs. Your designs essentially are the backbone of your print on demand business. So I highly recommend investing in a T shirt design tool that allows you to customize T shirt design templates.
Now the big thing that you have to understand on this one is that not all design tools are commercially usable and copyright free. So be very sure that you pick one that is both copyright free and commercially usable. If you're interested in using the one that I personally use myself, it's called placeit.net.
Tip 5: Setting Up Your Store
Now, before you can start selling your designs online, you're going to have to create a store or a storefront. This is something you'll have to do on pretty much all print on demand websites.
Now when you're doing this, you're going to have to name your store. This name can be something that's very generic and it doesn't really play a big role in if your print on demand business is successful. However, the big thing here is you want to make sure that the name of the store is not trademarked.
To give you a rough idea on this, some examples of trademarks are brand names, product names, and company slogans. Be sure that you are checking the name that you're using for your storefront to make sure that it does not have anything that is trademark protected.
Tip 6: Optimize Product Listing
Make sure that your product listings are optimized with clear titles, descriptions and tags. Now this took me several years to learn from the beginning when I started out, so a quick tip that I can pass on to you to help you save time is do research on finding low competition niches or sub niches, and when you find out what those are, use the name of that sub niche as keywords throughout your title and your description of your listing.
This one tip is going to help your products rank higher in search results and make it easier for potential customers to find your designs.
Tip 7: Plan Your Strategy
Now this is a big one to understand correctly, if you are using active print on demand websites like the ones we talked about before, then you will be responsible to do all of your own marketing and bring in your buyers.
If, however, you are using the passive print on demand websites we talked about, they will do all of the marketing for you. However, either way, doing your own marketing will only bring you more buyers.
So it may be smart to start thinking about what social media websites would fit your target audience best, which ones they are actively using, and then consider posting product mockups to get them in front of your potential buyers just with organic traffic on those social media websites.
Tip 8: Set Up Pricing
When it comes to print on demand, setting a price that guarantees a profit is very easy to do because all of the costs associated with printing and shipping the product, they are all laid out at the beginning when you're uploading and creating your listing.
Additionally, if you're using the passive websites we talked about, you won't be charged for anything, so the cost of the actual product to be made is covered by the customer when they make the purchase, you simply just get your split of the profit.
However, with that being said, you get to choose how much the product is sold for, so you essentially get to pick how big of a profit margin you have.
I spent a lot of time testing with this with high prices and low prices to try to see what would yield the most profit and setting it within a couple doll of the suggested price always yielded the most profit in the end.
Now I know that seems like a very simple tip, but that took me a long time to learn, so hopefully that saves you a lot of time.
Tip 9: Order Samples
Before you start selling, consider ordering samples from these different print on demand websites just to ensure the print quality and make sure that the T shirt materials that you're choosing meet your expectations.
Most print on demand websites let you choose the quality of the actual T shirt that your design gets printed on.
So if you do plan on selling your products at a higher price point, I highly recommend making sure you're picking a higher quality T shirt just so your customers aren't surprised where they paid extra for a shirt and then the quality of the shirt really isn't that good.
Tip 10: Prepare For Customer Support
This is one that applies to those using active print on demand websites like Printful, Printify and Etsy. Using the passive Print on Demand websites we talked about before, all of the customer service will be done for you. This includes refunds, returns, exchanges, everything.
So there you have it these are the 10 things that you should do before starting a Print on Demand store. If you're ready to start your Print on Demand business, I will link up the full step by step tutorial that I have here on blog. It'll walk you through everything from just wanting to start out with Print on Demand all the way to getting your first sale.
If you have any questions at all, just let me know down in the comments. And if you found this article helpful, please share it with friends on social media. That's all for today, guys. Thanks so much for reading.
