I have been selling something on Etsy since I was old enough to have my own bank account (approximately 12 years, yikes..) I’ve sold everything from clay figurines to found vintage to wooden peg dolls. Although I love hands-on creating, I have always struggled to keep up with an Etsy business due to all of the time demands involved, especially related to packaging and shipping products. All of this changed when I discovered… print on demand!
What is print on demand?
Print-on-demand is basically a term for online services that allow you to design t-shirts, baby clothes, mugs, home decor, (virtually anything!) from your computer/mobile device and sell those products in your own corner of the internet (in our case: Etsy) without ever touching any inventory. Print on demand is completely legit on Etsy, as long as you make your production partners known in your profile.
Benefits of Print on Demand
- No up- front cost. With POD, you do not purchase any product until it’s already sold in your shop.
- No inventory. You don’t have to store 100 mugs on your dining room table until they sell.
- No shipping products! I loathe shipping things so this one really pulls at my heartstrings.
- Mostly passive source of income. Although POD does require quite a bit of work initially, it’s pretty passive income once you have a shop filled with products.
Challenges with Print on Demand
- You don’t actually see the product. This can give Type A’s some serious anxiety. With POD, you must trust that your fulfillment partner is doing a good job creating your orders.
- Some amount of design / trend savvy / tech skills are required. These skills can be easily learned!
Step 1: Decide on a product and POD platform.
There are several POD platforms out there and this number is steadily climbing. The ones that I am most familiar with are Printful, Printify, and Gooten. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses. You will want to look at prices for the items you will be selling, quality reviews, shipping costs, and order fulfillment times when deciding on a POD partner.
I advise starting your POD journey by designing and selling one product. This will allow you to really niche down on one target audience to get in the swing of things. Many people start with mugs or t-shirts but there are truly hundreds of POD products out there to choose from.
Step 2: Create your designs.
Canva is super easy and intuitive to use for designing!
Think you need a fancy software setup to make awesome, money-making designs? Negative! I make all of my designs directly from my phone. Apps like Canva, Bazaart, and PicMonkey are great for this! Some of my best-selling products are simply TEXT! If you want to add images, one thing to remember is that you cannot use any copyrighted images in your design. Creative Fabrica is a great place to get images and even has an entire category of designs that are deemed okay to use on POD products. Just be sure to check the licensing info on each image when you download and ensure that it’s okay for your purposes.
One other thing to remember when designing for your products- make sure that there is no background on your image. Otherwise, when you upload the design on a product the background will be there too!
Step 4: Put your designs on your product and in your store.
Once your designs are created, it’s time to put them on your product and out into the world. Most POD platforms make this very easy- you simply upload your design and can instantly see what it looks like on your product. From there, you may choose variations of your product that you wish to offer in your store (like color, size, etc).
Once you upload your product to the POD site, you will need to make sure it’s also added to your store. If you’re using a POD platform that integrates with Etsy then this is super easy. Most of the popular platforms do integrate, meaning your products will automatically be pushed to your store. And more importantly- your orders will automatically be sent to the POD for fulfillment.
Step 5: Keep your business sustainable.
Although this business is mostly passive once your products are posted, you still need to attend to any customer service issues that may arise. There are times customers may need the address changed after a purchase or the color of a t-shirt they ordered is out of stock. It’s important to monitor your shop / POD platform for these issues.
And most importantly… keep creating! Success doesn’t happen overnight and the more you practice, the greater your POD skills will become!
If you have questions about Etsy and Print on Demand, feel free to leave them in the comments.