Full Print On-Demand Tutorial For Beginners in 2024 (Step-by-Step)

I want you to imagine for a moment you're driving a brand new Bugatti through the sunny streets of Dubai while passive income continuously flows into your bank account many young YouTubers promise that this dream is possible with the print on demand side hustle look I won't make claims like this I've been around a lot longer and from my experience if you need Grand promises just to listen then you won't succeed anyway however I will promise to give you a step-by-step guide to star in print on demand I'm going to to show you exactly where to click and what to do to make this business work with 0 you'll even learn how to make products like this and sell them internationally this is coming from someone who hasn't just started a few little internet businesses and sold a few print on demand items I'm An established millionaire businessman that's been running companies for over 35 years so I'll be sharing some of the lessons that you can only learn from having years of experience I know starting a new side hustle seems daunting there's so much to learn that's why this is the only print on demand for beginners video you need to watch before you take action right so I'm going to split this into 10 different sections to make sure to cover absolutely everything firstly what is print on demand but simply it's a risk-free way of starting out in business let's say you wanted to start a clothing brand but don't have a factory to make thousands of unique clothing products nor do you want to end up with a basement full of unsold shirts like a hoarder that that's where print on demand swoops in to save the day print on demand allows you to pay for your products only after your customers order them these products are then printed with your Unique Designs and delivered directly to your customers this allows you to run everything with very little money this isn't just limited to clothing you can also do mugs posters bags and even cushions this side hustle is ideal for someone who doesn't want the hassle of starting a full-time business but wants to earn passive income you can work from your laptop and as your income scales the time you put into the business shouldn't need to change significantly isn't it wild how these days you can potentially ring Millions without even physically touching a single product this concept would have blown my mind in my day the data backs this up as currently the global print on demand Market is worth nearly $6 billion and that's expected to rise to 40 billion by 2031 from my time in the business world I've seen firsthand how crucial it is to operate in the right Market believe me I've seen some seriously smart people hit rock bottom because they were busy building their brand in a market that was on the decline but here's where print on demand is different even if you're just an average Joe in the entrepreneurial world you could potentially raking a fortune if you dive into a booming market like this one to get started you need five things one a winning product two a great design to go on the product three a place to sell the product four a great supplier and five of course paying customers but don't worry we're going to cover all of this today by the way if you're new here then I'm Mark and I make videos sharing my years of wisdom so that you can grow your wealth so if that interests you make sure to subscribe to get more videos like this one so how do I find a winning product this is the first question most people ask when they're getting into print on demand and rightly so because if you get this wrong then it could make the difference between your store get in hundreds of sales and none whatsoever from my experience a winning product has two main components the product category and the design now you might think all of these product categories are created equal but far from it you need to be very strategic about which one you decide to use for your blank canvas you may be thinking why not just pick all of them and use the same design across every product now although this may sound like a good idea it really isn't at first your designs probably aren't going to be that great this means you're going to waste a ton of time and money focusing on different products and not getting any sales instead I want you to pick one product category and give it your entire Focus once you hit over 10K per month with that product type then you can repurpose the same designs on other products in a new shop it's much better to become a master of one product than a jack of all trades this even applies to color options personally I never offer more than seven different variations as that tends to overwhelm the customer and you you know what they end up buying nothing so you have a big decision to make so let me help you eliminate some of the categories cards and calendars are a big no from me as they're extremely seasonal you want a product that's Evergreen and sells continuously no matter what the time of year mugs iPhone cases oh and stationary they don't really sell for very much so personally I'd stay away from these my role is to have at least 20 to 30% profit margin I'm not saying these are a definite no because if you're able to sell them in large enough quantities then you can make a nice profit take this shop for example they have the number one listing on Etsy when I search for mug now if I dig into their figures I can actually see that they're generating around $30,000 a month from this store if we assume a 15% margin then they're probably making around what 4,500 a month in profit which isn't too bad at all if they've managed to get a 30% profit margin then that's even better if we're evaluating options based purely on potential profit margins then clothing and wallart are the clear winners in my opinion it's much easier to inflate the value of products like this it's the same strategy that Designer Brands and modern artists have been using for years I can actually show you some real numbers here now I've sold some wall art before using gelato honestly I really like gelato because they have production facilities in over 32 countries on this point over 90% of orders are produced in the same country the customer lives in cutting down shipping times even more as you can see my price point was $49. 99 and my costs were $25. 3 for the product and the printing there was also a $698 shipping cost as well so if we add those together that gives us a price of $32.

32 [Music] now if we take those numbers and plug them into the Etsy free calculator with everything taken into account I made $12. 42 on every sale which gives me a 25% profit margin on every product as you can see it's so easy for your profits to be eaten away that's why it's so important to pick an item with a high profit margin potential as I've already spoken about wall art in past videos I feel like switching it up so today let's go with clothing so what's the best Niche to pick it might seem obvious but nobody cares about blank clothes that's where you come in you need to make them care about what you're selling you can do this by attaching one of their interests to the item so I could just make a shirt like this with storm pooper on it to attract Star Wars fans that's the right kind of idea but it will also get you into a lot of trouble with the law this is because of one simple word trade marks you should always check the text for use of potential trademark infringements even if it isn't from a famous franchise luckily this is free too and super simple it's worth checking the UK and USA trademarks this is what the American Site looks like just click on basic word Mark search and then type in the phrase I'm going to use boomers are awesome and click submit change this setting to live there you go uh well for this one we look like we're in the clear okay so I can't use popular films or TV shows I'll just do something completely original I like your thinking but also no I'm going to say something that might shock you don't try to be original School drills into the importance of not looking at other people's work but when it comes to business this is completely wrong I have a theory that c-grade students often end up hiring the people who get the A's because of this there's actually a really good book that talks about this and it's called still like an artist it's based on the saying that good artists copy and great artist still honestly it works just as well for entrepreneurs being to original is the biggest trap I see beginners falling into they feel like they've got to come up with the next big thing and then just end up trying to sell something nobody wants yes you may have spotted a gap in the market but most likely that gap's there because no one wants what you're selling I'd say 99% of people fail at this step so here's what you should actually do research the market I love using Etsy to do this as all the sales information is public let's say for this example I want to sell t-shirts now since the T-shirt Niche is extremely competitive we need to find some good sub niches these are pockets of the market that have low competition but very high demand so let's type in women's t-shirts and sort this by top customer reviews now look ah this is one you don't want to be taking inspiration from as it's a clear trademark infringement of DC Comics and Wonder Woman I mean if you're going to risk doing this at least pick a decent film but seriously don't infringe on anyone's trademarks you might get a ton of sales to begin with but in the long run it's just not worth it when you run into all the legal trouble what we're really looking for is shops with lots of reviews as we can tell from that that they're successful now let's click on this one as they look like they're doing very well now let's go on their shop homepage and filter reviews by most recent to see what's selling at the moment oh I'm not going to lie to you even I like the look of a few of these designs myself this is a perfect little sub Niche you'll then just have to spend an hour or so going through screenshotting designs that are selling well and take elements from all of them to put in your design you might think this is a really small Market here but this t-shirt here has over 130 reviews that's important as the normal rule of thumb is the times that by 10 and then you have the number of sales so this seller has sold in the region of 1,300 of these t-shirts bringing in revenue of $ 43,6 128 when you take shipping into account now with a 30% profit margin that would be around $133,000 in profit from this one design so simple designs really do sell well and remember you can have loads of these as they're pretty easy to make just to set the record straight you can't simply copy these designs instead think of it like making a cocktail you're pulling different elements from various sources combining proven ingredients so it's important to draw inspiration from multiple places otherwise you risk getting banned so if you're going to steal steal from many for instance you could pick the font from One Design borrow the colors from another and NAB a section of a quote from a third Source the aim here is to whip up a whole bunch of unique designs for your chosen sub Niche because let's face it we can't always predict what's going to sell like crazy so what's the best way to create your designs this step is one of the biggest roadblocks people face I know so many people with great design ideas but they don't know how to actually make them look good on a computer to be honest I used to be one of those people but it turns out that it's actually super easy even for an old boy like me there are four main methods you can use firstly you can use a free tool like canva so I've got a list of woodwork related funny quotes here on chat GPT I'm going to go with this one now I'm going to take some design elements from other products we found earlier like the font from this Lis in and the design from this other one it's pretty easy to get these mocked up on cam and it's also a free tool which is even better then I just have to click here to download the image without a background secondly you could actually buy a template or full design so if we take this flower t-shirt for example and I download the image then use the Google search by image function then you're quite often able to actually buy the original source file thirdly and this is one I've actually been using a lot recently is AI tools to design it for you now I think mid journey is the best for this kind of thing look it does cost you $10 a month to generate designs and also have the rights to use the images commercially but it's such a great tool and I think it's worth it now I'm lucky that my son Curtis keeps me up to date with all the new AI Tech if I mentioned mid Journey to the other old boys down the golf club they wouldn't have a clue what I'm on about they think I'm halfway to my holiday destination it's super easy to use you just need to have a free Discord account once that's set up go to Mid Journey's website and click on Join Beta this will connect you to the mid Journey server inside Discord you might as well join my free Discord group while you're in there because there's about 40,000 people in there that'll help you out with everything business and making money related and it's completely free click on ADD server then me and my friends and just give it a name I'm going to call mine marks design lines now go back to the mid Journey server click on the mid Journey bot and add app there we go and then pick the server you just made so I'm going to click marks designs first let's get the settings right type forward SL settings and you'll get this menu select model 6 and stylization high right now type in for SL imagine now if we want want to make designs like this butterfly t-shirt then we would type something like this butterflies in the style of Silhouettes in a tornado pattern on a white background now these look pretty cool I actually think the colorful version looks nicer this Arrow Circle button here will run the same prompt again to give me more options but I'm going to click V4 which will give me more variations like like the fourth version once you're happy then upscale the one you like by pressing the corresponding U button this just makes the design larger so that you can use it on your product then you can just use a background remover to get rid of the white background I personally use photor room. com finally you can use professional designers on websites like artwork and Fiverr now I've done this before with wall art and I've been pretty happy with the results you just have to make sure that you're very specific with the brief here's a look at the brief I gave last time so you can just copy and tailor it to fit your needs these are all good methods so it just depends on your skill set available time and budget so now we've got our designs what's the best print on demand website for beginners this is the site you'll use to order your products print them and ship them to your customers this is an extremely important section as picking the wrong print provider will result in some of your shipments getting lost poor customer service and all around massive headaches most YouTubers recommend the absolute cheapest sites and to be honest I've got a real issue with this the reason a lot of them can charge crazy low prices is because they cut Corners in other areas wait a minute I thought you were telling us how we could start with $0 now you're telling us we got to pay for websites well the cool thing about most print on demand sites is you only have to pay once you've made a sale that way you actually don't need any money up front I live my life by the saying buy nice or buy twice this this essentially means if you go with the cheapest option then you'll actually end up spending more money in the long run as you'll have to take the hit for the Lost items and that'll start digging into your profits I tested out the gelato website for myself recently and I've got to say I was super impressed the experience was seamless with both the product quality and the printing quality being excellent just look at how great this poster came out I only ordered it as a sample but I've actually ended up keeping it because I like it so much all right so let's jump on to gelato and start uploading our design so you can see how easy the process is so I'm just going to go to the menu on the left hand side and select product catalog and then select men's clothing I'm then going to pick T-shirts I think we should be fine with the heavyweight unisex crew neck t-shirts as I can see that's their bestseller and to be honest gelato has a very high standard of quality anyway it's nearly $2 cheaper than the other more premium options and as I said earlier it's super important to protect your profit margins all right so here's what I'm thinking I'm going to go with direct to garment for this design now don't get me wrong embroidery is pretty cool and definitely has that premium Vibe but let's be real it's pricier so I'd save that for that design that screams embroider me and hey if you're shelling out the extra bux for embroidery make sure it's super obvious when you're promoting the product after all if you're paying more it should seriously ramp up the perceived value of your product okay so I'm going to start with the white option and size large but I'll also repeat the same process with seven colors in all sizes now it's as simple as dragging and dropping the design we made earlier into this Center box there's also an option down here where you can add different designs to the back neck and sleeves but now for this one I'm just going to keep it simple and do the front if you're interested in using them and you want to get 50% off your first order then feel free to sign up with the link gal.

com Sark they also give me a kickback if you use that link which I pass on to my video editors so if you use it then thanks for supporting the channel once you've got all your designs uploaded in their different colors and sizes it's time to start selling them but where do I sell my products I've got a real problem with how most YouTube channels approach this question with one answer they'll either say Etsy or Shopify but it really isn't that simple I'm not interested in rushing through this video to get a little bit of extra attention I know if you got to this part in the video then you want to know the facts before you jump into something so let's go through both of these options so you can decide which is the best route for you or route for all you American viewers firstly let's talk Etsy if we look at the figures from February 2023 we can see that Etsy had 46. 6 million visitors that's by far the most out of every print on demand Marketplace and that even includes Shopify in 2022 26% of sales were made to order merch in other words a lot of print on demand items and 45% of sales involved in international transaction this means that Etsy gives you access to a global audience of Shoppers a lot of people commented on one of my previous videos mentioning that I'd Overlook the marketing cost but I didn't that's the advantage of marketplaces like Etsy the customers are already there searching for these kinds of things all you need to do is rank high enough in the search results but it isn't all sunshine and rainbows lots of people H up print on demand on Etsy but more people fail than succeed that's just the harsh truth Etsy don't reveal the percentage of shops that actually succeed but they have revealed that there are five . 4 million active Sellers and the average monthly sales per user was $2,169 in 2022 but of course these figures are heavily skewed by the more successful and established shops in my opinion the reason for people failing on Etsy is that lots of folks just go with their gut selling whatever they fancy instead of really studying the market like I've shown you in this video but if you stick to the system I've taught you you'll have a ser serious leg up on the competition now for Shopify customer data is one of the most valuable things in business a general rule of thumb is that a customer's email is worth about $1 a month to a business as they can use it for advertising to a previous buyer as Shopify isn't a shared Marketplace and instead is your own website they allow you to collect this valuable information whereas Etsy doesn't have an option to do this legally you see someone has to agree to be on your email list so yes you can just download the email from your Etsy customers but you can't really get away with adding them to your email list without facing some issues not only is it against etsy's policies it's also illegal in many countries selling on Shopify also allows you to set yourself apart from the competition the bad thing about Etsy is that your products are always surrounded by your competitors so you're somewhat forced to compete on price it's kind of like this YouTube channel you've probably got tons of other print on demand videos recommended in the sidebar I know I don't have to worry about you clicking off my video though because it's the best one imagine this you're scrolling through YouTube but all you're seeing are my videos it's either stick with me or don't learn anything at all it's kind of like having a Shopify store if a customer wants what you're selling they can't go off and buy it from anyone else you've got them right where you want them so Shopify sounds like the clear winner right well no here's what I suggest when you're starting out as a beginner it's best to go with ETS see the customer already there which means you don't have to worry about marketing all you have to focus on is getting better and better at designing products people want to buy the competition aspect is actually very good for honing your skills as the market doesn't lie if your product designs aren't good enough then you won't make any sales this will force you to find unique gaps in the market and level up as an entrepreneur you can also easily connect it with gelato by going to menu and stores don't get me wrong the end game should be Shopify however before you start spending crazy amounts of money on marketing for products you don't even know sell I recommend you post 1,000 listings on Etsy this will set you back about 20 cents per listing which will be a total of $200 but the data you gather will be worth far more once you've identified your winning products you can start building a Shopify store and advertising on Tik Tok that way you'll know if your product aren't selling on Shopify then your marketing needs work if you just skip the Etsy step then the issue could also be your product and then it's hard to tell what needs improving think of etsy a bit like a testing ground where you can cast as many fishing lines as possible into the ocean and when you start catching some big fish you know it's time to take the next step so how do beginnner sell on Etsy once you've created an account there are three hacks that you can do to help you get notice on on Etsy and make more sales the first hack is to make attractive mockups this is super important as people want to see what your item looks like in the real world and mockups are an easy way for you to show them without having to order all the different colors and designs and taking photos mockups also seem to make the product look much more homemade which instantly makes it seem more valuable to customers gato's built-in mockup Studio actually makes this super simple now this one here there you go that looks pretty good so let's go with that the second hack is to use the best keywords this is extremely effective as Etsy is a search engine so the more information you can give them about your product the better of course you shouldn't use keywords that don't apply to your product is you only want traffic from people that are interested in buying what you're selling this is pretty simple to do so let's go back to the listing we found to inspire our t-shirt design as we can see they've used wood shirt men woodworker shirt men's funny shirt funny shirts for men and Father's Day gift and Dad's shirt so I'll just copy and paste these keywords into my tags and title it's also worth looking around for different listings in case some of them have other unique keywords you can copy the third hack is to use premium branding you need to convey quality and Trust now trust is the most important thing in business and you're not going to get there by looking like a shop at the local market you need to go for that premium Boutique fill this is a great example of a premium store with a clear identity you can use the free Shopify name generator to create a name that conveys trust and is relevant to your shop then use the name Checker website to see if it's available across different platforms the most crucial platform is Etsy but you should also check it it's free on other social media platforms and for the dename name availability when creating your logo and banner don't spend too much time perfecting it instead focus on making it clean and professional canva offers numerous templates that can be helpful the key to a good Etsy Banner is to make it reflect the charm of homemade Goods which corporate banners often lack lastly make sure your shop isn't targeting a completely different audience I mean you wouldn't expect to walk into an Apple store and see a washing machine even though they could sell them they understand the importance of maintaining a coherent brand image if you want to make sales quickly then you're probably thinking when should I run paid ads I understand the appeal of running paid ads as they can instantly give your Sal a boost however in my opinion people start using paid ads well before they're actually ready this means they ever end up with no sales or as soon as they turn paid ads off their sales completely dry up I've always Built My businesses with an organic first approach we're living in an age of more free reach than ever before and I actually think social media companies are going to start limiting organic reach soon as they must be losing out on millions of advertising dollars the first thing you need to put your marketing money into is creating short form content this is great as you can post it across Instagram Tik Tok YouTube shorts it's the first type of content that enables you to reach multiple different platforms and it's perfect for showing off your products you'd need to order a few samples which I'd recommend doing anyway as you need to double check the quality of the items that you're sending out then it's just a case of creating some kind of story around your product don't just get fancy shots of someone wearing it or using it actually make it a part of a story remember people are on social media to be entertained so if your content isn't entertaining then it won't reach as many people the more view you get the more people will buy it's as simple as that the beauty of doing it this way is that you're able to see what videos perform best with your target audience before putting any AD spend into boosting the views once you're seeing some organic success it's time to start supercharging it with some paid ads this way you're building your side hustle on solid foundations I've seen so many people lose their Facebook ad accounts and it's just ruined their businesses these platforms don't have enough employees to oversee everything everything so they rely on Tech to police it for them don't leave your income in the hands of AI but that's not the biggest thing people do wrong so what's the most common mistake a lot of people get drawn in by the huge figures many people say they're making with print on demand but it's important to remember anyone can sell at break even or even a loss I have a feeling a lot of these print on demand gurus and drop shippers actually do this they just make a loss on their products and then Flex their Revenue figures on YouTube to young and impressionable people don't make the mistake of focusing on the revenue you're generating this is a profit game and it's important to remember that your profit margins are everything and you should be protecting them at all costs I used to sell a lot of items on Ebay I remember having one competitor in particular who' always tried to undercut me on price instead of competing I'd wait until he sold out then I'd continue to sell my products at my normal price the surprising thing is most of the time my competitor only made 5% profit margin whenever I saw him at trade shows he would laugh thinking it driven me out of the market I just smile to myself as I still have my 30% profit margins and I was making bang the same applies with any business don't let your ego get in the way you don't have to be ranked number one to make money as long as your profit margins are strong you could be making more money than the top sellers if you're choosing the Etsy route this is even more crucial due to the associated fees Etsy charges 6.