What is print on demand business?
Print-on-demand business is a passive business model that allows printing on products, materials, and Orders that will be printed upon receipt of an order, even in small quantities.
It allows people to turn their ideas into brands and products and you do not need to be involved in production and distribution other than design.
That means once your design graphic and listed on print on demand site, buyers can buy products that printed your design, and your receive commission from every sale that your design got.
How to start a print on demand business?
Find niche
As a beginner, It’s best if you can focus on a narrow niche.
When I research for this blog post I saw success full gig related to paw lovers.
Every product on that POD store is related to the paws and when I visited that seller page even me convince to buy from them.
But keep this in your mind these types of pet niches are also very competitive at this time.
Best Print on Demand Niches 2021
To find the best Print on demand product I suggest the Google trend tool.
Don’t choose too competitive niches.
To check competition for your niche search your niche on Reddble, Teespring, and check the available design for that niche as I show on the above image.
If you choose a pet niche narrow down your niche too, like pitbull dog lovers.
Because It’s made easy to promote your POD designs.
Choose Unique print on demand products
The next part is the design graphics.
Before you design graphics, choosing Unique print on demand products helps you to get an idea about how design could be.
Decide did you need to print the same design on a range of products like t-shirts, water bottles, phone cases, etc.
If yes, you need to create a design fit with all of the products.
Most people think print on demand is only for clothing.
But there are much more products.
17 Unique print on demand products
- T-shirts
- Stickers
- Wall arts
- Mugs
- Masks
- Phone cases
- Pillows
- Socks
- Sneakers
- Hoodie’s
- Wall Tapestry
- Keychains
- Cap & hats
- Greeting cards
- Mousepads & desk mats
- Clocks
- Backpacks
Design graphics
When you design graphics or art for POD ask your own “Who is this design/art for?”
What’s the buyer’s aspect from buying a product with your design.
Focus on good designs people want to buy.
Different types of products are available on POD.
Before you start to design, sketch colors, logos, visual style, t-shirt type or product type, and printing specifications to get an overview.
Care about a product or material that your design print on.
For example, in a t-shirt design, you need to care about two sets of colors -fabric color(s) and print color (s).
Find trending things in your niche to create designs.
When you use characters, fonts, and other’s properties care about copyright and check are they allowed for commercial use.
It helps to prevent your account from being suspended.
List designs in POD site
Mainly there are 3 steps that you need to care about when listing your design.
That is uploading, optimizing, pricing.
First when it comes time to upload make sure to upload the right file type, right size.
Make sure to rename your designs with the keyword that you going to list.
When it comes to optimizing after you upload designs choose what product that your design fit for and disable or enable products.
Adjust the placement of your design on different products.
The product/design title is should need to focus on your buyer search query.
Also, you need to include keywords in the product description.
Explain about your product as much as you can make sure to add everything that your buyer wants to know.
The other thing is to make sure to add relevant tags related to your product/design.
POD site, Google, and other search engines identify your design through tags & titles.
When buyers enter the search query to find a product that they looking for in the search bar POD site analyzes designs, products that list for that search query.
That’s the importance of optimizing your designs.
The other thing that buyers care about is pricing.
When you sell, the POD site gets the cost of manufacturing and service fees.
Know about these feeses before you price your products.
Promote your designs
If you have enough followers in your social media accounts there is an opportunity to get more sales through your social accounts.
However, if you didn’t have a certain amount of followers, then there are 2 other options.
One is hiring the right influencer in your niche and the other one is using advertising.
analyze, redesign, repeat
After listing and promoting your products, analyze how your product/designs perform.
How many impressions, clicks, sales that each design get.
If your design didn’t get many impressions it’s mean your designs are not visible because you didn’t list them correctly.
Most time keywords and tags you use are not perfect or haven’t much search volume.
If you got a lot of impressions and didn’t click on them because your design is not perfect as their expectations.
If you got a lot of impressions & clicks but didn’t get sales?
Most time your pricing or the product description might have problems.
Check how other competitors price their designs in your niche.
Are their available better designs for cheaper than your price.
Then you need to think about your pricing twice.
