Hey everyone.
Welcome back to another video.
In today's video, we're going to be talking about
arguably the most important thing
that you need to know
if you're just starting print on demand.
In this video, I'm going to be explaining
the difference between using Shopify
for your print on demand
or using all of the other print on demand websites.
Some of these you may have seen are Redbubble, TeePublic
Amazon Merch on Demand, Etsy
and I'll explain the differences
between both of these in this video.
Now, I've been selling print on demand
for almost 10 years now
and one of the most common questions that I get
is what platform should I be uploading my designs to,
to get the most sales?
And this is actually a very important question
because if you choose Shopify or something similar
or if you choose one of these other websites
that I was just explaining.
When you look one or two years down the road
you are going to have a very different business model
for yourself and not many people know why.
Without further ado, let's dive right into this video
and I'm going to cover the main differences
between the two different print on demand platforms
and then towards the end of this video
we'll go through if you are just starting print on demand
which one will be right for you
depending on what kind of business you wanna start.
The very first difference
between these platforms is going to be price.
So if you choose to use Shopify for print on demand
when you come over to Shopify
you're going to have to pay at least $39 per month.
And if you know anything about Shopify,
Shopify is basically just giving you a website.
It's giving you a website that is a storefront
where you can sell items.
None of the print on demand is actually done for you yet.
So, so far just know that if you're going to use Shopify
you're going to be at least $39 per month
just to have that website live.
Now, if you come over to the other print on demand websites
they are 100% free to use.
You don't have to pay monthly to have an account
on their websites.
You can just start uploading your designs.
Now, I will say that there's a little catch with Etsy here.
Etsy charges you 20 cents per listing that you upload
but there's no monthly fee to use their website.
I'm going to touch on Etsy a little bit later in this video
because there's some things to clarify there.
So if you're interested in Etsy, stick around for that.
So staying on the same topic of price, we know that Shopify
you're going to have to pay monthly.
The other websites are going to be free to use.
However, when you use Shopify, it doesn't really end there.
So if you go to the Shopify app store
once you create your Shopify website
you're still going to have to add in
the print on demand feature.
So if you go to their app store
and you type in print on demand,
you can see different apps that you can add
to your Shopify website.
The two most popular print on demand apps
that you can use here are Printful and Printify.
Now, the important thing to understand here
is that both of these apps are totally free
to add onto your Shopify store.
So you stay at that $39 per month just paying for Shopify.
However, when you use either of these apps
when someone comes in
and makes an order of one of your shirts
on your Shopify store
you get charged for that order the cost of the goods
and then you get reimbursed for it after.
This is a huge concept that a lot of people are not aware of
when they start a Shopify store.
They don't realize that they have to have a payment method
on file so that every time someone makes an order
that payment method is going to be charged upfront.
Now, when you look at the other print on demand websites
they do not do this at all.
You upload your designs, there's nothing else from there.
You don't have to put a payment method on file
because when the customer makes a purchase
of one of those designs or one of those shirts
they pay the entire cost of the shirt,
and then we just get a split of the profit.
All right, so now that we've covered the price
of these two different options
now let's move into the next very important difference.
What this difference is, is the marketing.
Starting with the Shopify option,
when you use Shopify for print on demand,
they do not do any marketing for you.
This means that essentially you are creating your listings
you're uploading them to your website
and then it's just a website.
So you have to bring your own traffic
you have to get people to make purchases.
None of that's going to be done for you.
This is where you start to notice a really big difference
between these websites.
When you look at the other big print on demand platforms
they all do marketing for you.
Now, although each of them does different versions
of marketing, what you are going to get as a main benefit
is that when you upload your listings to these websites
your listing gets listed on their marketplace.
Now, to show you what this looks like on Redbubble,
for example, this is their marketplace.
So all of these are uploaded by different sellers
and then people come to Redbubble automatically
and organically every month
and they're seeing these listings.
Now, this is the same concept
for the other print on demand platforms in this category.
Amazon is even one of these as well.
So when you see T-shirts like this on Amazon,
that's done through print on demand.
So you may be wondering if you're creating designs
and you're uploading them to these print on-demand websites
are you really going to get sales
just by having your listings in the marketplaces?
And the short answer here is yes,
you don't have to pay for any traffic
to come to your listings.
You can literally rely on their marketplace traffic.
And just to give you an idea here
of how much traffic is really going to these websites
this is a traffic report for Redbubble.
Over the last six months,
they've averaged about 10 million people to their website
every single month.
And then looking at the other
print on demand websites as well, this is TeePublic
they get about a million to their website every month.
And then Amazon, which is using Amazon Merch on Demand
which is their print on demand
they're getting about 800 million people
to their website every single month.
And that brings us into the third really big difference
between Shopify and these other print on demand platforms.
What this difference is, is customer service.
So starting with the Shopify option here,
if you have your print on demand items on a Shopify store
you are going to have to handle all of the customer service.
This is going to be people writing in
about they ordered the wrong size on accident
they put the wrong shipping address
has their order been shipped, it hasn't arrived yet.
All of the questions
that are just going to eat up your time
you are going to have to be responsible
to take care of those.
Coming over to the other print on demand websites,
they take care of it for you.
So think about Amazon.
They take care of all the customer service for you.
It doesn't matter who uploaded that design
and is selling it on Amazon
Amazon's going to take care of the customer service for you.
This is the same
for these other print on demand websites as well.
So you're not going to have to lift a finger
to do any customer service.
Now with those three really big differences
between Shopify and these other print on demand platforms
that brings us into the concept of active versus passive.
This is something that I try to talk about a lot
on this channel because it's not commonly known.
So essentially, if you go the Shopify route
this is what I classify
as an actively managed print on demand business.
Essentially what that means is
if you look one or two years down the road,
as your business starts to grow
you are actively going to have to bring customers
to your store.
You're going to have to do paid ads
or you're going to have to do social media marketing.
You're actively going to have to be doing something
there to bring buyers to your store.
Also, you're actively
going to have to be managing the customer service.
So essentially, if you stop doing everything
for that business and you just try to let it run
as a passive income business, the business is going to fail.
Looking at the other side of print on demand
this is what I classify as passive print on demand.
On this side, essentially you're just creating
print on demand designs, uploading them to these websites.
They're getting tons of marketplace traffic on their own
and all the customer service is handled for you.
Once you've uploaded your designs to these websites
there's literally nothing else for you to do.
You can just sit back
and literally collect your split of the profits.
Now before finishing this video here,
we have to talk about Etsy because Etsy doesn't cleanly fit
into either one of these categories.
When it comes to Etsy,
Etsy is basically like a Shopify
where you can create your own store.
You have to handle your customer service,
however they're going to be doing the marketing for you.
When you look at Etsy's traffic report,
they get over 100 million people to their website
every single month browsing through their marketplace.
So if you're creating your designs
and uploading them to Etsy
you are going to have the marketing taken care of for you.
However, you still are going to have to actively
manage the customer service.
So with all that being said
let's talk about which option here is better for you
if you're just getting started in print on demand.
From my experience,
I would say that the Shopify option is going to be better
for those of you who want to create
a full fledged clothing brand.
By using Shopify
you're going to be able to customize your store a lot more.
Also, you're going to be able to have your own custom domain
so you can route people to your website.
And something that's really important
to a full fledged clothing brand company
is that you're able to collect emails.
This is something that you can't do
on these other print on demand websites.
So what that means is once someone has made a purchase
on your website,
you can then email them in the future
when you come out with new designs
or other things that you'd like to show them as well.
Now, coming over to the other option
these more passive print on demand websites
this is going to be for those of you
who want to create a passive income business,
for those of you who wanna create designs
in multiple niches and just upload them to the websites
and kind of have all of the marketing,
all the customer service, everything done for you
and really have a hands-off business
that's just generating you income.
This way of doing it
is the way that I personally really like to do it,
because it creates a stress-free income stream for you.
So with that being said, if you wanna get into this
more passive style of print on demand,
I'm going to link up two videos for you.
The first is a full print on demand tutorial.
It'll walk you through every single step
from just having the idea that you wanna start
passive print on demand to actually getting your first sale.
And then also I'm going to link up a video
on how to find low competition niches.
So in these big marketplace websites,
some of the big popular niches
are filled up with a ton of designs.
Well, there's actually ways that you can see
which topics don't have many print on demand sellers
in them.
So if you create designs in those topics,
yours are going to go to the first page on the marketplace.
So guys, hopefully that has been helpful.
The links will be down in the description.
I'll put 'em up on these sides as well,
so you can find them there.
And as always, if you have any questions at all
just let me know down in the comments.
Otherwise, I'll see you guys all in the next video.