If you're just starting out on print on demand or if you've been on print
on demand for a while and haven't gotten very many sales, the question you may be
asking is... What should I be designing for? What kinds of topics should I be designing
for to get those sales? In this video I'm going to share with you six different ways
that you can figure out what to design for and I'm going to put it in a list and I'm going to
show you the pros and cons and which is better and and what you might want to use. Let's go!!
Hey everyone it's Juna with Detour Shirts. In this video I'm going to talk about different
ways that you can figure out what to design for and not a lot of people just jump in to print on
demand and look that it's a way to make a lot of money but don't understand what topics to design
for and there's different levels of finding out what to design for and I'm going to go through
all of them I I hope I'm going to go through at least six of them there may be other ways
to do it and I'm going to go through some of the typical ways that some people find topics and I'm
going to show you you know at a high level what you can do now this is not a tutorial on research
methods and going deep into finding the exact right topic to design for at this time I'm just
going to give you high level things and there's other videos on on my channel to look at some of
these in more details so first way that I wanted to talk about is people who just are spontaneous
I just want to create stuff so the first one is is pretty much create something that you love I
think this is really great I think a lot of people get into print on demand or some art
kind of creative Outlet because of that they just have a creative Spirit they want to draw they want
to create an art or something they would like to Doodle and so this is a great way to start off
and one of the pros of this one is you're just designing because you love it you're designing
and and this is great and you feel good about what you're doing the bad side of this one is you may
be creating something that nobody wants to buy you maybe creating something you love but maybe
something that doesn't connect with the audience or people are looking for so for example you may
be into drawing uh slugs or snails and you do it in a certain way and you do it really sketchy and
maybe that's great for you and you feel good about it but maybe you know people don't wanna actually
buy that thing on the other hand you may be really good at drawing a horse and there's a big audience
for horses and you could stumble upon people that really relate to your design and design style and
so that could work so there's a balance here um if you're trying to make money online then this
may not be the best way to find a topic but if you're just doing it as a creative outlet and
you don't care if you're making any money this would be really good because you're putting it
out there somebody buys it it's an extra bonus on on top of the creative thing that you're doing the
love that you have for creating this so this is the first one that I put on my lesson that
is just creating something that you love so the second one that I wanted to talk about is kind
of related and that is just guessing just picking something randomly and this is what most people do
when they come into print on demand especially if they haven't done any T-shirt design before they
haven't done any research before they just like oh I'm in here I'm just going to pick whatever I want
and you know I'll do this t-shirt and I'll do this t-shirt and they'll do this design and just pick
randomly the pro on this one is it's very easy to do right you can pick lots of things randomly
and it's very easy to pick a topic the con on this one again is like this the one before is
um the chances of you picking something randomly if you've never done t-shirts before never done
print on demand before is very low that you'll find a pick something that people actually want
to buy and want to spend their money on so this one is good at first if you want to just get into
the mechanics of you know creating a design but as far as selling and making money with print on
demand this is not a great strategy just picking something randomly you have to do the research
and the rest of these topics are going to be on data so this one's basically just guessing and
the rest of them of these on the list are going to be using data to figure out what sells better
and I think that's a better way to get a topic especially if you want to make some money online
so the third strategy that a lot of people use and you've seen this on YouTube and and so on is
to jump on a trend and the pros for jumping on a trend is you know from the data that lots of
people are buying this lots of people there's lots of interest on this trend and that's why it's a
trend because so many people are jumping on it so many people are buying it and so of course you can
see uh that the trend is going up lots of people want it but the con on this one is uh everybody
know that it's a trend and so there's going to be lots and lots of competition lots of copycats
actually and also lots of competition on there so and and another thing is Trends don't last
very long so this is it's just a short window of sales so you if you Do's so happen to get a sale
on Trends and can get it that Trends sale won't last very long so you may get a bunch of bunch
of sales in the beginning and then this trend is gone and then you have to design something else so
this is an okay you you are on looking at data at least but as far as trying to get lots of sales I
wouldn't suggest this one for a long term thing and especially if you're if you're doing Trends
I wouldn't say to copy other people to you still need to stand out you still need to do something
different for the trend but it will be very hard for you to get up there and rank especially if
you're late to the trend so jumping on a trending topic is better than just guessing but it's still
not my favorite way to find out what to design so the fourth strategy that I want to talk about
is to find a topic that has high amounts of sales but low competition and that's really hard to find
especially in some of the other print-on-demand shops like Redbubble and T public and some of
the other ones because they don't actually share those kinds of things but on Amazon and
Etsy I believe you can you can find you can have programs like pretty merch and product and merch
Informer for Amazon and I believe there's some other programs for I know there's ever be on at
see I don't use Etsy as much but I know there's programs on Etsy and apps on Etsy that can help
you figure these things out so looking for topics that have lower competition not like Trends but
these are more Evergreen things things that people buy more of throughout the year that
still get some pretty high sales but not a lot of people know about it they have low competition so
this one's you're going to have to do a lot more research to find these but I think these
um and they're hard a lot harder to find because everybody's looking for this kind of sweet spot
but if you can find this and can design for it and still design something that people want to
buy and like all of these you still need to design something that people want to buy but I think this
can really help you get some sales throughout the year and have sales that last a lot longer instead
of those Trends so strategy number five that I want to share in this video is finding a hole
in the market now this is going to take a lot more research this is going to have to you're going to
have to go in and find a kind of a niche but then look through the niche and find out what people
aren't doing but maybe people want to still buy so this takes a lot more thinking a lot
more not guessing but you're using the data to find out like well this is selling and this is
selling but there could be something here that could be selling but it's not there I'm gonna
design for that so finding the hold in the market can be really cool because you're doing something
there there is no competition instead of low competition there's no competition so I've
done this right this can be really cool and get you some lots and lots of sales the con on this
one is you may guess wrong there may be a hole in the market for a reason maybe nobody's doing it
because nobody wants to buy that so you have to do your research and kind of take a chance but you're
taking a chance with data so this is a good one if you can get it right and do something of course as
soon as you do it there's going to be lots more copycats jumping on you because they'll see that
you're you're getting lots of sales but if you do it right I think you can get a lot of sales at
first so strategy number six that I want to share on here is one of my favorite ways to do this and
that is to create a brand or series of your top sellers so what I mean by that is if you have a
top seller for this this one for example I noticed that my Corgi was selling a lot so I made a series
of it I made him eating Ramen I made him eating pizza I made him eating uh whatever Boba drinking
Boba and then I did a corgi and then cat and a sloth and a panda and things like that so I made a
series of my top sellers so that I could get more sales on that and if you look at top sellers on
Redbubble on T public and so on you'll notice that they are kind of brand that they have kind of the
same style once they figure out what sells well for them they're making more and more and more of
these now this can really work well with uh number five when you find a hole in the market and you're
the first one there and you start getting sales then just go do a lot more of those right so that
you can flood page one with your designs on there and you'll still be on the top there with getting
more sales this can work really well with any of your top sellers so if you find one of any
of the other categories that are your top sellers now start making more and more things that are
related to your top sellers so there's a big Pro on this side that you can get lots of sales the
con on this side is this is probably not great for people who are first starting out because
when you're first starting out you don't have a top seller so this is going to take some time to
grow this category to figure out what is selling and what does well for you which may be different
from other people because it depends on your style and what you're doing but once you figure out that
once you figure out what's working well for you and your style you can keep doing more and more
of it so there you go those are my six ways that I think people find different ways to design for on
for print on demand I made this list right here as a resource I'm going to put it on my digital
downloads page on my website hopefully this really helps you kind of figure out on what kinds of
things are different ways to find what to design for what kinds of topics to design for of course
you still need to design things that people want to buy but I think having this can really help you
find out like different ways right either it's a trend maybe you find a hole in the market or on
any one of those so I'll put that as a resource if you want to watch a video on how to find a topic
on Redbubble I've put this video right here kind of doing some light research on Redbubble so that
that can help you if you're doing your Redbubble I have also lots of other videos on my channel to
kind of dive down deep on Research so thanks again for watching hopefully this was really
helpful and as always guys keep creating and keep learning I'll see you on the next one bye