Hey, everyone, welcome back to the channel.
If you're thinking about starting print on demand,
this video is going to save you a ton of time
and hassle down the road.
In this video, I have 10 tips
that will help you avoid the common mistakes
that new print on demand sellers make
and it will help you get your print on demand business
off the ground successfully.
Now, I've been selling print on demand
for over seven years now
and these are the things that I wish someone told me
when I was just starting out.
This is going to be one of those videos
that will take just a few minutes to watch.
Watch it all the way through just one time
and then throughout your entire experience
with print on demand, you will know all of these things
and be able to avoid these mistakes from the start.
So with that being said,
let's go ahead and just get straight into this video.
Tip number one is research your niches.
The first thing you need to do
is research the niches that you're interested in going into
for print on demand.
Now, what most people don't realize
is you are not limited to just one niche
for print on demand.
You can go into multiple different niches
and that's exactly what I recommend doing.
Just make sure that the niches that you're going into
have a passionate audience within them,
not something that's very vague or very surface level.
Make sure that you get down into these sub-niches
where people are committed
and people have an opinion about them.
Not only that but if you go too general with your niches,
you're going to have a lot of competitors.
Typically, people starting out in print on demand
go into these very big popular niches
so there are tons of different designs
you'll be competing with.
What you wanna do is narrow that down into sub-niches
that are within those big niches.
That's where you want to create your designs.
For those of you who need a good starting point
on how to find these sub-niches,
I have a step-by-step tutorial on how I personally do it.
I'll link that up down in the description totally for free.
Tip number two is understand your target audience.
What most people don't do as print on demand sellers
is think about who is in this target audience
or this niche or sub-niche that you're going into?
What are their interests beyond that general niche
and even what kind of problems do these people face?
This seems like so much extra to be thinking
but it allows you to create designs
that really resonate with people on a personal level
and that's why they're going to buy your design
over someone else's.
So once you dig into this
and you figure out all of this information,
include and kind of integrate all of those things
into the phrases and the graphics that are in your designs.
Tip number three
is choose the right print on demand platforms.
Choosing the right platforms
to list and sell your print on demand designs on
is probably the most crucial thing
that you can do in print on demand.
Not many new print on demand sellers know
that you can actually list your exact same designs
on multiple different print on demand websites
and that way you're going to get the organic traffic
from all of these different sites
and you're not limited to just one.
Now, in addition to that, there's actually a huge difference
between active print on demand and passive print on demand.
Active print on demand websites like Printful, Printify,
these are websites where you have to drive your own traffic.
They're basically just giving you
the ability to create your website
where you can sell your designs on.
On the other side, passive print on demand websites
like Amazon Merch on Demand, TeePublic and Redbubble,
they do everything for you.
They bring their own traffic
so people are going to see your listings
without you doing anything.
They handle the customer service.
They print and ship the products.
They do everything.
So I think it is so important
if you are a new print on demand seller
to figure out what are those top four or five
passive print on demand websites
and then upload your same designs
to all four or five of them.
This one little tip here is something
that could totally change your print on demand business
from not working and not getting sales
to totally exploding with organic traffic.
That brings us into tip number four.
This is super important.
That is creating high quality designs.
Your designs essentially are the backbone
of your print on demand business.
So I highly recommend investing in a T-shirt design tool
that allows you to customize T-shirt design templates.
Now, the big thing that you have to understand on this one
is that not all design tools are commercially usable
and copyright free.
So be very sure that you pick one
that is both copyright free and commercially usable.
If you're interested in using the one
that I personally use myself, it's called placeit.net.
I'll link up tutorials and even coupon codes
down in the description.
So if that's something that you need at this point,
all the resources you need will be down in the description.
Tip number five is setting up your online store properly.
Now, before you can start selling your designs online,
you're going to have to create a store or a storefront.
This is something you'll have to do
on pretty much all print on on demand websites.
Now, when you're doing this,
you're going to have to name your store.
This name can be something that's very generic
and it doesn't really play a big role
in if your print on demand business is successful.
However, the big thing here is you wanna make sure
that the name of the store is not trademarked.
To give you a rough idea on this,
some examples of trademarks are brand names,
product names and company slogans.
Be sure that you are checking the name
that you're using for your storefront
to make sure that it does not have anything
that is trademark protected.
Tip number six is optimize your product listings.
Make sure that your product listings are optimized
with clear titles, descriptions and tags.
Now, this took me several years
to learn from the beginning when I started out.
So a quick tip that I can pass on to you
to help you save time
is do research on finding low competition niches
or sub-niches and when you find out what those are,
use the name of that sub-niche as keywords
throughout your title and your description of your listing.
This one tip is going to help your products
rank higher in search results
and make it easier for potential customers
to find your designs.
Tip number seven is plan your marketing strategy.
Now, this is a big one to understand correctly.
If you are using active print on demand websites
like the ones we talked about before
then you will be responsible to do all of your own marketing
and bring in your buyers.
If however you are using
the passive print on demand websites we talked about,
they will do all of the marketing for you.
However, either way,
doing your own marketing will only bring you more buyers.
So it may be smart to start thinking about
what social media websites
would fit your target audience best,
which ones they are actively using
and then consider posting product mockups
to get them in front of your potential buyers
just with organic traffic on those social media websites.
Now, if you're not sure what a product mockup is,
I'll link up a tutorial down in the description
that goes through this whole process of social media
and posting product mockups step by step.
Tip number eight, set up your pricing strategy.
When it comes to print on demand,
setting a price that guarantees a profit is very easy to do
because all of the cost associated with printing
and shipping the product,
they're all laid out at the beginning
when you're uploading and creating your listing.
Additionally, if you're using the passive websites
we talked about, you won't be charged for anything.
So the cost of the actual product to be made
is covered by the customer when they make the purchase.
You simply just get your split of the profit.
However, with that being said,
you get to choose how much the product is sold for
so you essentially get to pick
how big of a profit margin you have.
I spent a lot of time testing with this
with high prices and low prices
to try to see what would yield the most profit
and setting it within a couple dollars
of the suggested price
always yielded the most profit in the end.
Now, I know that seems like a very simple tip
but that took me a long time to learn
so hopefully that saves you a lot of time.
Tip number nine, order samples.
Before you start selling, consider ordering samples
from these different print on demand websites
just to ensure the print quality
and make sure that the T-shirt materials
that you're choosing meet your expectations.
Most print on demand websites let you choose the quality
of the actual T-shirt that your design gets printed on.
So if you do plan on selling your products
at a higher price point,
I highly recommend making sure
you're picking a higher quality T-shirt
just so your customers aren't surprised
where they paid extra for a shirt
and then the quality of the shirt really isn't that good.
And lastly, tip number 10 is prepare for customer support.
This is one that applies
to those using active print on demand websites
like Printful, Printify and Etsy.
Those using the passive print on demand websites
we talked about before,
all of the customer service will be done for you.
This includes refunds, returns, exchanges, everything.
So there you have it.
These are the 10 things that you should do
before starting a print on demand store.
If you're ready to start your print on demand business,
I will link up the full step-by-step tutorial
that I have here on YouTube.
It'll walk you through everything
from just wanting to start out with print on demand
all the way to getting your first sale.
If you have any questions at all,
just let me know down in the comments
and if you found this video helpful,
please give it a thumbs up.
That's all for today, guys.
I will see you all in the next video.