If you're on print on demand or thinking about doing print on demand there's four
major categories of designs that you should know about. In this video I'm
going to explain what those four categories are and show
you examples of them and also show you the pros and cons for each of them. Let's go!!
Hey everyone, it's Juna with Detour Shirts. In this video we're going to talk about the
four major categories for t-shirts and any product really on print on demand. Those four categories
are trends, seasonal, evergreens and custom. So these can encompass all the different ones that
you're doing. Anything that you design will probably fall into one of these categories
and I'm going to explain each one so that you know the difference and why each one is good
and why each one is bad there's pros and cons for each of these and I'll give you examples so that
you can see what they are when you're designing yours and they can kind of match together too so
there can be trends that are seasonal there can be trends that are evergreen but I'm going to try and
break them apart and show you the difference so let's start with the one that's the most popular
and the one that most people want to get into and that is Trends so I think Trends are super popular
because most people when they think of trend they think of something going viral so if you have a
viral video or jump on a trend the potential of you making lots and lots of sales lots of views
on your product can be very very high because we see that everywhere it's almost like waiting
winning the lottery people think that if you jump on a trend and can get a trend and somebody buys
your stuff and lots of people buy it it's like you're winning the lottery like you're going
viral on a video or whatever right but that only works for a very select few people for
Trends let me explain what a trend is first so I made this so you can take a screenshot here this
is what trends are so a trend is a specific phrase or style that is popular right now and
gaining more interest as a result lots of people are buying the trend product so it can be a trend
because of a song it can be a trend because something that happened in pop culture they
can be a trend for many different reasons here are some examples of Trends and I don't know why
these are trending oh I know why this one is trending but these are very popular right now
um and I'm not sure why but people are buying this right now dear person behind me the world is a
better place without you reinhoge showed that this was um trending this week and this is trending not
sure what proud Munch is but it's trending I know what this is this is a from a song it's me hi I'm
the problem it's me it's a Taylor Swift song so that's another thing about Trends things may be
Trends but the trends could be copyrighted so you got to be very very careful that it's not
copyrighted or trademarked you don't want to jump on these Trends and get your account pulled down
so the other thing about Trends is that lots of people know about these Trends too so you're
going to have lots and lots of competition so just jumping on a trend isn't a guarantee that you're
gonna get sales if you were the only one making it then you might have a chance but because lots of
lots of people have the internet and can figure out what the trends are and there's different
products that tell you what trends are you're going to have a ton of competition and you may
be on page two three four and nobody will see your stuff even though you're designing for a
trend that people are looking for people may never find you so here are a couple pros and
cons about trends so you can take a screenshot of this one too but here are the pros first like
we talked about there's lots of people looking for Trends so one of the hardest things about
print on demand is knowing what people want and because it's a trend you know people want it so
that's a pro you also know the topic because you know the the thing that people are looking for and
it usually has a topic around it and potentially you potentially could get a lot of sales if you're
the one that people want to buy if you get on page one if you have a design that stands out
that the people want to buy for that Trend you potentially could make a lot a lot of sales the
cons though like we talked about is there's going to be tons of competition everybody wants to be a
trend everybody wants to win the lottery so there's going to be that there's also going
to be lots of copycats so because you're doing a trend uh there are the copycats love Trends
because they want to get on there too so you're going to see a lot of similar stuff they may even
copy your design and there may be some trademarks and copyrights associated with this trend like I
showed you with the Taylor Swift song that that's copyrighted Your Design could get pulled down as
well as your shop could get pulled down so very scary if you don't know what the trend is and you
um and just jumping on there not knowing not doing your research and these sales are short-lived so
Trends don't usually last very long they usually last a few weeks maybe a month and then they're
gone so although you may get lots of sales those sales may not last for a long time and you may not
see any sales for this trend ever again so let's talk about the next category and that is seasonal
seasonal stuff sometimes are combined with Trends sometimes Trends are trending because of something
seasonal which could be a holiday it could be a sports thing could be something that happens every
year around the same time so let me give you some examples of what seasonal designs are so seasonal
designs is usually a topic that repeats at the same time every year so it's usually holidays
but can be related to sports School whether zodiac signs whatever uh could be lots of other topics
but here are some examples so Black History Month right uh St Patrick's Day Mardi Gras it could also
be summer it could be spring it could be something with school 100 days of school right or uh things
like that so it could be anything that's seasonal that only happens during a specific time of the
year so these are mainly the ones that I have on my calendar if you haven't seen that I put I'll
put it right here uh you can get it on my digital downloads so the nice thing about seasonal over
Trends is that seasonals will repeat every year so if you make a St Patrick's Day design that sells
well this year it may also sell well next year in the year to come in the year to come so unlike
Trends where Trends will just go away seasonal things can come back and get you some sales the
next year the other thing about seasonal though is that everybody knows all the holidays so you
will stick still get a lot of competition for this you're gonna have to figure out a way to stand out
with your seasonal designs maybe come up with a different phrase that's not already out there or
use different colors graphics and so on so let me give you the pros and cons for a seasonal design
so here's my pro and con list for seasonal designs now there may be more but some of the highlights
so for pros some people are looking for we know that people are looking for uh seasonal designs
to wear for those holidays especially big holidays like Halloween and Cinco de Mayo and St Patrick's
Day we know people want to buy T-shirts for that so it's a known topic and real easy to find and
they're good next year like I said some of the cons though is that there's still going to be a
lot of competition there's still going to be lots of copycats because copycats know that seasonal
stuff do really well so they may copy your designs and you you still need to look out for trademarks
and on copyrights if you're gonna do that so try really hard on making your own phrases so that you
don't get those trademarks and copyrights and you're only going to get sales for a couple of
months and then not get sales again so seasonal doesn't get you sales all year long you're going
to have a a good good month or so that you'll get sales for a specific holiday and then you have to
wait till next year so that's one of the cons is they won't sell all year long so speaking of
getting sales all year long it is a good segue to the next category which is Evergreen so Evergreen
is called Evergreen because it can last all the time not just a trend not something that's just
gonna be there once Evergreen designs can sale all year long it will get you sales in January mid of
the Year till December right and the nice thing about Evergreens is that it can get you sales not
only all year long but year after year if you do a really good one so let me show you some examples
of what Evergreen designs are so here are some examples of Evergreen designs and Evergreen design
is a topic that can sell all year long or all gear and any time of the year this can include Hobbies
occupations funny sayings food age and a lot of other topics so here are some examples this is a
design of a monster truck so once monster trucks not just for January not just for them it's for
the whole year I love my girlfriend you can love your girlfriend no matter what time of year it is
right and I'm not old I'm Classic this is someone for someone that's old they're going to be old
um this year next year and whatever and it doesn't matter so these and many more are great examples
of Evergreen shirts that can get you sales all year long especially if you do it right now the
tough thing about Evergreen is how to find the topic so it's really easy to find Holiday topics
it's really easy to find trending topics because there's lots of programs out there that will find
it for you but Evergreen is so broad there's so many hobbies there's so many uh different
occupations and so many things that you have to do your research and figure out which ones are
a little more popular and maybe you don't even want a super popular one you may want something
that nobody else has done so those are kind of hard to find so do your research find a good
Evergreen one that will get you sales and and this goes with research as well as just trying things
out so you're going to have to put yourself out there maybe try this Evergreen topic if
it doesn't get you sales strong another Evergreen topic and if that does get you sales then do more
and more of that one right so Evergreen can be a good one but it's also kind of difficult to
find the right Evergreen topic that will get you sales all year long so here's my short pros and
cons for Evergreen designs again Pros sales all year long instead of just a little bit of at the
front of the year or a couple months there is less competition because less people know how to find
the right Evergreen stuff and you potentially could find a niche that nobody's doing so this
is a like a secret Evergreen Niche that you'll get constant sales that nobody knows what it
is but the cons is there's not as many sales at once so if you care about getting lots of sales
and lots of sales Evergreens isn't doing that it's unless you got one that's really good but
typically not and there they're harder to find on topics so you're going to have to do some
research you're going to have to do some trial and error and all of that but it can it can pay off
so the last category is one that I don't typically do because it's really hard to do on Amazon and
that is Custom Designs so Custom Designs can happen in two ways I've heard this one where
people will go out to restaurants or businesses and ask them if they could make a t-shirt for
them and so you can make a t-shirt design around a restaurant or a business and have them buy it
through Amazon or have them buy it through yourself through print on demand and that's
one way where you don't have any competition but you're gonna have to do the legwork and make sure
that you find that client and this can be very very profitable because you could get one before
a major business you know that has many different parts around the country imagine if you are doing
designs for McDonald's which they probably would never do but imagine every McDonald's in America
bought T-shirts from you right so this can be very powerful if you found a restaurant like a chain or
something or a business that has multiple location is that they're buying all your t-shirts from you
the second way to do customizable t-shirts is like with Zazzle or Etsy where you have a word like a
maybe a family name uh Smith vacation or Johnson vacation or Williams vacation and they can switch
out a word for their family and they can customize their design now you can't do that on Amazon yet
through merch on demand but you can do things like that with Etsy and Zazzle and maybe some
other print on demands I haven't done it but you could also do it with printful on your own site
so places like Redbubble don't do that T public doesn't do that merch by Amazon or Amazon merch
on demand doesn't do that but there's lots of different ways you could do some of these custom
stuff with print on demand so let me show you some examples what I'm talking about with custom
so here are some examples of custom I didn't get really good examples but here's an example of a
restaurant that you could do for or like I said you could switch out Williams family cruise or
Smith family reunion uh Custom Design is you're creating a design for a client that they can buy
online or creating a customizable design like these right here that someone could switch out
the words and make something they want so lots of ways to do custom stuff so if you did want to do a
custom T-shirt like for a business or a restaurant you could do that through Amazon or Redbubble or T
public you just have to make it private or give them a link to that spot and then anytime that
their that restaurant or business wanted to buy a shirt they could go in there and buy it this is a
great way because then they can buy different sizes so that's one of the benefits of having
print on demand for a business is that they don't have to buy it in bulk if they know they only need
two for two new employees or three new employees they can go and buy it that way instead of buying
a hundred t-shirts and then running out of large or extra large and only having small and having
to do that again so it's a real big benefit for these businesses to do it that way but you're
gonna have to go out there and sell that and and find and those clients and find those restaurants
and businesses so here's my pros and cons list for custom designs so the pros is if you're going to
sell to a business or a restaurant something like that you won't have any competition because you'll
be the only one that will be your client uh if this isn't necessarily the case if you're doing
the I'll switch out the words and switch out the family names you will have competition there but
you can make something the customer actually wants so one thing about being custom is people can come
in there and change it to something that they want so that's that's a big benefit for custom and you
could potentially get lots of sales if you get a big client a big restaurant a big business you
could get all their sales and they if depending how big that business is you could get a lot
of sales and and again if you're doing the the family reunion or the family cruise or whatever
you could get a bunch of sales because a lot of times they buy that in bulk they want to buy it
for the whole family some of the cons though is it's going to be hard to find a customer you have
to do the leg work especially if you're doing the restaurant one you may not have that hard to find
a customer if you're doing the customized thing on Etsy or Zazzle that that just may come to you um
cons is for the restaurant one on the business one they're not for sale for other people so you're
not making one that you can actually put out there you can't put that restaurant out there for others
to buy it's just going to be for that business and it's going to take a little extra work to make it
custom so in the case of Zazzle you're going to have to do it in a different way in the case of
etsy if you're doing custom work on Etsy they're going to have to give you the name and then you're
going to have to type it out and then send it to them so just a little bit extra work
it's not one and done it's if they customize it you're gonna have to do some extra work on that
so there they are those are the four categories that you need to know for print on demand
hopefully these are really helpful for you uh let me know which one you think is the best one I
think they all have their pros and cons of course like I showed there uh and there may be more pros
and cons that I haven't talked about let me know in that in the comments now that you know these
four categories you're gonna need to know how to design them I have this uh video right here 16
tips on how to design t-shirts you might want to look at that to start your print on demand and and
make better t-shirts and have things that people actually want to buy so thanks again for watching
this video and as always guys keep creating and keep learning I'll see you on the next one bye