In today's video,
I'm going to explain a big misconception in print-on-demand
and that's in regards to using Printify or Printful
on your own Shopify store
compared to using Teespring, Merch by Amazon, or Redbubble
to sell t-shirt designs.
Now this is actually a pretty important video
because a lot of people don't understand
that if you're using one or the other,
those are completely different strategies.
So in this video,
I'm going to clear up what those different strategies are,
when you should be using one or the other,
the pros and cons,
and everything you need to know between the two strategies.
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the channel.
If you're new here, my name is Greg
and I like to talk about online entrepreneurship
and sharing the important resources
that I wish I had along my journey.
So if you're interested in making money online,
feel free to look around the channel.
You might find some stuff that you like.
So without further ado,
I want to get right into the differences
between using Shopify and using Teespring,
Merch by Amazon, and even Redbubble,
which is another big one, but on the smaller side.
For this video's purposes,
I'm going to stick to comparing
Printify and Printful on your own Shopify store
to Teespring and Merch by Amazon.
I think that's a fair comparison
and it'll help us to explain the differences
and help to explain when you should be using
one over the other.
So for both of these,
the concept of the business model stays basically the same,
and what that is is you,
that's myself and yourself as sellers of designs,
we create t-shirt designs
and we upload them to one of these different places.
It's either going to be Teespring and Merch by Amazon
or Printify or Printful on your Shopify store.
What happens from there
is there's actually no inventory at all.
People can see your designs,
what they would look like on different clothing items,
and they can place orders, and when they place orders,
both of these are going to print that design
on the item that the person ordered.
Specifically, the color of the item, the size of the item,
and that specific design.
They'll print it, ship it out to the customer.
Now there are a couple big differences that you need to know
between Teespring and Merch by Amazon
or Printify, Printful on your own Shopify store,
but the biggest one that I want to get to right away
is the strategy of the two different ones.
They both have different strategies
and a lot of people don't realize
that if you're uploading to one over the other,
inevitably, you're going to be using a different strategy.
So first I want to get to what I like,
which is Teespring, Merch by Amazon.
This is what I personally do,
and the strategy here is that Teespring and Merch by Amazon
actually do the marketing and advertising
for your designs for you.
All you do is create and upload a lot of great designs
and they take it from there.
Now the only exception to this
is Merch by Amazon starts marketing for you right away.
The more sales you get,
the more items you can upload
so the more they're marketing for you.
They kind of use a tier system.
Teespring, you have to get a few of your own sales first
and then they recognize your account as a trusted seller,
then they start doing the marketing for you.
So there's a couple prerequisites.
I have other videos on this channel
that talk about how to get the sales,
how to level up on the tier system,
everything you need to know about that.
But essentially, just stick with me here,
Teespring, Merch by Amazon
is you create and upload a lot of great designs,
they do all the marketing for you.
Now if we come over to the other side,
the Printify, Printful on your own Shopify store,
they are not going to be doing any marketing for you.
So you are essentially creating and uploading designs
into your own store, your own clothing line, your own brand,
look at it more of that side,
and then you are responsible to do all the marketing,
all the advertising,
and take full responsibility
of getting people to buy your items.
So the first thing is the strategy between the two.
Over here with Teespring, Merch by Amazon,
you're creating and uploading a lot of designs,
it's very passive, long-term,
they're going to be doing marketing for you,
they take a small cut of all the sales
if they're paying for marketing,
we are still going to make plenty of profit on top of that.
Over on the other side of using your own Shopify store,
you are basically your own business.
You are responsible to get
all of the buyers and interested people to your store
and sell them on items.
So, keeping that in mind, for your situation,
if you're trying to create a clothing line
and you want a specific store
and you only want a few designs in there, very specific,
and you're looking for that side of the approach,
more of a company clothing line approach,
then using a Shopify store
might be the better option for you.
But if you're just looking to create passive income streams,
this is what I use this for for print-on-demand,
and you want to create and upload a lot of great designs
and basically just sit back
and let them do all the marketing for you,
and I'm not exaggerating when I say this.
For you guys who have started
and have been following along for a long time,
you've seen how passive this really is
when you create and upload
a lot of great designs to the right websites.
Teespring and Merch by Amazon are the biggest websites
that do all of this for you,
so those are the two that I definitely recommend.
The third one that you often
see me recommending is Redbubble.
It's in the top three
but it's not as big as Teespring or Merch by Amazon.
So if you want to be really efficient with your time,
I recommend uploading your designs
to Teespring and Merch by Amazon.
Now there's a couple important things between the two
that you need to know
and a couple of bonus tips that I want to throw in
just to help you guys at the end here,
but another big difference
between using a Shopify store or Teespring, Merch by Amazon,
is that there's no price to Teespring or Merch by Amazon.
You never have to pay for anything.
You create and upload the designs, there's no risk to it.
Over on the other side of using your own Shopify store,
whether you're using Printify or if you're using Printful,
you have to pay for the Shopify store.
Now, Shopify offers a free trial.
It's 14 days for free,
but then after that, if you want to keep your website up,
you have to pay $29 per month is the starter plan
and then it goes up to $79 a month and beyond that.
Now you really only need the starter plan
which is $29 a month, but that's something to keep in mind.
If you're going to be going the route
with your own Shopify store
and you're creating a clothing line,
plan on paying at least $30 a month just to keep that open.
If you're going with Teespring, Merch by Amazon,
you don't have to pay anything.
Now something else that's relevant here
is can you use both of these, or when's a good time to go
from one to the other potentially,
and this is a question that I get pretty often.
And an answer that I would give you
is the only time I would suggest doing this
is if you are going from Teespring, Merch by Amazon,
and you've been doing that for a while,
and you build up a following on social media,
and people want to get just your designs,
they know you for your brand,
they know you for your designing.
Now this doesn't happen very easily.
It may take years for this to really happen
and that's if you're trying to make it happen.
If you're just creating and uploading your designs,
this is really not going to happen
because you're not building a following anywhere.
But, stick with me,
if you are building a following on social media somewhere
and then they are just following you for your designs,
then it may be advantageous for you
to create a Shopify store
where you can direct those people to
who are already coming back to you on social media
looking for your designs,
direct them over to a Shopify store,
you can collect some more information about them,
you can retarget them,
but just know that that's going to be more work for you
and that's more of a business style
where you have to know online marketing
and potentially do product launch emails
or follow-up sequences, something in that regard.
But that's where I would see it
is if you're starting out over here
with Teespring, Merch by Amazon,
you're growing your business, you're growing your following,
and you want to turn it into more of a formal clothing line,
then I would recommend just switching over.
Now when you do switch over,
you can leave your designs on Teespring, Merch by Amazon.
There's nothing stopping you from doing that,
but just make sure your prices are about the same over there
as they are on your Shopify store.
And all you do is basically create the new Shopify store,
upload your designs, and you're in business.
You don't have to remove anything over here.
Now if you guys noticed right there,
I said you can have your designs
on Teespring and Merch by Amazon.
This is another little bonus tip.
For you guys who are new here, you may not know this.
For you guys who have been following the channel,
you guys definitely know this,
but if you were creating and uploading designs
over on this strategy over here,
keep in mind that you can upload them
to both Teespring and Merch by Amazon.
The same designs.
These sites are non-exclusive
so you're actually allowed to create one design
and upload it to both of these platforms.
Make sure you're keeping your prices about the same.
People are going to typically find you on one platform
and not the other.
They're not usually going to see you on both
so if your prices are a little bit different,
I wouldn't sweat it.
But what I'm getting at is you can upload your design
to both Teespring and Merch by Amazon,
both of them will be marketing
to their own audiences for you,
and you'll get sales from both of them.
It really doesn't get any better than that,
and then if you have extra time,
you can also upload that same design to Redbubble.
Now I want to make it clear that for some people,
Shopify might be the better option.
If you're creating a clothing line,
you're willing to pay about $30 a month to keep it open,
this could be a great option for you.
One of the big pros,
if you're creating a clothing line like that,
is that you have more clothing options to pick from.
Over on Teespring and on Merch by Amazon,
you only have so many options
of clothing items to pick from.
And for this strategy, that works perfect.
But if you're creating a clothing line,
they have quite a few different options you can choose from.
You can do high quality shirts, different cut shirts,
different sweatshirts, all different items,
and they are really good quality.
So if you're going with
a more specific clothing line brand, specific company,
then know that the options you have to print on
are really good on Printify or Printful over on Shopify.
Now I want to make it clear that I'm not talking down
on Shopify, Printify, Printful at all.
They are great,
it's just not how I personally use and recommend
to do print-on-demand for long-term passive income.
So if you've made it this far in this video,
then this message will be appropriate for you.
If you've been a subscriber
and you've been waiting for more videos to come out,
it's been almost two weeks since the last video
and the reason for that
is because I'm in the trenches with you,
I'm making more designs, I'm doing more affiliate marketing,
I'm building up my business as well.
I 100% use this YouTube channel
just to share the information with you guys
and try to help you guys as much as possible.
As you noticed, there are over 100 videos
on this YouTube channel.
They are really good resources
and I'm always in the comments every single day
answering questions to try to help you guys.
The big difference that you might see
between this channel and other channels on YouTube
is that YouTube is not my business.
It may be business for other people, other YouTubers,
so it's in their best interest
to create new content as much as possible
to get people back to the channel
and they can make more money.
YouTube does not represent a lot of my income.
It comes from print-on-demand and affiliate marketing.
So, I'm in the trenches with you guys
and I'm just sharing the things that I find
that are really helpful for you guys
and putting that into videos as frequently as possible.
I don't want to create fluff for you guys
so the only times I'm making videos
are when there are a lot of questions about a topic
and it's something that I think
is really beneficial for you guys and is not already covered
on my YouTube channel in another video.
So just keep in mind that the videos
that are coming out on this channel
that I make for you guys, they are new content,
they should all be fresh and very helpful videos
filled with a lot of value
that should be answering questions
that I can tell that a lot of you guys are having.
I will never be making videos on this channel
that are filled with fluff
just to get you guys back with clickbait.
That's not my style
and that's not my intentions for this YouTube channel.
So if you don't see videos coming out
every single day or every couple days, that explains why,
but just know that I'm always in the comments for you guys
every single day answering questions as much as possible.
If you enjoyed this video,
feel free to subscribe for more of them and as always,
if you hit the thumbs up button, thank you so much.
That helps these videos and it shows them to more people
who have the same questions as you.
So, thank you so much in advance.
I'll link up a couple helpful videos for you guys
in regards to print-on-demand
that I think you should watch after this one,
but if you have any questions at all,
let me know down in the comments.
And as always, I'll be seeing you guys in the next video.