Hey guys, it's Celestia, and today, I'm going to help you sell your art online. Specifically,
I'm going to help you put your art on products and sell THOSE with no upfront investment required,
using Printify's print-on-demand dropshipping services. And yes, okay, this video is sponsored
by Printify. I will acknowledge that. But anyone who's followed my social media for any significant
period of time will know that my love for Printify predates that sponsorship by far,
and while that was initially influenced by my gradual but increasing LACK of love for Printful,
another print-on-demand service that I worked with before switching over, it has grown into something
so much more. Something beautiful. Something pure. In all seriousness, the longer I've been
using Printify, the more I've seen firsthand that at least in my opinion and experience,
it's the best print-on-demand option out there, especially for artists operating outside of
the United States, as that's a demographic that other providers tend to disregard. And I'm like,
90% sure they only found my channel because of my excited tweeting at them about that opinion, so I
can say with confidence that this is not a stance that I have because they're paying me. I use
Printify for my own business, and that's precisely why I'm recommending them to you with this video.
At some point in the near future, I'll be making a video comparing Printful and Printify so that you
guys can understand the comparisons that led me to eventually switch and favor the latter, but this
one was my priority to make first, because quite frankly, I thought it would be more helpful. Keep
an eye out for that one soon, though, because it IS coming. So, okay. I've thrown a lot of
information at you so far that you really have to be familiar with Printify or print-on-demand
in general to understand, so for any of you that aren't familiar, let me explain both to you. First
of all, print-on-demand companies essentially allow you to create a product and sell that
product without actually ordering any inventory. You design it with this service and set up all of
your desired specifications like size, colour, and pricing for each product, and rather than ordering
a bunch of those products and selling them yourself, you just add it to your store, and then
whenever you get an order for that product, the company will create one of that product as needed
and send it directly to that customer without requiring any input at all whatsoever from you.
The only real downside to print-on-demand is that it takes a little bit longer than if you already
had the product stocked on your own, because you have to factor in the amount of time that it'll
take the company to produce it once it's ordered, given that it's not pre-made. But it only takes
a few extra days at most, and with that being the only real con, the pros are made even more
significant, because there are a LOT. First and foremost, what's most important to me and many,
many other small artists is that print-on-demand eliminates the need for any investment and,
subsequently, any risk. You don't have to shell out 200 bucks to get a bunch of shirts that you
don't even know if you'll be able to sell, you can just pay the cost of the shirts' production and
the shirt itself if - and only IF - someone orders one. Technically, you could order in bulk and make
more of a profit with every shirt you sell instead of going with print-on-demand, but that's based
completely on the assumption that you'll make back the price of every shirt in that bulk order to
make that larger profit, which rarely actually happens, especially for smaller artists and
creators. It also means that you're limited by the number of designs you can create. If you have to
order 100 of each shirt design, you probably can't afford to sell a diverse number of shirt designs,
because each one is a huge financial commitment. With print-on-demand, you can be like me,
and have an exorbitant, ridiculous number of apparel designs available at any given moment,
because you only have to pay to make one if one sells. There's no downside to having a
ton of them. The majority of my online sales are exceptionally varied - so, like, if I sell
10 shirts in a month, they're almost always 10 different shirts. My store's strength is in the
fact that no matter what your style or preference is, I probably have an apparel design that you'd
like, and without print-on-demand services like Printify, I wouldn't be able to do that.
I'd be limited to a small handful, and my sales and audience would suffer and dwindle as a result.
Another benefit of print-on-demand companies is that they're just so much EASIER. As someone who
runs a store that's half print-on-demand and half self-fulfilled, I am fully aware of how
tedious and time-consuming it can be to produce your own merch and ship it on your own. I'm even
more aware of it because by comparison, all of my print-on-demand orders are infinitely easier.
Don't get me wrong, I actually really enjoy creating and packaging my handmade orders, like
buttons and stickers, but each order I produce myself takes at least 10-20 minutes to package
and ship, and that's assuming that I already had that item pre-made and don't have to set
aside MORE time to make another one just for that particular order. Any apparel order, conversely,
is just-- it's a notification. My obligation to my customers for every apparel order is to look
at that notification. Beyond that, Printify takes care of the whole thing. The amount of time it
saves is so far beyond convenient that words fail to describe it. But those are just the benefits
of print-on-demand services themselves - Printify has their own fair share of benefits specific to
their company, and it's those aspects that have sold me on them as my new print and production
partner. First of all, they have over 650 products that you can sell your art on, and that's not
just limited to apparel. Their apparel is what I personally sell the most of, though, and when I
tell you that they have everything, I mean they have EVERYTHING. T-shirts, sweaters, leggings,
pants, dresses, swimwear, hats, bags, face masks, socks, even shoes and underwear! You can literally
put your art on anything wearable and sell it, and while that's the area that I have the most
experience with, I've been looking into expanding my stock into entirely new types of merchandise,
because Printify also offers a catalog of other cool stuff to put your art on, like posters, phone
cases, mouse pads, wallets, blankets, notebooks, and even teddy bears with customizable t-shirts so
that you can literally create the stuffed bears from Animal Crossing. What's better than that?
Name one thing. Looking at their catalog right now is legitimately making me an unfortunate
combination of overwhelmed and exceptionally excited by the amount of new merch that it makes
me want to make, and I encourage you to join me in this hell, because i don't want to be sitting
in a pile of Celestia-brand TM notebooks and blankets and plushies all alone. Beyond that,
they also have 24/7 merchant support agents who have been unbelievably quick and helpful in my
experience. Because orders of shirts are fulfilled by Printify and are essentially out of my hands
once they're confirmed, I can't normally help customers if they order the wrong size or colour,
because that order has already automatically been sent to production. And in the past,
when working with other providers, I've basically had to tell customers "Sorry,
but I can't do anything - this is why I added that warning about this in the item listing".
And while I don't think that's unfair, it does suck. But after the first time this happened since
my switch to Printify, I figured I would give reaching out to those support agents a shot first.
And lo and behold, despite the order having been sent to production, I was able to catch it early
enough with their help to switch the shirt's size. They went above and beyond to make that happen,
and that's been the case every single time I've reached out to them with a problem. Working with
them has made it a lot less stressful to leave production and shipping in someone else's hands,
because their support team makes it as easy as humanly possible to resolve any issues that might
come up. But I'm not done - I'm an infomercial that absolutely refuses to shut up, and I'm not
sorry, because I'm passionate and I'm right. They also offer the ability to create image mock-ups of
how your art will look on the products that you're choosing, which isn't just helpful for you - it
also saves you time and hassle in setting up your store, because those mock-ups also serve as a
visual for your customers. I personally recommend doing what I do, which is using Printify's product
mock-ups in each product's gallery, while making your primary cover photo with Envato's Placeit,
and that's the best way that I've found to combine Placeit's customizable and eye-catching product
images with Printify's comprehensive and accurate supplementary mock-ups. Finally, the best part
about Printify, in my opinion, is also the reason I ended up switching to them in the first place,
and it's that they have the absolute lowest market prices on the products that they offer.
Most of their competitors have a handful of their own production facilities in which they make all
of their products, and that's very limiting, because if you get an order somewhere where
they don't have a facility, you're gonna be demolished by shipping costs. Printify
doesn't do that - they use existing facilities all around the world to produce their orders,
meaning that no matter where you or your customers are, they can guarantee the lowest cost for both
the base item itself and the shipping for it. They also let you decide which facilities to
use for your product, so you can determine which ones are best for you based on price,
location, and the stock and colors that they have available. This is a degree of seller control and
versatility that I have never found with any other print-on-demand company, and i've worked with a
few. And that combined with the fact that their prices mean I can actually make a profit for once
is already enough for me to give them my first born child, my kidneys, and more importantly,
my business and my endorsement. Now that I have inevitably and rightfully sold you on Printify,
let's get into how to open your store with them. Personally, my store is hosted on Etsy, so a lot
of my instructions are going to be specific to sellers using Etsy, but Printify has automatic
store integration that's very easy to use for stores hosted on Shopify, Etsy, Squarespace, Wix,
WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Prestashop, and eBay, so if you're using any of those, I have no doubt that
it'll be just as easy to set up as it was for me. They also let you use other platforms or even your
own site with the Printify API, which is slightly more complicated by comparison, but still very
easy in and of itself. Regardless of what platform you're using, you just need to set up your store
on it, and Printify store integration will let you connect it to your account and start creating
products. And once that's done, it's ridiculously easy to use. You make the product on Printify,
click publish, and if you're using Etsy, it will automatically be sent to your draft listings.
From there, you just have to make any revisions to the listing that you need on your store
itself - so for me, that usually involves adding and reordering the product images, adding tags,
adding clothing types, adding it to a category, and updating the shipping information. Then you
publish it on Etsy, and you're done. Like, from that from that point on, your item is for sale,
and any orders for that item are fulfilled completely automatically by Printify. You
don't have to worry about anything. Again, that's only my experience in setting it up
on Etsy specifically, but I'm sure the process is largely the same for other platforms as well.
As someone who had to manually recreate upwards of 70 listings on my store when I switched to
Printify, I have a uniquely extensive amount of experience with this setup, and quite frankly,
if it weren't as easy as it is, I definitely would not have had the patience to do it. Now,
that's just the technical side of creating products, which requires very little information.
The more complex and detailed parts of store setup are making and preparing the art that you
want to put on the products, and coming up with fair and profitable prices for those products.
So before I send you off into Printify's loving arms, let me give you a few tips on those aspects.
In terms of the art itself, the one thing I wish someone had told me before I started preparing art
to sell on products was that you should always make sure it's big enough. In the beginning,
I made tons of designs on canvases that were like, 1000 px by 1000 px, because in my mind, that
seemed like a reasonable size. But for t-shirts and sweaters, the actual printable size for your
designs is 3600 by 4800 px, or 12 inches by 16 inches, and that means that to fill that space,
your design has to be relatively close in size to those dimensions. If you want to retain quality
and make sure it's not blurry, just-- please don't be like me. Don't end up having to redraw all of
your art on bigger canvases. Just save yourself the pain. Another thing to keep in mind with
the art itself is the colour. Printify uses RGB to print designs, so if your piece is in CMYK,
it will automatically convert it, which can result in some significant changes in how your art will
end up looking. To avoid any loss of quality or unanticipated colour changes, I would recommend
that if your art is in CMYK, you switch it to RGB yourself and then adjust the colors as needed on
your own. It's also worth noting that the spectrum of colour that you can see on your screen is
not actually the spectrum of colour that can be printed. The colour spectrum that can be printed
is significantly more limited than that, and I'll show it on screen here. It's also referred to
as the 216 non-dithering colors: non-dithering refers to colors that stay the same across all
devices and browsers, and by making sure your work falls within this range, you'll avoid it coming
out less vivid or saturated than you expected. Finally, a couple other tips: always make sure
you use a transparent background for your work so that you can put it on any color of shirt,
and I would strongly recommend using .PNG format instead of .JPEG, because not only do .JPEGs not
retain that transparency, but .PNGs retain higher quality, too. Vector files are also supported,
and while they're the best, they're not always an option depending on the way that you create your
art. In terms of canvas size for creating art for printed products, I personally recommend using at
least a 4000 by 4000 px canvas with 300 DPI, but the dimensions can be changed to suit your needs,
obviously. Okay, now, pricing. Pricing is an important thing to consider when opening your
store with Printify, and while they make it as easy as possible, there are still a few things
they don't mention that you should consider when you import your Printify products to your store.
Printify will automatically generate a price that gives you a profit, based on how much the base
cost of the product is and the cost of production. This is a very handy base number to work with,
but Pricing 101 tends to suggest that you price your items in multiples of five whenever possible,
and rarely do these automated prices fall into that category. For example,
frequently, it will automatically suggest that you price an item at, like, $24.29 or something,
whereas it would be a better business practice to price it at 25 bucks. But the one thing no
service takes into consideration with their recommended prices is shipping, because by
default, they charge shipping in addition to the product's price. But if you're using Etsy like me,
that might not be ideal for you. Etsy promotes items with free shipping over items that don't
have free shipping, so it's generally a good practice to mark all of your items as having
free shipping and just factor the average cost of shipping into the price of the item itself.
The problem with using the automatically generated pricing that Printify suggests is that if you do
offer free shipping, the amount that you have to charge to make a profit has to change and increase
in order to accommodate the absorbed cost of shipping, and at that point, you'll have to do the
math yourself and adjust pricing accordingly. It's also worth noting that generally speaking, sizes
larger than XL for apparel tend to have a higher base cost based on the amount of fabric used,
so I would recommend adding that cost into your pricing. Finally, consider sales. For example,
I offer channel members and patrons 10% off all of my merch, and I also often offer this discount
at events. If your profit margins per item are too low, you won't actually be able to offer
percentage-based discounts without selling at a loss, and it's worth considering when you develop
your base prices. For example, if you're charging 20 bucks for a t-shirt and you're paying 18 bucks
for that t-shirt to be produced, you're making two dollars a shirt. But if you want to offer
a discount of 10%, you're now making zero dollars per shirt, and that... kind of defeats the purpose
of selling it at all. It's not like you HAVE to offer discounts or coupon codes, so you don't have
to consider this in your pricing, but it's a very helpful marketing tool that I really do recommend
at least thinking about. And there you have it - that's all you really need to know to start
selling your art with Printify. Like most things, there's a lot more to it that you'll learn with
time and practice, but hopefully this has been helpful to anyone looking into low-risk ways to
sell their work on more than just paper or pixels. I genuinely cannot recommend Printify enough,
and have been nothing but impressed since making the switch myself, so whether you're
new at online stores and print-on-demand, or experienced at it and looking for a better,
more profitable alternative to the company you're using now, I'm confident that they're a
perfect fit. I've linked their information in the video description as well as their guides page,
which includes a multitude of-- well, guides, obviously, which make it even easier to get
your store started with as little struggle and hassle as possible. Good luck with your stores,
and thank you so much for watching! Special thank you, as always, to channel members Cafe Soleil and
Joseph Solomon, as well as patrons Lillybug, Kyle Lowe, Batman, Blueswanson, and thisistotallymyname
for their support. I hope you enjoyed today's video, and I'll see you in my next one!