Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to show
you how to automatically upload your designs to a print on demand website,
or several websites actually. And the way we're going to do this is with a software called Flying
Upload. I'll tell you a little bit about that service, and then we'll go over how to actually
upload a design. And then I'll cover some pros and cons with my experience with using it. If you plan
on using the service, I really recommend you watch this whole video, because there are some things
you need to know before you start. Alright, let's get started. Okay, there are two ways to get to
the download area for Flying Upload. And both of the links are in my description below this
video. The first way is to go through my referral link. And if you do that, I really appreciate
it, but you can also go to the website and the regular way which is just flyingupload.com.
If you end up buying the software, I do get a little bit of a commission.
But it doesn't change the price for you at all or anything like that. But I know some people
don't like using referral links, so I put both links in there. Now I personally had never heard
of this site before one of the reps reached out to me. Their software can actually upload to a lot of
different print on demand sites, and they are all listed right down here. Before I'd heard of them,
I was uploading to Redbubble and TeePublic, and it was taking a lot of my time every day.
And I thought about putting my art on a bunch of these others. but it just didn't make sense
because it takes so long to even upload to these two. But now it DOES make sense because Flying
Upload just does it for me while I'm working on other things. So now I'm uploading to
six sites: Redbubble, TeePublic, Spreadshirt, Threadless, Teespring, and Society6. So it is
pretty awesome. It does all the work for me. Let's head over here to the Store and go to Print on
Demand. And you can see the four different options you have. They have a free version,
and then they have three paid versions - Beginner, Advanced, and Pro. And so the one I'm using right
now is the Pro version. Okay, so let's open Flying Upload, and I can show you how it works.
Now I really recommend focusing on one site at a time, instead of adding four new sites at once,
like I did, for a total of six sites. Because that can be really overwhelming. You're trying to learn
4 brand new sites, and also trying to learn how Flying Upload works and all that. So I really
recommend just focusing on one site at a time. So first, you'll have to come up here to Options,
and then go to Settings. And then you'll come over here to Auto Login. You'll choose whatever print
on demand platform that you want to upload to. And then you'll enter your username and password.
And yes, it is scary to hand that information over, but it really is the only way that a
program can upload to the sites for you. I also asked the rep about that, and this information,
your username and password, is encrypted and is actually stored on your computer. So it's
not on their website. Basically, it just means that if their company gets hacked,
the hackers will not have access to your username and password - it's only on your computer.
Alright, so you'll enter the information there. And then you'll come over here to Templates.
Now, depending on the site you choose, a lot of these websites will need a template.
And this is sort of a starting point. So Flying Upload can know what to do with your artwork
as far as sizing, etc. So let's look at Redbubble. To create a template here, you'll go out to the
Redbubble site and you'll upload and size a design exactly the way you want it and then upload it
just like normal. And then you'll go as if you are going to duplicate it. And once you've duplicated
the design, copy the URL, and then you'll paste it in one of these blank areas. For all my designs,
I only have them going on men and women's garments. So I pasted the duplicate URL here.
And you'll also have to choose a color. This one is going on a black shirt (that duplicate is).
So if you want a version that's for white shirts, you'll have to choose white, and here I've got
a different duplicate URL. You can also choose colorful - I haven't set this up yet. So so far,
I'm only using black and white garments. Okay, so then we'll save and now we'll go to Edit.
And this is where you'll drop your new designs. So I've got a few designs ready to go.
I'll just put these four designs up here.
And when you load these, you'll get a preview image of what that design looks like.
And then you can fill out all the information. So I'm going to fill this out real quick.
I'll speed it up so you don't have to sit through all that. But the titles I generally keep it 40
characters because for some of the sites, that's the max. I'll paste the description in here,
and then I'll add the tags. Okay, now this design I'm going to put on white.
So I'm going to choose white down here. And I also want it to be for a man and a woman.
Now we'll go to the next one and do the same thing for this. Now the cool thing is you can copy the
information from the first one. So we'll do that I'm going to click Copy. And then you can choose
what number the one you want to copy from is. So in this case, it's number 1, we'll say OK,
and it just put in all that information. So now I just need to edit this to match the design.
I'll just do the same with the others. Now this one is the same design as the number 1.
So I'm going to copy the stuff from number 1. So everything automatically populates in there. And
then I'll click on number 4, this one is the same as number 2. So I'll copy from number 2.
Okay, and once I'm done with that, I just go through each and make sure they're on the right
color. Because when you copy and paste from a different design, it'll grab also the color and
all that stuff. That looks good, but this isn't showing up because it's got a white background,
so I'll choose black. And same with this one. So we're ready to upload this to some print on demand
sites, I'm going to hit the back arrow right here, these don't actually take you to the next step,
they just go through the list here. So we'll use the back arrow. And then we'll come over here to
Upload. And now it's got the four designs that we just edited. And I can choose which print on
demand side I want to upload to. Now you can do a lot of these all at the same time. But my internet
connection can't really handle that. So I usually tend to just use one and let it run through,
and then choose the next one. So I want this to go on Redbubble. And I'll choose Start.
Oh, and we will get a warning if we forget to check this box up here. So I'll say OK,
check the box, and then try again, I'll hit start. So when you do this, it'll open Chromium,
which is a way to automate, I'm guessing. It'll run through the
process of uploading a design on Redbubble: it enters our username and password,
it'll go to our template, and then it uploads the new design into that template. And the nice thing
about this is while it's working, you can just continue using your computer while this is running
in the background, it doesn't disturb what you do, although sometimes it will kick the page up to the
front, and you just click off again and continue. So it is pretty nice. About uploading, I would
limit the amount you upload to five designs per day. So like on Redbubble, that would be 5 designs
on Redbubble, 5 on TeePublic or whatever. Because regardless of whether you use this tool or not,
uploading a whole lot of designs at once, after not uploading that many can cause temporary
account suspension. And you do not want that! So just don't go crazy with the number of uploads.
Now while that's doing its thing, I'm going to come out here to the Finder and show you
what happens in your Finder files. Flying Upload has added another file along with your PNG file,
which is called an XML file. And this holds all of that title, tag, and description information. And
it is really nice because you can load these again or make changes and it'll update that file. So
don't throw those away. Okay, so at the end of the process, it'll give you an upload report. It looks
like all four designs were successfully uploaded. We did have one error on design 4. It tried and it
failed, it will usually try three times before giving up completely. And so on the second try,
it looks like it went through. Okay, so this might have been a blip with my internet, it might have
been some other problem. But in the end, it all worked out, everything uploaded perfectly,
and everything uploaded the way that it should have. Alright, so let's look at the designs and
how they did. I'm going to go over to Redbubble, and here are the four designs that it uploaded.
I'm going to click here and go to Edit, just on all four of these...open
them up and see what they look like. This image doesn't look great, but it never
does. So that's not a Flying Upload thing. The thing that really matters is how well it placed
the design on the garment. So as we scroll down here you can see it did a pretty dang good job.
This one might be over a little too far. And this all depends on your template. So I need
to go in and adjust my template so it doesn't print that far over. My stickers and magnets,
obviously they print white on white, so that's disabled and I have it that way on my template
I've never liked the way the phone wallets look, so I leave those disabled.
But as you can see, overall, this did a really great job. I've got my leggings disabled.
So yes, I'm pretty happy with the way this is turned out.
Okay, let's check the next one. Same thing here - ugly preview image, but it totally doesn't matter.
And then this is looking also quite nice,
you can tell is a little too far over in some of these. So that is a template issue.
Maybe on the aprons, I need to just size it down on my template a little bit.
Okay, now we've got the ones that are on the white background. Pretty nice.
Okay, it's looking pretty awesome on everything. And don't forget, you can always come in here
and edit these yourself. Just scale this down a little bit, move it over and apply changes. Okay,
these are looking great. Alright, so let's go over some pros and cons with using the Flying Upload
tool. Obviously, the main Pro is the automatic uploading, I mean, it is awesome, I would only be
uploading to two sites instead of six if it wasn't for Flying Upload. The second awesome thing about
it is you can have it running in the background while you work on other stuff, it doesn't disrupt
your workflow. #3, once you get the hang of it, the interface is actually super fast and easy to
use. It took me a minute to kind of get a feel for where things were. But it's super quick now. #4,
the staff are really on top of things, they update the software all the time. And I think over time,
the tool will actually get better and better. I'm sure they'll add more sites, and it'll just be a
more seamless process. #5, they have a Discord. That's a kind of a chat room, basically, where you
can ask questions, and seems like there's always somebody there who can help you, and I found this
to be a really helpful asset. And #6, you can upload to three or four sites simultaneously.
As I mentioned before, I had a little trouble with this because my internet connection is not the
greatest. But if you have a fast connection, you can have all four sites running at the same time,
or all six sites or however many you want to do. Okay, and now the cons. #1: sometimes
Flying Upload will fail with the uploads, this might have to do with a blip in your internet
connection, it might have to do with how your template is set up. But you kind of just have
to retry it change things. It won't actually tell you why it failed. Sometimes I just sit and watch
it and try to figure out what point it failed at, and see if it's something I can fix. #2:
the print on demand sites themselves update their sites, and when that happens, it's going to, of
course, break the uploader. So Flying Upload needs a little bit of time to update their installer.
And usually I just wait a few days, and there's an update available. And when I download the new
update, it works after that. #3: unfortunately, every website requires different sizes. So the
exact same design might not work well across all the websites. I'm sure you've noticed that if you
tried to upload on other sites, and they want, you know, less space at the top or whatever.
So to fix that I've actually made a Photoshop action, and I can batch my designs to work on
a certain site. So that's working really well. But it does take a little extra effort....nothing
like the amount of effort it takes to actually upload to all these sites though! Overall,
in my experience, Flying Upload is absolutely worth it if you have a ton of designs to put
on these sites and not a whole lot of time. And if you don't have a lot of designs, you can just
use their free version. Alright, if you liked this video, please click on the Like button.
And I'll see you next week with another graphic design tutorial. Thank you!!!