﻿Hey! I’m Michael from Printful. In this video, I’ll teach you how to connect your Etsy store
to your Printful account, how to add your first products, and how to set up shipping and product
personalization.
Before we start, let’s quickly go over what is Etsy, why it’s a good choice for ecommerce
beginners, and how it works with Printful. Etsy is a marketplace that caters to handmade and
vintage goods. If you’re only starting out and don’t have a large online following, creating
your shop on a marketplace like Etsy might be the right choice for you for two reasons:
It’s easy and quick to use. Your store will exist in the Etsy marketplace, meaning you won’t
have to create your own website from scratch. No need to have prior coding or design knowledge—just
open your store in a matter of minutes. It has a built-in customer base. If you
don’t have a lot of followers, it might be tough to drive traffic to your store. But millions
of people visit Etsy every day. If you work on keyword and marketing research, you can benefit
massively from such a large outreach. Now, you may want to open a shop on Etsy to sell,
let’s say, shirts or mugs with your designs, but you’re not exactly sure how to go about
it. That’s where Printful comes in. When you link your Etsy store to your Printful account,
you can create products on Printful and have them automatically synced to your Etsy store.
When you make a sale, we’ll make the product and ship it out to your customer.
So let’s get into it.
The first thing you’ll need to do is create your Printful account.
Go to the Printful page, click Sign up and fill in your info.
Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be able to see your Printful dashboard. Here,
you can easily follow all the onboarding steps you’ll need to finish in order to start selling
with Printful—confirming your email, creating a product template, connecting your store,
adding products to your store, setting up billing and ordering samples.
If you need help setting up your Printful account, be sure to check out our How to Get Started with
Printful step-by-step video tutorial.
To create an Etsy account, click ‘Sign in’, then ‘Register’, and fill in your info.
Once you’ve got the account set up, it’s time to open your shop.
Click on your profile picture, and in the menu under it, choose ‘Sell on Etsy’.
Now you’ll be able to go through the steps of creating your own store. You can use the
steps/guide on our Etsy FAQ or Etsy’s support team if you need any help with these steps.
In one of these steps, Etsy will ask you to create your first listing. This will be a mock listing,
so you’ll be able to delete it once you’re done with the steps—but
remember that in order to connect your store to Printful, you’ll need to have at least one
active listing in your Etsy account. So don’t delete the mock listing immediately
after you’ve opened up your shop. If you’ve already deleted your first mock
listing, don’t worry. You can always create a new listing in your “Shop manager” dashboard,
under “Listings”. Choose “Add new listing” in the upper right corner.
For your first mock listing, you’ll need a product photo. You can use Printful’s Mockup Generator
to create product photos. Just go over to your Printful dashboard, choose the ‘Product templates’
tab in the side menu, and click on “Create your first product template”. Choose the product and
model you want—I’ll choose a shirt. In our Design Maker you can choose the customization
technique for your product—either printing or embroidery, and proceed to add a design. Since
this is for our mock listing, I’ll choose a pre-made design from our Quick Designs tab.
Let’s adjust the size and hit “Continue”.
In the last step, you can review the template. Add in a template name and pick sizes. Once you
click “Save product template”, it will show up under the “Product templates” tab.
Once you have your product template ready, click on the menu in the upper right corner, and select
‘Download mockups’. Here you’ll be able to choose the photos you want to add to the listing.
When creating your first listing, you’ll also need to add your production partner.
Here you can write in Printful. For location, you can choose one of our
fulfillment center addresses, for example, our LA location. You can find the addresses
for our fulfillment centers on our Contact page—I’ll link it below.
Then write down a short description of the company and what it does. I’ll write in:
a fulfillment, warehousing, and shipping service for online business owners.
Once you’ve filled in the location and description, you can choose why you’re
partnering with Printful. Here, you should select: “I don’t have the technical ability or
equipment to make it entirely by myself”. Then in the next box: “I design everything myself”,
and then—“They do everything for me”.
If you ever want to add a new production partner or delete an existing one, you can manage your
production partners under ‘Shop manager', then ‘Settings’, then ‘Production partners’.
Now that you’ve set up your shop on Etsy and added your first listing,
let’s go to the Printful dashboard. In the side menu, choose Stores. Then pick “Choose platform”
and find Etsy. For quicker access, I’ll link our Etsy connection page in the description below.
Here all you have to do is click “Connect to Etsy”. You’ll be redirected to the Etsy page,
where you’ll see this window. Here you just have to click “Allow access”, and there you go!
Your Etsy store is now linked
to your Printful account.
The next step is adding products to your store. Choose “Add product”. Here we’ll go through
similar steps as we did when creating a product template. I’ll choose a men’s shirt again.
In the Design Maker, you can either upload your own design or use our clipart or
Quick Design options. If you’re uploading your own design, there are guidelines you should
follow—I’ll link more information on design preparation in the description below.
This time, I’ll choose the clipart option. I’ll choose Michelangelo’s
David from our Bold Sculpture clipart collection.
Now, let’s add text and adjust the size.
Alright, there we go—I’m satisfied with the design so we can move on. Let’s hit “Proceed
to mockups”. In this step, you can choose what kind of mockup pictures you want. I’ll choose
“Flat lifestyle mockups”. These are the product photos that will appear on my storefront.
After you’ve chosen the mockups, move on to details. In this section, you can edit the
name and description of the product. Let’s change the name of the shirt to “Michelangelo’s shirt”.
We’ve already prepared a description with all the product details, but be sure to tailor it to your
own brand needs. You can also add an imperial or metric size guide to the shop. The size guide will
appear as an image in your product gallery. Don’t forget to add product tags. Tags are important,
as they will improve your SEO results, making your products easier to find. Lastly, choose a
style—unisex, men’s or women’s. Then you can move on to pricing.
Here you can set your profit margin, so how much money you want to make from each sale.
I’ll set my profit margin at four dollars. You can see that as I change my profit margin, the retail
price in the next column changes automatically. So, once you decide how much money you want from
every sale, we’ll automatically configure the retail price. If you need more help with pricing,
be sure to check out our pricing and payment guide. Keep in mind that Etsy charges a fee,
too. From every sale you’ll make, Etsy will charge a 5% fee from the displayed price, plus
a payment processing fee. Before you click “Submit to store”,
let’s talk about shipping.
When you publish a product on Etsy, Printful’s shipping rates apply
automatically. All products you add to your store from Printful will have
shipping profiles with country of origin and estimated delivery times set—you can
manage your shipping profiles in your “Shop manager” dashboard under “Shipping settings”.
If you need more information about shipping speeds and prices for Printful products,
have a look at our Shipping page. I’ll link it in the description below.
You can also offer your customers free shipping. It’s no secret that customers
are more likely to purchase a product if they’re offered free shipping. So,
instead of charging an extra fee for delivery, add the shipping costs to your retail price.
You can add the free shipping option on Printful right before you hit “Submit
to store”. When you’ve set up your prices, click on “Pricing settings”
and enable free shipping on your storefront. Once that’s done, hit “Submit to store” and there we
have it! Your product will be automatically pushed to your Etsy store with free shipping.
It’ll first appear as a draft. If you’ve enabled free shipping on Printful’s end,
you won’t have to worry about setting anything up on Etsy. Etsy will automatically set the free
shipping option for the product.
The product you added to your store will first appear on Etsy as a draft listing. To publish
your product on Etsy, go to “Shop manager”, choose “Listings”, and you’ll see the product listing
under “Drafts”, right here. Before you publish it, you can edit and adjust details. One thing you have to
do before publishing is add Printful as your production partner. When editing your listing,
go to “Listing details”, and in the section “About this listing”, choose “Another company or person”.
Then scroll down to “Production partners” and check the box that says Printful.
Before you publish your listing, you can also check the shipping settings. Scroll down to
“Shipping”. You can see a shipping profile is already set for our listing because we enabled
the free shipping option on Printful. Now you’re good to go. Hit “Publish”—remember
that Etsy will charge a 0.20 cent fee for each new published listing. Click “Publish”
again and there it is. Your listing is now active and visible to your customers.
Keep in mind that you need to set up your billing with Printful as well.
If you need help, you can always check out our tutorial about “Setting up billing”. I’ll link
it in the description below.
You can offer product personalization to your customers for products on your Etsy store.
This means you’re able to allow your customers to personalize their orders—for example, the customer
can add their own name or initials to your product.
This tool is automatically enabled for all Etsy stores linked to Printful. Now let’s
go over and enable the feature on Etsy. Go to “Shop manager”, pick “Listings”,
and choose the listing for which to add the customization feature.
Scroll down to “Personalization” and you’ll see that it’s turned off.
Turn it on and you’ll be able to add instructions for your customers—what
is the character limit, where the customized element will show up in the design, or anything
else your customers should keep in mind. I’ll write in: “Enter your name! It’ll be printed
on the shirt, under the design. 14 character limit.” Once you’re done, save the changes.
When your customer makes a personalized order, it’ll appear on your Printful dashboard in the
“Orders” section. A personalized order will have a blue icon next to it. You can see the message
left by your customer when you open the order and hover over the icon. To finish the order,
click “Complete order” and then “Edit” on the design. Now we can make the necessary
edits in Printful’s Design Maker. Let’s say a customer sent us a request to personalize
our Michelangelo shirt with their name: “Josh”. Let’s add the name under the design
like we said we would in the guidelines we wrote on Etsy. Now we choose the font and placement.
Once we’ve adjusted the design, we can follow the manual steps to complete the order—click
“Continue to shipping”, add in the necessary shipping information, and review the order.
Voila! There you have it. Customization is an important feature that’ll add value
to your brand and a more personal feel to your store, so be sure to try it out.
When you start selling with Etsy, remember to read through and follow their rules and regulations.
If you have any questions about Etsy, you can always seek advice from Etsy Help,
or go through our Etsy FAQ. I’ll link both in the description below.
Alright—there we have it. Now set up your shop and start selling with Printful!
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