hey what's up guys it is a beautiful day
outside uh we didn't have internet for
the last like
16 hours or so so that was interesting
but
um finally got the internet back up so
i'm recording some videos for you
and i went to google to get some ideas
about what
are people looking up when it comes to
print on demand so i went to google
typed in print on demand
and one of the questions that stuck out
to me was is print on demand free
now the short answer is yes print on
demand is free
but there is a caveat as you would
expect and i'm going to explain the
different scenarios with print on demand
and the extent to which they are truly
free now we'll start at the top the most
ideal scenarios for
print on demand and you having
absolutely zero
risk from a monetary sense because
obviously you're going to have to invest
some time
and if your time is money well then if
you're investing time is
it really free not really right because
with print by the way with print on
demand your time is now money
if you've ever sat around wondering like
you know i'm hungry today i got that
fire inside of me i want to make some
money what can i do
to make money well now that you know
about print on demand there's no excuses
you know how to make your own money so
your time is money
and while print on demand in most cases
doesn't actually require you to pay any
money
you pay with time right so in a
roundabout way it is you know whatever
it isn't free
in that sense if you have to invest your
time but you can always outsource too so
i guess there's that
but let's start at the top the
print-on-demand methods of making money
without spending any i don't see how we
uh don't put right at the top
merch by amazon a print on demand
opportunity that allows you to sell
prime eligible print on demand products
on the world's largest ecommerce
marketplace actually
seven of them i believe it's seven right
um merch.com and then i think it's six
international ones if it's not six it's
five no it's six yeah
so you can sell on seven amazon
international markets including the
united states depending on where you
live it might be international
and it is a hundred percent zero money
down you never have to put a credit card
on file
when you make a sale you get paid a
royalty and they do not bill you
okay that's probably if you're googling
or looking up
is print on demand free this is probably
more or less the opportunity that you
were hoping to find
because i'm assuming you don't want to
put a credit card on file and i got i
get that i get that
the next one you should be aware of is
probably redbubble
it's another top-tier opportunity it
doesn't it's not in the same class as
merch by amazon because you're not
selling on amazon
the world's number one e-commerce
marketplace but redbubble's up there in
its own right in that you can make money
selling print-on-demand products a wide
variety of them by the way
all you really need to do is upload
designs to both merch by amazon and
redbubble
and then you just kind of enable
different products where your design can
be purchased
on them and you outsource automatically
you don't you don't have to manually
outsource it's outsourced for you
fulfillment shipping returns customer
service
so basically you just focus on uploading
top quality uh top tier designs
that are well researched you do need to
provide some seo
some search engine optimizations you
know title descriptions etc
uh in order to assist the algorithm in
putting your products in front of the
right people
but besides that you get paid something
for nothing
in a monetary sense now there are other
approaches to print on demand where
you don't necessarily pay to play
but following a sale you need to
outsource to a company that they create
the product that you sold
pack it ship it off to your customer and
that company these companies in general
because there are a bunch of them uh
namely like the big ones
printful printify gear bubbles big
guten's big
just to name a few i'll drop a link to
printful by the way which is my
recommended one
but these companies i call them
print-on-demand production partners
they exist solely to make our lives
easier
so if we sell a t-shirt with a design on
it
and we don't own the machine at our
house and we don't have a massive
warehouse with all the different t-shirt
colors
and size combinations we can say hey
printful
can you grab this shirt in this size and
this color
and add this design and ship it to this
address
and they say sure it's going to cost you
this much so
we pay them and our customer gets the
product
and as long as we charge the customer
more than we paid printful plus
typically there's marketplace uh fees
like if you saw on amazon you're gonna
pay
you know roughly 17-ish percent
uh from what the customer paid you
whatever's left that is your profit
margin
now is that considered free in the
context of is print on demand
free you got to kind of be the judge
right because
you've locked in your profit as long as
you priced in a profit
when your customer paid you first and
you pay printful
or whatever company you outsource to
second
so in theory you should already be
profitable however will the money from
the customer hit your bank account
before you have to pay printful no all
right but you can also keep a credit
card on file with printful which is what
i recommend i also recommend using the
printful wallet is what they call it and
you can set up so that they bill you
in higher increments so i typically let
them build me 100
at a time that way i don't get a bunch
of charges against my credit card
because i typically do make um you know
10 plus minimum sales in a day
so that'll avoid any credit card
transaction fee issues
now there is a third at least a one that
i can think of time where it
is a little bit pay to play with print
on demand
and that is if you're going to sell on
places like amazon seller central
now you're like what's the difference
between seller central and amazon merch
well amazon merch
is something that came after seller
central it's a very restricted portal
that exists only for print-on-demand
sellers it's actually invite only and if
you don't follow the rules
they'll kick you off the platform right
so you're going to lose a huge
opportunity if you don't follow the
rules seller central it's got plenty of
rules but seller central was the
it was it was invented for sellers to be
able to post products on amazon's
catalog
so you can sell lots of different
products through seller central whereas
merch by amazon you can only sell those
print on demand
products now with seller central to sell
print on demand products it is
highly highly highly highly recommended
to
pay for a professional seller account
which costs about 40 dollars
a month without that you're gonna need
to you to provide your own upc codes for
each product you list
to me that's not really viable uh not
for print on demand
they're they're way too expensive so
you're gonna want that you the the gtin
exemption which removes the requirement
for upc codes
which means you're going to need to pay
amazon 40 a month
now can you do print on demand in
general without doing seller central yes
so you can avoid incurring the 40 a
month fee
but i highly recommend doing seller
central because i have a saying
the more online real estate you occupy
the more money you can expect
to make so it's basically like saying
hey the more things you've got for sale
on
in more places you've got it for sale
the more money you'll likely make does
anybody want to argue against that logic
like
i don't think anybody ever has right so
you want to be on
amazon seller central which lets you
list products on the world's number one
e-commerce destination right now
in that case you are paying to play and
you're selling print on demand products
in this context
so in that case it wouldn't be free
right but we
before we even got there we talked about
a couple other opportunities that are
absolutely free and then you have the
variable free where you kind of
outsource the work to printful or
printify and uh
they fulfill it for you but you've
already priced in your profit so there's
that i guess before i wrap up i would
say
websites like etsy that you should also
be on they may have a
listing fee associated with getting
started
uh well not getting started but i was
going to say when you get started
actually if you use somebody else's
invite link you can get
i think it's like 40 free listings if
i'm not mistaken i think it's 43
listings
um so that's a pretty nice value that
you get absolutely for free i can put an
invite code in the description in case
anybody that's not on etsy wants to just
click that and get the free listings
but if you don't have the free listings
it's like 20 cents
per listing per quarter so in a year
you'd pay 80 cents
for a listing on etsy and then every
time it
sells you pay the renewal fee again they
call it renewal fee
and that's again it's 20 cents so there
is that
it is you know possible to incur some
fees while starting your print-on-demand
business but do you have to
no you don't and then i'd not be telling
the full story if i didn't just mention
that with selling anything online not
just print on demand
you always have the choice of
advertising and
if we understand the customer journey to
a sale part of that journey
whether they buy from you or me or
somebody else is that they must know our
products exist
and one way to help ensure
increased likelihood of visibility on
our products because right our end goal
is to make sales is to
advertise and unless you guys are aware
of something i'm not
i don't know of anywhere we can
advertise for free
everywhere that i've ever heard of
advertising whether it's print on demand
or whatever else
you have to pay uh different
marketplaces have different fees
like with ebay you only pay if it
converts but you bid a percentage of the
overall cost of the product
with amazon you pay per click with
google you pay per click
or per thousand impressions so there's
lots of different fee structures for
advertising it is kind of interesting
how they all work together uh etsy's
even got like a kind of more complicated
one
so yeah so that's always on the table as
an option too that could potentially
cost you money of course it's never
required so i did just want to throw
that in there but anyways guys
as i wrap up i did want to remind you
that i run a free weekly print on demand
giveaway you can find a link
in the description please take advantage
of that in addition to
the sponsors merch titans merch ninja
uh all sunsets and bubble scout i'm also
this week because it's giveaway number
50 giving away
two enrollments one to each of the
winners uh to any of my pre
well i'll just say print on demand any
of my passive income courses
on my ryan's method passive income
school where i teach my complimentary
approach
to e-commerce that freed me from working
a nine-to-five job however i do still
keep my second job
uh teaching web development at the
college level uh so that's it guys yeah
take advantage of the giveaway also i've
got a free print on demand mini course
in the description all i need is your
email address and i'll send you one
lesson a day
for eight days and i have a full print
on demand course of course at
ryansmethod.com if you want to check
that out i show you how i make six
figure print on demand sales every
single year
all right we got through the business
thank you for watching till the end guys
please like and subscribe and i'll see
you tomorrow
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you