by Karon Thackston
As a 7-figure Amazon seller who broke 6-figures just with print-on-demand sales recently (all while working a full-time job), Ryan Hogue is simply a force! Creator of the Ryan’s Method Print-On-Demand course, he shares his experiences here so that others can benefit and gain financial freedom. I’m excited to welcome Ryan to the Marketing Words Blog!
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Print-on-demand is an absolutely incredible way to make money online in 2020 and beyond.
Many people would love to participate in e-commerce as a seller by starting their own online business, but are restricted by the capital required to get started.
Understandably so… most online businesses require you to pay for:
- Website hosting
- Website domain name
- Software to host the site
- Inventory
- Advertising budget
That’s pretty much the minimum you’d expect to have to pay for when starting a new online e-commerce business.
Well, until you found out about print-on-demand.
What is Print-on-Demand?
Print-on-demand is a business model where we sell products that do not exist until after a sale is made.
The most common print-on-demand products sold include apparel, like t-shirts, and coffee mugs.
The physical products “exist” and are stored in bulk at fulfillment centers where following an order, a design is typically printed onto them and then shipped out to the customer.
In printing designs onto the blank products after the sale, it allows us to offer a much broader variety of designs by lifting the requirement of keeping inventory in stock of each product.
(as long as the “blank canvas” products are in stock, we’re in good shape!)
Take this coffee mug for example.
A print-on-demand fulfillment partner likely keeps tens of thousands of these in stock at any given time.
In doing this, we’re able to create an infinite number of designs that can be printed onto these coffee mugs!
Let me guess – you’re thinking to yourself:
“But how does the customer see the finished product if it doesn’t exist?!”
As a web developer, I can speak to the tremendous leaps forward that technology has made over the past 20 years, enabling us to algorithmically create lifelike mockups of finished products that combine
- Pictures of the base product
- Your design
Here’s an example below, “I’m Only 6 Decades Old”
In order to create this mockup, I spent about 5 minutes in Adobe Photoshop using the text tool and shape tool. Get familiar with two tools and you can create designs like this, with ease.
Online Print-on-Demand Markets
If I had to prioritize the options for online marketplaces, I would do it as follows:
Tier 1 Markets
Amazon Merch is in a tier of its own and for good reason.
It functions as both a production partner (where everything is done for you after a sale), and a marketplace. Plus, it’s free to participate, and all listings are available for sale on the world’s largest e-commerce website!
Rating: 9/10
💰 Monthly Cost: 100% FREE
According to Empire Flippers, Amazon Merch accounts have sold for as much as $234,798.
Amazon Merch, or just “Merch” for short, is an incredible opportunity for a number of reasons:
- Merch listings Prime eligible, drastically increasing the potential customer base.
- It’s 100% FREE. Unlike almost every competitor out there, Amazon Merch will deduct product costs from the order fee and pay the seller a royalty. You never have to provide them a credit card.
- Ease of use: Most competitor platforms require API integrations with the various marketplaces, whereas Merch lets you list directly to Amazon’s massive catalog (without opening a Seller Central account).
- The massive user base: Tens of thousands of people upload to Merch, which in turn means there are tons of helpful communities and resources available to learn from.
- Two negatives about Merch:
#1 Amazon provides little to no support at all to Merch sellers.
#2 The automated system in place to prevent infringement is very rudimentary and not documented well at all.
Honorable mention: Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which is basically Amazon Merch without upload limits and instead of selling apparel you’re selling books.
Tier 2 Markets
The tier 2 markets represent great opportunities to make money selling print-on-demand products online, but if we evaluate them relative to each other, some simply have to be distinguished above their competition (hence why Amazon Merch sits alone at the top spot).
Amazon FBM means “fulfilled by merchant” and means we’ll be paying $39.99/mo for a professional Amazon Seller Central account. Etsy has no recurring fees associated with having a seller account, but there are recurring fees associated with each product listing.
We will integrate a fulfillment partner (Printful being my preferred choice) with our seller accounts so that we can easily create new products and following a sale, Printful will automatically download the sale, produce the product, and ship it to our customer.
What’s not to love?
Redbubble functions similarly to Amazon Merch where its marketplace and production partner, combined with the high web traffic it gets made it a Tier 1 consideration, but there is too much of a drop off in web traffic to place it alongside Merch.
Rating: 9/10
💰 Monthly Cost: $39.99
Amazon.com is the world’s #1 e-commerce website and should be prioritized as a destination for print-on-demand sellers. Follow the customers!
According to Feedvisor: based on a survey of more than 2000+ US customers, 89 percent of buyers agree that they’re more likely to buy products from Amazon than other ecommerce sites.
- The monthly fee is $39.99/mo is the highest fee of any online marketplace (but there is no per-listing fee)
- Massive potential Amazon accounted for almost half of all online transactions in the United States in 2019
- Capitalize on customer loyalty Amazon’s a trusted brand name that people actually pay to shop on. You read that right – Amazon Prime members pay for that luxury.
- Three negatives about Amazon Seller Central:
#1 It’s not easy to use
#2 seller support is often not well-versed enough to help solve problems
#3 high transaction fees
Rating: 9/10
💰 Monthly Cost: $0.20 per listing every 3 months
Etsy is an established, trusted brand amongst e-commerce marketplaces and one where customers seem to be willing to spend a little more money when it comes to average order value.
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More people shopped on Etsy in 2018 than ever before: There were 17% more buyers than 2017. [source].
*31.7 million as of Sep 30, 2017 | **37.1 million as of Sep 30, 2018
- Over 40M active shoppers browse Etsy regularly to make online purchases (Source)
- Etsy listings rank well on Google which can bring additional traffic to your product listings
- Etsy is a trusted brand where the public perception is that they bring a handmade, personal touch to the products sold on their platform
- One negative about Etsy: #1 $0.20 listing fee w/ quarterly annual renewal
Rating: 7/10
💰 Monthly Cost: 100% FREE
Redbubble is another print-on-demand platform that can hold its own with the best of them, namely because it’s 100% and it lists products on its own marketplace that is integrated with Google Shopping. Here are my thoughts on Redbubble:
Redbubble had 20.8M total visits in October, 2019 [source].
- Google Shopping: Listing a product on Redbubble means that your product will show up for sale on Google Shopping. Given that Google is the most trafficked website in the world, this is a great way of getting organic traffic.
- Easy to use UI The Redbubble user interface is clean, intuitive, and easy to use. It’s more tedious than Printful, Merch, and Gearbubble if you just want to upload a t-shirt design, but if you want to place your design on multiple products, they make it very easy to do all at once.
- Integration: One downside is that Redbubble doesn’t integrate with other online marketplaces, so you are essentially uploading your designs to products that will only sell through their marketplace. Sometimes I manually cross-list products such as popular stickers onto other marketplaces, but I’m forced to manually create the order to the customer in an online arbitrage fashion when they sell.
- Pricing: I don’t know if this is more positive or negative, but you can’t control your profit margins on a per-design basis. Rather, you control your margins on a per-product basis and you do so by entering a % markup that will instantaneously be applied to all of your product listings (making it hard to target price points like $19.99).
- Three negatives about Redbubble:
#1 Inability to control product costs on a per-product basis (and cost control lacks flexibility)
#2 Lack of integrations with other marketplaces
#3 People steal each other’s work from Redbubble all the time
Tier 3 Markets
The tier 3 markets should be prioritized behind tiers 1 and 2.
They each received this classification because of their organic traffic and/or reputation amongst customers.
In short: Ebay has great traffic but a poor reputation in many customers’ eyes, as people still think of it as either an auction website or a place to get products super-cheap from China.
The rest are online print-on-demand marketplaces that serve as both marketplaces and fulfillment partners, making them grade extremely high in the ease-of-use category, but they are competing with the e-commerce behemoths (and each other) for web traffic the same customer base.
Ebay Rating: 9/10
💰 Monthly Cost: $0.35 per listing per month
Ebay has a bit of a negative perception as an online marketplace, as many people still perceive it as an auction website. It still boasts great organic traffic though, and should not be overlooked.
You can find live statistics about Ebay’s reach here.
- It’s more popular than you think Ebay has 183 million users worldwide as of 2019 (Source)
- The mobile app is popular too Ebay’s mobile app has been downloaded a total of 490+ million times (Source)
- Selling internationally is easy Ebay has a global shipping center in Kentucky that allows you to offer products globally at no added cost to you, the seller
- Two negatives about Ebay:
#1 it’s still widely perceived to be an auction website.
#2 savvy people who regularly shop on Ebay are typically looking for the best deal (as in, low prices).
Print-on-Demand Products
Different platforms offer a multitude of different print-on-demand products, sometimes even offering different brands of the same product to choose from.
The most commonly sold print-on-demand items are t-shirts and coffee mugs. What sets most drop-ship printing companies apart are the additional products in their catalog.
Here is a non-definitive look into products offered by each other four dropshipped POD platforms that I use:
- T-Shirts
- Premium T-Shirts
- V-Neck T-Shirts
- Tank Tops
- Long Sleeve T-Shrits
- Raglan Shirts
- Sweatshirts
- Pullover Hoodies
- Zip Hoodies
- PopSockets
Printful
- T-Shirts (Many brands, Tank Tops, Long Sleeve, 3/4 Sleeve, Sweatshirts, Hoodies)
- Pants (Leggings, Skirts, Dresses, Sports Bras)
- Hats (Trucker, Snapbacks, Dad, Mesh, Beanies, Bucket, Visors)
- Swimwear
- Accessories (Bags, Backpacks, Socks)
- Home and Living (Coffee Mugs, Aprons, Pillow, Wall Art, Beach Towels, Phone Cases)
- And More! (Printful is constantly expanding their catalog)
- T-Shirts (Many brands, Tank Tops, Long Sleeve, 3/4 Sleeve, Sweatshirts, Hoodies)
- Jewelry (Necklaces, Bracelets)
- Hats (Flat Bill, Beanies) * they claim to sell hats, but I don’t think they actually keep them in stock
- Coffee Mugs
- Travel Mugs
- Shot Glasses
- Pants (Leggings)
- Home and Living (Wall Art, Pillow Cases, Phone Cases)
- T-Shirts (Many brands, Tank Tops, Long Sleeve, 3/4 Sleeve, Sweatshirts, Hoodies)
- Pants (Leggings, Skirts, Dresses)
- Mugs (11oz, 15oz, Color Changing, Travel, Shot Glasses)
- Accessories (Stickers, Bags, Backpacks, Socks, Notebooks, Clocks, Art Boards, Acylic Blocks)
- Home and Living (Coffee Mugs, Aprons, Pillow, Wall Art, Beach Towels, Phone Cases, Duvets, Scarves, Tapestries)
- + More! (Redbubble is constantly expanding their catalog)
Start Your Print-on-Demand Business
Excited to get started? I don’t blame you!
Here are the steps you’ll want to take, top-down perspective:
Choose a production partner
In order for your print-on-demand businesses to grow and scale, you’ll be farming out the inventory storage, production, and shipping to a production partner. This will allow you to focus on scaling your business!
Research profitable niches
It’s often not enough to come up with a great design and list it for sale on various print-on-demand products. The most successful sellers learn how to research what’s already selling well using market data and cater to that demand.
Create winning designs
Designing is much easier than you expect… I promise. There are even free tools you can leverage such as Photopea that can do almost everything Adobe Photoshop does, all from your web browser! Additionally, paid services like Canva make it easy to design using their pre-made design elements.
Open seller account(s)
You won’t get sales if your products aren’t out in front of potential customers, so ask yourself: where do customers go to do their online shopping? Whatever answer popped into your head, you’ll want to be sure to sell there! The more potential customers that see your products, the more sales you’ll make.
Expand!
To piggy-back off of that last sentence: Getting more products in front of more potential customers will result in more sales. Let that sink in! You will want to offer your print-on-demand products on all of the major e-commerce websites that allow print-on-demand, which will help make as much money as possible.
If you’re ready to get your print-on-demand business started and want an unfair advantage, you’re in luck.
7-figure Amazon seller Ryan Hogue recently published a step-by-step course that outlines the exact actions you’ll want to take in order to grow and scale your print-on-demand business from scratch! Enrollment is OPEN:
🚀 Enroll in Ryan’s Method: Dropshipped Print-on-demand TODAY!
Save about $100 when you use coupon code MWORDS20 (depending on payment method).
Have questions about Amazon Print-on-Demand? Talk to me below!
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