If you want to reach your goals, you need to have a system. If you don’t have a system, your goals mean nothing.
New Year’s is when most people like to make New Year’s Resolutions.
We feel like a New Year is a new beginning and we want to achieve something new. People usually want to lose weight, make more money, read more books, etc.
But you know what? Most people don’t follow through on their New Year’s Resolutions or goals. They do what they planned to do on New Year’s Day and maybe for the first few weeks. But after that, most of them fail to do what they planned.
Luckily, I haven’t made New Year’s Resolutions for years, so I haven’t failed. (Just kidding 😅)
But I really haven’t set any New Year’s Resolutions, because I think it’s better to build habits.
For example, if I make a New Year’s Resolution to read one book a week, exercise five times a week, meditate every morning, etc., I might end up with 5-10 things to do every day to keep to my New Year’s Resolutions.
That’s too much.
If we make just 1-2 New Year’s Resolutions, they might be easier to achieve. But what happens after that? Should I wait for next New Year’s to get motivated and create new resolutions?
In the past few years, I’ve learned that, instead, it’s better to build new good habits and achieve goals one at a time.
For example, if you want to lose weight, you might have to do cardio every day. You have to create a system and use it every day after you wake up. Do it for many days until it becomes a habit.
Then, add that new habit to your daily routine. For example, if you already have an exercise habit and want to make ‘reading’ your next habit, create a system that helps you read more.
You might add 15-30 minutes of reading time after your cardio exercise. Do this every day until reading become your next habit.
When these two things become habits, your body will know you have to exercise after you wake up and then read for a few minutes.
You can add new habits after that. Use your system to establish your daily routine.
I found this is easier than setting New Year’s Resolutions and trying to achieve them all at once.
Anyhoo…
How is all this related to the topic you’re going to talk about today, Bank!?
Well, I’m going to tell you: defining goals for your Print-on-Demand business is like setting New Year’s Resolutions.
But goals are useless! You just said so!
Well, goals are useless without a system, and success is difficult to achieve if you set goals that are TOO BIG.
A goal is like a direction, but system is for making progress.
In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to define a goal and set up a system for your Print-on-Demand business in 2021.
Let’s get started!
Define Your First Goal
Ask yourself: “What do I want from my Print-on-Demand business?”
To make an extra $1,000 a month?
To make enough money to quit your job?
To build a passive income?
List all of them. There are no wrong answers. We can adjust the goals later.
Then, ask yourself: “Where am I currently at in my Print-on-Demand business?”
Just starting out?
Done it for a year but haven’t made a lot yet?
Already making $10,000 a year?
Once you answer these questions, you’ll know what you want and where you’re at right now.
In the title above, I wrote “First Goal” because you can have many goals in a year.
But you have to achieve them one at a time.
You can set the minimum goal according to where you’re at and adjust it during the year.
When I started doing internet marketing, I set a goal for each stage of my life.
For example, early on, I set a Short-Term Goal to just pay my bills. I wanted to make $500 a month to pay for food, transportation fees, and my some of my bills.
That’s all. Then, I created a system to achieve my Short-Term Goal.
I’ll talk about how to create a system for a Print-on-Demand business later in this article.
Then, when I reached my Short-Term Goal, I set a Medium-Term Goal to not work at a corporate job.
My dad wanted me to work for a company after I graduated from university. It’s what most parents want their child to do. Get good grades in school and work for some company.
I didn’t want to do that. So I created a system that helped me make at least $2,000 a month.
If I was making this kind of money, my dad would allow me to do anything I wanted. I’d have enough money to live and wouldn’t have to work a corporate job.
Then, after working for a while, I set a Long-Term Goal to build a business that could generate $5,000-10,000 a month passively for me so I could live the life I wanted.
Again, I had to create another system to reach my Long-Term Goal.
In the same way, you have to set goals for your Print-on-Demand business. You have to define Short- Medium- and Long-Term Goals, then create a system that will help you progress towards your goals.
Think about it. What are your Short- Medium- and Long-Term Goals?
The Successful Print-on-Demand System
Your GOAL will tell you the direction you want to go.
Then, you have to create a SYSTEM to make progress.
When I passed out and fell in my restroom last month, the doctor told me my heartbeat was faster than normal. It was over 90 beats per minute.
He told me to do cardio exercises every day to get rid of my heart issue. My heartbeat would slow down if I exercised regularly.
My GOAL is to get rid of my heart issue.
My SYSTEM is to do cardio exercises every day.
For a Print-on-Demand business, the GOAL might be to make $500-$10,000 (or whatever) every month, depending on the Short-Medium- and Long-Term goals you specified in the previous step.
The SYSTEM – that is, what you have to do to achieve your goal – is to upload new products to Amazon and Etsy every day.
Yes, this seems broad. We have to add detail here so we can follow the system more easily. But we still have to base the system on the goals we want to achieve.
For example, if you’re just getting started and want to make $500 a month from POD, you might create a system like this:
- Do product research and find 10 quotes
- Use 10 quotes to create 10 new designs
- Use those 10 designs to create a white coffee mug, a two-tone coffee mug, a shot glass, and a travel mug (40 products in total)
- Create and upload those 40 products to Amazon and Etsy.
You’ll create 1,200 products a month. This might not help you reach your goal in the first month, but if you do it for 3-4 months you’ll have 3,600-4,800 products in your account.
To make $500 in profit per month, you need to sell 60-80 units a month, which is possible when you have this product volume.
Anyway, please note that you have to create products with great quotes and nice designs and have excellent product titles and keywords for every product you upload. Otherwise, your product won’t attract or be visible to visitors.
If you’re new to it, no worries. Start slowly. You’ll learn the ropes after you upload a few products and check the stats in your account. You’ll know which niche or style you should create your next designs for.
Increase Your Goal and Improve Your System
If you’ve reached your first goal, you have to take things to the next level and update your system.
For example, if you achieve your Medium-Term Goal to make $2,000 a month, you should start working on your Long-Term Goal.
In the Print-on-Demand business, uploading more products to your account can help you make more money automatically.
But there’s a faster way.
When you reach $500 or $1,000 a month by selling print-on-demand products, you’ll know from your stats which niches or styles sell well.
Want to make more sales? Just list more products in the niches that have been selling. Create designs based on the styles that people have been snapping up.
If you already have sales stats, don’t blindly create new products the way you did when you were starting out. Use your stats to strategically create new products.
You’ll be able to make more sales much faster compared to the early days.
Also, you might hire someone to work for you so you can list more products and reach your Medium-Term Goal faster.
Your improved system might look something like this:
- Select 20 winning niches and hire a virtual assistant to find 50 quotes for each niche. You’ll have 1,000 quotes in total.
- Hire a graphic designer to create 1,000 designs from those 1,000 quotes.
- Prepare the product titles and keywords in an Excel File.
- Use the1,000 designs to create coffee mugs, two-tone mugs, shot glasses, and travel mugs. You’ll have 4,000 products to upload in total.
- Don’t upload them by yourself.
- Send the product info in the Excel file to the same virtual assistant and ask them to create and upload products to Amazon and Etsy. Ask him or her to upload 130-140 products a day.
- Do this every month and select NEW niches to create products for.
You’ll now have 4,000 new products in your winning niches every month. If you do this for 5-6 months, you should be able to reach your Medium-Term Goal.
Again, it depends on your products’ quotes, designs, product titles and keywords.
I used the same system when I tried to reach my medium-term POD goal. I hired a graphic designer and a virtual assistant to upload 150 products a day to my Amazon account.
Right now, I have PODTurbo to handle the uploading for me. It’s cheaper and better than hiring a virtual assistant.
Furthermore, if you want to make more sales and hand off the annoying job of talking to your customers when they receive the wrong product or suppliers when there’s a problem with the carrier, you might try Amazon FBA.
Selling print-on-demand products through Amazon FBA is the End Goal of the POD business (that is, if you don’t want to scale using paid traffic).
When you have many good-selling products in your Amazon Warehouse, you’ll enjoy making $100-200k or more a year passively, because Amazon will handle most of the work for you.
I’ve been selling Print-on-Demand products in the marketplaces for five years, and this is my Long-Term Goal.
I haven’t reached it yet. I’m trying to, and hopefully I’ll achieve it this year.
My goal for this business is to make $200k a year from selling POD on Amazon this year alone. I’ve already created a system to help me reach that goal.
I have the sale stats in my Amazon account, which I’ve been using to sell FBM products for many years. I just have to pick some of them to sell as FBA products.
I also have suppliers who can create and ship my products in bulk to the Amazon Warehouse at a very cheap price.
This is my system for my POD business this year. I’ll use it until the end of the year and see whether I reach my goal or not.
To Sum Up
Again, your GOAL is the direction you want to go, and your SYSTEM is what you use to get there.
A GOAL is nothing without a SYSTEM.
So, if you want to reach your goal, you have to create your own system.
Check where you’re at, and don’t set too BIG a goal if you’re just getting started. Set a small goal, create a system, do the work, and up your goal after that.
The way to build and grow a Print-on-Demand business is basically to keep uploading products. Find out what sells, and try to list more products in those selling niches.
It’s simple, but you have to create a system and add more detail to it so you (or your team) can follow it easily.
Okay, it’s time to create your own system for 2021!
Talk soon,
—Bank K.
