1. Product Research

A lot of people who want to start a POD business have asked me about the practical steps they should take. I’d tell you what I often tell them.

“It all begins with research!”

Before selecting a niche that you want to create products for, do your research. Carry out keyword research for the best keywords to use when listing your products on the marketplace.

When the right products meet the right audience, the cash begins to flow in! It’s not rocket science. You can’t sell big if you don’t offer your products to customers who actually need them.

As a Print-on-Demand seller, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to define your target audience. This will help you tailor your products to suit their possible needs and the trending demands in the niche.

Some niches are way too general. Creating Print-on-De- mand products for **“students,” “men”, “women” **or **“children” **is just too broad.

Try creating products for narrow niches with little competition. I have tons of **“Engineer Mugs”, “Nurse Mugs” **and **“Camo Face Masks” **in my Etsy shop. This way, I can attract a defined audience rather than throwing my net into the ocean and hoping it will catch something.

When you’re creating your products, also consider special events and holidays. These are the power-ups of the POD business. They are special times when you can increase the price of your products and still sell like crazy!

Here are some holidays that drive up sales of POD items:

• New Year Day – January 1st- Valentine’s Day - February 14th- Mother’s Day - Second Sunday in May- Father’s Day - Third Sunday in June- Halloween – October 31st- Veterans Day – November 11th- Thanksgiving – the 4th Thursday of November.- Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving- *Cyber Monday – the Monday after the Thanksgiving *- Green Monday – the 2nd Monday of December- Free Shipping Day – December 14th- Christmas Day – December 25th- Boxing Day – December 26th

Once your niche and audience are defined, you can now get into the actual creation of the products. It all begins with finding the right quote. How do you want to go about it? Funny? Sarcastic? Interesting? Or will you just go with a cool image?

Whatever you do, just make sure that it’s something people will love to have.

After you’ve selected your quotes, you then move on to the design. If you have a good mastery of Canva or Photoshop, you’re good to go.

But if you don’t, you can hire a freelance designer to work with you. Creating the designs might be fun – until you have to make hundreds of designs within a short time. But you can get someone to do it for you in no time.

Once that’s out of the way, you need to create a product image on a supplier website. If you don’t, you won’t have a mockup image to upload to the marketplace.

Once your designs are ready, it’s time to upload!

2. Create a Product on a Supplier website

There are tons of POD suppliers out there. Although I use GearBubble, other suppliers like Printful and Printify also offer great POD services.

Once you select your supplier, go ahead and create an account with them. Note that you can use more than one supplier. This is to ensure that there are no delays in the fulfillment of your orders.

Once you log into your supplier account, you can upload your designs and create your products using the available mockup designs. This will render your product design in realistic 3D.

You can export this image and upload it with your product images for better customer attraction and sales.

3. Upload it to Marketplaces

We’ve talked about different marketplaces where you can upload your products.

But getting hundreds of products up can be a bit… well, it can be a pain in the ass. This involves putting up your product information on marketplaces for potential buyers that might be interested in them.

This product information includes your product image, product title, product tags, as well as product descriptions. You need to build up a good product title and tag, because it affects your product visibility.

The purpose of your product listing is defeated if your products cannot be easily found when people search for them. This invisibility can be caused by the wrong use of keywords and key phrases.

You also need to create a good description, because you’re not selling to robots! You are selling to humans who will actually appreciate the details of your product and how it can benefit them.

From here, grab the mockup image you got from the supplier in the previous step and upload it and your product on the relevant POD marketplaces. It’s hard to do all of this manually, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of products to upload.

I know because I’ve been there. Luckily, there’s a way out! But you’ll have to wait to find out what it is. I’ll explain how to handle the rigorous uploading process in the next chapter.

4. Order and Fulfillment

Getting a sales order is the result of having a good product, great SEO, and a pinch of luck. Once you make a sale, you have to place the order for the sold product on your supplier’s website.

The supplier will then initiate the production and shipping process. Once the product is on its way to the customer, you have to send the tracking information to them so that they can follow it from their end. For this, you have to submit the tracking info on the order in the marketplace.

Once the buyer gets it and is satisfied, hopefully you’ll get positive feedback or reviews, which is good for your business.