53 min read

The Print-on-Demand Free Mini-Course For Beginners

7 Steps to Building and Growing Passive Income by Selling Print-on-Demand Products on Amazon and Etsy

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Have you ever wanted to build an online business but don’t have much budget or don’t know how to start?

Fortunately, there’s an online business model that allows you to get started easily and with a small budget.

It’s called print-on-demand.

The print-on-demand business has been my bread and butter for many years.

Before print-on-demand, I did many things in internet marketing – affiliate marketing, website monetization, mobile applications, etc.

But I could only stick with them for just a few months.

However, I’ve been working on print-on-demand from 2014 until today. It’s a business model you can use to build and grow passive income for many years.

I love the print-on-demand business.

When someone new to internet marketing asked me what online business is best for those getting started in online business, I always recommend print-on-demand.

I’ll tell you why in this article.

And I’ll tell you how to build and grow a print-on-demand business in detail in this mini-course.

After you’ve finished reading this print-on-demand tutorial, I guarantee that you will:

• Have a better understanding of the print-on-demand business model.
• Be able to launch your own print-on-demand business.
• Make your first print-on-demand sale within 30 days.

But remember: reading without taking action is useless.

I always tell my readers that if you read any articles in my blog, make sure to take action on what you learn. That’s the only way to get results.

So, in each section, I’ll give you some ‘homework’ so you can start working as soon as you finish reading a section.

I hope you enjoy The 7 Steps To Building and Growing Passive Income From Print-on-Demand Products!

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Introduction

Before we dive into those 7 Steps, let’s start with the 30,000-foot view and answer three clarifying questions:

• What is Print-on-Demand?
• Why do I always recommend it to people?
• How does this business model work?

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What is Print-on-Demand?

Let’s start with the first one: What is Print-on-Demand?

Have you seen those ads for fancy T-shirts or coffee mugs on your Facebook News Feed? I bet you have. 🙂

No? Let’s check out one of them:

Did you know that most of the people selling those products don’t own a factory?

They never see, make, or even ship the products themselves.

Since I started working as a print-on-demand seller, I’ve sold thousands of t-shirts, coffee mugs, travel mugs, face masks, and so on, but I’ve never seen my products in person.

As print-on-demand sellers, we usually work with a supplier to customize products like t-shirts or coffee mugs with our designs. We sell them under our own brand.

That means we don’t even need to pay for the product until we sell it. We don’t need to buy products in bulk or stock any inventory.

That’s the Print-on-Demand business model. 🙂

You can create a design, put it on a t-shirt, coffee mug, tumbler, or whatever suppliers can make for you, and sell the product under your brand.

Why do I always recommend this model?

The next question is: Why do I always recommend this model?

The answer is simple. As you can see, it’s easy to get started, no advanced knowledge is required, and you don’t need much money to start.

Think about other online business models like affiliate marketing or email marketing.

They are good online businesses but they require you to have skills like copywriting, knowledge of A/B split testing, landing page optimization, etc.

For affiliate marketing, you need to learn how to pick good offers or products to promote. You also need to have a budget to buy traffic, which usually difficult for newbies, especially those who don’t have much budget.

I still remember the first day I bought paid traffic from Google. My $50 disappeared in just a few minutes after my campaign was approved!

Pooooooof! Like magic, $50 disappeared from my pocket!

I won’t say it’s a bad thing. It’s just a bit difficult if you’ve never run paid traffic before and have a small budget to get started.

After you’ve run paid traffic for a while, you also need to learn how to do A/B split testing and landing page optimization to make your campaigns profitable – that is, before the product owners stop you from promoting their products.

Ah…yes, the products or offers you sell can be removed by their owners, any time they want.

You will enjoy making $500 a day by promoting an affiliate product. But when the owner decides not to continue letting you promote it, your $500 a day will disappear and you’ll need to start all over again.

$500/day – Poooooof!

Again, promoting affiliate products with paid traffic is a good business model but you need to have a budget and learn how to do it properly.

I did it in the past. It’s one of the best online businesses of all time.

Let’s look at one more example.

To make something like email marketing work, you need to build an email list.

If you don’t have a budget, you’ll need to rely on free traffic and it will take months or years to grow your list.

If you want to grow your list quickly, you need a budget and will have to spend money on ads.

(Money can buy everything, including the traffic for your website!)

But again, to run the ads, you need to make sure you can create a high-converting landing page so every penny you spend can convert into an email.

Otherwise, you might lose money when no one gives you their email address.

$100 Pooooooof! And no emails!

Okay, let’s assume that you’ve got some email addresses.

The next thing you have to learn is how to write an email and a subject line that will make people open and read your email.

This is copywriting.

If you’re a non-native English speaker like me, it’ll be more difficult. You’ll have to hire someone to proofread it for you.

(Yes, this article was proofread, too. Thanks to my proofreader for making this article fantastic!)

Anyway, email marketing is a highly recommended business model for the long term. But it requires time to build an email list, as well as some skills.

You can do it, but I suggest that you have another way to pay your bills before you commit to it.

The Print-on-Demand business is different.

People will buy your product because of the design of the product. They don’t care much about what you write in the product description.

When you buy a t-shirt or coffee mug, do you check the product description?

No, right? We just look for a design we like and make a purchase.

This t-shirt is cool. I like it. I’ll buy it!

This coffee mug is funny! I want to get it for my dad.

That’s it.

You don’t have to be a copywriting wizard or do any A/B split testing.

No money to buy traffic? No problem!

For this print-on-demand business model, we put products in places where there are billions of eyes and you’ll have a chance to sell.

No need to have a big budget or learn how to run paid ads.

Compared to other online businesses, it’s easy to get started.

That’s why I always recommend it to everyone I know. 🙂

And the last question before we will dive into the main lessons is:

How does this business model work?

Okay, you understand how the print-on-demand process works. Let me sum it up in one picture:

You put your print-on-demand products such as t-shirts, coffee mugs, tumblers, etc. in your store.

When a customer orders a product, you send the order and product info to your supplier.

You pay money to your supplier, who will start making the product.

When the product ships, you’ll have to send the tracking info to your customer.

That’s it. This is how print-on-demand works.

You don’t even need to touch or see your product. Almost everything is handled by your supplier.

You can run this business without leaving your home! 🙂

Next, we’ll talk about business models.

There are many ways to sell print-on-demand products.

You can sell your products on an e-commerce platform like Shopify or Gearbubble Pro, and then drive paid traffic (like Facebook or Google Ads) to your store.

This way, you can make sales very fast (that is, if your products are what people want).

But again, you need some budget and knowledge of how to run ads. Otherwise, you’ll be throwing money down the drain.

I have an easier way.

Not only is it easier. It also requires fewer resources.

It’s the low-hanging fruit model.

I learned this business model from Rachel Rofé. If you want to learn more about this in very deep detail, you can check out our her blog. 🙂

With this business model, you don’t have to run ads, but you will put your products where people can see them.

I’m talking about marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy, which billions of people visit every day.

You just need a fraction of these people to see your products. Then you can make passive income from free traffic when these people buy them.

The more products you have, the more consistent passive income you can make. 

It’s a low-risk business model that anyone can use.

But it won’t make you rich overnight!

There is one thing people must have: either money or time.

In this business model, you don’t need money to get started and be successful. But you do need time.

To make this low-hanging print-on-demand model work, you need to create and upload tons of products to Amazon, Etsy, or any other marketplace.

As many products as you can!

Don’t expect sales if you’ve uploaded 100 or 1,000 products.

(You might make some sales after you have 1,000 products in your account, but it’s difficult to make consistent sales with this number of products.)

Billions of people visit Amazon or Etsy every month, but there are billions of products on these websites.

You need to compete with them to get a fraction of the traffic.

If you don’t want to spend money to get your products in the top ranks of Amazon or Etsy, you need to compete with other sellers with the time you have.

To make consistent sales, you need to have at least 10,000-100,000 products in your Amazon or Etsy accounts.

In the first year, I started doing this business, I had around 30,000 products in my account. I made sales almost every day.

I kept uploading new products every day, and now I have over 100,000 products in my Amazon account and make at least $300 every day, without doing anything.

Here are the latest stats from my Amazon account:

$7,159 in the past 7 days– a 759% increase from last year!

$16,320 in the past 30 days – a 262% increase from last year!

Again, these numbers are derived from the 100,000++ products in my Amazon account. I’ve spent many years building this inventory.

Now, I spend only 1-2 hours a month working.

And that’s the ultimate goal for our low-hanging business. We want to build and grow our passive income so we can live the life we want.

So, in this mini-course, I’ll share with you how to build a “passive income engine” with print-on-demand products. I’ll share with you what I’ve learned over the last seven years.

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Step 1: Pick and List Niche Markets

Okay, now you have an overview of the print-on-demand business.

Next, let’s start with the first step, which is to Pick and List Niche Markets.

What’s a Niche Market?

Well, I’m not a marketing teacher who can give you an exact definition, so I’ll tell you what it means to me.

A niche market is basically a group of people who are interesting in the same thing, or have the same demographics or the same jobs.

Before you create a print-on-demand product, you need to know who you want to sell it to.

Otherwise, you won’t know what products to create, right?

As I said earlier, you must list tons of print-on-demand products to get a small fraction of Amazon or Etsy traffic and make consistent passive income.

To do that, you need to have tons of niches.

Again, this business model is not like building a brand. If you want to build a brand, you might choose one main niche for your shop, try to build your brand, and make sales from this main niche only.

But this low-hanging business model is different. Your goal is to earn passive income by winning a fraction of the free traffic on big marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy.

So, you won’t find just one niche, but will create a list of hundreds of niches. You can use this list to create products consistently.

The question is, how do you find all those niches?

Well, you fish where the fish are.

I usually go to Amazon or Etsy to find niches.

Let me show you how.

I’ll go to Etsy, insert a keyword like “Mug”, and click the search button. Hundreds of coffee mug listings will appear in the search results.

Because of Etsy’s search algorithm, these are probably the top-selling mugs. This top marketplace won’t randomly sort the products. It’ll show you the ones that have been selling.

Try it. You’ll see products in all sorts of niches in the results. Pick a few of them and try to categorize them.

Let me show you some examples:

Niche: Dad
Category: Family

Niche: Accountant, Tax Accountant, CPA (Certified Public Accountant)
Category: Professions

Niche: Grandson
Category: Family

Niche: Cat
Category: Pets

Niche: Stepdad
Category: Family

Niche: Sarcastic
Category: Funny

Niche: Nan
Category: Family

These are a few of the niches you can find when you search Etsy using the keyword “Mug”.

Now, you have to categorize them.

• Family (Dad, Grandson, Stepdad, Nan)
• Pets (Cat)
• Professions (Accountant, Tax Accountant, CPA)
• Funny (Sarcastic)

Then, you have to add more niches to each category. You can easily find more niches by going to Etsy and doing another search.

Previously, we used only the word “Mug” in the query. This time, let’s add more search terms to get more specific niches.

Instead of using just “Mug”, add a category to the search query – like “Family Mug”, “Profession Mug”, “Pet Mug”, or “Funny Mug”.

I tried a search using the keywords “Family Mug”. Check out what I found:

From these search results, we can see that apart from the “Dad” niche, there is “Mom”, “Son”, “Daughter”, “Siblings”, and many other family members.

Add them all to the “Family” category.

If we search using the keywords “Profession Mug”, we’ll get these search results:

There are more niches, like “Marketer”, “Manager”, “Court Reporter”, “Custom Profession”, “Pharmacist”, “Social Worker”, “Lawyer”, and “Dentist”.

There are hundreds of professions out there, so you can add many new niches to the profession category.

Keep doing this, and you’ll have many niches you can create products for.

You can also use this method on Amazon or other marketplaces to find niches.

On Amazon, I like to start from this page.

The page shows the top-selling mugs. You’ll get an idea of what niches are selling well at the moment.

Next, go to the main Amazon page and search using more specific keywords like “Family Mug”, “Profession Mug”, etc. You’ll be able to add tons of niches to your list.

This is the “Fish where the fish are” method you can use to find tons of niches.

There’s another way to find niches that I like to use.

It’s called the “Top 100” approach.

When you find some categories using the first method, you can use Google to accelerate your discovery of new niches.

Go to Google and search for something like this:

“Top 100 Professions in the US”

“Top 100 Famous Dog Breeds”

“Top 100 Popular Cat Breeds”

“Top 100 Hobbies”

“Nickname for Mom”

“Nickname for Dad”

etc.

You get a list like this from Google:

Boom! You now have 100 new niches added to the Profession category.

Boom! 100 new dog breeds added to the Dog category.

Boom! 100 new hobbies added to the Hobby category.

Using the “Top 100” approach, you can grow your lists of niches very fast.

This technique also helps you find “untapped niches” that most sellers might not think of.

For example, most people know that products in niches like “Dad” or “Mom” will sell really well, especially on Father’s Day or Mother’s Day.

Keywords like “Dad Mug” or “Mom Mug” will have high search volume because they’re the words most people will use when they want to search for a mug for their parents.

So most sellers will create print-on-demand products in the “Dad” or “Mom” niches.

But when most sellers create the products in the same niches, there will be tons of products in these niches and the competition will be very high.

And these sellers won’t make many sales.

In contrast, if we keep building lists in the Family category, we will find niches like “Stepdad”, “Father-in-Law”, “Bonus Dad”, or even nicknames for dad like “Daddy”, “Papa”, “Pop”, which have much less competition.

Let’s see the number of products we get when we search Etsy using the keywords “Dad Mug”:

There are 307,744 products!

In contrast, the number of products from the search query “Stepdad Mug” is…

Only 17,308 products! That’s almost 20 times lower.

The upshot: if we have products in these small niches, it’s easier to make more sales.

Okay, you might think that the search volume from keywords like these might be lower. Between the keywords “Dad Mug” and “Stepdad Mug”, the first keyword will have a lot higher search volume.

True. But what if we have products in many small niches like these?

The collective search volume will be as high as the volume for one big niche. And it’s easier for products in these small niches to receive a higher ranking in the search results.

Using these two methods – the We fish where the fishes are and the “Top 100” – you can grow your lists very quickly and find many untapped niches that have few competitors.

The next thing we need to do is to pick niches to create products for.

We have tons of niches, but which one should we pick to create products for first?

I categorize niches in two ways:

• Trend
• Evergreen

First, I’ll check whether a specific holiday (like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day) is coming up. I know I can sell lots of products these days.

If there is a holiday, I’ll pick niches related to it and create products for them first.

Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day are the top holidays for which print-on-demand products sell well.

These are called “trend” niches.

If there’s a general holiday like Christmas or New Year’s – for which anyone might buy a gift – I’ll create products for all of my niches.

During Christmas, New Year’s, or Q4, when everyone purchases gifts, they won’t only purchase products for their family members but also for their friends and colleagues.

Some niches can be sold all year long. I have many niches in the profession category that sell at any time of the year. These are called “evergreen” niches.

Okay, this is the first step we’re going to take. We’ll create lists of niches to create print-on-demand products for.

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Step 2: Find Quotes

When you finish creating your list of niches, the next step is to find quotes or messages to put on your products.

But wait…what’s a quote, and why we need to find one?

Aren’t we supposed to learn how to sell print-on-demand products? Shouldn’t we be learning how to create or draw a nice design?

Nah…not yet. You don’t have to draw or create a nice design in the low-hanging fruit model.

You don’t have to be an artist or great graphic designer to make good money from the print-on-demand business.

I’m no artist, but I can still earn a lot from print-on-demand – even with my lousy Photoshop skills.

Let’s check out the top-selling coffee mugs on Amazon again:

These were the top-selling coffee mugs right before Father’s Day.

As you can see, most of them are just simple text designs.

They have funny messages like:

“My Favorite Child Gave Me This Mug”

“I’m a Proud Dad of a Freaking Awesome Daughter…yes, she bought me this mug”

“Dad, no matter what life throws at you, at least you don’t have ugly children.”

“Dad. Thanks for being my dad. If I had a different Dad, I would punch him in the face and go find you. -Your Favorite”

These are what we call quotes.

To make money from the low-hanging business model, we just have to find quotes like these and put them on our print-on-demand products.

That’s it. No need to draw anything or have great Photoshop skills.

You just need to know how to insert text in Photoshop and center-align it.

Simple text designs sell well. Most of the time, they top the Amazon and Etsy sales charts.

Most people purchase a print-on-demand product because of the message.

If people like the message, they’ll buy the product, even if the design is just black text on a plain background.

The example above is a Father’s Day product. Children just want to pass a message to their dad via coffee mugs like this.

They just want to say something nice to their dad or make him laugh when he unboxes the gift.

There are other POD products besides coffee mugs. They include:

Tumblers:

Ceramic Shot Glasses:

Bracelets:

Watches:

These are just a few examples of print-on-demand products.

There are many others you can put a message on and sell.

As you can see, most of the products above contain different messages. Most of them are just plain text on a plain background.

Also, they show a message the “sender” wants to convey to the “receiver”.

In this case, the sender is a son or a daughter, and the receiver is a dad. This is a gift that people purchase for someone they love.

Apart from products that people purchase as a gift, there are products that people will purchase for themselves.

Many people want branded promotional items like mugs or t-shirts to help them publicize themselves or their business.

Like these:

or these:

If you’re a fan of Breaking Bad and watch Better Call Saul, the second tumbler in the image above is from this TV series.

The lawyer Saul wants to represent himself with this tumbler as well.

It Saul good, man!

These are some examples of appliances that people will buy to represent themselves.

People will buy this kind of product to represent themselves. Most of them will also buy it for their colleagues.

So, to make money from the print-on-demand business, you need to find quotes like these and put them on your products.

The next question is, How and where do you find these quotes?

I divide quotes into two types:

• General Quotes
• Substituted Quotes

General quotes, which you can see in the products above, are easy to find on the internet.

I normally use four websites to find quotes like this:

• Amazon
• Etsy
• Pinterest
• Google Image

Choose some niches from the list you created in the previous step to find quotes.

For Amazon and Etsy, you will still fish where the fish are.

You’ll browse products, see which ones are selling well, and choose the quotes on them to create your products.

But please don’t copy designs!

You have to create new designs with these quotes and also make sure they aren’t trademarked.

Otherwise, you might have an issue with your account, because your designs will be duplicates of others.

Make sure the quotes you find are not trademarked. Always create new designs.

This is how to find quotes on Amazon and Etsy.

You use keywords like this to find quotes:

ADJECTIVE + NICHE + PRODUCT

Replace ADJECTIVE with the emotion you want your product to evoke – like “Funny”, “Meaningful”, or “Inspirational”.

Replace NICHE with the niche you found in the previous step.

Replace PRODUCT with any print-on-demand product.

For example:

“Funny” + “Engineer” + “T-shirt”

“Meaningful” + “Father” + “Card”

“Inspirational” + “Lawyer” + “Gift”

As you can see, there are many general quotes we can find using these keywords.

The next question is, which quotes can be sold?

I always check whether the product I got the quote from has received customer reviews or not.

If there are reviews, it means the product has sold in the past. You can check customer reviews on both Amazon and Etsy.

Read the reviews for a bunch of products. You’ll get a better understanding of what people in different niche markets want. You also might get some fresh ideas for new quotes.

That’s is how to find quotes from Amazon and Etsy. Again, you fish where the fish are.

Another way to find quotes is to search Pinterest or Google Images.

These are two websites where you can find thousands of new and interesting quotes.

You can easily find interesting quotes using the keyword formula I described above:

ADJECTIVE + NICHE + “Quote”

Note: You can replace “Quote” with other words like “Saying”, “Phrase”, or “Prayer”, too.

Like this:

“Funny” + “Teacher” + “Quote”

“Inspirational” + “Friend” + “Quote”

“Lovely” + “Mom” + “Quote”

When you look for quotes on Google Image or Pinterest, you have to read and understand what the quotes are saying, because they have no customer reviews. They’re not like Amazon or Etsy.

Not all quotes are a good fit with every product. You have to read them and make sure you want to sell a product with this quote.

Save the quotes you like in your list, and make sure none of them is trademarked.

So far, I’ve been talking about General Quotes. You can easily find them on Amazon, Etsy, Google Image, and Pinterest.

Too lazy to find quotes on Amazon Etsy, Google, or Pinterest? – Check out My secret tool – A.I. Quote – to *build* quotes fast.

I prefer to use another type of quote, which I call a Substituted Quote.

It’s faster to find this kind of quote, and you can avoid the trademark issue by using them.

Let me introduce you to it.

A Substituted Quote is basically a quote that allows you to replace a word in the quote with a niche keyword.

Finding them is the next step to take after you find top-selling general quotes.

When you find General Quotes on the top-selling products on Amazon or products with many reviews on Etsy, you’ll use them to create new designs for your products.

The problem is, you might not make great sales, because the same quotes are probably being used by other sellers.

Some quotes also might be trademarked. If we don’t check this, we might run into issues with our account.

It’s wise to modify those top-selling quotes and create new ones.

For Substituted Quotes, you find some top-selling products and modify the quotes on them using your niche keyword.

For example:

The main quote is, “I love you, mom. When you smile, I smile.”

The niche for this main quote is “mom”.

So, if you have a list of niches in the family category, you can use this quote to create other quotes for other family members.

Just substitute “mom” with another family member.

Like this:

“I love you, dad. When you smile, I smile.”

“I love you, aunt. When you smile, I smile.”

“I love you, granddaughter. When you smile, I smile.”

If you have 100 niches related to the family category, you’ll create new 100 quotes very quickly.

You can also do the same for other niches.

For example:

I’ll use the quote from Better Call Saul again.

“World’s 2^nd Best Lawyer”

You can use this quote to create new quotes in the profession niches, like this:

“World’s 2^nd Best Engineer”

“World’s 2^nd Best Nurse”

“World’s 2^nd Best Teacher”

There are hundreds of occupations, and you can use them to create hundreds of new quotes very fast.

This is why I recommended that you create a list of niches in the previous step. You can easily use them to create new quotes this way.

If you have 100 occupations on your list, you just have to find 10 top-selling quotes to create 1,000 new quotes.

If the main quotes you find are top-selling ones and you use them with other niches, they usually sell well, too.

The reason is that those top-selling quotes are often used with big niches like Mom, Dad, or popular professions like Engineer, Lawyer, or Nurse.

When you use these kinds of quotes for small niches like “Welder” or “Zookeeper”, they’ll be easier to sell.

These kinds of niches are less competitive. There are plenty of Welders and Zookeepers, but not many sellers create products for them.

I have many winning products in these small niches.

And that’s how you create Substituted Quotes.

Again, you find interesting quotes that have a good sales record and substitute a word in the quote with your niche keyword.

I really like the Substituted Quotes method. Apart from the low competition, I can create new quotes very quickly. Most of the time, they are not trademarked because I’ve modified the quote with my niche keyword.

Next, once you’ve found or created some quotes, I recommend that you record them with the niche in Google Sheets, like this:

You can use this sheet to create designs or list products easily.

This is the second step you need to take to easily find interesting quotes for your print-on-demand products.

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Step 3: Create Designs

Now that you have a list of niches and quotes, it’s time to create designs for your products.

In this section, I’ll show you what kind of designs you should create, give you some tips and tricks on how to create tons of designs quickly, and how to hire a graphic designer for your print-on-demand business.

After you finish this section, you’ll know that creating designs for this business model is easy and you can create tons of them in no time. 🙂

What Kind of Designs can be sold?

I’m no good at Photoshop.

Luckily, you don’t have to be a Photoshop expert to make good money from the print-on-demand business, especially when you use the low-hanging business model.

As I showed you in the previous step, most top-selling print-on-demand products contain simple text designs.

To be exact, just black text, center-aligned, and on a plain background.

But if you have design skills, you can create other styles as well. Just make sure your designs are legible.

Again, most people purchase print-on-demand products because of the message on them.

So, if you already have a good quote, just make sure you have an easy-to-read design on the product you sell.

How to Create Designs Fast

To run a successful print-on-demand business, you need to add new products consistently and have many products in your stores.

To do that, you must create new designs and launch new products every day.

I hired a graphic designer to create designs for me after I started running my print-on-demand business.

That’s why I don’t have many tips or tricks about the design process that come from direct personal experience.

But I’ll tell you about what I get my designer to do for me each day.

There are many tools you can use to create designs fast.

Here are two you can use to create simple text designs easily:

• Photoshop
• Canva

Both cost around $10-20 a month. If you’re unfamiliar with these tools, I recommend Canva because it’s cheaper and easier to use than Photoshop.

A Canva yearly plan costs just $9.99 a month, and you can use it to create as many designs as you want. Canva has loads of nice attractive fonts you can use to create nice designs.

When I had a team to run my business for me, I purchased a Canva yearly plan and they use it to create designs. It allowed my graphic designer to work faster and more efficiently.

But if you know how to use Photoshop and have subscribed to the service, you can use Photoshop. No need to pay the additional costs for Canva.

Photoshop has a great function you can use to create tons of designs fast. I’ll tell you about it later in this section.

Choose a design size that you can use on multiple products

Basically, when creating a design, I’ll ask my graphic designer to create a design I can use on many products.

For example, you can see here that the dimensions of the design used on products like a coffee mug, camper mug, shot glass, travel mug, and most types of kitchenware are the same:

Most designs are basically vertical rectangles.

For a design like this, I normally let my designer create a design measuring 3600 x 4200px or 3000 x 3500px.

This is big enough to be printed on a t-shirt if I want to expand my product line in the future.

For my PODTurbo software, I asked my development team to use this design size, even though some products (such as tumblers) don’t use a vertical rectangle design.

This way, when I create and upload a CSV (which is the product info format we use in PODTurbo), we can use the same designs for multiple products.

I always do it this way, so my graphic designer doesn’t need to spend much time creating the other sizes of the same design. It’s better to let him create new designs.

Doing this will help you save money when you hire a graphic designer.

For example, if you hire a designer to create a design for $0.50 each and you use this design to create 5 products, the average design cost for one product will be just $0.10.

Cool, right? 🙂

Create templates you can use to generate many designs

In Step 2, I introduced you to General Quotes and Substituted Quotes.

When creating designs for each quote type, I have some tricks I use to create the designs fast.

For General Quotes, I’ll let my designer create 5-10 design templates. These templates will normally just contain something like “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.”

(Obviously, this is just placeholder text you will replace with your actual quote.)

Here are some examples of what my designer creates for me:

My designer will use this placeholder text to create templates with different fonts or layouts, then use them to create designs with the ‘real quotes’ in the future.

For Substituted Quotes, I’ll let my designer create a template as well. But this time, I’ll let him create just one template when I give him a quote.

One template per quote.

When my designer gets a new quote from my team, he will create just one template and leave space where he can insert the niche keyword in the design.

Like this:

If my team approves the design template, my graphic designer will use this template to create designs for hundreds of niches very quickly. He just has to replace NICHE with the niche keyword in the design.

This way, my graphic designer can work fast because he doesn’t need to think about the design. Again, I have him create one template for designs for all the niches I have.

You can do this yourself and save plenty of time.

Convert a color using Photoshop ActionScript

Many print-on-demand products come in different colors – black or white coffee mugs, black or white or pink tumblers, and so on.

But the black text on a plain background might not work for all products. So, to use the same design for products that are dark in color, we have to make the text white.

If we have 1,000 black text designs and convert them to white text manually, it will take many hours.

Luckily, Photoshop has a function called “Action”, which can complete this process in seconds.

Let me show you how to do it.

First, open your design in Photoshop.

Go to the “Window” menu and check “Actions”.

Click “Create new action”, enter the name of the action you want, and click “Record”.

Click on the layer of your design and press “CMD” and “I”. This is a command to convert the color from black to white in Mac.

If you use Windows, I believe you can also use “Ctrl” and “I”.

Please note that this shortcut is for converting the color to the opposite color. If your design is not black, it won’t convert to white. You’ll have to find another way to convert it to white.

Then click the “Stop” button.

That’s it. You can now use this action to quickly convert tons of designs by following these steps:

Go to File > Automate > Batch

Select the action you just created, select the source folder, select the destination folder, and click “OK”.

The Source folder is the folder of your existing designs that you want to convert from black to white.

The Destination folder is the empty folder where you want to save your new designs.

Photoshop will start processing all the designs in your source folder. If you have lots of designs, it might take a while.

Go grab a coffee, watch some YouTube videos, and come back later. Your new designs will be ready. 🙂

The Action tool in Photoshop is extremely useful.

Apart from converting colors, you can use it to do many tasks that have the same patterns.

Some of my friends use it to generate designs from quotes as well, but this requires advanced knowledge (like linking an Excel sheet to Photoshop. You can learn it by yourself later). 🙂

Should I hire a Graphic Designer?

Should you hire a designer to create designs for you?

Personally, I think it’s better to do everything yourself first so you can understand all the processes in this business model.

If you have money coming in from other businesses and want to grow a passive income from this business model, I recommend that you hire someone to help you build your print-on-demand empire.

But if your financial leash is short, I highly recommend that you do it by yourself first. Once you make some money, you can hire a graphic designer to expand your business.

The low-hanging business model requires time to launch many products. It won’t give you results in just a few months.

I’d been building my Amazon and Etsy stores for years before I started making a 6-figure annual revenue.

In the first few months, if I’m not mistaken, I made less than $100 a month.

(Yes, I paid my team to run this business, but I incurred losses for many months. But when I look at my results today, it was worth the money. :))

Where to Find a Graphic Designer

If you want to hire a graphic designer, I recommend Onlinejobs.ph.

This is a website where you can hire people from the Philippines. There are excellent workers on the site, including many talented graphic designers you can hire at an affordable price.

I’ve hired many of them and paid them $0.2-0.6 per design.

The price depends on your negotiating skill and the amount of work you can feed your designer. If you can hire them to do more work, you can negotiate a lower price per design.

Anyway, when you suggest this price to them, most of them will walk away because they think it’s too cheap.

You have to clearly explain to them in the job description what they have to do and how much work (and money) they can expect.

Just copy and paste some of the relevant sections in this mini-course and show them the kind of designs you want and the tips they can use to create designs fast.

After that, they will likely accept the cheap pay, because they’ll know they can create 100 designs in less than an hour.

But before you decide to hire anyone, let them do some trial work so you can see whether they can create the designs you want.

Give them 5-10 quotes and let them create designs.

If you like what they come up with and you can pay them what they ask, hire them.

Please note that some workers will disappear after working for a few days.

That’s normal.

That’s why you should save the names of the designers you like in a list. When one designer leaves, you can hire another one.

I think I hired 5-6 designers before I found the one who’s still been working for me.

It’s worth spending time to find a reliable designer who can help you build your print-on-demand business.

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Step 4: Launch Products on a Supplier Website

Once you’ve created your designs, the next step is to use them to create product mockups you can upload to the marketplaces.

If you’re a Photoshop wizard, you might do this yourself. You can buy a product mockup image from a stock photo website and add your design to the mockup.

If you don’t know Photoshop, no problem. Many print-on-demand companies provide a tool you can use to create a product mockup for free.

I use Gearbubble and Laser Chili for all of my products. (Laser Chili is my own print-on-demand company).

These are the two print-on-demand companies I’ve been using for years.

I use Gearbubble for products such as coffee mugs, shot glasses, travel mugs, tumblers, and so on.

I use Laser Chili for engraved products such as bracelets, keychains, dog tags, and so on, which are provided by my own company.

If you want to sell other products, you can easily search for other print-on-demand companies using keywords like:

[PRODUCT TYPE] + “Print on Demand”

For example, if you want to sell a face mask, try Googling “face mask print on demand”.

You’ll get results like this:

Visit any websites of the print-on-demand companies, check the customer reviews and prices, and select the print-on-demand companies you want to work with.

You can choose any companies you like. Most of them have the same mockup-creation process. It usually goes like this:

• Create an account
• Select a product
• Upload your design
• Enter the product details (product title, keywords, and description)
• Download and save your mockup image

After you complete these steps, you’ll have a product bearing your design on the print-on-demand website you’ve chosen.

Let me walk you through an example of how to get a product mockup on Gearbubble.

First, go to the Gearbubble website and click “Launch Product” in the top menu:

Enter your info to create a new account with Gearbubble:

Then wait for a few minutes. A confirmation link will be sent to your email. Click on that link to activate your account.

You’ll see a welcome message from Gearbubble. They have a link to the training area, too.

If you’re new to Gearbubble, watch their videos to learn how to use the system. I highly recommend watching them all.

Now you can create products on Gearbubble. Go to the “LAUNCH CAMPAIGN” button and click “Traditional”:

Select any product you want to create a mockup for and click “NEXT STEP”.

I’ll choose a coffee mug.

Next, upload your design to this page, adjust its size and the product price, duplicate the design on the back, or do anything else you want to do.

When you finish adjusting your design, then click “NEXT STEP”:

On the next page, you’ll have to insert the product title and description. You can insert anything you want for your reference.

Once you’ve inserted all the product info on this page, click “LAUNCH CAMPAIGN!”.

The system creates a product mockup with your design. You can click the link they provided to see your product on the Gearbubble website:

Your design will be on the product, and you can use it to upload to the marketplaces.

You can save this image to use when you’re creating a product for Amazon, Etsy, or any other website you want.

Again, the process to get your product mockup image on other websites is similar:

• Create an account
• Select a product
• Upload your design
• Enter the product details (usually including the product title, keywords, and description)
• Download and save your mockup image.

Choose any website you want. The goal is to get a product mockup image and upload it to the marketplaces.

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Step 5.1: Manually Launch Products on Amazon and Etsy

Okay, now you know everything you need to know to upload a product.

Now it’s time to launch your products on the marketplaces.

Although some print-on-demand companies provide Marketplace Integration, I’ll show you how to do it manually so you can get started with a small investment.

In this mini-course, I’ll focus on two big marketplaces: Amazon and Etsy.

I don’t often write about the registration process. But this is the basic guide for everybody, so I’ll include basic details about this in this course.

Let’s start with: How to get your Amazon Seller Account.

1. Go to https://sell.amazon.com/sell.html
2. Follow the steps and enter all the requested information.
3. Select Pro Seller Account ($39.99 a month).
4. Verify your account with a Bank Statement or Utility Bills.

Please note that Amazon might revise the account creation process, but these are the main things you have to do.

It will take a few days or weeks to verify your account.

Once your account is ready, you have to set up shipping settings.

• Go to the Shipping Settings Page (Settings > Shipping Settings or this URL https://sellercentral.amazon.com/sbr#settings)

• Click “Edit” Next to the “Default Shipping Address”.
• Add a U.S. Address. You can use a P.O. Box. I use this service: https://secure.hopshopgo.com/. It’s free.
• Click “Save”.

Then, on Amazon, you have to set the shipping price for your product.

On the same page, click the “Shipping Templates” and click “Edit Template” to get the default shipping template.

If you have no idea about how much to charge for shipping, check out my template below. I always charge $4.95 to ship my products.

How to Apply for the GTIN Exemption

Next, you have to apply for the GTIN Exemption. With this exemption, you can upload tons of products without using UPC codes, which costs a lot of money.

There are two cases when you should apply for the GTIN Exemption.

Case I: You don’t have a real brand name (most people will be in this category).

Follow these steps to get the GTIN Exemption:

• Log in to your Amazon Seller account.
• Go to https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gtinx/browser
• For the category, select “Home and Garden”, “Office Products”, “Sports”, and “Clothing & Accessories”. (This is important!)
• For Brand Name, insert “Generic”. (Also important!)
• Click “Check for Eligibility”.

Case II: You have registered a brand name.

• Log in to your Amazon Seller account.
• Go to https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gtinx/browser
• For the category, select “Home and Garden”, “Office Products”, “Sports”, and “Clothing & Accessories”. (This is important!)
• For Brand Name, insert [YOUR BRAND NAME]. (Important!)
• Click “Check for Eligibility”.

*Applying for the GTIN Exemption with “Generic” will be automatically approved by Amazon. If you apply with your brand name, you might have to send some documents to Amazon.

Now, you can upload products without using UPC Codes.

Once your account is ready, you can start uploading your first product to your Amazon account.

First, go to the menu and select Inventory > Add a Product:

Click “I’m adding a product not sold on Amazon”:

Search for a product category you want to upload your product to. You can search for a category using your product keywords.

In this case, I searched with the keyword “Coffee Mug” and chose “Home & Kitchen Kitchen & Dining Dining & Entertaining Novelty Drinkware Coffee Mugs” for the category:

Next, you have to insert the Product Name and Brand Name.

If you already applied for the GTIN exemption I recommended above, you don’t have to insert the Product ID. If not, you might need to buy a UPC and insert it here.

To insert the Product Name, make sure you include keywords people will search with. They must be related to your product.

I have an article on how to create a great product title. (This article isn’t finished yet, but I’ll add a link here when it’s done.)

Next, go to the Offers tab and insert the price, quantity, and condition.

Please note that you must select “I will ship this item myself” for the fulfillment channel. Once you do that, the quantity box will appear.

Insert the price and quantity you want. For the condition, select “New”, because all print-on-demand products are new.

Next, go to the Images tab and upload the product mockup image you created in the previous step:

When you’re done, click the “Save and Finish” button.

Your product will take a while to appear on Amazon.

In the meantime, you can edit the product description by going to the Manage Inventory page and clicking the “Edit” button next to your product.

Then, go to the Description tab to insert the Product Description and Key Product Features.

Make sure you write a good product description that contains keywords related to your product. For tips on how to do this, read my article on how to write a product description.

This is very important because Amazon will use this product info to rank your product in the search results.

Next, go to the Keywords tab.

Insert all the search terms related to your product here.

In Amazon, you don’t need to insert a comma to separate keywords. Just insert non-duplicated keywords. Don’t put a comma between them.

Like this:

“coffee mug for engineer men women ceramic funny inspirational”

You can learn more about how to insert search terms effectively on Amazon.

Then, click “Save and Finish”.

That’s it. This is how you create a product on Amazon.

Next, let’s learn how to create an Etsy account.

The easiest and safest way to get an Etsy account is to read the EtzyReborn eBook and follow the steps inside.

Trust me, it will be one of your best investments of $9.95 ever.

Etsy is complicated when it comes to **Account Suspension**. There are many theories about how to prevent your Etsy account from getting suspended.

When I first started selling on Etsy, I just followed the basic instructions to get my store and list my products.

Then, this account was suspended for no apparent reason when I made my first sale.

Then I found and bought the ebook EtzyReborn and followed the steps inside it to create my new account.

I needed to use a new identity (my shop is currently under my wife’s name), a new device (which I use to manage my shop on my iPhone), and a new internet network (I have to use my 4G cellular network).

So, if you want to create an account using the safer method, I highly recommend you get this eBook and follow the steps inside it carefully.

(Sorry, I can’t share the registration steps here. It wouldn’t be fair to the author of the book.)

You can also go to the Etsy website and follow the basic registration process there as well. Please do so at your own risk.

When you get an Etsy account, you can use their guide on how to add a product to your Etsy store.

(The guide is very detailed and I can access it only on my phone, so it’s better if I send you to Etsy’s official site.)

Here is a guide about Basic Etsy SEO.

Please note that Etsy has a listing $0.20 fee. Your product will be active on Etsy for four months. You have to pay $0.20 every four months to renew your product.

So, if you have 1,000 products in your account, you’ll have to pay $200 every four months.

Is it worth the money?

It depends on your products. If they’re selling well, then it’s worth the money.

I uploaded tons of products to Etsy and weeded out the ones that didn’t work within four months.

I did this for 1-2 years, and I now have some good products that make at least one sale every four months.

Using this method, I initially lost money, but it helped me find the products that sold.

The listing fee on Etsy prevents many sellers from uploading tons of products. If you upload tons of products, you’ll have to pay expensive fees.

But it also helps keep the competition lower than it is on Amazon.

So, find your strategy to upload products to your Etsy account.

Okay, now you know how to upload a product to Amazon or Etsy manually.

As I said earlier, some print-on-demand companies can sync your products to Amazon and Etsy automatically. It’s called “Marketplace Integration”.

All the processes I explained above can be done in a few clicks if you use this integration.

Both Gearbubble and Laser Chili have this integration. When you create a product in their systems, it takes only a few more clicks to upload it to Amazon and Etsy.

Now let’s look at Marketplace Integration in more detail.

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Step 5.2: Launch Products on Amazon and Etsy (using Marketplace Integration)

You can save plenty of time uploading products to Amazon or Etsy using Marketplace Integration.

Gearbubble offers free marketplace integration you can use to upload products to Amazon and Etsy.

You can get access the Amazon Integration here.

For Etsy Integration, click here.

However, they limit the number of products uploaded to 100 products a month. Gearbubble’s system can process only 100 orders a month for each marketplace.

The free plan is enough when you’re just getting started.

Let me show you how to use Marketplace Integration to upload a product to Amazon.

First, log in to your Gearbubble account and click this link to get the free marketplace integration plan.

Select the free plan and click “NEXT”.

Enter your card info. No worries – you won’t be charged anything. They just need the info to make and ship a product when you get an order.

You’ll see the video guide on how to use marketplace integration. You should watch it. It takes two minutes.

Don’t want to watch? Want to keep reading my guide? Okay, okay, I’ll explain it to you! 🙂

Okay, go to the main Gearbubble Dashboard. Click the “View Dropship Dashboard”:

You’ll see the main Gearbubble Dropship Dashboard. Since this is the first time you’ve accessed this system, you have to connect your Amazon account to Gearbubble Dropship.

Click the “STORES” button and click “NEW STORE”:

Go to the Amazon tab. You have to enter the info about your Amazon Store on this page. Follow this guide.

It might seem difficult, but try to do it. You only have to do it once. If you can’t make it work, contact the Gearbubble support team to get this done.

If you want to upload a product to Etsy, you also have to connect your Etsy store to the system. Connecting to Etsy is much easier than Amazon. You just have to insert your Etsy Store Name.

When you finish connecting your Amazon to Gearbubble, go back to the STORES page.

(This is a screenshot from my main account, and you can see there are many stores here. I use marketplace integration for most of my stores.)

Click “New Product” to add a new product to your Amazon store.

The products you created in your Gearbubble account will show up here. You have to click the “Upload” button for the product you want to upload to Amazon.

Wait for a few minutes, and your product will be uploaded to Amazon. You can do the same for Etsy.

Just go to the STORES page, click “New Product” next to Etsy, and click the Upload button.

Using marketplace integration, you can skip all the uploading steps I showed you in Step 5.1.

Please note that the Marketplace Integration from Gearbubble doesn’t send product descriptions to Amazon.

They will upload a product with the mockup image, product title, and search terms. You need to go to your Amazon account and edit the product description there yourself.

Some print-on-demand companies also provide this kind of integration. However, I rarely use them, so I won’t include them in this mini-course.

Laser Chili has marketplace integration as well. With our system, you can insert product info in bulk in a .CSV file and upload it all at once, but we don’t have a free plan yet.

Laser Chili pricing starts at $37 a month. We don’t offer a free plan and we don’t open it to new members too often. We want our products to be exclusive to serious sellers only.

Okay, that’s all about Marketplace Integration. You can see that it can help you save tons of time when you’re uploading products to the marketplaces.

If you’re just getting started, I highly recommend that you get the free Gearbubble Integration plan and work on uploading products to Etsy manually.

That’s all for this step.

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Step 6: Fulfill Your Order

After you’ve been listing tons of products for a while, you’ll get some orders. Then, it’ll be time to make and ship products to your customers!

In this step, I’ll show you how to process your orders.

(If you’re just getting started, you can skip this step for now and come back to it later, once you get an order.)

There are two main methods you can use to fulfill your order:

• Manual Fulfillment
• Automated Fulfillment

Let’s start with the first one.

To fulfill an order manually, you just have to place an order on your customer’s behalf.

In other words, just purchase your product and insert the customer’s shipping address info.

When the order is shipped, use the tracking info you get from the supplier to fulfill the order on Amazon or Etsy.

Here’s how to do it.

First, go to your Amazon or Etsy account and get the order information, including the customer’s name, delivery address, and product details.

On Amazon, go to the “Manage Orders” page and choose the order you want to fulfill.

You’ll see the customer’s name, address, and product info:

In Etsy, you can find order info on the “Orders and Shipping” page.

Once you know the customer’s name, address, and product details, you can place an order on a supplier’s website.

If you used Gearbubble to create a product mockup in the previous step, just go to your product’s page in Gearbubble and click the “Buy it Now” button:

Then, enter the customer’s name and address and place an order.

You should use your email address when you place the order because the system will send the order’s updated details, including the tracking info, to your email address.

The process on other supplier websites is very similar. You just have to find how to place an order on the supplier website you use and place an order on your customer’s behalf.

When the order is shipped, the system will send the tracking info to your email address. You can use this tracking number to fulfill your order on your Amazon or Etsy account.

In your Amazon account, go to the order info page again and click the “Confirm Shipment” button:

Then, enter the tracking info ­– including the shipping date, carrier, and tracking number – and click “Confirm Shipment”.

For an Etsy order, go to the order info page, click “Mark Complete”, and enter the tracking info.

You can find more info on what you have to do to fulfill your order here: After You Sell an Item

This is how to fulfill an order manually. You just have to place an order on your customer’s behalf and fulfill the order in your Amazon or Etsy account using the tracking info.

It’s easy to do all this manually.

But if you use the Marketplace Integration I recommended in the previous step, your life will be a lot easier.

All the fulfillment steps above will be 100% automated.

If you use Marketplace Integration to upload products to Amazon or Etsy, you don’t have to do anything when you get an order.

Just wait for the Marketplace Integration system to pull your order details, and the supplier will start preparing your order.

When the order is shipped, the marketplace integration system will also submit the order’s tracking info to Amazon and Etsy automatically.

You just have to make sure that you have enough credits in your account to pay the production and shipping costs you owe your supplier.

I’ve been using Gearbubble’s marketplace integration for many years. I rarely have to do anything when I get orders.

Please note that the software has limitations. Sometimes the system can’t get the info for every order because of technical issues.

I know this because my team has built software that works with Amazon and Etsy, too. Sometimes, a glitch in the system renders the system unable to pull or fulfill the order.

So, it’s wise to spend a few minutes a day (or at least once a week) to ensure all of your orders have been processed successfully.

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Step 7: Scale Up

To build a print-on-demand business, you have to repeat steps 1 through 6 to keep adding more products to your stores.

Make sure you upload products in many different niches so can attract visitors who are using various keywords.

After you have tons of your products in your stores, you’ll start to make a few sales. Once these start to build, you can use your sales stats to scale up your revenue.

There are a few techniques I use when I scale up:

• Add More Products
• Amazon FBA
• Paid Traffic

Let me explain these in detail.

Add More Products

This is the first and easiest way to scale up. There are two ways to consider when adding more products to your store.

• Horizontal Scaling
• Vertical Scaling

Horizontal Scaling means you add more products in new niches where you don’t have products yet. This will help you get new visitors from new groups of keywords.

For example, if you find that a product with a quote like “Keep Calm, I’m an Engineer” can sell well, you might use this quote to create products in other niches.

Like this:

“Keep Calm, I’m a Nurse.”

“Keep Calm, I’m a Teacher.”

etc.

Vertical Scaling means that you check your sale stats and see which niche markets are making sales. Then you create more products for that niche.

For example, if you find that you’ve made a few sales from some ‘Engineer’ coffee mugs, you just have to find new quotes related to engineers and create more products.

Like this:

“I didn’t choose the Engineering life. The Engineering life chose me.”

“Understands heat transfers, still burns popcorn.”

Then, you can use these quotes to create more products. Specific quotes like these will generally make more sales than general quotes.

Amazon FBA

If you list products on Amazon and make some sales, the easiest way to scale up is to make your best-selling products FBA.

If you don’t know anything about Amazon FBA, it’s a process in which you send your products in bulk to the Amazon Warehouse and let Amazon pack and ship the product to your customer.

You can read more about the benefits of Amazon FBA.

When your product becomes an FBA product, it will get some ranking benefits and more trust from visitors on Amazon.

Most American households subscribe to Amazon Prime, and they prefer buying FBA products because they’ll get discounts.

Moreover, since FBA products are packed and shipped by Amazon, they get shipped to customers a lot faster because of Amazon’s Logistics.

They can even ship your product to your customer within a day!

This will make your products more attractive than non-FBA products in last-minute sales.

For example, most people will look for a product for their moms three days before Mother’s Day. Most general sellers can’t ship those products before the big day, but Amazon can.

If Amazon ships products for you, your products will sell more easily, even if you charge a higher price during these last-minute moments. After all, people want their products to be delivered quickly.

So, because of the benefits of higher rankings and fast shipping, your products will sell a lot easier when they become FBA products on Amazon.

I’ve been selling print-on-demand products on Amazon for many years and found that my revenue increases every year because I have more FBA products in my account.

Just keep making your top-selling items FBA products. The more FBA products you have, the more consistent revenue you’ll make.

Paid Traffic

Adding more products and making some of them Amazon FBA is enough to make you more than five or six figures a year from selling print-on-demand products.

But if you want to scale up your print-on-demand business to a whole new level – I mean, if you want to make millions a year from this business – you can learn how to use paid traffic like Facebook Ads or Google Ads to make a lot more sales.

Using paid traffic to sell print-on-demand products is completely different from using free traffic, which I explained above.

And I mean it when I say “completely different”.

To sell print-on-demand products on Amazon or Etsy, you don’t need to spend money on ads. Just keep listing new products and try to get visitors “for free” by adding new products and improving the SEO of your products.

With paid traffic, you have to buy traffic from sources like Facebook or Google and send visitors to your print-on-demand products.

When money is a variable in the equation, things get a lot more complicated.

With free traffic, you don’t have to worry about anything. You pay the Amazon Pro Seller fee of $39.99 a month, and you can list tons of products in your store for no additional cost.

You’ll eventually get visitors to see your products and make some sales.

With paid traffic, you need to spend money to get visitors, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll make enough revenue to cover your advertising costs.

In fact, with paid traffic, there’s a high chance you’ll incur a loss, especially when you’re just getting started.

So, you have to do some solid product research before using paid traffic. Otherwise, you might spend too much money on testing many products before finding the winning ones.

Either way, if you start from selling print-on-demand products on Amazon or Etsy, you’ll get some sales stats.

In other words, you don’t have to blindly direct paid traffic to random products.

Just pick the ones that are selling well on Amazon or Etsy and send the paid traffic to them.

If your product keeps selling with paid traffic, you can start scaling and make a lot more sales.

I have done this many times. The method works EXTREMELY well.

You can read my case studies on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day here:

• Case Study: How I Make over $174K by Selling Mugs for Moms on Gearbubble, Amazon, and Etsy.
• Case Study: The Secret Hack I Use To Find *Unicorn* Print-on-Demand Products on Gearbubble

When you use this method, you don’t have to test many products with paid traffic.

That means you can save tons of money.

Just pick the ones that are selling well on the marketplaces and test them by sending some paid traffic to them.

In addition to product research, you have to set up your store. You can’t send paid traffic directly to your Amazon or Etsy store.

(In theory, you could do this – but as you can see, there are “related products” on Amazon and Etsy which link to other people’s products. You probably don’t want to spend your money to promote other people’s products, right?)

You might use a platform like Gearbubble or ShineOn to sell print-on-demand products without setting up your store. You just have to create a product on the platform and send the traffic to your product’s landing page.

But I still recommend that you build your own store if you want to do use paid traffic for the long term. You should run paid traffic to your store under your own brand.

If you set up your own store, you need to set it up properly. You have to ensure it has a good conversion rate to earn the most from your products.

When your store is ready, you can start sending paid traffic to the product’s landing page in your store.

That’s it.

This is the easiest and safest way to run paid traffic to sell print-on-demand products. Just pick products that are selling well on the marketplaces, launch them in your store, and send the paid traffic to them.

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Recap

Woohooooo!

I’m so glad you’ve read this far. It means you have everything you need to start running your own print-on-demand business!

Let’s recap what you have to do to start building a successful print-on-demand business.

First, you need to pick niches. Go to Google, Amazon, or Etsy to find niches or groups of audiences you can sell your products to.

List as many niches as you can in your Google Sheet and divide them into categories.

Then, pick a few niches to find quotes for. The message on a product is what people look for, so make sure to find interesting and amusing quotes that will catch people’s eye.  

Next, create designs for these quotes. The designs don’t need to be complex. Simple text designs can sell well. Make sure the message is easy to read and properly aligned.

When your designs are ready, use them to create product mockups on a supplier website. There are many suppliers you can use. Do your research and choose the ones you like.

After that, use those product mockups to launch products on Amazon and/or Etsy. Do keyword research and use the proper set of keywords to create product titles and tags.

You can launch a product manually or use the marketplace integration provided by some suppliers.

Many suppliers offer this integration for free these days, so you can save tons of time on uploading products.

After you’ve launched many products on Amazon or Etsy, you’ll make some sales and will need to fulfill your orders. If you use marketplace integration, your orders will be fulfilled automatically.

If you do it manually, you can place an order on your customer’s behalf. When the order ships, you can use the tracking info to fulfill the order in your Amazon or Etsy account.

You can repeat these steps and make passive income from the marketplaces once you have tons of products in your Amazon or Etsy store.

When you have enough experience and more budget for your low-hanging print-on-demand business, you can start scaling your business to make a lot more sales.

There are three ways to scale up your POD business: by adding more products, doing Amazon FBA, and using paid traffic like Facebook or Google.

This is all you need to know to start building your print-on-demand empire.

Please note that this business model takes a long time to build. You can start with a very low budget (basically $39.99 a month for the Amazon fee).

When you do business with a low budget, you need to put in more time.

You have to spend time launching many products and wait for the Amazon or Etsy algorithm to make your products visible to people.

There are tons of sellers and millions of products on Amazon and Etsy. You have to compete with them all before your products get discovered.

That means using your time to launch many products in many different niches. It will take many months to build a 4- or 5-figure passive income.

If I remember correctly, it took me two years to build a 4-figure monthly passive income from my print-on-demand business.

So, don’t expect quick results if you’re just getting started. Focus on the process and try to launch as many products as you can.

After you make some sales, you can start scaling slowly – from hiring some people to work for you, or using Amazon FBA or paid ads to accelerate the process.

Nowadays, I make over 6 figures a year. I rarely need to touch anything in my print-on-demand business.

I just spend a few hours a month to pick and send some FBA products to the Amazon Warehouse. I also pick some of these products to promote with paid traffic during the holidays.

That’s the beauty of the print-on-demand business.

I wish you all success in your print-on-demand journey!

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F.A.Q.

Here are some common questions I get. I think the answers are very useful for anyone who’s just getting started.

• How long will it take me to make my first sale from the low-hanging print-on-demand business?

It depends on when you start and the niches you tap into.

For example, if you get started just a few days before a holiday like Mother’s Day and you list many products related to mothers, there’s a high chance you’ll get your first sale fast.

But if you start in Q3 or a slow season when few people buy gifts, it might be a bit difficult to make that first sale.

Anyway, if you do your market research well and list many products consistently, you should probably make your first sale within a month of getting started.

• How much can I make from the print-on-demand business?

You could make over $100,000 annually from print-on-demand using the low-hanging style. I do it myself, and many people are making a lot more than me.

But please keep in mind that these people and I have been working in this business for many years and have tons of products in our accounts.

It takes time to build consistent passive income from a print-on-demand business.

Also, if you scale up your print-on-demand business with paid traffic as I suggested above, you can earn more than 7 or 8 figures a year.

• What’s the total budget I need to get started?

The minimum budget you need to get started is $39.99 a month for the Amazon Pro Seller fee. With this account, you can list an unlimited number of products in your store.

Nowadays, you can find marketplace integration for free to upload products to Amazon easily.

You can see that the investment is a lot lower than building a bricks-and-mortar business. 🙂

• Should I start with Etsy because Amazon has a monthly fee?

Etsy has a listing fee as well. You have to pay $0.20 every four months to list one product. If you have 1,000 products, you have to pay $200 every four months, which is a bit higher than the Amazon Pro Seller fee.

But Etsy has less competition compared to Amazon, and this is a good point to look at.

But from my stats, Etsy buyers seem to like products that have a higher-quality design. Products with colored designs seem to sell better on Etsy.

They also prefer personalized products that allow them to insert their name or customize the characters in the design.

So, if you’re more creative and can create better quality designs, Etsy is a good place to start. You don’t have to list tons of products to make lots of money on Etsy.

But if you’re like me – not creative and not good at Photoshop – listing tons of products with simple text designs on Amazon is a better idea.

• Is it possible to hire a graphic designer to create a design for $0.50?

Yes, especially for simple text designs. These designs can be created quickly, so the designer won’t charge you much.

You can go to onlinejobs.ph and find many graphic designers who can do this for you. But you have to make sure you can give them long-term work to be able to negotiate their rate of pay.

• Should I use marketplace integration from the start?

If it’s free, then yes. Your work will be a lot easier with marketplace integration.

• Is it possible to list a few hundred products and make consistent sales?

It’s possible. If you don’t want to deal with ‘quantity’, then you need ‘quality’. You need two things for your product:

1. A unique design that people like.
2. A type of product that’s hard to find in the market.

If you want to list a few products but make many sales, you need to do careful market research to find what people want and create beautiful designs for them.

I’ve seen stores on Etsy stores with just under 1,000 coffee mugs that have made over 10,000 sales. But their designs are unique and most of them are products that people can personalize.

Another way to make many sales with a few products is to have products that few sellers are selling.

For example, if you go to Amazon or Etsy and search for coffee mugs, you’ll see millions of them.

But if you search for other non-popular products like bracelets or keychains, the number of products will be lower. Fewer sellers are selling them.

In the Laser Chili group, we have many sellers making over $1,000 a month, and they have just a few products in their stores.

The reason for this is that most of the products Laser Chili provides are products that not many people are selling yet.

Also, few print-on-demand suppliers provide these kinds of products. It’s not like a coffee mug, which many suppliers can provide.

• If I want to start doing POD right now, what are the first three things I have to do?

1. Choose products you want to upload.
2. Find a supplier that offers marketplace integration.
3. Start creating and uploading products.

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Resources

These are some of the tools I’ve been using for my print-on-demand business.

(Full disclosure: Some of these tools are free and some are paid. Some links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you purchase through my link. I only recommend the tools I use.)

Marketplace Integration:

Gearbubble (Free) – I’ve been using Gearbubble Dropship Integration to upload and fulfill thousands of orders for many years.

Laser Chili ($37-67/month) – This is my print-on-demand company. We have a handful of sellers, but we’ve made over $100,000 in sales. I’m biased, but this is a good choice. 😛

Keyword Research:

MerchantWords ($9.99/month) – This is the only tool I use when I do keyword research for my products. It will help you come up with many related keywords with search volume.

Use my link to get a Lite package for $9.99 a month. I don’t get a commission. I just asked them to create a deal for my subscribers.

Quote Builder:

A.I. Quote ($497/year) – Are you selling print-on-demand products but tired of writing quotes yourself?

This is a writing bot that will help you come up with new quotes. You don’t have to sit and think them up yourself.

Design Tools:

Canva ($9.99/month) – This is a design tool with a very user-friendly interface. You can use it to create simple text designs quickly.

AutomatePOD ($14.99/month) – You can use this tool to work with Canva to generate hundreds of designs fast. Normally, they charge $29.99 a month, but you can get it through my link and get 50% off. (The discount will show up on the checkout page.)

Outsourcing Websites:

Onlinejobs.ph ($69/month) – This is where you can find workers for your team. I found a graphic designer and a person who does product research and uploads tons of products to my account here.

You can find many workers at affordable prices. They are Filipinos who are very diligent and easy to communicate with. The website charges $69 a month to post a job, but you can unsubscribe when you hire your workers.

Fiverr (Free) – If you’re looking for graphic designers who can create higher-level designs, Fiverr is a good place. Most of the talented designers won’t charge $5 per design. Most of them will charge at least $25.

Product Editor Tool:

Vela (Free) – If you’re selling on Etsy, you can use this tool to edit product info including the product title, tags, description, image, category, and so on in bulk.

Automation Tools:

Consistently uploading new products is the key to success in the print-on-demand business, so I decided to create these two tools.

My team, which has been working on the print-on-demand business for many years, built them. We know what we want.

Many sellers and I have used the tools to upload millions of products to Amazon, Etsy, and other marketplaces and have generated over $1,000,000 in sales.

PODTurbo ($97/month) – This tool allows you to prepare 300 products – including the product titles, keywords, product types, etc. – in a single .CSV file. You upload this file and your product designs to the system, and it will schedule a time to upload the products for you.

It takes just 2-3 hours to prepare the info for 300-1,000 products. PODTurbo will upload these products throughout the week.

PODtomatic ($997/year) – This is an upgrade of PODTurbo. I asked my team to create functions to automate the product info and design creation.  

With PODtomatic, you don’t have to prepare the product info or designs anymore. Just connect your Amazon or Etsy store to the system, and it will create and upload up to 50 products a day to your stores on autopilot.

Okay, that’s all for this print-on-demand mini-course. I believe it will help many people get started on building their print-on-demand business.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below or send me an email. I’ll try my best to answer all your questions.

—Bank K.

P.S. If you enjoyed this mini-course and think some of the people who follow you will too, I’d love a share. It would mean the world to me!