There are tons of niches to create and sell print-on-demand products.
Most people like selling products in family-related niches, such as Mom to Son, Dad to Daughter, Son to Mom, Daughter to Dad, Husband to Wife, etc.
These are big niches where we can make tons of sales, especially on special days like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
Everyone’s got a mom and dad, right? It should be easy to sell products in niches like these because there are millions of buyers here.
But the problem is that these niches are quite competitive.
There are tons of sellers trying to sell products in these niches.
If you search for a coffee mug for mom on Amazon, you will see thousands of mugs in the search results.
It’s quite difficult to launch a new product and push it to the top of the search results.
In this article, I’ll tell you why I prefer selling print-on-demand products in much smaller niches recently and how you can do the same.
Okay, let’s get started.
Big Niche = Big Competitors
There are thousands of print-on-demand products in the family niches on Amazon and Etsy.
Moreover, if you search Amazon with the keywords like “Dad Mug” or “Mom Mug,” you will see that those products on the first page have so many customer reviews.
In other words, these products have been selling for a long time and have very strong rankings.
Amazon found that these products have been making many sales and have gotten many customer reviews.
They will keep these products at the top because these products are making money for them.
It’s quite difficult to add new products to the top results in these competitive niches.
Anyway, there is still a way to make your product be on this top list. But I still don’t like doing it. I’ll tell you why next.
FBA + Amazon Ads = More Boost
If you have a product in a family niche that makes consistent sales, you could make it to the top ranking.
The easiest way is to make it to Amazon FBA. When the product can be shipped by Amazon, it will gain a lot of benefits.
- Ships faster by Amazon
- Amazon Prime Members love it
- Better rankings
If Amazon FBA doesn’t help your product much, try to boost it again with Amazon Ads.
Try to make more consistent sales until you reach the top of the search.
When the product makes consistent sales, it will climb up to the top of the search automatically.
I did that before, but I decided not to do it again.
Let’s talk about it next.
Copycats Love Top Products in the Top-Selling Niche
I made over 200 sales a day from one coffee mug on Mother’s Day a few years ago.
My coffee mug was the first top-selling mug under the Novelty Coffee Mug category on Amazon on Mother’s Day.
When my product was at the top, there were so many people copying my listing and selling it under their own accounts.
It’s a hijacking function from Amazon actually. I’m not sure why Amazon created this function.
The design of my coffee mug is just simple text, so it’s very easy to copy and sell by anybody.
When these copycats copy the listing, they will lower the price and try to be the first seller on the product page.
(There will be multiple sellers on a product’s page on Amazon if there are many sellers selling the same product. And the visitors will usually buy from the default one.)
I tried to contact these sellers to remove my product from their stores. All of them ignored my message.
I tried to contact Amazon, but Amazon asked for proof that I created it by myself. So I just ignored what happened. Too lazy to deal with this stuff, lol.
That’s another issue when you have a winning product in the top-selling niches.
Copycats will copy your listing and undercut the price anyway.
Small Niches = Peaceful Selling
After selling print-on-demand products on Amazon for several years, I’ve found that I prefer selling print-on-demand products in small niches.
Selling print-on-demand products in competitive niches could make you tons of sales but it’s a lot more difficult and requires time to monitor and improve your listing.
Otherwise, competitors (and also copycats) will try to get your position in the search results and you will make fewer sales over time.
Which I’m too lazy to do…
I prefer selling products that don’t need much time to monitor and have fewer competitors.
Like in the professional niches.
There are hundreds of occupations in the world and these niches have a lot fewer competitors on Amazon.
If you have one winning niche, you will be able to make sales from a few products in this niche for a very long time.
Also, multiple small niches like 9-10 niches could make the same results as one BIG niche as well.
And it’s a lot easier.
Copycats might still come for some niches but there will be a lot less compared to the competitive niches.
I have a few winning niches that I have sent to Amazon FBA.
All of them have been dominating sales with very few competitors and I have never seen any copycats for these products.
Professional Niches = Higher AOV
Apart from being easier to get a good ranking and no need to fight with the copycats, selling products in the small niches like professions also gives you higher AOV.
AOV = Average Order Value.
If you’re selling print-on-demand products for Mother’s or Father’s Day, the receivers of the products will be only Mom or Dad.
That’s only one unit sold per order. Sons or daughters have only one mom and dad.
If you sell products in the niches like Mom to Son or Dad to Daughter, there might be a chance to get 2-3 units sold per order.
But in the professional niches, people will buy this product for their colleagues – or sometimes for all of their friends and the whole of their departments.
Check out the screenshot below.
These are some recent orders I got and people buy like 2-20 units per order.
The maximum units I sold were 200 coffee mugs in just one order. It was from the boss of one company.
That’s another good thing to sell products in professional niches. People often buy many units per order.
Here’s How to Get Started
Okay, now you got an idea of why I prefer selling products in the small niches.
Next, how to get started?
Well, as I said, there are hundreds of occupations in the world so it might be difficult to create products for all these niches.
However, there’s an easy way…
First, you just have to create a list of the occupations you want to create print-on-demand products for.
Try to Google something like “Top Jobs in the US” or “Most Famous Occupation in 2022.”
You will get hundreds of results.
Pick 100 of them. If you’re diligent, try to create a list of 250-500 professions.
Then, create a list of 100 general quotes you can replace a word with the professions.
Something like:
Keep Calm, I’m a [PROFESSION]
Trust Me, I’m a [PROFESSION]
Don’t Make Me Use My [PROFESSION] Voice
Find 100 quotes like these and combine them with the list of occupations you created in the previous step.
If you have 100 occupations and 100 quotes, you will have 10,000 quotes to create 10,000 designs.
If you have 500 occupations and 100 quotes, you can create 50,000 designs.
The design doesn’t have to be complex as well. Just create the design in a simple text style.
Most of the top print-on-demand products on Amazon contain just a simple text design.
You might create them by yourself (not recommend) or hire someone to create them for you (highly recommend).
Then, use these designs to create the print-on-demand products such as a coffee mug, travel mug, bracelet, etc., and upload them to Amazon.
You can use tools like PODTurbo to upload them all quickly.
I teach my virtual assistant how to use PODTurbo and let her do it for me as well. Just make it automated so I can do other things.
Next, just wait for them to make a sale. You won’t make a sale fast from the start because this kind of niche doesn’t have much traffic.
You need to wait for a few sales and then make them be Amazon FBA
. You will be able to make consistent sales when your product becomes an FBA product.
When you make a few sales, try to check your sales stats on Amazon. There might be some niches that could make you many sales.
If there is any outstanding niche, try to find more specific quotes for that niche and create new products.
For example, if you found out that products with a niche like Math Teacher can make a few sales, try to create print-on-demand products with the Mathematical Formula.
Like this:
Also, try to optimize the product titles and keywords specifically for this winning niche as well. Try to add the keywords related to the Math Teacher niche.
And if this kind of design can make a few sales, make them to be Amazon FBA products. Your product could be the one that dominates sales in the Math Teacher niche.
That’s it.
Just keep repeating the process.
Okay, this is why I prefer selling products in the small niches and how I have done it for years.
I hope this article can help you to do the same 🙂
—Bank K.
P.S. This is the same process that the PODtomatic does every day for our members.
The system uploads products in many small niches. When there are sales, our members will pick some of them and send them to Amazon.
Haven’t tried PODtomatic yet? Join here and let the system upload products in many small niches for you.
