How to Start a Print On Demand Business

Today is easier than ever to start an online store from home and the print on demand business is booming. No matter where you live you can start a shop and sell to a worldwide audience, there are no borders when it comes to selling online.

Gone are the days when you needed thousands of dollars to start an online store, now you can start one almost for free, technology has made selling online accessible to everyone. What you need is an idea and some time to get the ball rolling and make a revenue off it.

Products to sell

First, you need to decide what you want to sell, is it posters or yoga pants, iPhone cases, t-shirts, or maybe mugs? At first, you should start with one or two products to create an audience and get the hang of it.

Selling online is a challenge and the more you have on your plate the harder it is, so start small. Sell something you would like to use yourself, this way you will be more involved.

Find a niche

You can’t sell to everyone, not everyone is your client, keep this in mind. Instead, think of an audience that would want to buy your products. For example, if you decide to sell t-shirts to a younger audience, a more urban style that you like, again you might know this audience.

These might be the people you hang out with and know what their style is. Find the style and design for them, think of what is your buying pattern, what makes you want that t-shirt or cap. There are thousands of niches you can create for, choose the one.

Find a domain name

Your domain name will be the one that represents your brand, so make a careful decision but don’t get stuck on it. These are some tutorials to find a good domain name. The cost for a domain name is around $10 per year, depending on the registration length you chose, usually, one year is enough to get started.

Create your store

Now that you have an idea of what to sell and to whom also we have a nice domain, we need to start building it. We have created a tutorial on how to create a Print on Demand store with WooCommerce. A step by step guide that can help you get started today. With this course you learn a skill that can save you thousands of dollars and make you tenfold that.

Another way is to set up a store is with Shopify, no maintenance, easy to start, and with a lot of theme designs to make it your own. Chose a free theme that you like and design a simple logo, don’t waste time with it.

The third way to do it is to start one for free on Etsy, eBay, or even  Amazon. It takes no more than 10 minutes.

Choose a print on demand company

Prinftul or Printify are great choices, it really depends on which one you like more, we have a full list of print providers or marketplaces where you can sell your products. You will connect your new store with one of their applications and you start setup your products.

You don’t pay in advance anything, you only pay when an order is placed in your store. They will handle printing and fulfillment so you don’t need to do anything else. You just have to sell products.

Designs

Once you have all the little bits ready, now it’s time to create some products. At Designious we have over 3500 ready-made t-shirt designs that can be used right away and more than 20000 individual vector elements and cool fonts ready to be printed or customized. If you just want to test out we have a lot of freebies as well.

We also have an easy-to-use online design tool, The Online Product Designer. It also comes with a ton of editable free templates here.

You can start with our collections and grow from there, adding every month new designs to your shop. Use them on posters, t-shirts, mugs, pillows, shoes, hats, iPhone cases, totes, and anything you can think of. We have a great promo now if you want to get started.

Use mock-ups

Now that you chose a niche and you found some t-shirt designs you like you need to create some mock-ups that look great and make your shop stand out. We have gathered a list of free mock-ups here.

If you want to stand out even more we recommend Placeit.net (get $10 OFF when signing up), they have amazing realistic templates and tons of models to chose from.

Learn Marketing

Now that you have everything set up you must start getting clients. You can find a lot of marketing tutorials, resources, and guides to get started and make it happen. Find your tribe and share with friends on social media, create profiles for your new website and shout it everywhere you can get 1000 true fans.

To be successful online you need to find the right match between products and the market you’re addressing. Add to mix a bit of hard work and do it smartly and there is nothing stopping you.

Happy Selling!