After the pandemic, selling Print On Demand face masks has become the new trend right now.
eBay has been one of the first marketplaces to sell custom face masks and powered this feature after the recent success of Etsy sellers.
Here is a to-do list if you want to start selling Print On Demand face masks on eBay: create an eBay account as a vendor, check their guidelines on selling custom face masks, create a design, launch your store.
Compulsory Guidelines
Before start selling face masks on eBay, you have to go through the following guidelines:
• Any safety statements or claims about the real effectiveness have to be shown in the product;
• Any mention of “Covid”, “COVID-19” or “Coronavirus” has to be shown in the product;
• No surgical mask or N95 respirator has to be included in your catalog.
eBay & Face Masks
The urgency of medical aids during the first phase of the pandemic soared the demand for face masks (you could check on Google’s trend too).
First sellers started to appear on eBay and took advantage of a market situation where the huge request didn’t match with the current offer.
This led to an increased price of these masks, until a point when customers started to blame real extortion attempts by these sellers.
After that, eBay decided to deny these unqualified vendors and banned everyone willing to sell face masks.
At the beginning of April, Americans were told to wear a face mask when walking away from home, as it would have slowed the spread of contagious.
Although, wearing surgical masks would have been more effective than cloth face masks, which were, in turn, more effective than not wearing anything at all.
This pushed eBay to review its policy and to introduce face masks vendors to the marketplace, under the conditions we mentioned before.
Great Tools For Designing Face Masks
If you want to design custom face masks we recommend using Printful first or a new Print On Demand platform called “ThisNew”.
Printful is the leader among Print On Demand services and has many fulfillment facilities both in Europe and the USA. They provide fast shipping, no matter where your customers are from, in a reasonable time (on average, 3-5 business days).
Recently, their huge database started to include even face masks, which you can customize with your designs.
The second provider, ThisNew, is located in China and provides a wide range of products and, especially, face masks.
Due to its geographical location, shipping times are slower but fees are relatively cheaper than average.
Your margins will be accordingly higher with their products, which is something you may appreciate a lot.
But first, you should warn your customers that, due to pandemic restrictions, there may be some delays in shipping times.
Write a clear statement under each item of your store. Customer experience is extremely important and you should take care of it.
Over time, hopefully, this situation is going to change and even this problem will be solved.
Quick Tips On Creating Your Design
The main problem of every seller before launching their store is to create a valuable design.
If you won’t seek the help of professionals, you need to develop your skills and learn how to use graphic software.
We recommend Canva and Placeit, as they are intuitive and user-friendly.
Canva can be used both for designing and editing, with its easy drag and drop features. It also allows personalizing each design with background images, adding text, changing sizes, colors, and much more.
It provides a wide range of copyright-free templates completely for free; for Premium features, however, you have to upgrade to a paid subscription.
Placeit is the second most recommended tool and the one we prefer, due to its extreme simplicity.
It provides a ton of copyright-free templates for your designs, which you can customize to your tastes.
You can even create logos and mockup images for your advertising campaigns, all included in their basic subscription. They provide a 30-day free trial after that they will be asked for a paid subscription, monthly or yearly.
There could be a third option, which is Innovative Fabrica, which provides hundreds of thousands of copyright-free templates for your designs. You can choose yours and upload it to Canva for further personalization.
Before Launching Your Store
Before launching your store, we truly recommend reading this article:
BONUS – Can I Make Money With Print On Demand?
This is the question you should ask before running any kind of business. Is really worth it? Is it profitable or it will just blow up time and money?
Regarding Print On Demand, the answer is yes, absolutely yes. Print On Demand has been profitable in recent years and so will be in the next future. We will explain to you why in the following paragraphs.
Recent Estimates
What is expected for the next years, is that while traditional retail sales will keep decreasing, online shopping is going to outperform the industry, due to restrictions and social distancing imposed by local governments.
Numbers say that just last year, online shopping had an impressive 45% growth, considering even home deliveries. The comfort of online solutions, plus Amazon‘s reliable shipping powered, conquered a vast majority of people, and seems now simply impossible to avoid this progression.
The first purpose of a Millennial entrepreneur in 2021 is to open an online store, no matter with dropshipping or Print On Demand services. Shopify, for instance, currently hosts over one million stores on its website; eBay reported millions of users with an increase of eight million buyers in the last quarter. Etsy announced a 26% growth of users compared to the previous year.
These examples just show how the retail industry has dramatically changed during the last year. So it’s quite objective that this trend will continue even in the future.
But it’s even true that we’re talking about a highly competitive environment where many more people, professionals or not, will try to jump on just to secure their piece of the pie.
So like any other passive income source, it will take time and effort to build up, especially if you don’t already have an audience. Surely, if you are a YouTuber or an Influencer, it’s an excellent solution to monetize your audience.
In all other cases, the path is long and that’s why we wanted to breakdown some key points that will make you understand if running a Print On Demand business would be profitable for you or not.
Risks
A big con of the Print On Demand business model is the low-risk profile. As you don’t have to pay a lot upfront, there is nothing to lose if something won’t work as you planned.
If you want to improve your margins, you should take care of your fulfillment service and choose the one which has the best yield to cost ratio. Definitely, you don’t want to waste profits on commission fees.
Costs
Startup costs for Print On Demand services are usually pretty low. All you need is a laptop, an internet connection, and a ton of creativity.
It’s important by the way, to compare the prices of different platforms and to select the one which possibly matches the best prices for high-quality materials.
Printful, for instance, is a bit costly. If you want to buy a custom t-shirt to print and sell through their platform, you would spend $12.95 and resell it for like $22.95.
If your average is $10 profit each sale, it means that you’d need to sell 10 t-shirts every month to try and procure $100. On the off chance that you need to make $500 per month, you should receive 50 orders of your shirts.
One point is extremely important: don’t hold back on quality otherwise, customers won’t be satisfied and won’t have any desire to work with you.
So during the first phases, you should test different platforms and select the one that ensures the best price and quality ratio possible.
Seasonality
A valid principle of the fashion industry is seasonality.
For instance, if your store is based on tank tops, it won’t be so effective during wintertime. The same is true for designs. If your main theme is the “Magic of Christmas”, or “California Waves” you won’t have the same appeal and visibility during the year.
So, as we said before, you should launch different store niches and upload great designs in all of those. This will make you avoid this kind of risk.
Customization
If your passion is creating art designs, then Print On Demand is the right environment for you. Even if you’re not a professional you still can get started because there are no real upfront barriers to accede.
Your main tasks are choosing the right platform, create a bunch of good designs (you may seek the help of freelancers), upload them into your store, and wait for the first order. Advertising is important too but many platforms usually have already great marketplaces on their own.
A downside is that self-made designs aren’t so attractive as you believe, so we recommend seeking the help of qualified designers if you want to assure unique and fine artworks to your catalog.
Another tip is to diversify your portfolio. It means to create different stores, each related to a passionate niche, and to upload attractive designs for them.
This will ensure you higher odds of receiving more and more traffic from a passionate and targeted audience.
The more stores you create, the higher sales you will make.
Competition
From our point of view, this is the main disadvantage of running a Print On Demand store in 2021. Since it’s so easy to start, as we said before, everyone is jumping into this trend.
What you have in mind might be already used by somebody else for his store or could be replicated in a better way by future newcomers.
Only if you already have a loyal audience you might not have these problems, unless your visibility keeps growing (this is generally true for Youtubers and influencers).
In these circumstances, Print On Demand would be a solid source of passive income, because you don’t really need to advertise your product, as you are the best promoter of yourself.
Learning Period
This type of business model, even if it’s quite accessible to anyone, takes a considerable learning period, especially if you’re willing to offer different products and great designs.
Of course, you can do that on your own, saving some money but spending your time, or rely on somebody else work, with the opposite effect (Fiverr provides great professionals in their platform, ready to help you at a cheap price).
Moreover, another con of Print On Demand is that you won’t find a winning product so easily. And, even if you find one, it’s not sure it will last enough until a competitor will replicate it.
This is why your only task should be to work constantly on your products every single day. And this might be expensive if you want to hire a good designer for your store or time-gaining if you want to do it on your own.
And Now..?
We think it’s quite immediate to run a Print On Demand Dropshipping store in 2021. You don’t need great investments upfront, but just work hard and develop the right mindset throughout the process.
Although you could face drawdowns, it still remains a valid business model willing to become profitable and scalable in a short period.
You might regret it if you don’t accept the challenge to compete. Don’t be afraid of obstacles and failures, they’re just natural parts of the process. The journey is what it counts, as much as the experience you will gain. Then results, as many times happen, will come unexpectedly.
Are you ready to run your new online store?
