Selling your products through Print On Demand platforms can be rather simple and easy for beginners today.
These services provide everything you need to process and deliver orders while you deal with designs and promotion through social networks.
All you need is to create a Shopify store, choose a Print On Demand service, set up your store, and prepare for the opening.
The complete setup of your store generally lasts around 2 days. If you follow this checklist you won’t have problems and most likely you will run your business properly.
But, before proceeding, you must be aware of which item you want to sell, and which design you want to apply. Furthermore, note that these guidelines can be applied only to Shopify stores.
Create a Shopify Store
Shopify gives you a free 14-day welcome trial, which is more than reasonable to set your online store.
You will be asked to digit the shop’s name and domain name but don’t waste too much on it as you will still have the opportunity to change it later.
At this point, you should already have an idea for your Shopify store, like a brand or a logo, which you can apply to your products.
It will be asked to add information to your store and to do that just go to settings and fill all the boxes indicated.
You will be asked to enter your contact information and everything related to payment and billing addresses.
Setting a default payment method is also important to make you pay you correctly by Shopify as soon as you receive the orders.
Once done that, you can move on.
Choose a Print On Demand Service
Well, you have to make sure you pick the best print-on-demand platform for your needs. Each platform has its pros and cons, so it’s important to choose carefully before starting.
Shopify itself doesn’t offer a Print On Demand feature, so if you’re planning to sell types of products, you have to choose among the available integrations.
On the Shopify App Store, you can find a list of print-on-demand applications. Please do your research carefully before installing the app.
Once chosen, start creating your designs and upload them to your POD catalog. Then, synchronize it with Shopify, and they will be shown on your store too.
Set Up Your Online Store
Now that you have configured the application, uploaded the first items, and synchronized them on your store, you want to customize it so that your brand and image are clear.
You can also set up a new domain name that reflects your underlying concept, directly from the Shopify application through the settings.
Layouts, background images, and colors are other features you can change to increase your brand identity as well as adding variants to your items, in terms of colors and sizes.
For each product, you got to write the title, the description, the main questions related, and upload valid pictures that show clearly its qualities.
Done that, you can move to price setting, minimum double of the custom product plus the shipping costs.
These can be seen in the shipping section of the menu.
Prepare For Opening
Be aware, before you start, of how the production process works and the costs associated with delivering and purchasing custom goods.
The whole process is embedded into the print-on-demand platform, but you can manually change the settings and customize the check-out procedure.
It’s important to personalize it further and insert orders in upselling to maximize your earning possibilities.
We recommend also to accede the store in private mode and make a random purchase as if you were an external user. In this way, you could test the quality of the Store and the check-out process to evaluate the presence of any errors.
This crucial step will allow you to objectively appreciate the shopping experience of your store.
Summary
In this guide, we have covered the main steps to build a specific Shopify store for selling print-on-demand products.
It might be useful to test many platforms for a certain period and evaluate the one which offers the greatest reliability in terms of service efficiency and lower overall costs.
We know it’s a personal choice but we would recommend you narrow down your list to the main two providers: Printful and Printify.
Top 4 Print On Demand Companies Which Work With Shopify
1. Printful
Printful is actually the world’s largest and most commonly used Print On Demand service and provides wide embedded solutions for inventory, fulfillment, and shipping.
Their catalog offers you more than 200 products, among clothing items, accessories, home decors, and so on.
There are lots of advantages to choosing Printful as your main Print On Demand fulfillment and we will summarise as follows:
- No expenses upfront, the all supply chain is upon Printful;
- Full integration to Shopify, no manual processing of orders;
- Automatic warehousing & fulfillment;
- Full access to their catalog and their mockup generator;
- Full access to their professionals’ network, which may help you in creating your designs;
- Discounted fees if you order in bulk (up to 20% less);
- High-quality materials for your products;
Some of these features may require a premium subscription or extra fees. However, you can get started with a free account and upgrade as your business becomes profitable.
2. Printify
Printify is an outstanding worldwide famous Print On Demand service, fully-integrated with Shopify.
It allows you to create wonderful designs, and to choose the perfect items from a huge catalog of mugs, t-shirts, skirts, and whatsoever.
The main advantages provided by this platform include:
- Fully-automated fulfillment of your order;
- Wide network of providers where you can choose from, sorted by price, location, and other criteria;
- Exclusive packagings with your brand name on it;
- Powerful mock-up generator free to use.
Printify it’s extremely useful for worldwide sellers as their providers are located both in the USA and Europe.
Their monthly subscription plans are of three types:
- Free, only one Store per account with unlimited designs;
- Premium, for $29 a month, you can create up to 10 stores per account;
- Enterprise, it’s tailored for massive orders accounts; it has a flexible price depending on the features asked.
As with Printful, you can start your store for free and gradually upgrade until your business becomes successful.
3. Teelaunch
Teelaunch is currently used by over 40.000 stores on Shopify and has become very popular in recent years.
Its providers are located both in Europe and North America, and that’s important for geographical diversification.
They don’t ask you for any subscription fees or upfront costs as they take care of all the fulfillment process by themselves.
Your order is completely tracked since the item is purchased until it’s finally delivered to the customer. Plus, they accept PayPal for payments, which is comfortable.
But what is outstanding about Teelaunch are profit margins: the more orders you receive the higher they will be. They’re tailored to the sales volume and can shift from a minimum of 50% to a maximum of 75%.
Which is higher than the market average for similar services.
4. Gooten
Gooten is a fully-embedded Print On Demand service that claims to be the all-in-one solution for POD fulfillment.
With their catalog of over 100 items, it’s specifically indicated to niche stores.
Their 3D mockup generator is unique in its own genre and lets you create high-quality images.
It’s a perfect solution for small enterprises and we wouldn’t recommend it to bigger ones, as it doesn’t provide premium features like Printful.
However, what’s really valuable in Gooten is the possibility to set manually your margins and the transparency of the costs, clearly displayed on your dashboard.
Fees on your sales include fulfillment and shipping costs; monthly subscriptions aren’t charged.
Everything works automatically and you can easily track the order processing until it’s delivered.
Print On Demand Estimate Growth
What is expected for the following 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 today 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.
