Essential Tips for Aspiring Print-on-Demand Sellers

Aspiring print-on-demand sellers must enjoy the creative process to succeed, regardless of their personal interests.

### Essential Tips for Aspiring Print-on-Demand Sellers
* 🎨 If you're dreaming of becoming a full-time print-on-demand seller, it's crucial to **enjoy the creative process** rather than love every single design you create.
* 💡 Many successful sellers don't start with a professional art background; instead, they find **joy in brainstorming and bringing ideas to life**, which is essential for **sustaining motivation**.
* 📈 Avoid the trap of seeking the easiest platforms for quick success; platforms like **Amazon and Etsy may require more effort but often yield better long-term results**.
* 🤝 Collaborating with a reliable manufacturing partner like Printify can simplify the selling process on platforms such as Etsy, allowing you to **focus on creativity and design**.
* 📊 Setting realistic, measurable goals is vital; breaking down larger objectives into **daily tasks** can help maintain **consistent progress** without overwhelming yourself.
* 🔍 Experimenting with different niches and product types can **increase your chances of finding bestsellers**, as not every product will perform **equally well**.
* ⏳ Don’t get discouraged if sales are slow initially; aim for a **minimum of 100 listings** to give your shop enough visibility for potential sales to emerge.
* 📚 Commit to learning something new each week to continuously improve your business skills, ensuring **steady growth and adaptation** in the competitive print-on-demand landscape.

If you are dreaming of becoming a full-time print-on-demand seller, this is definitely the video for you. Today, I'm going to be breaking down some of the best pieces of advice that I wish I knew when I was first starting out as a print-on-demand seller. This is all going to be very brutally honest. A lot of these things I've never even talked about on my channel before, but I really sat down and started thinking about what are the things that are essential to being a successful print-on-demand seller, and this is the list that I came up with. Let's not waste any more time and just jump right into these. Now, the first thing I really want to get across to aspiring print-on-demand sellers or those that have maybe just gotten started is that you don't necessarily have to love every single thing that you make in print-on-demand, but you do have to really enjoy the process. Now, that doesn't mean that you need to be an expert artist or a graphic designer to be a really successful print-on-demand seller.

seller. In fact, most people who find success in print on demand honestly didn't start out with that as a professional career. But what I mean about you need to enjoy this process is that if it is very laborious every single time you sit down to research and make new designs, every single time you sit down, you're racking your brain, not sure what to do, and really just hating this whole process, this honestly might not be the business model for you. A lot of times, the sellers that are really successful are the ones that have a lot of fun doing this business model, that enjoy the creative part of this whole process, really have a ton of fun thinking of new ideas and kind of bringing those to life. Now, that definitely was what drew me to print on demand in the first place. I have a very creative side, and I wanted to find an outlet that I could do that in a way that maybe made money. So, if you really are struggling to just get the motivation to even make your first few

designs and just hate the process the whole time. Don't worry, there are tons of other ways to make money online, but you might want to look for something else. But if you do really enjoy this process, you love coming up with ideas, you love researching, making creative things, and then POS them for other people, this could be perfect for you. But I want to touch on what I was saying before. You're not necessarily going to love every single thing that you ever make. Now, in print on demand, a big part of this is we are trying to appeal to a very specific group of buyers, and a lot of times that is not necessarily going to correlate with what we are personally interested in. Many of the niches that I've made the most money in are ones that I am not really personally interested in. Yes, I put a lot of heart and thought behind the designs, but they're not something I would necessarily ever wear. But I still had a lot of fun thinking through the process, thinking about who the customer was going to be, and making something for

them, so you don't have to limit yourself to only the hobbies and things that you are interested in. You don't have to only pick niches that you know a lot about, but you need to enjoy the process of making these products no matter what you pick to actually sell. Now, the next piece of brutally honest advice that I definitely wish someone had told me a lot sooner is that you need to stop trying the easiest thing and expecting to get these incredible results. What I mean by that is I see a lot of new print-on-demand sellers that really want to grow this thing, want it to become a huge business, but they are going to the print-on-demand platform with the lowest barrier of entry, uploading some designs, and just hoping for their shops to take off overnight. Now, I personally, I love selling on Redbubble, Zazzle, TeePublic. All of those are ones that I definitely recommend, but a lot of times I'm going to recommend those to be more of your secondary platform where you're putting

all your designs that you're making for your Workhorse platform that's doing the bulk of the work for you, where you're making most of your sales. So, an example of one of those platforms is going to be Amazon and Etsy. Now, a lot of times, new sellers, they don't start on those platforms because they genuinely are more work than just going to a place like Redbubble that really holds your hand through the process. They are going to help you get started. They are going to have an easy place for you to upload your artwork, and they are going to do a lot of that work for you. Whereas on Etsy, you are going to have to do a lot more of the due diligence. You're going to have to find a manufacturing partner. You're going to have to do a lot more work for each listing that you do. But in return, you are going to have a lot better payoff in the long run. Now, I know one of the pieces that definitely intimidated me for a long time when I was a new print-on-demand seller was the

whole process of working with a kind of middleman manufacturing partner to sell on Etsy. It really took me a lot longer than I'd like to admit before I actually made the jump from Amazon to Etsy as well because I just thought it was way too much for me to deal with. But I really wish I had gotten there a lot sooner because it is so profitable. So one of the ways that you can definitely make this easier for you is by working with a manufacturing partner that really has this process nailed down. Now I'm working today with Printify, who you guys have heard me talk about all the time. You probably know who Printify is, but if you don't, they are basically a network of a bunch of different manufacturing partners that connect directly to your Etsy shop. So anytime you want to sell a product on Etsy, you're going to need someone who can store, produce, ship, and pack your items without you having to do any of that. Now I love that Printify. They have so many different item types, they are so reliable, and they are really

easy to start with. In fact, it just takes a few minutes to link your account with Etsy, which I know is one of the most daunting parts of this process. So, if you've been putting that off, you've been thinking that I don't really want to sell on Etsy, I'm going to try something easier first. If you really want to make this thing a full-time business, you're going to have to actually dive into using a manufacturing partner. So, I'll link a full tutorial here of how to get that started in just a couple of minutes. Now, the next brutally honest piece of advice I want to tell new sellers: this is something that I have definitely utilized many times in my business, but sometimes I kind of slack off and I forget to do this. But it's really important to be setting measurable goals for yourself. Now, I know that everybody loves to talk about goal setting, how it helps, but it truly does, and a lot of times it can demystify how our business grows. So, a lot of new sellers, they will

say things like, okay, by the end of the year, I want to have a thousand uploads to really start making money in my business. Now, that definitely is a goal, but you have to really evaluate if that is going to be doable for you in your business. So, if you realize there's only 3 months left of the year, that means you're going to have to be doing about over 300 new listings every single month, meaning you're going to be doing at least 10 new listings every single day. Now, maybe that is doable for you. There have been seasons in my print-on-demand business where I definitely made 10 uploads, and I really made that work for a period of time. But that might just be making too lofty of a goal that you're ultimately not going to reach. So, I definitely suggest thinking about how much you can reasonably do in a day, and if that's two or three listings, set that as your goal and kind of work on your business in 3-month chunks. So, if you wanted to have 300

new listings by the end of the year. That is a much more manageable goal, and you can definitely help yourself stick to that by working on your business just a little bit every single day. I have found that it is way easier to actually grow your business when you are working in it in small chunks, incrementally over a long period of time, instead of just trying to do a ton of work at once and then set it and forget it. A lot of times, new print-on-demand sellers, they get so passionate at the beginning, they're staying up all night making tons and tons of designs for a few days straight, but then they get really burnt out and they just kind of leave it. But the people that really have a lot of success are doing two, three uploads every single day for several months, and then at the end of that, they have a whole ton of products listed. So definitely take note of what is feasible for you to accomplish in a day and really see what you could accomplish in a 3-month period.

if you just stick to that number every single day, you might be surprised with how many listings you're actually going to end up with at the end of a 3-month period if you actually stick to that small amount of uploads consistently. Now, the next piece of advice that I think is really important for new sellers to understand is that it is totally okay to try a number of different niches as well as different product types. Now, a lot of times, people think that imprint on demand to be successful. You're going to have to have one specific shop that has one very specific niche that you're building your whole business around. So, maybe, for example, you're making a store for Spanish teachers, so you're only going to be making designs for those Spanish teachers. Now, this definitely can be a strategy that works, but a lot of times when you're a new seller, you don't necessarily know what is really going to take off and sell well. So, I think sometimes a better strategy is to try a bunch of different niches and not kind

of nail yourself down to only one thing that you do. That way, you can really test out what is selling, what people are actually interested in, and then when you get more views and sales in certain niches, you can always come back and do more and more of that specific type of product. But sometimes, our very first ideas are ones that are kind of not always the greatest. So, you might think that this is going to be a bestselling item, and maybe it's just way too saturated, or people are just not interested in it. And if you locked yourself into only that one type of product or niche, you might be really stuck and not make progress in your business. But if you're trying a bunch of different things, you have a huge opportunity that something can really take off. Now, one thing that a lot of new sellers don't realize is that not every single one of your products is going to sell equally. So, even the most successful stores have new products that haven't made any sales, but they have certain

products that every single month are way outperforming everything else, and that's pretty much true for almost all print-on-demand sellers. So, we need to have enough variety and enough different products that our best sellers can really be found. If we only have maybe three or four different niches and we only have one product type, there's a good chance that you still haven't made anything that people really want to grab onto and buy. But if you have maybe a hundred different niches and you're trying a few different product types, that's way more opportunities for one of those to really become a best seller. Now, I definitely don't recommend when it comes to different product types you try way too many. I think that a good number for your shop is to test out maybe about three different things, and I actually have a full video here of some of the best suggestions, especially towards the end of the year, of what you should be selling. All of those can be found on Printify, but if you are really in a rut.

you've been trying one product type, for example, only T-shirts. Maybe it's time to branch into something else and see if that maybe is a better product for you. Now, the next brutally honest piece of advice that I really want to tell you guys is don't get discouraged when you haven't even met certain thresholds in your business. Now, this is definitely one of those brutally honest pieces of advice. It's easier said than done not to get discouraged when you are really pouring a lot into something that you're passionate about, that you really want to work. But sometimes I get comments from new sellers who are super discouraged because they've posted a few items and they still haven't gotten any sales after a couple of weeks. But a lot of times you aren't even giving yourself enough time or enough volume of listings in your business to even be seen. So typically I tell new sellers don't even worry about making your first sale until you have over 100 different listings. Now, there's nothing magic about 100

listings posted to your store, but that is just going to give yourself enough volume that maybe one or two products can really start taking off. If you have way less than that, there's a good chance that nothing is your best seller yet, that people aren't really interested in those first few products. Stores that really are full-time businesses have thousands of different products in their shops, but like I said, not all of those are always going to sell. So don't worry if you haven't made your first sale, if you're not getting a lot of views, if you still have very few products, and same thing with the amount of time you've been working on your business. If you've just posted listings the past couple weeks and you still feel like you aren't getting traction, that honestly probably just isn't enough time for any of the algorithms on the print-on-demand sites to really understand what you're selling and find the right customers for you. So give it a few months trying this, uploading new products every single day, and get above that 100 listing threshold.

and then you can start maybe worrying that, okay, I should try some different niches. Maybe I should work better on my SEO, on my mockups, on my designs. But before that, you really don't have the volume or the time in your shop to worry that you aren't making sales. So just keep pushing through and use those first few months as a learning experience. You are just practicing uploading, getting products out there, and some of those could become bestsellers that are selling years down the road. I have some of my first products that I uploaded in the first few weeks that I was doing print on demand that are still selling over 4 years later. So you never know what really is going to take off, but you just have to keep going and don't get discouraged too early in this process. Now, the next piece of advice that is amazing for new sellers, but even those who have been sticking with this for a longer period of time, this is something that I like to work on as well, is commit

to learning one new thing for your business every single week. Now, when you're first getting started, it's really easy to get so overwhelmed by how much there is to learn. When you're starting out, the threshold for what you don't know is so large. You're probably still learning how to do your titles and descriptions. You don't know anything about SEO. You're just learning how to do mockups and designs and research niches, and it feels very overwhelming. So, it's easy to get stuck in analysis paralysis, where you're not doing anything, you're not making new uploads, you're not making new products because you feel like you don't have all the information yet. But you really should just be getting started and focusing on one area that you're going to tackle every single week. So, maybe for that first week, you're working on making better designs, you're watching videos about design tips. I have a lot here, and there's a ton of other print-on-demand YouTubers that have awesome design videos that you can get a

lot of ideas from maybe you're playing around a lot in your KD account or Canva, seeing how things work. And for that week, yes, you're doing your best with what you know for your titles and your upload process, but you're mainly just focusing on improving those design skills. And then maybe the next week, your focus is going to be on writing your titles. So you are spending a lot more time looking at what other sellers are doing, researching good SEO, watching videos about how to write titles and descriptions, how to do SEO, and just making that your one focus only. Learning one thing every single week really helps us not become too distracted and too discouraged in this process when there really is so much to learn. If you just add one new thing to your business every single week, at the end of the year, you're going to have so much additional knowledge, and your print-on-demand business truly is going to improve, even if you're only focusing on one thing every single week. Now, if you feel like you're really struggling with the niche.

Research process. That's one that I find so many different sellers have a hard time with. I actually highly recommend going down below and signing up for my free workshop, all about my cross-niching method. This can be your focus for the week if you just want to get some new strategies for how to do your research process a lot better. That workshop is about an hour long, it's totally free. If you sign up, I will send you the link to watch the whole thing, and it really just gives you some actionable tips that you can start using right away in your business. And if you're looking for even more advice and tips, here's another list of some of the biggest mistakes a lot of new sellers are doing without even realizing. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in my next video.

My BRUTALLY HONEST Advice to Someone Who Wants to Be a Print on Demand Seller

Hannah Ebeling

Key Advice for Aspiring Print-on-Demand Sellers

Enjoying the process is crucial for success in print-on-demand, even if you don't love every design you make.

Many successful sellers come from non-professional backgrounds and find joy in the creative aspect of the business.

It's important to appeal to a specific group of buyers, which may not always align with your personal interests.

Growing a Print-on-Demand Business: Key Advice

It's important to enjoy the process of making products, regardless of the niche.

New sellers often underestimate the effort needed on platforms like Etsy and Amazon, which offer better long-term payoffs.

Working with a reliable manufacturing partner, like Printify, can streamline the process of selling on Etsy.

Linking your account with Etsy takes just a few minutes, but using a manufacturing partner is crucial for building a full-time business.

Setting measurable and realistic goals is important for growth, and working in small increments daily is more effective than trying to do everything at once.

Consistent effort over a few months, rather than intense bursts of work, leads to greater success in listing products.

Strategies for New Print-on-Demand Sellers

Consistently uploading a small number of listings can lead to a significant collection over three months.

Trying out different niches and product types is beneficial for new sellers, as it helps identify what sells well.

Offering a variety of products increases the chance of finding a best seller, while testing out three different product types is a recommended approach.

Branching out to different product types can be beneficial if T-shirts aren't working.

Don't get discouraged by slow sales; it often takes time and a larger volume of listings to gain traction.

Aim for over 100 listings to increase the chances of one or two products taking off, and use the first few months as a learning experience.

Learning One New Thing for Your Business Every Week

Focusing on one area of improvement each week can help prevent overwhelm and analysis paralysis when starting a business.

This approach allows for gradual skill development, such as improving design skills or mastering SEO.

The consistency of learning one new thing each week can lead to significant knowledge gains and overall business improvement by the end of the year.