print on demand is honestly one of the best businesses you could start in 2025. If you're looking for a way to make some additional income every single month, it's really beginner-friendly. It doesn't take a lot to get started, and it's very low cost. You won't have to make a ton of investment upfront to go ahead and start making a bunch of money. But there are so many outdated strategies and tips I see floating around all the time that I kind of just want to clear the air about and give you my take on those. So, this is going to be a complete list of some outdated tips that you should throw out in 2025 if you really want to be a successful print-on-demand seller and scale this business to where it can be more than just a few dollars here and there every single month. So, let's not waste any more time and just jump right into this list of way outdated tips. Now, you might be a new seller, and the first thing you might find yourself wanting to sell is going to be t-shirts. You know

you're going to see it all over YouTube, people doing t-shirt tutorials, ways to make money on Etsy, selling T-shirts on Amazon. And I personally still love and sell t-shirts, but in 2025, that is not the only way you should be approaching your print-on-demand business. There are so many other products that you can make a ton of money and break into really saturated niches if you sell other alternative products besides just t-shirts. Now, some easy ones that I always love to suggest selling, if you haven't yet, is definitely things like sweatshirts and hoodies, mugs, tumblers, glass cups, Christmas ornaments, items for babies. But I have an entire list of items that you can find and sell on Printify. Now, what I really love about selling these other items is a lot of times t-shirts are going to be the first thing that people tend to sell. So, in many niches, t-shirt designs are so saturated. But if you do those same kind of niches, those same designs, and just an

alternative product you have a way better chance of actually standing out. So maybe you've made a ton of different designs for many different niches, but you feel like you're not getting any traction. It doesn't necessarily mean those designs are no good, but why don't you just try putting them on another product type? Now, I mentioned that Printify has a ton of selection when it comes to different products. If you've never signed up for them before, I'll link all their information down below. They're 100% free to use and sell with, and they basically are just going to act as a middleman between a place like you and Etsy. So they're going to do everything from store items. They are going to manufacture them. They are going to pack and ship the items. They are going to handle all of that for you, and you can simply make the designs and upload them to your Etsy store. And they have a catalog of over 800 different items. So if you just feel at a loss for what you should be selling next and feel

like you're getting in a kind of t-shirt rut. I highly suggest just scrolling through some of their best sellers or their new products to see if there's something that you could be able to try that could really help you break into a saturated niche in this coming year. Now, the next very outdated tip that I still see so many people doing is falling into the trap of copying best-selling designs. Now, in print on demand, a huge way that we figure out what is going to sell, what niches to pursue, is by looking at what is selling on Amazon, what's selling on Etsy. So, we're going to take huge clues from the designs that are doing well, from the different niches that are selling. But a lot of times, I see new sellers fall into the trap of they see a design that looks really cute, it's selling super well, so they're like, Okay, I am going to make an almost exact copy of that design. It's going to have the same phrase on it, it's going to have a

really similar graphic, and then they upload it on Etsy and expect it to do really well because the other one had thousands of sales. But the reality is that design is already ranking. Yes, that might be a good niche to sell in, but if you're trying to copy a very similar aesthetic, the same phrase, the same type of design as someone else, very likely the one that already has sales, it's already ranking on the first page. It has reviews, is going to continue to get sales, and your item is probably going to get banished to like the 10th, if not 200th page of Etsy. What you should be doing instead of copying designs almost exactly is you should take note of what is working well with that design. So, what niche is this? What kind of style is this? And you should take that information and kind of reinterpret it in a new way and do something that's not already out there. This is really how I found a lot of success in print on demand, is I would see bestselling designs. I would take

note of what niche it is, maybe what phrase was on there, but I would make it in a new way that I hadn't seen before. So maybe, for example, a bunch of bestsellers were just being sold on black t-shirts with kind of a white distressed text. Well, I want to see something different. So maybe I would make this on a red or a blue shirt with some more colorful graphics and some more kind of interesting font that kind of takes that same idea but reinterprets it in a new way. So anytime that you are looking for a niche, when you find something that's doing well, think about how you can either do it differently or do it better, and that is going to make your item have a way bigger chance of actually standing out and being seen. Because when someone sees the item that's already sold and then also sees yours, it's not a choice between two almost identical things, it's two really separate ones, and then it just comes down to their preference if they like your design and your style better.

they're going to purchase it even if it has less sales and reviews. So, make sure you're not just copying designs exactly and you're actually reinterpreting those in your own way. Now, the next really outdated thing that I see a lot of sellers doing, especially if they are selling on a platform like Etsy integrated with Printify, is they are still using the autogenerated mockups that come with every single upload you do. So, if you've used Printify before, you are probably familiar that anytime you upload a design, it's going to automatically have some good mockups for you. They're very clear. It's going to have a great image of what the photo exactly looks like and a few other in-context photos. Now, you've already spent a lot of time on the research portion and the design portion, so it's really tempting to at this point in the process just be like, you know what, those look good enough. It shows the product. You can see it very clearly, so I'm just going to use those autogenerated mockups that

Printify gives me for free, but that is really a huge mistake and a very outdated way to do things. The reality is the mockup is truly one of the most valuable pieces of real estate for your listing. When someone searches something on Etsy, they are going to be scrolling through hundreds of listings, and if they don't like the picture that they first see of your item, they're just going to scroll on past and not click on it. So, it's really important to stand out and have mockups that actually look like real people using your items, wearing them. And so, that's why I partnered today with Placeit, who is kind of an all-in-one print-on-demand tool. But the thing that I often use them the most for is their stock of thousands of different mockup photos. Now, a big challenge for me when I was first getting started is I was not an expert in how to use things like Photoshop or Illustrator, so I really didn't know how to just take a mockup photo and then my design and kind of put

it on my mockup in a way that actually looked real. I didn't know how to warp the image, and I found that when I tried to do it that way, it just took a lot of time. So, I really quickly got a subscription to Placeit. What I love about their mockup library is not only do they have almost anything you could want to sell there, but all you have to do is just import your design, and it's going to auto-format. So, you don't have to worry about making it look real because they're going to do that for you. And it's a subscription, so you don't have to worry about paying a la carte for every single mockup you get because that can get really pricey. And a lot of times, you want to test things, see if it works, and if that doesn't work, you could be out that money. But with a subscription, you can have access to their entire library, thousands of different mockups for each product type, and try things out. If it doesn't work, you can always switch.

that back out, so I really can't recommend this place enough. Along with that, they actually have a full design suite that you can use with a lot of templates, especially for the holidays. I find they have a bunch of cute Thanksgiving and Christmas designs, and they have logo makers and a bunch of other print-on-demand tools as well. So, if you're looking for something to kind of be an all-in-one print-on-demand tool, I definitely recommend giving them a try. I'll link all their information down below, and I have a full video here on how I go about making my mockups, some of my best tips for that, and how to actually step-by-step make one of those if you do want to check that video out. Now, the next really outdated strategy I see a ton of print-on-demand sellers still doing, and some more experienced print-on-demand sellers still recommending, is depending on scalable designs to really grow your business. Now, if you don't know what a scalable design is, it's basically a design that has a

phrase with maybe a graphic on it that just by changing one word you can make an entirely new design. So, it could be something like world's best Grandpa, and then you're going to change out the word grandpa for every grandparent name you can think of, so Grandma, granny, Nana, Nan, or you could even keep that same design and have it say world's best baker, world's best astronaut, world's best babysitter. So, a lot of people, they want to simplify the print-on-demand design process in the niche process as to make it as easy as possible, so they're going to make these generic designs where they can switch out just one word and upload hundreds of different items that are almost exactly the same except they've changed out one key word. Now, I'm not against all scalable designs. I think there is a way to do this well, but a lot of times I see people saying, I don't know why I'm not making sales. I have 10,000 listings, but I haven't been getting any traction. Come to find out, they have

a th000 listings of almost the exact same thing, just changing small things about one type of design. So, in print on demand, I think that it still is really important to bring some originality to whatever you're making. And I really love to try to get into the mind of the customer I am selling for. So, you're not always going to 100% know everything or love everything about the niche you're selling in, but I think it's really important to think about what types of designs are going to appeal to the customer who wants to buy that niche. And if it's a type of design that's broad enough that it could appeal to hundreds of different niches by just changing one word, it's probably not specific and niche down enough to actually really appeal to that specific demographic. That's one of the greatest things about print on demand is we can get so specific with the types of items we sell, way more than big stores like Walmart or Target could do, who have to make sure they're appealing to a wide enough

audience. We can make something so specific to a beagle-owning fireman, and that could actually still get sales, where a store like Target couldn't make that because they have to make sure they are manufacturing enough items to make it worth it for them. So, in print on demand, the more niche down and specifically can be the better. So, while scalable designs are okay here and there, I wouldn't rely on them solely for the types of designs I do to really grow my business. Now, the next really outdated thing that is not going to work in 2025 for your print-on-demand business is going to places like Creative Fabrica and just downloading t-shirt design packs or t-shirt design SVGs, uploading them to your Etsy store, and just waiting for sales to roll in. So, Creative Fabrica, I really love them. They do have some fabulous design elements, they have wonderful fonts, and I highly recommend them as a subscription service. But the one area that I don't typically use is going to be their already fully made

designs. Now, what I have seen is that if you are downloading this design pack, chances are thousands of other people are also doing the same thing. They're uploading this, so there are just copies and copies of the same design already out there. So, not only can that get you in trouble kind of with copyright issues with people saying that you uploaded this design after they already made it, but you're really just not going to have a big chance to make sales because you're competing with a bunch of other people. So, what I instead like to do is I'm going to go to a place like Creative Fabrica. I'm going to download individual elements, and I'm going to add them to my own things. So, on my design suite, I might add a really cute graphic from Creative Fabrica, but I'm going to add my own text, think of my own phrase in my own niche that I want to sell in, and that is going to make it way easier for me to make a bestselling design than just downloading packs of t-shirts that hundreds of other

people are probably using as well now. The next thing that is really outdated, and you definitely want to think about this going into 2025, is in 2024-2025. You cannot treat a generic holiday as a niche in and of itself and expect to get sales. So, what I mean by this is a lot of people are like, Okay, I know Christmas is a super popular holiday, so I'm going to make some Christmas designs, and those are going to sell really well. Well, yes, Christmas does sell really well. If you just make a generic Santa sweatshirt or something that says Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, you're competing with hundreds of thousands of new listings like that every single month, so you have almost no chance of actually standing out. So, what you need to be doing if you want to be selling in niches like Halloween or Thanksgiving or Christmas, Father's Day, Mother's Day, all the holidays that are going to come around next year, is you really need to think about how you can sub-niche these types of items and maybe cross them with

something else to have a way better chance of standing out. So, one way I love to kind of make holidays a little bit more subn is crossing them with things like careers or people's hobbies. Now, if you've been around my channel a little bit, you've probably heard me talking about this cross-niche strategy I have. It's something that has really helped me scale my own business. I use this all the time when I am trying to come up with new niches to create. So, if you're interested in learning more about this whole cross-niche method of how you can really take some profitable holidays and actually break into those niches, I have a full free workshop for you guys where I am going to break down this entire process for you, show you how to use my cross-niche guidebook that I'm going to give you for free, and take you through the process of kind of coming up with a niche, creating a design, and what that looks like. So, if you want to enroll in that free workshop, you can just sign

up right down below, and all the information will be sent to your email. And if you feel like you're doing any of these tips that are a little bit outdated, don't worry. You can just change things from here on out and really prepare yourself to have the best 2025 and beyond. And if you want even more tips about how to make this next year the best one yet, to really scale your business and grow your income, I highly recommend watching this video next. Thanks so, so much for watching, and I'll see you in my next video. Bye.

These Strategies DON'T WORK in 2025: The New Way to Grow Your Print on Demand Business in 2025

These Strategies DON'T WORK in 2025: The New Way to Grow Your Print on Demand Business in 2025

Scripts