How To Start A Successful Print-On-Demand Business In 2022 [100% Working]

There is no shortage of the startups when it comes to the online businesses with no investments. With online business such as blogging, Affiliate marketing, and Dropshipping growing up, there is the ocean of opportunities to make it big there.

One of the online businesses if you love designing and is passionate about the printing is the print-on-demand (POD). Print on Demand may be similar to the AliExpress Dropshipping in some aspects but it has its own pros and cons too.

In this post have explained in detail a step by step guide on How to Start A Successful Print-On-Demand Business In 2022 With Little Investment.

What Is Print On Demand?

Print On Demand is the business of selling your own custom designs in different products. It is the self-publishing books. You can get your custom designs in the T-shirts, mugs, hats, and print other digital content using this business model.

If you are creative enough, you can start your own POD business with just a few simple steps and you will be ready to go.

The POD has brought a drastic change in printing as compared to the traditional printing. While the traditional printing needs the bulk orders for the printing, the POD business saves the cost by only printing as much as the requirement.

Advantages of Print On Demand:

• There is no need to keep the stocks with you. All of the things are printed only after the order. The design is kept digitally.
• The copes can e printed individually and thus they can be customized easily.
• The quality of the printing is better than the traditional printing as it is based on newer machines and technologies as compared to the old machines.
• One your design is ready, it can be sold easily from anywhere I the world to anywhere. All you need is to upload the manuscript.
• You can, later on, make changes and edit easily as it doesn't involve bulk printing.

Steps To Start A Successful Print-On-Demand Business In 2022

I have given a detailed step by step guide on how to start a Print-on-Demand business with a little or o investment. Starting an online business might not cost you dearer but it is must that you give your hard work, time and dedication to it.

Step 1: Choose a Software

So, the first thing that you would need for a successful print on demand business is to choose the suitable software. Even if you are creative enough, you would need designing software. You must choose that software which has both Pixel as well as the vector format.

I have selected some amazing and the best software to use for the POD business. There are some freebies too but I wouldn't recommend going for the free software if you are looking to start with something serious. The free tools may have the limited features and less flexibility.

While some software like Canva and Gimp may help you, though they are free, some better software that I have tried is:

Step 2: Choose a Niche

This is the most important step to start your T-shirt business online. Deciding the niche becomes important when you start an online business of your own.

In the Print on demand business, the competition is tough and it is too hard to get the better conversions until and unless you have got some attractive stuff to display. The most profitable niches would only benefit here and it becomes too hard to choose a niche in this kind of business.

I will help you out in choosing the profitable niche. Firstly, there are two main niches to choose from in a POD business.

The first one is the product niche. Product niche decides that what type of product you want to add to your store. It can be T-shirts, or mugs or anything that you want to sell in your shop. You can also sell one or all in the shop. But I would recommend selling only one type of product.

The second type of niche is a subject niche. Choose that what do you want to choose as a subject- birthday, nurses, dogs, clowns, yoga or anything. Choose a design and the subject that you want to show. You can display the same designs in all the products in your shops such as in the T-shirts, mugs, hoodies, sweatshirts or any other product that you would choose.

Use the same design in different languages and people would love those designs in their native language. That's the best way to increase your sale but make sure the design you are creating is a unique one.

Thus, once you have chosen the niche, I would say that go with both of them simultaneously. Once you have chosen the niche; let's take an example that you have chosen the birthday. You can start with choosing another 5-10 sub-topics such as the month, date, year or anything.

Then use that subject or design on any product that you desire to. Make sure the product is a profitable one with the niche.

How To Research Keyword Demand

Before you proceed with the chosen niche, it is important to check once again for the profitable niche or the keyword that might help you. To look id the niche is selling or not, just type in the niche in the any of the sites that offer POD products.
There are a number of POD sites such asRedbubble, Zazzle, Teepublic and a lot of others. These sites can filter the products on the basis of best sellers. This way, you can check out the winning products.

You can also research the Pinterest with the relevant keyword and look for the most pinned product. Also, there is an extension in the Google Chrome - 'Chrome DS еxtеnѕiоn.' This extension displays the best selling products in Amazon.com.

If you are still confused about the niche, you can search for your keywords in the Google trends.

Step 3: Create Your Store

This is one of the most necessary steps to start your own Print on Demand business. To sell your products, it is essential to own your store. Even the customers, as well as the dropshippers, will contact you through your store.

Creating a store becomes lucrative as there are a number of stores that create the readymade E-commerce stores for you. One of the best platforms for creating the E-commerce store is Shopify.

Shopify has been widely used to create the E-commerce store by any E-commerce vendors or dropshippers. It also gives a free trial so that you can test your store before launching it.

The reason why I would like to go with Shopify is:

1. 100+ professional themes
2. Web-based website builder
3. 100 payment gateways
4. Mobile friendly website
5. Abandoned cart recovery
6. Email Templates
7. SEO optimized stores
8. Social Media integration
9. Free analytics and traffic report and many more...

Some of the other great platforms for creating your E-commerce store is WooCommerce and Magento. But, I would still go with Shopify because of its robust features.

Once you have created the shop, the printers or the dropshippers can reach and print o dropship the products directly to the customers using your designs that would certainly profit you.

Quick Links:

Step 4: Apply For Merch By Amazon

Shopify offers these awesome dropshipper apps which you can use to find a Dropshipper:

After you have got some designs ready, apply for the Merch by Amazon. I will explain about Merch by Amazon in detail here.

MBA (Merch by Amazon) is the grandfather in the POD industry. It is one of the largest platforms to earn money through POD. You don't even need promotion to make money. All you need is an attractive design and the beneficial and relevant keywords.

A lot of skillful designers can't get the proper sales because they remain intact with the traditional designs. The secret of making more money using it is by describing the design and using the relevant keywords.

How Does Merch Work?

If you are willing to start your own T-shirt business and you are skilled enough, then Merch by Mazon is the best platform to earn quickly.

The Merch By Amazon service works simply as another dropshipper and seller sites (POD sites) for your designs but it is far more profitable to your business when it comes to selling the design using MBA.

Amazon is one of the best E-commerce sites and it has millions of customers around the world. You just need to upload your design and choose the colors and all other things will be looked at by Amazon.

You will first need to request for an invitation on their landing page. It is a kind of approval by the Amazon that you are eligible to sell your designs on Amazon. While the approval may take days or even months, you can decide the niche and sell on other POD platforms too.

At first, you can sell up to 10 different designs at once. After these 10 designs have been sold, you are upgraded to the next tier and can sell up to 25 designs now. The next upgrade level is for selling the 50 designs. This way, you may have the ability to sell over 500 different designs at once.

• Upload your Design
• Set the Price
• Amazon creates the listing
• People will see the listing and buy it
• Amazon prints and ships it for you.

Step 5: Create your designs on MBA

After login, choose a color of the product and then you can use the software to upload the graphics on your shirt. There is the number of software that you can use to design. I would recommend Photoshop as it has all the features and tools to add designs and colors.

You can download the Amazon T-shirt template that can help you specify the dimensions for your graphics. These templates can be created in high-quality and do not stretch these designs as it will distort the designs.

Merch By Amazon works in pretty simple steps:

• Place Your Design wherever you want to.
• Look for the shirt colors and preview the design by using the different colors.
• Choose the shirt types in the dropdown- t-shirt, women front or hoodies, etc..
• After creating the design, save the contents and save it as a new PNG file. You will then need to upload it to Create with Amazon section.

Merch By Amazon tips to Get Successful T-Shirt business

• Research the relevant phrase or keywords by using the MerchResaerch tools to find the suitable keyword. You can look up the results by using the categories.
• Do not copyright. Look for the POD sites and check for the copyright infringement.
• Make sure that you have described the products well. Make use of the bullets and use proper description.
• Market your designs and check for the success ratio by publishing your designs on Facebook and Twitter.

Is Print on Demand Similar to AliExpress Dropshipping?

Print on Demand may vary slightly from each other but they can also be similar to each other in a lot of aspects. While Print on Demand involves creating your own design and use them on different products such as T-shirts, mugs or any product, Dropshipping means to choose among the millions of products from the stores such as Aliexpress and the supplier would deliver it to you.

But, they are somewhat similar too:

• No need to keep the inventory
• The supplier directly delivers product to the customer
• Placing the order is automated.
• Low investment business. Both of them don't need store upfront to store your products.

Pint on Demand business needs the proper graphic skills and the use of keywords whereas the Dropshipping needs SEO optimized store and proper marketing skills on social media.

Two tool to start your Print on Demand Business :

Quick Links:

Conclusion: Start A Successful Print-On-Demand Business In 2022

There is always the right time to start your business. And in the case of POD, I must say this is the best time to start your POD business even if you don't own anything.

All you would need is some designing software and a store to kick off your business. If you have got the creative mind and the skills to design, you are ready to go. Do not rush and have patience.

Print on Demand is certainly the blooming business nowadays and no one wants to spend a large sum using the traditional printing. It is the most cost-effective business with no storage and postage costs.

This was my step by step guide on starting a print on demand business for the beginners. If you think that I have missed something, kindly let me know in the comments.