It's important to understand that print on demand profits are not made overnight!
You need to keep the right perspective on PODL It's a long-term play.
This means making sure to not infringe on trademarks and copyrights, and uploading new products regularly that you'll reap the benefit from for years to come.
Realistic numbers won't blow you away, but it's all about scalability:
If you post a t-shirt that sells on average once every other month for $5 profit, the numbers look like this:
- $2.50 profit / month
- $30 profit / year
Now if you can scale that 10x, all of a sudden you make $300/yr.
What's stopping you from scaling that another 10x? NOTHING! Just a simple investment of your time & energy can take that $300/yr up to $3,000/yr.
Figuring Out "What Works"
When I ask my print-on-demand mentees and discuss what's working for them, I usually get a mixed bag of results.
Some people see success by targeting evergreen niches that randomly sell here and there, while others have more success attacking big niches like Valentines Day which was just last week.
A student of mine who's only been doing print on demand for 3 months was able to design some hilarious Donald Trump + Valentines Day + modern news cycle coffee mugs and get a bunch of pre-holiday sales, which was a pretty major success considering how new he was to the game.
While this worked and earned some short-term sales, it's not very likely to sell after the holiday.
I personally believe that you should regularly be uploading evergreen t-shirt designs to multiple platforms, while also targeting trends at the same time.
Things get a bit confused when I say "target trends".
To me, that doesn't mean uploading St Patrick's Day designs simply because that's the next major holiday this calendar year... I mean that you should look at the news cycle and try to tie something that's trending TODAY to St Patrick's day:
St Patrick's Day w/ a 2019 new cycle spin!
The problem here is that you'll still be targeting "St Patricks Day" primary keywords, and likely end up competing with listings that have prior sales history on those keywords, making it hard to appear page 1.
This is probably common sense, but if you're not ranked on page 1 of search results, you wont get any sales.
I personally would rather just target evergreen niches and dodge major holidays, as I think they're too saturated.
I wrote in another post about how I find profitable niches that when I crush a trend, it's usually one that I either saw on TV or saw a push notification for.
Let other people advertise your products for you!
But it's also important to keep the right perspective:
As evidenced in my transparent monthly passive income reports, I wasn't able to achieve any real success outside of Q4 in my first YEAR.
This was also largely in part to the fact that I lacked a mentor to show me the ropes & learn from, because I definitely faced a steep initial learning curve.
The point of me sharing that is two fold:
- Keeping the right perspective is key - print on demand businesses are a long-term play that you will reap the benefit of over time down the road, as it's completely passive once your products are launched
- No matter what your business model is, if you're going through it for the first time, I very strongly believe that learning from someone who's already doing it successfully is most optimal.
Your time is valuable - if you can fast forward the learning process - do it!
My First 12 Months Doing Print on Demand
Starting a new business is difficult, but as long as you focus on streamlining & automating business processes, you'll make it in the long run.
Each time you iterate through a workflow, focus on improving it so that the next time you do it, it's easier & more efficient.
Also join online communities with like-minded people (*cough* Ryan's Method Facebook Group), and learn from each other.
I mentioned that I paid a coach for 1 on 1 help launching my Amazon FBA business, but my journey into Amazon Merch & other print on demand income streams were largely lead in part by dumb luck.
I do have to give a shout out to my primary source for Merch by Amazon information (& fueling my fire to out-sell the hosts): The Merch Minds Podcast.
Their podcast content is both valuable & entertaining at the same time. I really wish I took them more seriously when they implored everyone to jump on the Printful+Etsy integration... unfortunately I waited months to take advantage and lost out on profits.
Beyond that though it was self discipline and the desire to quit my day job that fueled me, through thick (Amazon Merch = $$$) and thin (all other dropshipped print on demand I tried = FAIL for the first year).
Here's a brief overview of my print on demand story:
Amazon Merch
I got off to a slow start on Amazon Merch, as many do. The "10-tier" that caps your maximum t-shirts available for sale at 10 is BRUTAL, but I eventually made it out by niching down until I found initial sales, and then doubling down on that niche which got me enough sales to get out.
I never had to buy my own shirts! (Not that there's anything wrong with doing this).
On my second account (my mom's account), I got 100 sales while in the 10 tier and was immediately eligible for the 500 tier, by getting lucky while chasing a hot Halloween related trend.
You can't bank on that sort of success though, I didn't know something other people didn't! My design was one of at least 100+ very similar designs.
Luckily, somehow, some way it was displayed prominently on the primary keywords and customers that clicked the listing were converting.
In my first 12 months on my primary Amazon Merch account, I made $21,071.04 in royalties
That averages out to 1755.92 a month, and not to insult your intelligence but would equate to a $21,071.04 annual salary which would NOT make you rich if you live in the United States.
Other Print on Demand
All of my non-Amazon Merch print on demand ventures were largely unsuccessful for the first year, with the exception of Q4 where everyone gets sales :)
In my first 12 months on non-Merch print on demand ventures, I made $3,273.82 in profit.
I had absolutely no clue what I was doing initially, and I really only offered fulfilled by merchant (FBM) print on demand products via Gearbubble for the first 14 months.
Sign up for Gearbubble today »
This strategy does work just fine in the long run, because I eventually grew my catalog of Gearbubble coffee mugs & shot glasses to over 10,000 but the revenue would never be enough to live off of by only chasing evergreen niches.
Then on one fateful day in August 2018 I struck gold when I saw a hat being advertised in the media and thought to myself "I should throw this up on a t-shirt".
After uploading the shirts I think the story is something like I went to the gym, worked out, and it hit me: "Dumbass - UPLOAD THE DESIGN TO A HAT!!" ...I'm hard on myself in my internal monologues :)
At the time I didn't know if it was even possible, but a simple Google search lead me back to Printful.com which easily integrates with Amazon, Etsy, & eBay for selling print on demand embroidered hats.
The result: I made over $10,000 in profit that month selling mostly print on demand hats, including making over $1,500 profit in a SINGLE DAY!
This is just Etsy - it doesn't factor in Amazon or eBay!
To be fully transparent, I should mention that this wasn't my first time getting ahead of a big trend, as I had made over $700 in royalties in one day on Amazon Merch the year before & knew how to approach being early to a big trend.
This massive success also helped me understand that I was under utilizing the Etsy marketplace, and lead to me taking it more seriously which lead to me now averaging monthly profit in the thousands (instead of in the hundreds) from print on demand.
The real takeaway here is that I never gave up and I learned from both my mistakes and my successes over time.
The Occasional Big Win
As I mentioned earlier, you should let other people advertise your products for you.
That means designing products that you see celebrities & influencers already wearing (make sure they're not trademarked first!).
This way your advertising fees stay locked in at low rates, while still getting visibility.
If you follow this strategy, occasionally you'll have some big wins.
In an earlier post I outlined that I was able to get out ahead of a few sports trends and make some big bucks as a result, including making over $700 royalties in one day.
I was also able to 10x my Amazon Merch profits month-over-month from a different trend in June 2017 (click to view the income report).
I'm not trying to wow you with my numbers - I could never guess that I'd find that level of success - the truth is, it doesn't work that way.
What I want them to illustrate are the potential rewards for being vigilant and always being ready to tackle new trends.
