Why I Decided to Write this Course
Only a few months before setting out to write this course, I was clueless about the first step one needs to take to create and sell Print and Demand T shirts and other such merch online. What I knew for sure is that I was missing out on some big bucks$$.
I did know a few things though…such as that one needs a niche audience to get started. A decently trafficked website would be helpful. I had most of the requirements, plus a super-creative mind, and that is why I was looking into how I could make a killing creating and selling Print and Demand Merch for life!
At the time of getting started, I had only superficial knowledge of Print on Demand Merchandise and how to create and sell them, and many questions baffled me, such as:
- Which is the best Print on Demand website company?
- Do I need to process orders manually or is it all automated?
- Do I need to pay upfront or are my fees deducted from each purchase?
- What’s the best storefront or marketplace to use?
- How do you set up payment processing?
- Etc
Of course, there were tons and tons of websites and videos that gave lessons on various aspects of the print on demand merchandise business, and while they were good, none laid it crystal clear for the absolute beginner. I spent two weeks in peace and quiet in a rented hotel room and read and studied as much as I could about creating and selling Print on Demand Merch. Having a knack for breaking complex stuff down, I decided to write this course that lays everything down crystal clear from start to finish for the absolute beginner.
Help me to Help You
I’ve tried to make this course as simple and step-by-step as possible. However, if I missed anything, if you have any questions, or if anything confuses you, please express this using the comment form at the bottom of this page and I will address it promptly. That way, you can help me improve this course!
Prerequisites
In order to take full advantage of this course, you will need the following:
A Printify Account. Click here to sign up.
A Fiverr Account. Click here to sign up.
What is Printify
Printify, and other Print on Demand Merchandise Companies, gives people the ability to create customized, value-added merchandise such as t-shirts, pants, hoodies, caps, mugs, cups, water bottles, and a wide variety of other items to sell online. The merchandise is customized with words, pictures, logos, etc and presented to the buyer.
These Print on Demand Merchandise appeal to people’s emotions. They contain pictures, words, and phrases which enhance the product. Usually, persons who sell Print on Demand Customized Merchandise Online appeal to a niche audience. For example, I have a website www.guyanasouthamerica.gy, a Facebook Page named “Guyana, South America,” and a YouTube Channel called “Guyana, South America.” The Guyana, South America publication features businesses, tells stories, post videos, etc, of or related to the country of Guyana. It also publishes news, commentaries, etc. The publication has a growing audience of people who are from the country of Guyana, live in the country of Guyana, or have some other interest or appreciation for the country of Guyana.
I can use this platform to market print on demand t-shirts that carry beautiful pictures of Guyana at the back and a catchy phrase at the front, or even ones with only a catchy phrase. I can adapt the designs to fit other items such as water bottles, mugs, cups, blankets, etc.
Here are some examples for t-shirts:
Back: Scenery picture with words describing the location of the picture at the top and my website URL at the bottom: www.guyanasouthamerica.gy.
Examples of top back descriptions:
- Lethem, Region 9
- Bartica, Region 7
- Aruwai Resort, Region 7
- The Takutu Hotel, Region 9
- Orealla Village, Region 6
- The Kaieteur Falls, Region 8
Front:
- I Love Guyana
- Guyana: My Country, My Home
- Born in Guyana
- Guyana, Land of the Free
- 100% Guyanese
- True Guyanese
- Born and Bred in Guyana, South America
- Guyanese Made
- Proud Guyanese
- Born in the Land where men sought El Dorado (Back contains map of Guyana showing golden city and words at top: El Dorado: Guyana)
Recently, there has been a conflict with neighboring Venezuela for the Essequibo county whereby Venezuela threatened to invade and annex the Essequibo. This raises the volume of the national sentiment that the Essequibo belongs to Guyana. In this context, I can create t-shirts, hoodies, caps, and other merchandise to magnify these sentiments. Since this will appeal to people’s emotions and patriotism, it has the potential to generate a lot of sales.
Here are some examples:
Back:
Photo of scenery with words describing scenery at the top and the website URL at the bottom.
Words describing scenery may include:
- The Essequibo River
- Bartica, Essequibo
- Moruca, Essequibo
- Mabaruma, Essequibo
- The Pakaraima Mountains, Essequibo
- The Kanuku Mountains, Essequibo
- The Beautiful Rupununi, Essequibo
- The Kaieteur Falls, Essequibo
Back May also contain:
- a map of Guyana with words “All of Guyana” at the top
- a flag of Guyana with words “the Golden Arrow Head” at the top
- a blade of grass with words “Not a Blade of Grass” at the top
- a rice grain with words “not one rice grain” at the top
- a curass fish with words “not one curass.” at the top
- a blue saki with words “not one blue saki” at the top
Front:
- Essequibo Belongs to Guyana
- Essequibo is We Own
- The Essequibo is Guyana
When I sell one of these t-Shirts, I not only make a profit, but I also remind people to come back to my website because the t-shirts are branded with my website URL www.guyanasouthamerica.gy. On top of that, Printify allows Premium users to send a personalized card to their buyers. This card can contain the website URL, Facebook Page, YouTube Channel, etc, thus helping you to drive traffic to your publication while building a customer base and making profits at the same time.How cool is that!
Here’s a great video that teaches you how to use Printify to create and sell customized merchandise.
Options for setting up your Printify Store
On top of creating customized products inside the Printify website, you’ll need a good third-party storefront to display your products and process orders. There are several options for this, including:
- Shopify
- API (for connecting your own customized website to Printify using Application Programmer Interface)
- Big Commerce
- SquareSpace
- Tiktok
- Walmart
- Wix
- Printify Pop up Store
- Woocommerce (for WordPress developers)
- Etsy (marketplace)
- Ebay (marketplace)
In my opinion,Etsy and Printify Pop Up Store are the easiest ways to start selling POD merch. Each one has its own unique advantage and disadvantage. Printify Pop Up store, built into your Printify account, and provided by Printify itself, eliminates the need to have a credit card on file that Printify will charge when an order comes in. With all other options, when an order comes in, it goes straight into your account balance connected to your store which you will later withdraw in full. When someone places an order for a POD merch from ETSY, Shopify, Ebay, and several other storefronts, Printify is unable to deduct their printing and shipping costs automatically from that payment, so it charges your credit card the production and shipping costs and fulfills the order. The difference between what Printify charges you and what you charge your customers, remains your profit for each sale. However, for the Printify Pop Store Option, Printify is able to deduct its costs for printing and shipping, and leave you with the profit. Therefore, you do not need to have a credit card on file when using the Printify Pop Up Store.
The Etsy Marketplace option, while it does not allow for automatic deduction, and requires that you file a credit/debit card with Printify, has the advantage of providing you with a heavily trafficked marketplace so your merchandise get a lot of free exposure even before you start doing your own promotions.
In your Printify account, you can select the option for Printify to process orders every hour, 24 hours etc, or you can set it to manual. That means, you go and manually place the order after the customer places an order from your storefront. In my opinion, setting to “automatic: every hour” saves a lot of time and work, ensures speed and efficiency, and is totally hands-free, ensuring much needed, time-saving automation for your Printify Merch Business.
The Design Process
In order to create and sell POD merch using Printify, you will need to design the graphics which will be superimposed on the product and printed. You have several options for this:
- Use a photo editing website or software, such as Photoshop or Canva. This option is for those who have great photo editing and design skills. If you’re not passionate about artwork and graphic design, I suggest you choose option 2, below, so as not to compromise the quality of your product.
- Outsource your product using an outsourcing website, the two most popular of these being Upwork and Fiverr. I’m one of those persons who don’t consider themselves an expert in graphic design or photo editing, so I used this option, and below, I’ll give you the full low-down on how to use this option too if you choose it.
Outsourcing Your Design on Fiverr
Creating A Printify Pop Up Store
The Print on Demand Pop of Store, which is the easiest way to get started, and doesn’t require that you have a credit card on file, is only available to some countries. The list of countries it is available to is steadily growing, and Printify will notify you whether or not your country is eligible once you attempt setup.
So let’s get started. Log in to your Printify account.
Creating a Print on Demand T-shirt in the Printify Pop Up Store
Now that we have set up our Printify Pop Up Store, and created our first pair of graphics to super-impose on our merchandise, let’s go ahead and create our first Print on Demand t-shirt by adding these pre-designed front and back graphics onto the t-shirt.
Log in to your Printify Account. Once inside, look to your top right and make sure that the Printify Pop Up Store that you just created is selected. In my case, it is the first store that I created, so it was selected by default. If you have several stores, you will have to click the up/down arrows and make sure the Printify Pop Up Store Option is selected.
Next, scroll down to the bottom-middle of the dashboard and you will see the button to browse available products and select one to customize and add to the store.
After I click “Browse Products” it opens a window where I can do just that. I’ll now click on the “t-shirts” category.
Now the t-shirts category of Print on Demand Merch has opened giving me a wide variety to choose from. Also, in the “Target Market” option, I selected ALL options.
Now I’ll select the first product I want to create and sell, which is: Unisex Jersey Short Sleeve Tee by Bella+Canvas3001.
After I select Unisex Jersey Short Sleeve Tee by Bella + Canvas 3001, I’ll select my Print Provider from the list of options. I’ll go with the first one, Print Geek because it is highest rated and also has a low shipping cost, fast production time, offers front and back printing, a wide variety of sizes, and also offers a wide variety of colors. This is a Canadian print provider, and I personally have a lot of respect for Canadian companies.
Next, I’ll click on the “Start designing” button which opens the window below.
On the right hand side of the screen, I’ll make sure “New design” is selected. Then I’ll click on “My device” and browse to the location where I saved the front graphic after I had purchased it from the Fiverr creator. I’ll select that graphic so it gets imported into the Printify Creation tool. See below the requirements which Print Geek has for this graphic for this particular product.
Bear in mind that when I commissioned the design on Fiverr, I gave the creator these requirements. So hopefully, all will go well!
As you can see from the picture above, the design from the front was successfully imported into the Printify Online Product Creation tool.
For color option, I’ll leave white alone which was automatically selected. I’ll scroll down to the size and position option, leave all the automatically selected options, and just hit the two “center” buttons which make sure my design is centered both vertically and horizontally on the t-shirt.
Next I’ll select the “Back” option, and click on Add design to upload my back design which was created on Fiverr.
I complete the same steps as for the Front side, and then click on the “Save Product” button in green.
As you can see above, this gives me the option to choose my title image and mockup views.
In this case, I’ll choose the “Lifestyle” option with the beautiful young model with her hands in her pockets smiling because it adds beauty, life, and liveliness to the product.
Next, I’ll scroll down a little and add product title and description. There is some text there by default, but I’ll reword it completely.
Now admit it! That looks much sweeter, doesn’t it! Next, I’ll select the option to add size table in metric!
Next, I’ll scroll down to variants and select “All Sizes.”
Now let’s have a look at the table below.
Production price for this item ranges from 17 to 21 US dollars and shipping ranges from 7 to 11 US dollars worldwide. Average shipping time is 2 to 5 business days for Canada, 3 to 5 business days for the United States, and 10 to 30 business days for rest of the world. I’ll make an estimated 11 dollars profit on each sale.
Now, I hit the “Publish” button, and in a few seconds, my product is published!
Next, I click the three dots highlighted in yellow and select “See in store.”
This opens the live store listing where customers can purchase this amazing product!
Now, all I have to do is share the product URL highlighted above with my audience to give them the ability to purchase this amazing product!
I can also look at the layout and wording of the listing, and if anything doesn’t look too nice, I can go back to my Printify account and edit it and save changes.
And that’s it! I’ve published my first POD Merch on Printify using the Printify Pop Up Store. See what it looks like live!
Creating a Sweatshirt for my Printify Pop Up Store
Now that I’ve done the awesome job of creating a t-shirt for my Printify Pop Up Store, I’m going on to create my second product: A Sweatshirt.
First, I’ll log into my Printify Account by going to www.printify.com and then clicking on the “My Store” button to the top right. Once inside the store, I’ll click on “Catalog” to open the list of categories of products.
Next, I’ll click on “Men’s Clothing,” and then “See All.”
Now I’ll choose sweatshirts.
Next, I’ll select all the options for Target Market and click on Unisex Heavy Blend Crewneck Sweatshirt by Gildan 18000.
Next I’ll select my Print Provider, once again, Print Geek, and click on Start designing.
Bear in mind that the Print Area for this sweatshirt is different from the Print Area for the t shirt I created previously. The Print Area for the tshirt is smaller (3600 x 4800) as compared to the Print Area for the sweatshirt which is 4200 x 4800. While I am using the same design, I paid my Fiverr talent a small fee to adapt the design for this print area. Bear in mind that the same design cannot work on products of different Print Area Size or it might look awkward or result in low Print Quality, etc. So I’ve already done the ground work of adapting the design for this Print Area. Let’s go!
From hereon, I’ll follow the same steps I did to create the t shirt explained above. And that’s it! I’ve created a magnificent Print on Demand Sweatshirt ready to pull in orders!
