---
title: 'Start a Print on Demand Business - Setup & How to Get Traffic (Beginner''s Guide)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ee29-6NWap8'
video_id: 'ee29-6NWap8'
date: 2026-08-17
duration_sec: 895
---

# Start a Print on Demand Business - Setup & How to Get Traffic (Beginner's Guide)

> Source: [Start a Print on Demand Business - Setup & How to Get Traffic (Beginner's Guide)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ee29-6NWap8)

## Summary

This video is a comprehensive beginner's guide to starting a print-on-demand business using Printify, covering the entire setup process from creating an account to publishing products, and then detailing four free or low-cost methods to drive traffic to a new store. The creator emphasizes that while the setup is quick and free, success requires consistent effort in traffic generation and realistic expectations about income timelines.

### Key Points

- **Print on Demand Basics** [00:00] — Print on demand allows starting an online business with no inventory or upfront costs. You create designs, put them on products, and a printing company fulfills orders directly to customers.
- **How Printify Works** [00:27] — Printify connects you with printing companies. You upload designs, set prices, and link to a store like Etsy or Shopify. You only pay for production when a customer orders, so there's no upfront investment.
- **Free Setup with Printify** [01:29] — Sign up for a free Printify account at printify.com. The free plan provides everything needed to start. A paid plan exists but is not necessary for beginners.
- **Product Selection** [02:55] — Printify offers hundreds of products (t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, etc.). For beginners, it's recommended to start with one or two simple products like t-shirts or mugs to avoid overwhelm.
- **Pricing and Profit** [03:38] — You see the production cost and set your retail price. The difference is your profit. Example: a $12 t-shirt sold for $25 yields $13 profit. Pricing requires trial and error based on your niche.
- **Connecting to Etsy** [05:30] — Etsy is the most beginner-friendly store to connect. You can create a free Etsy seller account, though Etsy charges a small listing fee per product. Once connected, you can publish products directly from Printify.
- **The Traffic Problem** [07:16] — Most new stores fail because of lack of traffic, not bad designs. A new Etsy store has no sales history or reviews, so it ranks low in search results. You cannot rely on Etsy search alone initially.
- **Traffic Method 1: Etsy SEO** [08:30] — Optimize your listings with relevant keywords in titles, descriptions, and tags. Use Etsy's autocomplete suggestions and the free tool e-rank for keyword data. This is the foundation for other methods.
- **Traffic Method 2: Pinterest** [09:49] — Pinterest acts as a visual search engine. Create pins with your product mockups and keyword-rich descriptions. It can drive consistent free traffic, but takes a couple of months to build traction.
- **Traffic Method 3: Micro Influencers** [10:35] — Collaborate with creators with 5,000-50,000 followers. Offer a free product in exchange for a post or story. Cost is typically $15-$20 for product and shipping, but trust is higher than paid ads.
- **Traffic Method 4: Social Content** [11:52] — Create your own content around your products or niche on platforms like TikTok or Instagram. Focus on being entertaining or valuable, not just selling. This takes time but can yield high-quality traffic.
- **Realistic Expectations** [13:05] — The first month is mostly setup with little to no income. From months 2-3, you may see some sales if you consistently work on listings and traffic. This is a side income method for most, but can scale.

### Conclusion

Starting a print-on-demand business with Printify is free and accessible, but success hinges on driving traffic to your store. By combining Etsy SEO, Pinterest, micro influencers, and your own social content, you can build a steady stream of customers, though it requires patience and consistent effort.

## Transcript

Print on demand is one of the few ways to start  a real online business without spending anything.   No inventory, no upfront costs, and you can have  your first product live today. But most tutorials,   however, do not show the full picture. So,  in this video, I will show you everything you  
need to get started. The complete free  setup with a platform called Printify,   and the methods you can use to get traffic  to a brand new store with no ad budget.  
So, let me just quickly first start by explaining  how print on demand actually works in case you do   not know what it is. And the idea is quite simple.  You create designs and you put them on products.   This can be things like t-shirts, mugs, hoodies,  bags, all kind of different products. And when  
someone buys one of your products, the order goes  to a printing company who makes it and then ships   it directly to the customer. So, you actually  don't have to ever touch the product yourself.   And Printify is a platform that connects all of  this. So you use it to connect your products,  
upload your designs, you set your price, and then  you link it to a store where customers can find   it. This can, for example, be Etsy or Shopify.  They are two of the most popular, and they are   also quite easy for beginners. But there are also  other platforms you can connect as well if you  
prefer. And the part that makes print on demand  really interesting is the cost. Because Printify   itself is free to get started with. You only pay  for the production when a customer actually places   an order and that cost comes out of the sale  price. So there's no money for you going out  
before money comes in. And we will then later in  this video talk about how much you can expect to   earn from this. But let's first go over more about  how to set everything up. So the first thing you   need to get started is a free Printify account.  So you can just go to printify.com and you can  
sign up with your email. And the free plan gives  you access to everything you need to get started.   There is a paid plan as well, but you do not need  it when you are just starting out. You can see on   the joining page there, there is a free account  that gives you access to plenty to get started  
with, but then also if you want access to more as  you grow, you can also get a paid plan that gives   you more advantages and accesses to more stores  and different other benefits. Once you have signed  
up and are inside, you will first be asked a few  questions and guided to get started. And it only   takes a few minutes and it helps you on your path  no matter your experience. I have gone through   that. So I'm actually on the dashboard now. But  the best way is to actually just go through there,  
answer these few questions and then just follow  the path they show you. But you can also get to   introduction. And this is where you manage your  products, your designs, and eventually also your  
orders. And maybe at first if you're brand new, it  can look like a lot, but you actually only need to   know about a few things here to get started.  And once you just look around a little bit,   it is quite easy to get an overview in my opinion.  And the first thing I want to show you is the  
product catalog. And Printify works with hundreds  of different products. It can, for example,   be t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, phone cases, tote  bags, posters, and a lot more. You can see some of   all these different categories here. You can also  search, for example, for men, women, accessories,  
home and living. So you can just choose whatever  product you want to create. So in this case here,   let's just try to look at hoodies. But overall,  I would say if you are brand new, I would only   just choose one or two simple products. And for  example, t-shirt or mocks. They are some of the  
most popular and some of the easiest to work  with. But it could also, for example, be hoodies.   But do not overwhelm yourself, in my opinion  anyways, by starting to create, for example,   20 products when you're first joining. Just start  with a few to get a sense of how everything works.  
And once you found a product, it is quite  easy. You can see what the cost would uh be.   But remember, as mentioned earlier, this is not  something you have to pay here. And now you will   set your price. So you will actually also earn  something. And then this price will be deducted  
from your sales price. So that is quite unique  and quite great for this business model here. So   you don't actually have to buy all these products  or invest anything like this up front. And you   can see all the details about how it's made, the  material, all these different things there. And  
then you can click to start designing. And there  are a lot of different things you can do here.   You can add text. You can do something on front  side, backside, sleeve, the neck, label there,   inner there. You can see here also graphics.  You can design here. You can also add templates.  
There are many different ways you can design it.  You can of course also choose the color if you   want a different color. And it is quite intuitive  to figure it all out how you design it. And then   it's just up to your creativity. But I will cover  the design part in more detail in a separate video  
if you don't have any idea about how to get good  ideas for it and all that. For this video here,   I just want to show you how to set everything  up and then you can play around with the design   yourself. It is quite interesting and fun in my  opinion to actually play around with. You can get  
the exact designs you want to. But as mentioned, I  will go over all the details about how to do that   because the great thing about it is that you  do not need to be designer to do this. And a   great little tip until I make the next video  is that a free tool like Canva for example,  
it makes it very accessible to just get some  inspiration and some ideas even if you never   made a design before. And also you can use AI  chatbug or claw to brainstorm different ideas  
depending on what your niche or your audience is  interested in. But after your design is then done,   you are guided to connect it to a store if you  have not already done that in the signup process.   And to actually then sell your products, you need  to connect Printify to the store. And probably the  
most beginner friendly option is Etsy. And you can  also set up an Etsy seller account for free. Just   keep in mind that Etsy does charge a small listing  fee per product. So just keep that in mind, but it   is a very small one. And you can see that is just  one option, but there are also other stores you  
can connect it to if you prefer others instead.  So you would just need to go through there,   once your Etsy account is connected to Printify,  you can publish your products directly from here  
with a few clicks and then they will appear live  in your shop. And a part of this process is also   to choose your price. And I showed earlier where  you could also see the cost that you will have.   And I really like how transparent Principy is.  So they show the exact production cost you will  
have. So that means what it will cost to actually  make the product and then you then set the retail   price on top of that. And then the difference  is your profit. So let's say for example,   a t-shirt cost $12 to produce. you sell it for $25.  So then you get to keep $13 per sale. And then you  
can adjust this based on what similar products  sell for in your niche, your audience, all these   different things. And maybe that takes a little  bit of time to figure out what the best price is   to not make it too cheap, not too expensive, all  these different thing. That is something that will  
just take a little bit of trial and error in most  cases. And that is really the setup. You just get   a free Printify account. You have a free design  tool for example Canva and then an Etsy store.   And then your first product can actually be live  within a few hours of starting or even faster.  
But here is the thing because having a product  live is not the same as making sales. And that   is what most people do not figure out until they  have been waiting for weeks with no orders coming   in and making you spend hours or weeks designing  different products. So let's go deeper into this.  
So, what usually happens when someone sets  up their first print on demand store is that   they spend a few hours getting everything ready.  They create a couple of products. They write the   descriptions. They set the prices and then they  hit publish and then they wait. And a day goes by,  
there are no sales. A week goes by, still nothing.  And most people at that point assume their designs   are the problem. So, they make more products  and still nothing. But in fact, the real issue   is traffic. Nobody knows the store exists. Etsy  does have built-in search traffic, which is one  
of the reasons it's a great place to start. So,  people go to Etsy specifically to buy things. So,   there is also a real buying intent there, but a  brand new store with no sales history, no reviews,  
and no established listing is going to be at the  bottom of the search results. And Etsy's algorithm   favors stores that already have momentum, which  creates a bit of a chicken and the egg situation   when you are just starting out. This does not mean  it's impossible, definitely far from it. It just  
means that you cannot rely on Etsy search alone  in the beginning. But the good news is that there   are free and very lowbudget methods you can use  to start driving traffic to your store while it   is still new. And that's what I want to go through  next. So the first method you can use is Etsy SEO  
or search engine optimization. So that means the  first thing you need to get right is your Etsy   listings themselves because as mentioned Etsy is  a search engine as much as it is a marketplace. So   people type in what they are looking for and Etsy  shows some results. So the words you use in your  
product title, description, and tags. They matter  a lot. And a simple way to start is to just use   the Etsy search by itself. You start typing  something related to your product and look at   what it autocompletes. And those suggestions are  real searches people are making. So you can use  
those phrases as inspiration when you are creating  your own listings. Printify also has AI that helps   you write the descriptions, but it is also good to  look at everything yourself and optimize yourself.   There is also a free tool called E-rank that gives  you more detailed keyword data specifically for  
Etsy. So things like how many people are searching  for a term and how much competition there is. And   they also have a free version that's enough  to just get you started. This alone will not   flood your stores with traffic overnight. So  it's important to be realistic here, but it is  
the foundation everything else builds on. So you  need to start here because if your listings are   not optimized, then the other methods will also  be less effective. So the second traffic method   I want to talk about is Pinterest and this can be  a great traffic source for print on demand stores  
in my opinion because it's not really a social  media platform. It works more like a visual search   engine. So people go there to look for ideas and  products which means the intent is already there.   And what you can then do is to create pins for  your products, you just use your Printify mockup  
images, for example, and then you write keywords  rich descriptions for each one. And when someone   searches for something related on Pinterest  or sometimes even on Google Pinterest pins can   also show up. Then in some cases, if you put in  enough time and effort, then your pins can show  
up and they can then click it and watch it and go  straight to your Etsy store. But again here, be   realistic. It takes definitely at least a couple  of months in most cases to build up some traction.   But once it does, then it can drive consistent  free traffic without you having to post every day.  
Method three is micro influencers. And this  is slightly different because it does involve   a small cost, but it is very low. And micro  influencers are creators with a small but very   engaged following in most cases. So typically  somewhere between 5,000 and 50,000 followers,  
and it can in some cases even be less. And they  are usually much more open to collaborations than   bigger creators. and their audience tend to be  more targeted and trusting. So the approach here   is quite simple. For example, let's say you sell  dog themed t-shirts. You look for pet accounts  
on Instagram or Tik Tok and then you can reach  out offering a free product in exchange for a   post or story featuring it. For example, the  only cost to you is the deduction and shipping   which is usually somewhere around maybe $15 to $20  depending on where the creator is. Sometimes it  
might also charge a small fee. But again, with  micro influencers, it will usually not be very   high. So that's something you can decide yourself  whether you want to test or not, but one post   from the right account can bring in more traffic  than weeks of waiting for Etsy search to kick in.  
And because it's a real person showing the product  to people who already follow them for that topic,   the trust factor is much higher than a paid ad.  So it's definitely something worth considering   if you have the budget for it. So the fourth  and last traffic method I want to talk about  
is creating your own social content. So that  means that you are creating your own content   around your products or around your niche. So  this does not mean you need a big following or   need to become a full-time content creator  because even a small niche account on for  
example Tik Tok or Instagram. It can drive real  traffic if it is focused on the right audience.   It can for example be a short video showing your  design process, the product arriving in the mail   or just someone wearing or using your product.  And these can sometimes perform well because  
they're genuine and specific. It can also be niche  related, entertaining content. And in general,   in my opinion, an experience with something like  this, you should not just focus on selling on   those accounts because usually videos and accounts  like that, they don't get much traction. So also  
think about what is entertaining or valuable or  interesting for people to watch and that content   has a greater chance of getting traction and  spread which will potentially then after some   time bring in traffic to your site and then also  hopefully sales. But again this is not something  
that happens overnight it's something that does  take time to build up but once it builds once you   get everything rolling it can also really  give a lot of great highquality traffic.   So before we finish here, I want to be completely  transparent and straightforward about what you  
can realistically expect from this because  I think it's very important to do it with   the right mindset and expectations. And the  first month for most people is mostly just the   setup. So you are learning the platform, you're  figuring out your niche. If you're brand new,  
you're getting your first products listed, for  example. And most people make little to nothing   in that period. And that is completely normal.  And then from month two or three and onwards,   if you're working on your listings and you're  putting some effort into traffic, then you will  
likely start seeing some activity. It will maybe  be a sale here and there and slowly building up.   The stores that do well are usually the ones  that treat it consistently over several months,   not the ones that list five products and expects  results in a week. Realistically, this is a side  
income method for most people, at least for  the first long period if you are starting from   scratch. But the upside compared to a lot of other  methods is that once your products are live and   your traffic is working, sales can come in without  you actively doing something every single day  
and then you can try to scale it from there.  If you want to get started with this yourself,   I have left my Printify link in the description  below. It is free to sign up as I showed and   you can start exploring the product catalog  straight away. As mentioned, when you sign up,  
they will take you through, they will guide you  through everything. It doesn't take long. you just   reply to a few questions and then they will guide  you every step of the way. And I would also love   to know which of the traffic methods I was talking  about are you planning to use first or is there  
maybe another traffic method that you think that  I didn't mention that you are definitely going to   I reply to every single comment. And finally, if  you found this useful, make sure to hit the like  
button and don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube  channel and hit the notification bell so you won't   miss out next time I release a video tips and  tricks about different ways to make money online.