[00:01] putting it for sale, and waiting for the money to roll in. That's a lie, and it's why most fail. The truth is, there's a lot more to it. But today, I'm boiling it all down for you into the easiest way to start print on demand from scratch.
[00:15] people are using right now to make tens of thousands of dollars online. From the product to designing to marketing. To guide you along, I'll be building a new even go over the beginner mistakes that lead to instant failure. Having made
[00:29] entrepreneur, I can assure you by the end of this video, you'll be ready to business. The first step to print on demand is not your product. It's not your design. It's your business model. The biggest mistake beginners make is
[00:42] thinking print on demand is a business model. It's not. Slapping design on a ship it for you after a sale is not a business model. It's just a fulfillment method. It's how a product can be made and shipped, not how you will make
[00:55] decide how you're going to make your money. In print on demand, there are two business models to choose from. The first is running a trend store. This is the business model where you look for trending and viral designs in random
[01:08] niches, create a similar product, and get to market fast to ride the wave. there's little guesswork. You're capitalizing on what's hot and grabbing a piece of the pie. Creating your designs will take less thought because
[01:20] proven to sell, and you don't need to spend much time building a brand. What's not so great about it is that trends die. Your design lifespans are short, so before you're off chasing another trend. Since you're modeling your designs off
[01:34] from the competition. You also won't build a loyal following because customers are buying into the trend, not your brand. Which brings us to the second business model, running a brand store. This is where you focus on one
[01:47] specific niche, create your own designs and products, and build a trusted name in that space. The pros of this model are that it has long-term growth. Brands you're not relying on trends to keep you afloat. Your designs can be more unique
[02:00] and you can charge higher prices because you aren't just selling your product, you're selling the value of your brand. That value can build a loyal following and lead to repeat customers. The cons are that building a brand requires far
[02:12] more upfront work and time than chasing trends. You have to actively invest in And since you're building something original, you don't always know what's for you depends on your goals. To boil it down, if you want faster results, run
[02:26] a trend store. If you want long-term growth, run a brand store. If you want me to decide, I recommend starting off with a trend store that eventually grows I'm building with you, I'm going to go with the trend route. Let's kick it off
[02:39] decide on what to sell. I'm going to head to Printful, the print-on-demand service I use and recommend. On their website, you'll find a large catalog of and customize. You've got your classic t-shirts and hoodies, all the way to
[02:51] unique products like bags, shoes, and home decor. There's even a knitted pet unique products are very tempting to sell, that's where beginners go wrong. personally like, not the ones that people actually buy. And when the goal's
[03:06] to get people to buy, that doesn't really work out. The best products to sell are those that meet three criteria. The first is that they have a high sales demand. An easy way to find these products is to look at the best sellers
[03:18] on Printful. We can see that there's hats, mugs, hoodies, all your classic items. They're classic for a reason, they sell. The second criteria is that they are evergreen. Designs will come and go, but the product itself should be
[03:30] timeless and never go out of style. This will ensure a long product lifespan, is a great example of an evergreen product. People wear and buy t-shirts forever. A phone case, however, changes design and size every year and can
[03:43] for me. The third criteria is that they have a healthy profit margin. I'll be essentially, your product should be able to sell for at least a 30% margin or around $7 in profit. The more the better. This will allow you to actually
[03:58] example, have high sales volume and are evergreen, I'd say the profit margin is usually too low to make them worth selling. Unless you sell them in a pack. That can raise the profit margin and make them more viable. Lucky for you,
[04:11] picked out four products you should sell. T-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, and mugs. They all hit the three criteria. Choose one product and stick business, I'm going to go with this Comfort Colors 1717 t-shirt, which is
[04:24] create a design for the product, we first need to figure out who we're designing for. Enter step three, target market. This is your niche, the specific type of person who will buy your product. Most beginners jump straight
[04:37] think looks cool without a clearly defined target market, then wonder why no one's buying. Or they target too broad a market, like moms, athletes, or streetwear. The truth is, if you try to sell to everyone, you sell to no one. By
[04:51] target market, you'll be able to differentiate your product and attract more buyers with a higher intent to purchase. In print on demand, there are four key attributes you must define about your target market. First, their
[05:04] identity. Who are they and how do they label themselves? Think about their interests, personality, and lifestyle, and how they all intersect. Are they a boss lady, an engineering student, or a first-time dad? Your design will express
[05:16] that identity, so you need to know it. Second, their style. At the end of the day, what you're selling is your design, so you need to know what visual style appeals to them. Do they want a cute and funny vibe, a rugged country look, or
[05:29] something sleek and modern? Third, their occasion. Why do they want this product? Are they buying it for themselves, for an event like a birthday or wedding, or will they be the one receiving it as a gift? And fourth, their profitability.
[05:41] >> SHOW ME THE MONEY! choose and validate a target market is to research products that are already lead you to who's buying. You can browse social media like Instagram, TikTok, and
[05:54] Pinterest for trending products, as well as Etsy, a popular marketplace for print-on-demand. I recommend Etsy because you can see real sales data. Using Everbee, a product research tool, you can view Etsy product, shop, and
[06:06] keyword analytics. For example, if I search for something generic like mom shirt, it lists a bunch of products in this category. I can see its sales, revenue, trend, and growth rate over a set period of time, which can help you
[06:18] or not. I recommend filtering over the underrated is listing age. You can filter for listings under 6 months old. If it's selling well, that proves it's a fresh idea that's actually trending and
[06:32] not just relying on old reviews or established search rankings. Okay, so I did some digging and I've landed on this French bulldog howling to the moon pretty good amount per month. Anything over $500 in monthly revenue and 15
[06:46] solid. It's also got a conversion rate of 3.62%, which isn't bad at all. A good one sits around 2 to 5%. Now, to analyze which target market is actually buying this, taking a look at the product's tags, we
[06:59] can see this listing is targeting people who like cute dogs, Frenchies, bulldogs, and vintage t-shirts, particularly Comfort Colors t-shirts. This is the earlier to print on. One thing not to forget, the product's occasion. Gifters
[07:13] market you can often target simultaneously, letting you expand your sales without much extra effort. This listing does that by mentioning gift in the title. So, all in all, dog moms or people gifting dog moms who love cute,
[07:26] funny, vintage t-shirts. That's the main target market I'm landing on and I think it for my first design. For trend stores, each of your designs will likely running a brand store, you'll be targeting only one or a handful of them.
[07:40] In this case, you'll also want to analyze entire shops to see if your niche is sustainable. For example, this store, Leona T, is a brand store that focuses on dog t-shirts and pulls in over $10,000 a month. That's a clear
[07:53] to support an entire brand based around it. With a target market in hand, you're now ready for step four, designing. You can create an original design, or the one that's already trending and put your own spin on it. I'll be using Kittl, a
[08:07] I'm going to upload the trending Frenchie design I found earlier and use Kittl's AI image generator to generate a new version that's similar in style. I use the prompt builder or styles to help guide the prompt, or if I'm not quite
[08:22] sure how to write it, I can click on the trending design and press the plus sign analyze and generate a prompt for you, which you can use to recreate the design. I'm going to hit generate, let it do its thing, and there we go, a new
[08:36] version of the trending design. Before I export, I'm going to get rid of the design's black background. I can either use remove background, vectorize, or photo filter and remove black only. Now, when it's printed on a black t-shirt, it
[08:48] won't print black and instead let the natural black fabric fill in the gaps. upscale the design and it's ready to export as a PNG. Since we're already designing, I might as well show you how to create a product mock-up, too. You're
[09:02] your design. I'm going to click on mock-ups, and here I can choose from a bunch of different templates. For example, let's go with this one. And I can also change the color of the shirt. And of course, if you can't find
[09:16] you can always AI generate one. The last thing I'm going to do, which is a low-key game-changer, is generate an AI video of my product. I'm going to head to Kittl's templates and use one of their video templates, like this one.
[09:29] With it, I'm going to paste my mock-up in here, regenerate this AI image board to place the product into the scene, then regenerate one of the AI video then regenerate one of the AI video boards for a certain shot. And look at
[09:41] that. Tell me that ain't fire. It really brings a shirt to life compared to just done, it's time to actually put the design on the product. I'm going to head to Printful and upload my design to the t-shirt I chose. And that's it. It's
[09:55] ready to be sold. Now, to release it into the world in step five, platform. This is where you're going to offer your products for sale. There are two main marketplace like Etsy. They're easy to join, quick to set up, and they already
[10:08] have millions of buyers searching for products every day. Marketplaces have their trade-offs, though. They've got high fees, high competition, and the biggest con, lack of ownership. When you sell on a marketplace, the marketplace
[10:20] owns the customer relationship, not you. You can't send marketing emails to your visitors and customers. You can't fully control your branding. You're limited in your ability to generate loyal and repeat customers. And on top of all of
[10:32] that, your entire business is at the mercy of their rules and algorithm. If Etsy suspends your account or changes its policies, your store can disappear like that. Relying only on a marketplace can be risky. So, whether you sell on a
[10:44] marketplace or not, I always recommend being on the second platform, your own website. Having your own website gives you complete control over your business. You control your emails, your branding, your customer relationship. The downside
[10:57] and drive traffic to it through marketing, but it's often worth investment in the long run. For my online store, I'm going to sell on both. I'll be diving into Etsy later. For now, let's build a website. To start, I need
[11:09] a domain name. I like to go with the dot store domain. It clearly shows my something, and there's a reason big names like Rihanna, Maroon 5, Cristiano Ronaldo, Mr. Beast, and a million others use it for their online stores. Studies
[11:24] domain can actually get more clicks, more visibility, and more sales. They're more memorable as well because of their uniqueness. It's a straight-up hack, and it. We're taking advantage of it, too.
[11:38] naming it something general and neutral. How about Aura Designs? It's simple, works with any niche, and gives off some aura in the clothing. I'm going to go to Dot Stores official website to see if Aura Designs.store is available to
[11:52] purchase, and it is. It's officially mine. I reached out to Dot Store deal. You can grab your own domain name for just 99 cents for the first year by using the code Jensen at the link in the description. A big thanks to Dot Store
[12:05] domain name, I can now start on my website. I'm going to create mine using the easiest way to build a print-on-demand website because it's going to enter a description of my print-on-demand products and brand. I'll
[12:19] now create a website, AI will do its magic, and boom, in just a few seconds, I've got a site that's laid out great and ready to edit. First things first, Printful by going to more, then integrations. You want to press get
[12:33] started with Printful right here. And again, click add Printful, then authorize. You'll then see your Hostinger website under stores on Printful to add your products to. Now, there are two main pages on your website
[12:46] you need to get right if you want to make sales. The first is your homepage. website with the drag-and-drop and AI tools. You can see that it has a hero banner with an eye-catching image that showcases my products. I generated this
[12:59] generator. You'll want a headline that states the unique value proposition of your brand, and also a call to action button that directs customers to your products pages, such as shop now. Lower on the homepage, you'll want to display
[13:12] your products for easy access, so customers can jump right into shopping. want some info about your brand. It could be your mission statement, story, homepage is ready, the second page to get right is your product pages. This is
[13:26] arguably the most important page because it's where the money is made. You'll you made earlier and enter in detailed product descriptions, which you can write using AI. You can show related products below to encourage additional
[13:38] sales and prevent lost orders. And make sure to add a review section. Reviews and social proof are massive drivers for online sales. So, let your customers give you a good word and do the selling for you. Other than those two pages, the
[13:50] to collect emails. Email marketing is what can truly make more effective than marketplaces. Add a pop-up or at a minimum a text box in your footer where list. You'll want to offer an incentive to sign up. An easy one is updates on
[14:06] the latest releases and exclusive promotions. But, if you can, give a discount like 10% off. Speaking of which, depending on when you're watching this, Hostinger may be running a sale. So, look out for that. On top of that,
[14:18] off. First, head to the link in the description. Make sure to choose the business website builder plan because only it has the Printful integration and AI tools. It also has zero transaction fees. At checkout, to get the lowest
[14:31] monthly price, select the 48-months period and enter the code Jensen Tung. You'll get 10% off plus a free domain and two extra months. Enjoy. As you set do step six, branding. You can build out
[14:44] Your brand should connect with your target market. Pretty obvious if you're running a brand store, but what about trend stores? If your designs are covering all kinds of different niches, how does that work? Is a brand even
[14:56] necessary? Branding is less important for trend stores, yes, but it's still necessary. Think about department stores like Target, TJ Maxx, and Nordstrom. products for different target markets, yet they still have an umbrella brand to
[15:09] convey their quality and trust across everything they sell. There are four first is the name. Make sure it's relevant and sounds good. I've settled on mine with Aura Designs. Second, the logo. I used Kittle to generate a modern
[15:23] 2D minimal logo representing aura and premium design. Next up, visual identity, the look and feel of a brand. This includes the color palette, typeface, and imagery. While my product designs will vary in style from trend to
[15:35] trend, my overall store and marketing will be under a consistent visual style. And lastly, messaging. This is what you're communicating with your brand. This can include your brand's mission, story, quality, sustainability, any
[15:47] selling points you have for your brand. The specific messaging for each of my products will depend on its target market. But for the Aura Designs brand the mission of thoughtfully designed premium apparel and gifts inspired by
[16:00] today's trends for every occasion. With your website ready to go, we enter step numbers. Most beginners price their products too low. They look at products similar to theirs and think, "Okay, I'll just match that price." And end up
[16:13] losing money. It's usually because they didn't calculate their profit margin it's easy to consider the obvious cost, like the cost of manufacturing and printing. What people tend to forget are all the other expenses, platform fees,
[16:26] shipping fees, taxes, also costs that can come up later, like paid ads, discounts, and refunds. If your profit margin isn't big enough, you won't have That's why, as I mentioned earlier, your
[16:38] For example, I'm planning to sell my t-shirt for $25.99. It costs $17.95 to print, which means I'll profit $8.04. That's a 30.9% profit
[16:50] margin. Now, here's people destroy their profit margins, offering returns and profit margin is big enough to cover them and still have a 30% margin or around $7 in profit, I'd say a complete no to offering returns and only offering
[17:05] free shipping at a higher minimum spend. For my t-shirt, it costs $4.75 to ship in the US. I could tack that onto the price and sell it for $30.74, for this design. Charging shipping separately keeps the display price low
[17:21] the thing, you don't have to compete solely on price. It's okay to not be the value through your branding and marketing. You can also charge more for something print on demand lets you do easily. Personalization. Since print on
[17:36] demand prints each product individually, you can customize every order before it custom message, or a date. It doesn't cost anything extra to print yet you can charge more because it's custom. This is one of the easiest ways to increase your
[17:49] revenue without increasing your cost other than time, of course. With pricing set, there's only one thing left to do, and that's step eight, promotion. This is where it all goes down. This step is where most people fail. Not because they
[18:01] have a bad product or bad design or wrong pricing, it's because they spend 80% of their time creating their product, but only 20% promoting it. When it should be the opposite. The reality is marketing is the bulk of running a
[18:13] print on demand business. Promotion is the name of the print on demand game. So, you have to be willing to play it. And if you play it right, that's where channels to promote your products. Let's start with marketplaces, specifically
[18:26] Etsy. Etsy has millions of buyers, and yes, it can drive traffic to your products, but it won't do that just because you're on the platform. You have to capture that traffic by making your listings stand out from the rest. And
[18:38] that starts with keywords. You want to add relevant keywords to your listing's title and tags based on your product, design, and niche. Use up all your tags limit as possible. These will help your target market find your listings through
[18:51] Etsy search and Etsy's algorithm. An easy way to find keywords is to look at Etsy search suggestions, tags from similar listings, and related searches that your listing is showing up, the next step is getting people to click it.
[19:04] And that comes down to your visuals. You want to feature a clean mock-up for your primary photo/thumbnail. It should look polished yet natural, meaning no plain white backgrounds. Think textured backgrounds, a neatly folded shirt, or
[19:16] someone in your target market, since it helps buyers visualize themselves entire photo gallery with multiple mock-ups to show different angles or color variations, as well as informational images like size and color
[19:30] charts. And remember to add your video. This will play when buyers hover over your listing in Etsy search, making it so much more engaging. Etsy themselves twice as many orders as listings with just photos. That's huge. However,
[19:43] something to note, no matter how clickable you make a listing, you can't rely on a single product to carry your entire business. Most beginners upload a like buying one lottery ticket and expecting to win. The odds are slim. By
[19:58] posting more listings, you're literally taking up more digital real estate on chances of making a sale. Now, eventually, you can consider running Etsy ads to generate more sales. Etsy will boost your listings in search and
[20:11] Here's what beginners get wrong though. They run ads on all their products in hopes it helps. It doesn't. It just burns your money. You don't want to run ads on any random product of yours. You only want to run them to scale what's
[20:24] already working. If your product isn't attracting clicks, favorites, or sales organically, ads won't magically fix it. Think of ads like a microphone. If your singing is bad, no matter how loud you turn it up, no one wants to listen to
[20:36] you. But if it's good, it can help you reach and attract a bigger audience. Ads don't fix a bad product, they amplify a good one. On to the second main channel to promote your products, social media. You'll want to create organic photos and
[20:49] video for your target market. Pinterest is a great place to share mock-ups, posting short-form videos to drive traffic to your store. Unlike marketplaces, people on social media often don't have an existing intent to
[21:02] buy a product like yours. So, you need to give them a reason to care. Don't just create commercials, Create content people actually want to see. Tell a story, show something exciting, tap into a relatable feeling or experience.
[21:14] That's what actually converts, not just a basic photo or video of your product. sending out free products to small influencers that your target market follows. Those with around 1,000 to 50,000 followers in exchange for
[21:27] posting. And just like Etsy ads, I would stay away from running paid ads on that's already performing well and generating sales. At that point, you can run that content as a paid ad to scale it further. Social media is primarily
[21:40] about creating awareness and driving traffic to your store, but not everyone will buy right away. That's where the third main channel comes in, email direct access to your customers' inboxes, making it one of the most
[21:53] reliable ways to generate sales. Your emails can be simple. Share your latest promotions, and behind-the-scenes updates. These will keep your audience engaged with your brand and helps turn readers into customers. From the sound
[22:06] marketing is only for brand stores, but stores. Your email will just be less about brand building and more about keeping customers updated, any reason to bring them back. And that's the key.
[22:19] Emails keep customers coming back, which can drive them to make repeat purchases. It's always easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one. You've probably come to realize print on demand is a lot more than just printing on
[22:31] of, but success comes from everything else. It's a journey, but if you can stay committed over the long run, I'm certain your prints will not only be on demand, they'll be in demand. And there you have it, the full blueprint. Go get
[22:44] video, be sure to like it, subscribe if video, be sure to like it, subscribe if you haven't already, and peace out.