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How to Create and Sell Print on Demand Products on Etsy (Full Tutorial)

0h 17m video Published May 22, 2025 Transcribed Jul 23, 2026 M Money With Mak
Beginner 8 min read For: Beginners interested in print-on-demand and Etsy selling, with no design experience.
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AI Summary

This video provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to research trending designs on Etsy and create unique print-on-demand products using AI tools like Playground AI and Canva. The creator demonstrates the process of finding best-selling nurse shirt designs, subniching into pediatric nurse themes, and generating custom graphics without design experience.

[01:23]
Etsy Bestseller Hack

To filter by bestsellers on Etsy, go to All Filters, select Star Seller, then in the URL replace 'star' with 'best' and hit enter.

[02:02]
Taking Notes from Trends

Scroll through bestsellers and note design styles, phrases (e.g., 'go with the flow'), colors, and sub-niches like pediatric nurse.

[04:06]
Using Playground AI

Playground AI is a beginner-friendly tool that uses templates instead of blank prompts. Search for a template (e.g., 'nurse'), then modify it with simple text commands.

[06:44]
Customizing Design Style

Select a different design style (e.g., 'make it say best mom ever') and change color palette (e.g., 'pastel dreams') to match trends.

[07:37]
Removing Text with Object Erase

Use the object erase tool or prompt 'remove text' to clean up the design before adding custom text.

[08:18]
Subniching with Pediatric Nurse

Add trending elements like dinosaurs to the design to target the pediatric nurse sub-niche. Use prompts like 'add a cute dinosaur'.

[09:16]
Upscaling for Print Quality

Upscale and remove background in Playground AI to ensure high resolution for print-on-demand products.

[10:12]
Finalizing in Canva

Import the design into Canva to add text with bold, funky fonts (e.g., from Creative Fabrica). Change each letter color and add outlines for contrast.

[14:14]
Listing on Printify

Drag the final design into Printify, select a comfort colors t-shirt, and list on Etsy.

[15:28]
AI-Generated Multi-Color Text

Playground AI can automatically make each letter a different color with a single prompt, saving time.

By combining trend research with AI design tools, even beginners can create unique, sellable print-on-demand products. The key is to adapt trending elements to a specific sub-niche without copying existing designs.

Clickbait Check

85% Legit

"Title accurately describes a full tutorial on creating and selling print-on-demand on Etsy, though the year '2026' is speculative."

Mentioned in this Video

Tutorial Checklist

1 01:23 Search for a niche term on Etsy (e.g., 'nurse shirt') and filter by bestsellers using the URL hack.
2 02:02 Take notes on trending design styles, phrases, colors, and sub-niches from bestseller listings.
3 04:06 Open Playground AI, search for a relevant template (e.g., 'nurse'), and select one to modify.
4 06:44 Change the design style and color palette to match trends (e.g., pastel colors).
5 07:37 Remove unwanted text using object erase or the prompt 'remove text'.
6 08:18 Add sub-niche elements (e.g., 'add a cute dinosaur' for pediatric nurse).
7 09:16 Upscale the design and remove background for print quality.
8 10:12 Export to Canva, add bold text with different colors per letter, and add an outline.
9 14:14 Upload the final design to Printify, select a t-shirt, and list on Etsy.

Study Flashcards (8)

How do you filter Etsy search results by bestsellers?

easy Click to reveal answer

Go to All Filters, select Star Seller, then in the URL replace 'star' with 'best' and hit enter.

01:23

What is the key principle for selling print-on-demand products?

easy Click to reveal answer

Sell what the market demands, not just what you find beautiful.

00:55

What is Playground AI and how does it differ from traditional AI design tools?

medium Click to reveal answer

Playground AI uses templates instead of blank prompts, making it beginner-friendly.

04:06

Why is upscaling important for AI-generated designs?

medium Click to reveal answer

AI designs may not be high resolution enough for print-on-demand; upscaling ensures print quality.

09:16

What sub-niche did the creator target for nurse shirts?

easy Click to reveal answer

Pediatric nurse, adding elements like dinosaurs.

08:18

How can you remove text from a design in Playground AI?

medium Click to reveal answer

Use the object erase tool or type 'remove text' in the chat prompt.

07:37

What font source did the creator use for bold, funky fonts?

easy Click to reveal answer

Creative Fabrica.

11:06

What is the benefit of making each letter a different color in a design?

hard Click to reveal answer

It matches a trending style seen in bestseller pediatric nurse shirts.

11:59

💡 Key Takeaways

⚖️

Market Demand Over Personal Taste

Core principle of print-on-demand: sell what people are buying, not what you like.

00:55
🔧

Etsy Bestseller Filter Hack

Practical, lesser-known trick to access bestseller data on Etsy.

01:23

Playground AI for Beginners

Introduces a template-based AI tool that lowers the barrier for non-designers.

04:06
🔧

Subniching Strategy

Demonstrates how to target a less saturated sub-niche (pediatric nurse) within a broad market.

08:18
💡

AI-Generated Multi-Color Text

Shows AI's ability to automate complex design tasks like coloring each letter differently.

15:28

✂️ Creator Tools: Viral Hooks

AI-generated clip ideas for Shorts based on the transcript

Why Your Etsy Designs Aren't Selling

53s

Challenges common misconceptions about design creation and emphasizes market demand over personal taste, sparking debate and curiosity.

▶ Play Clip

Etsy Best Seller Hack: Find Trends Fast

60s

Reveals a little-known URL hack to filter Etsy bestsellers, offering immediate, actionable value for sellers.

▶ Play Clip

AI Tool That Designs T-Shirts in Minutes

60s

Showcases a free, beginner-friendly AI design tool with a live demo, appealing to creators with no design skills.

▶ Play Clip

From AI to Etsy: Create a Pediatric Nurse Shirt

50s

Demonstrates a complete, step-by-step design process from trend research to final product, inspiring viewers with a tangible result.

▶ Play Clip

[00:02] sellers or people who don't see sales on the platform to just not understand the concept of creating designs that sell. And that comes from a lack of understanding research and how to find these specific design trends that people

[00:15] want to buy. And it's also a problem when you're trying to create a design or recreate something that you like and you have absolutely no idea how to. And so in today's video, I'm going to show you a step by step of this process. How me,

[00:27] who is have multiple best-seller designs on Etsy, print on demand products, and digital products, finds different trends and applies them to my niche or a to. And then I'm going to show you how I would create a design using a really

[00:41] cool way that is foolproof for beginners. And I also think that a lot of times too, people assume that research is just going to Etsy and already bestselling. And that's not exactly how it's done, right? We want to

[00:55] bring something that is new and valuable to an already existing market. And a big truth with print on demand and selling online in general is that it's not always about what you find to be beautiful and amazing to sell. It's

[01:09] actually what the market has a demand for and people are already purchasing. today. And yeah, we're going to get right into it. And I'm Mac. If you're be linked. And yeah, let's get right into it. So, I'm on Etsy here and I just

[01:23] did a search for nurse shirt and I filtered by bestsellers. Etsy took away the buttons. So, in order to do that, you go to all filters. You'll select star seller here and then you'll go up to the top here in your actual URL and

[01:35] you'll just take the word star, delete it, and type best. Hit enter and then that will automatically filter it through best sellers on Etsy. So, it's a little hack there. And then now we're seeing the best sellers for

[01:49] the search term of nurse shirt, which yes is a incredibly um you know searched for term on Etsy, which does come with competition, but we can really see And what I want you to do with this is take notes of all the different things

[02:02] that you see. So off the bat, I'm noticing this like fun groovy like collage design was that looks really cool. Cannot talk today. Um and then I'm also seeing this phrase, go with the flow. It seems that this listing is

[02:16] that's something I'm going to mark in my mind of like the phrase go with the flow. Okay, cool. So, it's for heart anatomy. Um, see all these juicy things over here in that title give us an idea of like what these search terms are that

[02:30] are selling that aren't going to be as popular as the term just nurse nurse shirts. We're seeing here it says cardiology tea, cardiac nursing, cardiac heart flow. Those are different things that, you know, might not be as

[02:43] saturated as the term nurse nurse shirt, right? So, that's just little things to And you can even like write that down. And this is my EverB Chrome extension. did that. But yeah, so I'm just scrolling through and seeing different

[02:56] things. So, go with the flow as a term. I love this style of design. It kind of has like um you know, all the different nurse types of objects in there. It even is personalized with the nurse's name. This is a very classic best-selling

[03:09] design of the floral letters, but I feel like that's a little bit overdone. Um, let's see what else. Here's one that says Thoracic Park. It is a pediatric nurse shirt. So, see the trend here? How I'm noticing the different types of

[03:22] nurse shirts. Um, this one seems to be a great seller. It's a less than a year old and it's selling quite a few a month. And it has like a little joke for a pediatric nurse. I also see this and I love these types of designs that have

[03:36] applied to a nurse. So, that's something that I'm taking in my mind right now of like, okay, what I'm noticing here is that a lot of these designs have little graphics of nurse stuff and say the word nurse. Let's go ahead and create our

[03:51] two different examples in this video, but um yeah, let's go ahead and create inspiration from these different types of elements in the hearts and like all the different nurse stuff. And I'm also going to want to play off of these like

[04:06] more um pastely colors. And yeah, maybe different uh types of nurses. I'm actually using this new and amazing AI tool that I found recently called Playground AI. Now, this is very very

[04:21] cool because it is a strictly AI designing tool that you will be working with templates to recreate your design. So, it works a little bit differently than like a traditional AI software. Typically, with an AI design tool, you

[04:33] will have to type in an entire prompt while looking at a blank page and trying to explain to it what you want. And that is not the case with Playground. So, it's a lot easier and beginner friendly for people who have literally zero

[04:45] design experience because all you have to do is tell it what you want it to do. And you don't really have to understand AI super well. And while I've been using this and playing around with it, I've actually gotten to understand more about

[04:57] like different things that you can do. So, I'll show you how it works. How it goes is this is what it looks like on here. It is free to use. They have a free and a paid version. And basically what you can do is search for what

[05:10] you're looking for or click on one of these, you know, pre-existing things. So I'm just going to type in the term nurse up here on the right in the search bar. templates that are already here that we can use and mess with. So I found this

[05:23] template which is very similar to the nurse and like the heart that we were is the one that I kind of want to mess with and change to a more nurse related just describe again exactly what I'm looking for. I'm going to use the

[05:37] version 4 this time and we'll also use the version three and I'll show you how depending on the version that you're using, whether it's paid or pro, you get a specific amount for the price that you're paying if you're on um the pro

[05:50] version. And then you also get a certain amount free if you're using the free version. So let's go ahead and type. I'm going to say keep the same design style but change the images to

[06:04] nurse images. And then we're going to hit go and see what it creates for us. So, this is what it came up for us. And while this is similar to the ones that one's just kind of plain. Um, and then the other one, where did it go? You

[06:18] know, is it has some color, but it's not like super intricate, there's some other designs that I feel like have a more fun or like approachable vibe, like this one here. So, that's going to be my inspo on how I'm going to like turn this design a

[06:31] little bit more fun. So, I'm going to go down here. And there's a few different style. And I'm going to select a different design style to, you know, change the design up and like elevate it a little bit. So, I'm going to select

[06:44] make it say best mom ever, but it is going to change the design just to like it changed the design style, made it a little bit more fun, added some flowers. So, already getting a little bit closer. And what I'm going to do is go to change

[06:58] color palette and select another color palette. So, I can add custom colors if different one. I'm going to go with pastel dreams cuz we noticed a lot of pastel colors. So, as you can see, I'm like creating this design, but just like

[07:10] clicking a little bit and like giving it some edits. So, relatively pretty easy. there are a few things that are tedious, you know? But I just find this to be if you're not good with like understanding maybe what looks good,

[07:24] having to like put together a bunch of nurse elements into the shape of a heart, adding the word nurse is definitely a timesaver. Okay, so really, really pretty. Um, I can literally take this design as it is and

[07:37] put it on a product, but I want to elevate it just a little bit more. to do is actually remove where it says nurse cuz I'm not loving that text. So, I'm going to go to object erase and I'm going to just draw over what I want to

[07:51] erase. You could also in the um chat prompt at the bottom just say please remove text or like remove the text and it will do that as well. So, now that the text is removed, we can really take this design and add any type of text to

[08:03] it. We could say blank nurse or just add more fun nurse text. And honestly, the export this and then upload it into Canva or KD to add the text cuz there is more text options when doing that. But I want to show you a little bit further of

[08:18] what I was talking about with the subniching, right? So, we're going to want to show you exactly what I mean by that. So, what I'm going to do here is I noticed pediatric nurse was trending on Etsy, right? I was noticing like the

[08:31] term for it. There's a lot of like cute things, a lot of dinosaurs, just super cute stuff, like a lot of baby animals. Um, yeah. So, what I'm going to do because I'm noticing a lot of dinosaurs is I'm going to ask it to add to this

[08:44] is I'm going to ask it to add to this design. So, I'm going to say add a cute dinosaur. Send. Okay, super cute. And then I'm going to ask it again to add the text pediatric

[09:02] like I was saying, we can bring it in and add text in Canva if we want to, if I think that that would just elevate the design better. But what I'm going to do going to hit upscale and remove background so that it upscales the

[09:16] design because unfortunately when we're using AI, the designing software doesn't make it as, you know, upscaled and precise as it should be if we're on demand product. So, it's a really important step to make sure that you do

[09:30] upscale this before putting it on any of your images. And then we're going to have that ready. And then I'm also going to go back to this other design that I had and I'm going to export that and do the same thing, upscale and remove

[09:43] create the two designs together to list on the product. So, I can show you how I was talking about bringing in, you know, that other element that we were seeing use that to create something unique and fun for the design. So, I'm just going

[09:57] I'm going to drag in one of those designs. Let's go ahead and work with the first one of the nurse image. And I'm just going to upscale it a bit more I'm just going to upscale it a bit more so I can see it clearer. Okay, cool. And

[10:12] Canva has this new feature where you can actually change the colors in the design different image that you did not create on Canva, which I got really excited about recently that I saw that. Um, and if you know me or follow my channel, I

[10:24] use a bunch of different designing softwares and tools. I'm always, you out. I think they're great for a lot of different things, but I know that when can sometimes be a little out of budget, but whatever ones that you use, you'll

[10:37] with. I'm just using Canva cuz I know a lot of you guys use it. Um, same with KD. I absolutely love using KD as well. And I'm going to just add some text here. And I'm going to type in nurse. I also could type pediatric nurse. I could

[10:53] type ICU nurse, the different types of nurses. And what I was noticing when I was doing that trend research, right, is that like bold, funky text that we want in here. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through here and all

[11:06] these different fonts that I have. And I actually have a few of these saved fonts from Creative Fabrica, which is a great tool if you've never used it before. And I really like how like these funky design um these funky fonts look. So I'm

[11:20] going to kind of fit this in where I can. I don't want to take away too much from the design, but I still want it to get that nurse point across. So I'm just going to move this in here. And I think if I even wanted to make this better,

[11:34] I'm going to edit this. I'm gonna go to the magic eraser and I'm going to erase this guy and this flower cuz they're not. Okay, perfect.

[11:46] And then let's do something funky to this design. So, when I was scrolling, right, we just noticed a lot of these like cute fun bubbly letters for pediatric nurse. Um, and then a lot of them have a different color for each

[11:59] letter. I'm using the font super vibes again. Um, that's from Creative Fabrica. a free download with the links that I have. Okay. And let's change each letter have. Okay. And let's change each letter to a color of the design. Just selecting

[12:13] each individual one. And then we want this to stand out. So I'm going to go to outline. Go. And we'll select a color. And

[12:25] depending on what color t-shirt I want this to go on can really affect what color of the outline that I want, right? Because if I look again like a lot of comfort colored t-shirts and a lot of them are lighter. So that would kind of

[12:38] tell me like okay my design is on the lighter side so I kind of want to stick to like these darker t-shirts. So I might have to do a darker color outline on there. Um but we'll just kind of see how it goes. So okay. So this design

[12:51] here has a few different elements from what I was noticing in the trending both pediatric nurse, right? I'm noticing big bold letters, each individual different color, the hearts with all the nurse graphics, right? I'm

[13:05] without just taking this design and completely copying it. You know what I mean? It looks different. I added something new to the market and it's just different. And if I even wanted to, I can even duplicate this page and add

[13:17] I can even duplicate this page and add in different words. So And we can add in another font. Keep it the

[13:30] the same. Okay. Add in, you know, more text or put it up here and curve it a little bit to go on the heart. Really cute. And then we could add in the same type of vibe. Or just

[13:45] make the text one color. Whatever color like fits the best. I think that looks cute. No, I think the yellow. Okay. And then effects, outline. do the same the yellow outline so it'll show up on our design.

[13:58] So now this one's a pediatric nurse design, right? And I can, you know, take So let's do patric nurse designs. And then on Printify, we'll just find that comfort colors t-shirt. Hit start designing.

[14:14] Select our colors that we want. Let's drag and drop one of our designs into here. Check our colors. black. Looks good. We can list it, you know, on Etsy. And you don't have to

[14:29] bring it into Canva like I showed you, you know, to completely transform the design. Um, you can totally, you know, change it up just in here. And I think even with this design, you can completely transform it. Change the text

[14:45] completely transform it. Change the text to

[14:58] cute dinosaurs and cute dinosaurs. We're cute, right? Like even this design by itself I absolutely love. And all I did just use this. So, it's not something that you absolutely, you know, have to

[15:13] you that you could totally just design in here and create something really great and just use your own, you know, creativity, but also using a template so canvas cuz that can be really intimidating. Okay, so I just gave this

[15:28] three more prompts. I asked it to add nurse hats and stethoscopes. And then I wanted to see if the AI would be able to do this, and it clearly did. I asked it to make each individual letter of the word nurse a different color to fit that

[15:42] trend that we were seeing when we click on the ones that are for pediatric animals, and all the different letters of uh the nurse or pediatric being a different color and it did it. It made it super cute and it gave it all the

[15:56] different colors. So very very cool. I feel like if I was more specific as well, I could even make like change the letter N to a light blue or whatever. or different um color schemes in here, I'm sure it would make it even better. But

[16:10] took me the least amount of time. It's completely made in playground and it's look good on lots of different colors as well and I absolutely love it. So, I'll leave all the templates that I used below for you linked from Playground.

[16:26] I'm really excited to share this with you guys. I think it will help a lot of creativity to your design that maybe you don't know how to create already. Um, t-shirt really quick. I know this video is longer, but I want to see what it

[16:40] love it. And see, like just a few minutes made a super beautiful, very cute design that, you know, goes off of all the things that people are searching for and buying in that pediatric nurse

[16:52] term. So, very, very fun. Okay, everything's linked below. I won't make valuable. I want you to get designing. Um, thank you so much for watching. I hope this was helpful. If it was, be sure to let me know.

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