How to Start an Etsy Print-on-Demand Shop in 2026 (Beginner Friendly!)

[00:00] If you've been thinking, "Okay, I really want to start an Etsy print on demand shop in 2026, but I have no clue where to start." [music] This video is for you. Today, I'm going to be walking you through step by step exactly how to open

[00:16] your shop, design [music] your first product, and get your first listing live, even if you've never designed anything before. My goal is to make this as easy as possible for you. Hey there, I'm Emily, a mom of two and

[00:31] started this journey with zero [music] experience. Now, I help beginners launch simple print ondemand [music] Etsy shops that fit into their real life. So, if

[00:46] you are ready to start your Etsy shop in 2026, you have come to the right place. Now, before we jump into all the steps of getting started with print on demand, let's make sure we're on the same page about what print on demand actually is.

[01:01] That means that you, as the seller, create a design digitally, let's say on a tool like Canva. Then you upload it to a product on a site like Printify. You add it to your Etsy shop. And when an Etsy buyer actually purchases that

[01:17] product, the print supplier, Printify in this case, does all the hard work of actually printing, packaging, and shipping the product for you. So that means no inventory, no shipping labels, no boxes piled up in your house. And one

[01:34] of the best parts that makes it beginner friendly is you only pay for the product once that product actually sells, which is why it is such a great low-risk option for beginner side hustlers like I was. Okay, now that we've kind of got

[01:49] the basics covered, let's get to building your first listing. So, when to open your Etsy shop. And Etsy makes this really easy. So, when you go to

[02:04] etsy.com and you scroll all the way to the bottom, you are going to see the option to sell on Etsy, you will click here and this is where you will be able to hit get started and they will start the process for you. You'll just have to

[02:18] select your email address and go through the login process and then you'll be able to fill out the information needed to open your Etsy shop. This is a little bit about what it will look like when you are starting your Etsy shop. They

[02:33] are going to ask you some questions and the most important ones are going to be about your finances. So, making sure you have bank information that you would like to enter. You will have to pick your shop name, but again, this is

[02:48] something you can change. So, please, please, please don't let picking a shop name deter you from starting your shop. That is going to be something that you can simply do and change later. Now, if this is your first time selling on Etsy,

[03:02] you can pick the option that fits best for you. Or if you already have another Etsy shop, you can also pick this bottom one. And here is where the fun is going to start. This is where you are going to

[03:14] start your shop. And you are going to put all the information in that they request. So, you will have your shop preferences. You'll get to name your shop. you'll do the financial piece of it and share your billing information

[03:27] and go from there. So, they make this really user friendly and this is step one in getting your Etsy shop off the ground. Okay, so moving on to step two. So, as I mentioned when we were talking about

[03:41] what print on demand actually is, Printify is my go-to print partner, meaning all of my products will go through Printify and they will fulfill all the orders for me. So, I never have to touch a single product. Now, Printify

[03:56] is an incredible print partner. They have wonderful customer service. Their products are topnotch, and I have absolutely loved working with them over the last couple years. Now, what we need to do at this point is actually sync

[04:09] your Etsy shop to your Printify account so that they speak together. So to do that, we are going to come to Printify and you'll just create an account with your email address. And let me note it, it is free to open a Printify account.

[04:26] You don't have to pay anything upfront, which is something that I love. And you're going to come over to this section here, and you want to add a new shop. Now, this is where you have the option to sync Printify to many

[04:41] different sales channels, but in this case, we are going to sync it to Etsy. So, all we are going to do here is hit connect to Etsy, and it is going to then sync both of those channels together. Super easy. It's literally a click or

[04:57] two of a button. And once that's done, then your Etsy shop and your Printify account are synced together. So that way you can push products from Printify to your Etsy shop. Okay, moving on to step three. Now, the most important step in

[05:13] the process, in my humble opinion, is going to be the research process. And often when I talk to brand new sellers about this, this can feel very intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. All we are going to simply be doing is

[05:27] looking for what are Etsy buyers actually buying? And the good news is there are free ways to do this. We can do this directly on Etsy to look for what is in demand. So what do I recommend for new sellers to do when

[05:43] they are just brand new beginning? First thing I want you to do is I want you to brainstorm on a piece of paper or on your computer a list of things that you have experience with. things that you do as a hobby, things that you do at work,

[05:58] things that your kids do, or relationships that you have in your example that when I first started my Etsy shop, I asked a couple people in my close circle kind of what do they go on Etsy and buy or what are some things

[06:14] that they have purchased before? And my sister-in-law is a speech therapist and she said, "We love to buy t-shirts and different things on Etsy." So, that's honestly where I started. You just need a starting point. And the good news is

[06:27] my first sales were in the speech therapist niche, and I've evolved since then and done other things. So, you can absolutely branch out. But what I want you to do is create a list of these things that either you or the people in

[06:40] your life have experience with or are passionate about or participate in. And then I want you to just start plugging those in to the Etsy search bar. Now,

[06:52] let's say that this year you really got into the game of ma jang or maybe you have a family member or friends that are really into ma jang. So, all I want you to do is type in ma jang into the search bar on Etsy. And what we want to do is

[07:09] look for a couple things. Number one, are there products that are actively selling? meaning they are bestsellers, meaning that they're popular right now, meaning people are really buying them on Etsy. And the second thing that we want

[07:22] to look for is what kind of products are they selling. Now, when you're first starting your Etsy print on demand shop, I recommend sticking with one product to start and then evolving from there. But if you try to do too much at one time,

[07:36] it is going to be overwhelming. So we want to try to find one product type and let's start with one general niche or idea to get us started right cuz the point of today is we are going to get your first listing off the ground. So I

[07:52] have done a simple search for ma jang and I can already tell right off the bat that there are multiple popular now buttons which means that there are definitely buyers actively buying these products. So our first question is

[08:09] answered. Now going on to our second question is going to be what product types are we seeing that are actively selling and making good sales. So I am

[08:21] seeing a few ornaments. I am seeing a kind of funny mug here. So that might be a good option. I'm definitely seeing some sweatshirts. Now, obviously, some of these products are not print ondemand products, but we can still take

[08:37] inspiration from these as well. And so, I am seeing, you know, a variety of things, but I'm definitely seeing some ornaments that are popular. And so, I am leaning in that direction. And again, this is to get you started. It

[08:52] doesn't mean this is where you have to live forever in your Etsy shop. Now, before we design anything, the other thing we want to be looking for are what kind of design styles are popular to help us get started. And I am a big fan

[09:08] of keeping it simple. So, we are going to focus on super simple designs for to figure out what's really working here. Now, we see this ornament down

[09:22] here. It says crackbam dot. Then it's customized with the name and the year and it has a cute little Christmas tree with those maong elements on it. Now that might be a little bit out of our element right now just if we're just

[09:36] starting, but it's good to keep in mind some of those colors and the fonts that they used. We're seeing a lot of light pinks. We're seeing a lot of the lime greens and definitely some of the blue colors as well. We are seeing some of

[09:52] this kind of social club idea here. You know, to be honest, some of these are incredibly simple like this mug here. So, we are going to focus on kind of a

[10:04] simple design for a ma jang and we are going to put that on an ornament. Now, how do we know what design size we need to start with? Let's go into Printify and we will find that. Okay, we are over here on Printify and I am going to click

[10:20] on ornaments and currently at the moment my favorite ornament is this ceramic decoration ornament from Swift POD. So you will click into this here and if you

[10:33] scroll down you will click on start designing. Now here you will have this print area size right here which is 900 pixels by

[10:46] 900 pixels. So that is what we are going to take over into Canva as well. Now one really neat thing you can do as well is download this design template

[10:58] and that is going to save on our computer and we can then upload that into Canva to make sure it's within the margins of the design. Okay. So, my favorite design tool for beginners is going to be Canva. If you are just

[11:13] getting started, Canva makes it incredibly easy and simple to start creating designs for your print on demand shop and it's the tool that I still predominantly use and it's the tool that I used when I got started.

[11:27] Now, I mentioned that Printify showed us we needed a 900 pixel by 900 pixel design. So, we're going to come over to create and we are going to hit custom size. And this is where we will type in 900 by 900 and we are going to create a

[11:43] new design and that is going to open up for us the square design. Now, the next thing we want to do is we've uploaded you can upload here your design template. So, we are going to pull this like this. And

[12:00] this is something we are going to use at the end when we are getting ready to finish our design, but I want to have it here on the first page. So, at the end, we're just going to make sure that the design fits within those margins. Now,

[12:13] we are going to add a new page. And this is where we are going to start our design for Majam. Now going back to our research, it is important to as I said that we want to look at inspiration for our design. One phrase that I saw coming

[12:31] up was this Mary ma jang which I really like for doing an ornament. The other thing is I did not really see any other ornaments that had that phrase on it. A

[12:45] you are creating for your print on demand shop is you never want to copy, but we want to figure out what is working and how can we bring that into

[12:59] our design. So, I love the idea of this Mary Maj or Mary Majang idea and so we are going to use that as our inspiration for our ornament. Okay. So the first

[13:13] thing we want to do is come over to elements and we are going to look up ma jang and graphics is the main area we are going to be looking for today and you can see that there are a variety of ma

[13:28] jang elements here. So there's a lot of different options that we can pull from. Now remember the name of the game especially if we are just starting out

[13:41] is keeping it simple right we want to just keep it simple. So what we are going to do today is really just look for a simple element that we can use.

[13:53] And I liked this one right here. And we are going to make that a little bit bigger. And what's nice about Canva is they will show you when your element is

[14:07] centered or in the middle. So we want to make sure that right now we have that centered here as well. Now the next thing we are going to do is add a little bit of a Christmas touch to this because we are going to do Merry Ma Jang. And I

[14:24] am going to I'm kind of thinking maybe like a Santa hat added to this. So, let's see if we can find something that might be like something even like this

[14:36] first one. And so, we are going to add that here. And I'm just going to kind of tilt it so it's right on top of the tile there and kind of covers that. And I'm

[14:48] actually really liking that. I do think um one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to select all of these elements and again I'm going to bring it down so that it's centered. I'm also going to hit group on here because that's going

[15:01] to make sure everything stays together. Okay, so we have our design here and now the next thing to do is add text. Now for this ornament, for it being your first product, we are not going to personalize this one. We are just going

[15:16] to have this say Mary Majang. So I am going to add a text box here and I am going to add Mary ma jang exclamation point and I

[15:33] am going to then look for a font. Now for this one I think I really want a fun um let's see if we can find like a Christmas font. And what's cool about

[15:46] Canva is that they have a lot of different searches that you can do that like typing in Christmas, it's going to give you fonts that really feel Christmasy. And so we're going to try a few of these.

[16:01] And I really kind of liked, let's see, this one here. So I'm going to actually bring down my ma jang element here and

[16:16] I am going to then do under effects you can add a curve and some other different effect styles but you can add a curve here and we are going to make this

[16:28] bigger and we are going to add Mary ma jang and then just make the ma jang pieces bigger and I am really liking that. Now for colors, we are going to click on the font here and under text color, it is

[16:44] Canva is they'll show you some of the colors from this design, so you can use those. Um, and I'm actually thinking let's go with

[16:59] there was a lot of green in the products that we were looking at earlier, but I feel like the red is actually going to show better. Now, before we upload this

[17:11] to Printify, I told you we want to check on this. So, we are going to copy. We are going to copy this and I want to paste it on top of here. And I want to

[17:24] make sure that all of my elements are within the white. And it looks like we have some room to bring this down. So I'm going to bring this down a little bit and bring this down. And let's try again. Okay. So it looks like now

[17:38] everything is within the margins. So what we are going to do now is come up to share and we want to download this with a transparent background. Very key.

[17:50] And we want to make sure that we only select the page that we need at the over into Printify. All right. So now I'm here in Printify at our design that

[18:02] we were at and I am going to hit upload and look for this design in my files. Okay, so our design comes in already sized because we've already tested it out in Canva and it is already placed exactly where we need it to be. If you

[18:18] want to see a preview of what it will look like, we can click on the preview button and it will show us the mockups here, which I am really excited about. Now again, this is what I love about print on demand and it being such a

[18:31] great beginnerfriendly side hustle is that we just did some research, came up with a new design, something very simple, and added some text to it. And we are going to then hit save product. Now, here is where you can decide what

[18:48] mockups you would like to add. And over here on the right hand side, you could see your selected mockups. Now, we definitely don't need all of these. Etsy does allow you to have up to 20 mock-ups, but that is not something that

[19:02] you need, especially for your first listing. So, we are going to simplify this a bit. I do really like this mockup that they offer. And this one here, you really only need, especially for an ornament that has just one variation to

[19:17] it, you really only need a couple high quality mock-ups. So, we are going to keep these four mockups and save the selection. Now, something I want to touch on mock-ups. They are a great option to add your own mockups on Etsy.

[19:35] You can find highquality mock-ups at a very, very low price. And so, I do recommend doing that if you have the budget to do so. If you don't, for a product like these, you know, these do well. Um, but if you can buy your own

[19:50] and add those, that is a great option as well. Now, we have our Printify listing here. And this is where you can add your product details to this. And I actually

[20:04] do prefer to add my product details in here on this side. So then when it comes over to our Etsy shop, it is already ready to go. Now, the next part of the listing process is one that people are often

[20:17] very nervous about, which is creating your title and your tags and your description. Now, I have a full and thorough SEO made easy video that I made several weeks ago that can help really dig into this part of the process. For

[20:33] highlights. Your title is going to be up to 140 characters. And this is important keywords that you want your product to be known for. Your tags are 13 keyword

[20:49] tags that you can use again to help Etsy know where to place your product. So, let's go ahead and dig into how to do this. Now, how do we know what keywords to use? This is going to be a process that as you continue in your Etsy shop

[21:03] is going to take you time. So, here's the most important thing today. You don't need perfection. You just need progress. Okay, I have written our title here and it takes up 115 characters. You don't have to fill up all 140

[21:19] characters, but recommend getting as close as you can. Now, when it comes to our tags, we are going to then kind of break up these keywords into different search terms. Something to know, you should never have a single word keyword

[21:34] for a tag. So, we are going to break those up. So, I have taken all of my keywords and I have created these 13 tags which will then go over into my Etsy listing. Now, the last thing we want to do here is for our description,

[21:50] what I recommend doing is over time building out your description. But the most important part in terms of SEO is building in a couple sentences at the beginning that include some of those main keywords. Okay, we've added that

[22:05] first section that has some of those keywords listed here. Now, over time, shop policies and about your shop, but these things are going to evolve over

[22:20] time. And again, today we are focused on progress, not perfection, right? So, just kind of giving you the main highlights to get your first listing up. So, we have all of this done. And the next most important part is

[22:37] going to be pricing. So for your shipping, this is something that Printify will automatically bring in, which is great. But if you want to change that shipping, you can. Also, if you want to do economy shipping, which

[22:52] is going to take a little bit more time, you can select that or you can do just the standard shipping. When it comes to your pricing, we want to make sure that you are profitable, right? So, how do we make sure that we are pricing your

[23:06] product in a way that you are making a profit every time you make a sale? So, we are going to edit your price here. But first, we are going to use Printify's profit calculator. And so this is what's so nice about this

[23:22] calculator is that it is going to bring in kind of your total in terms of shipping and everything like that. So what I typically recommend is having a minimum of a 30% profit margin and obviously ideally more, but let's say we

[23:38] want to do 30%. So that means that your profit is going to be $2.85, which I would definitely like that higher, right? The other thing that we want to do, we want to make sure that Etsy is the sales channel that is

[23:53] selected. And so if we want to kind of increase that profit margin, let's try around with this on the Printify profit calculator directly. And so that is

[24:08] showing that my sales price is going to be 1258. So, let's let's just do $12.99 just to kind of make it a clean number. And my profit margin is going to be

[24:20] $5.94, which is a 46% profit margin. Now, if want to make sure all of that is factored into here. But for right now,

[24:33] for this first product, we are going to be just making sure this is clean, that we're making a solid profit margin, and that even if you decided to run a sale in the future, that you have a healthy profit margin built in here. We are then

[24:48] going to go back to our product details and we are going to make sure we're going to scroll down to the bottom here and we are going to make sure our retail price here is set at $12.99.

[25:05] Perfect. So then that is going to then go to our Etsy listing so that it's already in there. Now, one little logistical thing that I do like to point out is I would love for you to select hide in store. That is going to send

[25:20] this to your Etsy draft. So that way you have time to go in and make any tweaks before publishing it. And then the other option here is if you want to show in stock versus out of stock, something I recommend doing is showing all variants

[25:36] as available for purchase. So that way you can get an order and if you ever do that on the back end. But this will allow you to continue to receive those

[25:48] orders and it's going to sync all of your product details to your shop. So we are going to hit publish here and this is going to go over to our Etsy shop.

[26:02] And this is going to go over to our Etsy shop. You can see it's publishing here and we are going to head into our Etsy shop so I can show you what it looks like and hit that publish button. Over in our Etsy dashboard, I have clicked on

[26:16] listings and then I have clicked on drafts and we see our ornament has popped up here. So, at this point, what you'll do is you will open this and if you need to make any tweaks at this moment, you absolutely can. some other

[26:31] bonus things you might want to consider in your listing, including some potentially brand photos that say, "Thank you for shopping small," or, "Here's how to contact me if you have a question." So, that is something you

[26:45] could add. You could also add a size chart. There are some wonderful size charts that are for sale on Etsy, or you could also make your own in Canva as well. So, adding a few of those is going to help with building that buyer trust.

[26:59] You can also adjust your thumbnail here. So, if you want to zoom in a little bit on the ornament, you can do that. And then you're going to see all the things that we brought in, your description, your price, and something I want to

[27:14] touch on is your skew number. Now, this is the what I would call like the walkietalkie between your Etsy listing and Printify. The skew number is what is going to attach this listing to that Printify product that we just created.

[27:29] And what I mean by that is that when you get an order on this product, that is how Printify is going to know what product to attach to it. So that skew number is very important. This is also going to have some other details. It's

[27:42] very important, and this is something I love about Printify, is that when you bring an item over, your production partner is already set at Printify. And if you are using another company to create and produce your item, you do

[27:56] have to disclose that on your Etsy listing. So, this is an important piece of that. It will automatically select your category. But if you have a different category you'd like to search for, you can you can always look for

[28:09] materials. So, in this case, let's say we wanted to select ceramic, you could do that. You could also select your colors. And some of the other attributes that can be important are holidays and season. So if we wanted to

[28:23] select Christmas because this is a Christmas ornament, that will help with knowing where your product goes. You're also going to see your tags are already here and your shipping profile and processing profile have automatically

[28:37] been brought in from Printify. So easy for us. And then we are going to scroll down and the last thing we're going to want to do is shop sections. So these are sections within your shop where you can create different categories for

[28:51] buyers. So for example, I have like pregnancy and baby, healthcare. So let's say we wanted to add a section for hobbies. We could save that and create that shop section. And the last question it's

[29:07] going to ask you is about renewal options. So I recommend doing a manual renewal. What that means is every Etsy listing is given four months. If your listing doesn't sell in four months, it is going to expire. I prefer to do

[29:21] manual renewals. So that way every four months you can kind of reassess if you want to continue listing those products. And then we are going to hit publish with changes. And this is where it will prompt you

[29:35] that every listing is 20 cents. And we are going to hit publish. And that listing is now published on Etsy. Can you believe it? Your first listing is now live. So now we can see what this listing looks like live. We could see

[29:51] the pricing, the photos, and everything else that you have worked so hard to create as you're getting your print on demand shop off the ground. Now the last question is what happens when you get an order? So, let's hope that this product

[30:06] will sell and what does that look like when you get an order come through on Printify. So, let's hop over to Printify and I will show you real quick. Okay, so the best part about print on demand is when you get an order that you don't

[30:20] really have to do anything at all in terms of printing or packaging or shipping the product. So, what does that look like? When you're on Printify and you get an order on your orders tab, you'll click here and you will be able

[30:33] to see the order that came through. And if you click into this, it is going to show you those order details. It'll show you the customer name. It'll show you the item that they ordered. And if everything looks good to go, you can go

[30:48] ahead and hit submit. So, this makes it incredibly easy to be able to sell a variety of products without having to worry about storing them at your house, printing them yourself, managing all the inventory, all of that fun stuff. Okay,

[31:04] so if you followed along, you just created your very first print ondemand listing, and that is a huge deal. Some people think about starting a shop for years and you have just taken your very first steps towards your own Etsy print

[31:19] on demand business. And remember, this is progress over perfection. You are not meant to do this exactly right the first time. But I hope this video helped show

[31:31] you what is possible and be able to do it in a way that isn't overwhelming. And if you would like support in launching your Etsy print on demand business, don't forget to hit like or subscribe below and come join us in the Gift Lab

[31:47] community where we are providing hands-on support every single day to each other in growing and scaling our own Etsy print on demand businesses. join us for 7 days free. Thanks so much for being here. I'll see you in the next

[32:05] one.