Do you know that the print on demand can provide you more revenue than the regular business without investing alot? You don’t need a large set up, a large set of helpers, or a huge store to set up your product, but still you can achieve the same profits as a regular business. Impressive right..!!
Yes It’s. Print on demand set up is very quick and low investment needed. This is one of the most popular trending business option available now.
If you are wondering what is print on demand exactly or if you want to know more about it, perfect you are in the right place. We will start from scratch and will explore many things on print-on-demand.
What is Print on Demand?
In a big mall or clothing store, we can find that there would be a lot of clothes lying down or kept hanging in the same place for a long period. I used to wonder what they would do with them if they were not sold.
This is a serious problem that usually most shopkeepers do face in any sector along with clothing. In any case, they can find some unlucky stock left behind without grabbing anyone’s eyes. They can neither make profits for them nor balance them too.
It consumes a lot of space and later environmental issues too. So to give a serious check to this problem and make things much easier like running a store without building, print-on-demand evolved.
Thinking about how it’s possible to run a store without having a building? It’s possible, I will tell you how. Let’s first understand well how print-on-demand works.
The word print on demand, the name itself suggests that printing will be done only after the demand. Let’s talk about the same clothing. We have already discussed that there will be leftover stock in any case.
So in print on demand, you will design something on your own if you can or you will hire the help of a third party designer to help you in designs.
You will post the designs on platforms known as Merchants like Amazon Merch, Teespring or other to make your products visible to the customer.
When people like your design, you will receive an order from the platform. Now you will redirect that to platforms like Merchants to start manufacturing and printing the design of the size, cloth and color they selected.
In between, the most important thing that you need to focus on and to work on is marketing. You can choose your own sites to advertise or you can join in any handles like instagram or facebook etc.
Whatever you will choose, you have to promote better and ensure that your product grabs required attention. Based on your promotion levels, you can get customers.
Once your product is exactly finished, they will deliver it to the customer on behalf of you in time. This is exactly how print-on-demand works.
This era is mostly of side hustles due to many reasons. The growing cost of living and the evolution of growth for side hustles made everyone have a look at it.
There are various side hustles available and choosing them depends on people’s skills. But the side hustle which is matching up with almost every area and all professions is print-on-demand.
Print-on-demand works for everyone from artists, educators, and painters to everyone. You can work on any customization like bags, clothes, gifts, and many more.
If you want to know about how many types are in print on demand, there are two types. One is active print-on-demand and the other is passive print-on-demand.
In active demand, you need to own your site and have to ensure that the product reaches your final customer in time. In passive demand, you won’t own a site, you will take the help of platforms like Amazon, Etsy, etc to publish your product.
So as said earlier, this is one of the best side hustle from home to start with. This passive income is really easy to start with and can excel in it.
How Does Print on Demand Works
Well, several ways and descriptions are there with how print-on-demand works. Here we are going to talk about 3 different ways of how print on demand works.
Fig 1 – Working of Print on Demand
1. You are the designer
So here, first you will think of some design, work on it. So the complete master of the design is you. Post finishing your product, you will make use of any platform to publish your product.
In active print on demand, you will establish your site and you will look into your shipping options and things. Talking about the types here, it’s always somewhat better to make use of the platforms, instead of setting up a new one.
Passive print-on-demand will avoid a lot of headaches and tension in shipping. But if you want to establish your place like separate large entities, you can go ahead with active print-on-demand.
2. Third Party Designer
The idea of print-on-demand working excites everyone. But you may or can’t design the perfect one that can attract a larger audience. Sometimes people make a better choice of hiring a designer to design for them.
The designer will provide you with the designs and you can start posting them on your own. A larger scale business connects with a designing team for the designs but prints them on their own and makes a profit from it.
Benefits
There are many benefits you can find with print on demand. Here are some basic and exciting benefits I am listing, know them out.
Fig 2 – Benefits of Print on Demand
1. Less Storage Required
If you are having a bag store, you will design a lot of styles with a lot of materials. You have to keep at least 10 to 20 sets of the same designs for customers. Because you can’t design 100 all at once.
So that automatically takes up a lot of space. You have to make every design visible to the customer. If unfortunately, your sales are not going well as per expectations, still you have to keep the stock.
But if that’s print-on-demand, you don’t need to maintain a large stock of each design. All you just need is to design something and manage them as per orders.
You will just be requiring only the components required for manufacturing, you don’t require a larger space. Once the product is printed, you can send it immediately.
2. Lesser Risk
You have already designed something and prepared a final end product. If no customer is attracted to it, then it could be a huge loss to you. You can’t get back the return of investment you kept on that product.
But here, you are just showing your design based on your experience and expectations, you have to worry less about its sales. Because you are not losing the investment.
Some may like it, some may not like it. Also, it depends on your luck sometimes lol. Even the brightest wonderful design and good work may not undergo as many sales as you expected. So it’s risky to make the product before
So what do you think? Isn’t it less risky than finishing the whole product without asking for the customer’s consent? Yes, it’s less risky as compared to the whole-scale business.
3. No Much Pre Work Required
Let’s talk about one of my favorite aspects now i.e., jewellery. If I own a jewelry shop, don’t assume that I won’t sell anything and I would just wear all by myself without selling.
If I own one, can you imagine how much work I have to do for every single design? Multiple times jewelry requires minute art making, intense focus, and concentrated design. It’s a longer process than your expectations.
So when I am planning to serve 100 customers, I have to start working for them straight from 3 months before. Otherwise, I can’t serve those many clients. But in print-on-demand, it’s completely different.
You don’t need to start your work. You can just start your work after receiving the order with the requirements. Even if you receive more orders all at once, you can plan accordingly without keeping any pre-work.
4. More Freedom
In a large scale business, you definitely are dependent on many other people as everything is interlinked.
In print on demand too, you are dependent on certain things but not as much as you find in the regular business. You can have a lot of choice for action in several things here in print on demand.
You can choose your design on your own, make changes in it. You can choose the platform you want and can perform any action which you can’t find in regular business. Because every team is segregated in that.
5. Clear Steps Of Procedure
So straight to the point here, you will clear steps of the procedure in print on demand. It’s actually not like there is no planning and procedure in regular business.
But in print-on-demand, you can find more precise steps to follow. In regular business, you will find a lot of options for each and everything. Because the product-making is completely under your will, expectations, and assumptions.
But here in print on demand, though you will have limited options, you can understand well and can grab the option well easily and quickly. You don’t need an affiliate marketing team to market your product too much either.
6. Quick Setup
We have come halfway, so by this you can already understand that print-on-demand business can be set up easily. You will not be requiring a large amount of space to store your material and stock.
The setup is very quick. All you need is to gain some knowledge, prepare your designs and start publishing them. With your growing in business, you can set up more and can expand more. You just need your basic machinery and can work on things easily.
7. Huge Saving
If you are running a business, you definitely will need support. You can imagine how many people should be working with you to manage all the deliveries. You can also imagine the production cost for all the products.
In print-on-demand, you will definitely need labor but it will not be as much as required in regular business. There will not be much production cost too because you will start working after receiving the order.
You will just need the basic material for processing and for immediate work. You also don’t need to work on the construction of stores, development of stores, and remodeling.
You don’t even need to feed the salespeople and staff maintenance too.
8. More Profits
In print-on-demand, you are just keeping your investment in the raw material and the basic setup. As compared to the regular business, don’t you think you are keeping less here? It’s. We have already spoken about it.
So obviously you will get more profits and a higher return on investment. As you are getting the same sales but at a different investment.
Let’s say you have designed a product, and you don’t need to stick to a single platform. You can register on all the platforms of the same design. So you can make a profit from every platform if your product is sold there.
Demerits
Every coin has both sides like a head and a tail. Print-on-demand is not an exception. Here we will be talking about some demerits linked with print-on-demand.
1. Hard to Gain Customers
Unless you are named as the best seller or best designer in any aspect, it is hard for the clients to believe in your work. It takes time for them to automatically reach out.
Even if you show your best work, it takes time to establish a regular mode of business. Till then you have to keep working hard to gain more clients and to get more feedback.
2. Need Extra Care
Unless basic designing, in print on demand, you need to be extremely careful. Even if you miss any customization or product quality, your customers will be dissatisfied with your product and will be hesitant to order again.
So from picking up the material to working on design, you need to be extremely careful in everything. You need to perform more research and work than the regular work.
3. Chance of Missing Quality
Here you have to be dependent on the printer and person for the quality. After receiving the order, you will give the complete action of statement to your selected platform.
There are some chances if they miss any quality or customisation. As You can’t have control on every part of it, you would have some tension of it’s quality.
Top 5 products in Print on Demand you can sell
Yes, the fact indeed is you can sell anything through print on demand. If you have that designing skill, you can obviously for it. But here we are listing some popular customized products where you can pick any of them to start selling.
1. Tshirts
Fig 3 – Print on Demand T-shirt
This is one of the most demanding and running print-on-demand businesses. There are a lot of people who gained popularity and success with t-shirt customization.
You can also think to yourself, how many times you went to purchase a t-shirt, you might not be upset all the time, but sometimes you might feel this is missing, that is missing. You might also feel that something in the design can be better.
You can also take the instance that during a college fest or in any separate function, you would like to wear a similar pattern and similar design for everyone. In this way more than regular stores, print-on-demand works well.
2. Mugs and Cups
Fig 4 – Print on Demand Mug
I myself remember how many times I have been given the gift of a coffee mug with a printed photo and a greeting multiple times. You might have given it to your better half or to a friend as a birthday present.
So this has not started in recent times, but customizations and much better improvements started taking place in recent times. This is one of the popular working print-on-demand products.
The cost of setup and the raw material won’t cost much if you can invest in a printer once. In the same way, you need to remember to the point that there is a huge competition too here.
3. Wall Arts and Room Decorations
Fig 5 – Print on Demand Wall Art
We all love our home a lot. Who wouldn’t love to add extra beauty to it? That’s when the wall art and room decorations started happening. It can be a monkey hanging from a tree branch or a bird eating fruits.
You can find a lot of sketches to design and you can also design wall hangings too. There is a lot to work on here. If you can extend this, you can start printing for phone covers and phone cases too.
4. Customised Gifts
I remember designing a gift for my friend’s birthday again the whole night to design a nice gift. I made some papers and some cardboard sheets along with beautiful sketches.
But now I am happy to find them online. There are thousands of customized gifts from numerous platforms. This requires a certain amount of creativity. But definitely a booming business.
You can start by designing little crafts, slowly you can increase the level of it. The thing is clear, the more you work on it, the more creatively you can design day by day.
5. Face Paintings
It used to be like sitting on a bench and someone will draw our picture. It will take at least 4 hours of work and we have to sit idle.
With this print-on-demand, people are now just sending pictures over mail or uploading to their portals and getting the work to be done. If you are a painter or an artist who can draw people’s faces, then you should definitely take a chance at this.
Because you can charge a hefty amount for just a single picture. Once you can set up your business and stabilize yourself. You will find a lot of customers depending on your previous work and showcase.
You can also extend this to design paintings for home, work, and many more. All you need is just a skill in it. If you do have one, don’t miss this print-on-demand that can fetch you a lot of revenue.
6. Water Bottles
So, guys, it is not the usual state of carrying old carrying water bottles. People are so specific not just about the material they are using, but also about the design and the art or quote on the bottle.
This is one of the coolest and easiest prints on demand to start with. All you need to do is write up motivational quotes or the coolest phrases and just attach them to the bottle with a little design and color.
Working on essential items gives you more customers. But you just need to work better than before to grab their attention.
7. Bags
Along with the color we are choosing, we give utmost importance to the design. Bags are also a pretty cool trend. Let’s not talk only about the bags we wear while hanging out.
Fig 6 – Print on Demand Bag
It’s also about the bags we need for the office, work, and other traveling journeys. The design includes something inspirational, cute design, creative design, etc. Even if you are not too aware of designing, bags require very little design, so you can start this.
FAQ
What is the best print on demand site?
It actually depends on the niche or the product you have chosen. There are many wonderful sites where that make sure your product reaches the end customer. Here are some sites I am listing that are actually good.
Is print on demand profitable?
As we have already dealt with this, print on demand is much more profitable than the regular business. All you need is the right skill and ability to gain customers and manage them throughout.
Is print on demand risky?
Nothing can be said with no risk at all. As this is business, there would be some risk involved in it. But as compared to the regular business, you are not investing here a lot, all you do is just designing and giving the product when the customer ordered.
So we can say that there is a very little risk involved but much in this risky terms, much better than the regular business.
Where can I get designs for print on demand?
With this competition and overwhelming products, we also agree that designing again something so unique is harder. Still, there are some sites to help you out like Freepik, Pixabay and Pinterest, etc.
You can get a lot of inspiration and new ideas from images. Most of the modern tailoring and designing clothes is based on sites like Pinterest. You can find tons of designs.
You can make use of them and perform changes to them. Then make the best version of it according to the audience who you want to sell it to.
Conclusion
So, guys, this is completely about print on demand. Hope you guys are filled with some knowledge and better understanding now on print on demand.
We started with what is print on demand and explored our journey to benefits and demerits. We have also seen some popular print-on-demand products and also answer your possible queries.
I hope you are satisfied with this and hope we helped you in making your groundwork to get started.
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