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Disclaimer: The information provided is for educational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.
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Print-on-Demand is a drop-shipping method where you upload your designs onto products and a manufacturer prints and fulfills orders for you, so that you won’t need any inventory.
With this method, you can sell products from anywhere without having any inventory. You can design products using a graphic software such as Canva (either free or paid), ProCreate, Adobe Illustrator, etc. You can sell through your own website (using 3rd party integration - we'll discuss this later) or directly on an e-commerce platform (see previous article). The POD supplier would print your designs at its manufacturing warehouse and ship the products directly to your customers. You’d just manage orders and customer service (platforms like Fourthwall handle customer service for you).
✔️ To summarize, you would:
1.) Choose either Wordpress(.org), Non-Wordpress(.org) site or an E-commerce platform. **For Wordpress, WooCommerce is the best, in my opinion
2.) Connect any 3rd party integration, as needed
3.) Make your designs, upload, and publish
4.) Use social media marketing and/or other advertising to bring traffic to your site
5.) Be patient & keep promoting consistently!
There are many products you can design, such as crew sweaters, T-Shirts, hoodies, hats, coconut wax candles, 100% soy candles, tote bags, phone cases, laptop cases, blankets, coffee mugs, tumblers, mouse pads, candles, wall art & canvases, kitchen items, windshield sun risers, the list goes on!
🌸 My Recommended Print-On-Demand (P.O.D.) Partners: these are 3rd party tools that you'll need to integrate with your platform
🌷 Printful: very popular, HUGE catalog of products, can be integrated with *MANY* platforms
- Pros: high quality, international fulfillment
- Cons: shipping times can vary
🌷 Art of Where: artsy products
- Pros: high quality, custom packaging
- Cons: smaller product range, fulfillment is in US and Canada only
🌷 Gooten: good selection
- Pros: good customer service
- Cons: quality depends on the provider since Gooten uses 3rd party suppliers and doesn't print in-house like others on this list
🌷 Gelato: fulfillment in lots of countries, local shipping
- Pros: fast shipping, good prices, good wall art/photos
- Cons: not many apparel options
🌻 Tip: Each POD partner is different and one may offer items that another doesn't. In some cases, depending on which platform you choose, you may be able to combine and use multiple POD partners.
- Let's go over some set-up examples. For instance, if you wanted to sell custom designed P.O.D. T-shirts, there are many ways you can do that, depending on which path you choose:
Example 1: Amazon Route: Sign up for Amazon Seller Account —> Request GTIN exemption for each category you plan to sell under —> Connect Printful to Amazon —> design & upload your products onto Printful (for example), set up shipping, taxes, etc.
Example 2: Wix eCommerce Route: Sign up for a Wix eComm store & pick a plan —> Go to the Wix App Market —> Find the Printful app & connect —> design & upload your products onto Printful (for example), add products to store, set up shipping, taxes. etc.
🌻 Tip: I personally like to make sure the process goes smoothly before I launch my store, and on my previous store, I purchased an item from myself (I was my 1st customer) and later paid the sales tax that I previously paid to myself. Easy but it still helped me to better visualize the process as I was new to e-commerce :)
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