 All right. So I just started doing one of the best business models for beginners, which is print on demand. And there's a lot of companies out there that do this. Amazon does it. Printly does it. Printify does it. But the company that I really like that I think is really easy for beginners to get started with is going to be printful. And in this video, I'm going to go over exactly what I've learned starting a print on demand business. Well, where are we waiting for? Let's go. Now you're probably wondering why is print on demand a good business model for beginners? Well, first of all, print on demand is basically a business model where you design some piece of art that can be put on shoes or a shirt or a jacket or a mug or a planner or all sorts of different things. I'm an artist. And then you put that up on the internet to be bought and it's not made until somebody actually purchases it. And so what that means is this is a business model where you basically don't need any money to start. All you need is to make some designs, throw them up on some kind of website where people can buy them. And that's how you start making money. Now print on demand has been around for a while, but typically if you wanted to do this, you'd still have to deal with the printing and the fulfillment and a lot of the logistical issues. But with printful, they take care of all of that for you. And printful almost like having an Olympic athlete for your printing needs, fast, precise and always ready to go for the gold. So this is basically a low risk and potential for high reward type of business model to get started with. Now, there are some skills you're going to need to know, which I'll go over a little bit later in the video, but compared to most business models out there, it's so easy to break into. And if you don't believe me, you can look up story after story of people that are making a full time income with this. For instance, Ryan is a 33 year old making 14,600 a month and passive income. And he does it all by using printful and then listing his artwork on Etsy as well as eBay. And you have probably bought print on demand products without even knowing for instance, I bought some artwork in the past to put in my studios as well as around my house. And turns out it was actually print on demand. And so I get asked all the time on my channel about side hustles that people can get started with easily. And I honestly think this is one of the easiest ways to make your first dollar online. So this is going to be an actionable guide to teach you what I've learned so far about doing print on demand and using printful. And by the way, I was able to get a deal for you guys. You can actually use it completely free if you use the link down in the description as well as the pen comment below. And yes, that is an affiliate link. So if you click it, I will get a small commission for that. But this is the company that I'm using with my print on demand journey, which I will be documenting on my channel. So I would be linking them down below anyways, even if I wasn't an affiliate. All right. So the first and most important step is going to be research. Now this is something you have to do no matter what business model you go into, you need to figure out what your target audience is and figure out what they are buying. Right. So you're not just selling shirts. You're selling shirts to women and you're not just selling shirts to women, maybe you're selling shirts to pregnant women specifically. And pregnant women are going to be much more likely to buy specific designs that have to do with pregnancy. Now, there's a million different ways to do research on this. Obviously, you'd want to see what is selling really well on websites like Etsy. And you can tell what's selling well by how many reviews they have, but you don't want to just copy them because you're going to be competing directly against, you know, some companies that are already established. So you want to see what's working and get ideas for something that you could do. And then after you've got an idea for something, let's say you decide to start making paintings or artwork, at that point you want to start doing research on websites such as Answer the Public and Uber Suggest. And this is a completely free website that will give you ideas of what people are searching and the different phrases they're using when they search. And if you're able to find something that people are searching quite a bit, but there's no fulfillment for it on Etsy, then you probably just found a winner. So a good friend of mine, for instance, makes really good money by selling stuff that's related to a bachelorette parties. Say what? And the funniest thing is this is a 30 year old guy, so he doesn't really know anything about bachelorette parties, but he was able to do research and figure out what the market wanted. Now, after this, I also recommend looking things up on popular forums and subreddits across the internet. So for instance, there's probably a lot of subreddits that have to do with bachelorette parties, go on those subreddits, maybe even start engaging in those subreddits, see what kind of language they use, see the kind of problems they're having, and that can give you some really good ideas on what to use for print on demand as well. Now this is the step that you do want to spend some time on, but with that being said, with your very first product, I don't think you should spend too much time because you kind of just want to get the reps in. There's like a 99% chance that your very first product is going to fail. It's not going to get any sales or maybe it'll just get a few sales, and that's completely fine. The whole point here is you're getting the reps in and you're getting started. And your first goal is just to make a single dollar. And then after you've made a dollar, you want to try to make $10. And after you've made $10, you want to try to make $100. And so being involved in these different subreddits, different forms across the internet, maybe Facebook groups as well, is going to give you a great chance to interact with your target demographic. And you can even ask them opinions on different designs before you put them up on Printful. Now, once you've done this, go ahead and move on to step number two, which is create the product. Now Printful offers three ways to create designs. You can use their free integrated design maker, you can upload your own artwork, or you can utilize Printful's graphic design services for a fee. Now, if you want to use their free design maker, that's probably the easiest way to get started. You can also utilize your own artwork as well. You can use things like Photoshop for that. Another really good one you can use is GIMP. And if you don't have access to either of those two, you can always use Canva. And another really cool way you can start making art is by using AI. And this is actually what got me interested recently in print on demand. I saw that there was so much opportunity using AI and combining it with print on demand that a lot of people weren't taking advantage of. Now, there's a lot of controversy over AI related tools. Some people say the AI tools heavily borrow from real artists work. So there is a possibility this may not work in the future, but from what I've seen right now, make sure you look this up, depending on the time you're watching this video, you can still use AI to help you make artwork. Now, besides Mid Journey, which everyone knows about, there's other websites such as RunwayML or the Deep Dream Generator. So yeah, this is another part where you do want to take your time. But with that being said, if you're just getting started, you want to get your reps in, so I would just recommend not spending too much time on this and just getting something posted. And this is for three different reasons. One, if you overthink it, you're probably just going to burn yourself out and you won't get around to eventually doing it. Two, just like any other skill, you're going to get better at it by practicing. That means you need to put in the reps. And the only way you can put in the reps is by doing it over and over and over again. And three, print on demand, just like almost any other business model is a numbers game. So you could choose the best niche, figure out the best type of artwork to do, create the perfect product, put it up and you get zero sales. But each time you do that, you have a probability of success. And of course, if you do a really good job, you're going to have a higher probability. But at the end of the day, it's all a numbers game. So a good analogy for this is baseball. The best sluggers of all time hit about 35%. Let's say you were playing baseball and you're really bad, so you only hit 10%. The difference between baseball and business is you can swing the bat as many times as you want. And so the number of times that you upload is going to significantly increase your chances of success. So if you swing the bat 10 times at 10%, you're going to have a very high chance of success, even against somebody who's very good, but they only swing it once. And so I can't stress how important it is to just get started. Just do it! And by the way, same thing goes with a YouTube channel or if you're trying to do Amazon FBA or any other number of business models. At the end of the day, it's all just a numbers game and the people that are more persistent are going to be the ones that win. Now, number three, we're going to move on to another really important one, which is branding. Now you don't need to worry too much about this at first. It's not something that you want to trouble yourself about, but if you're going to try to create an entire brand, you want it to be recognizable, right? So going back to the example of creating bachelorette-related products, you might be creating shirts, you might be creating cups that have printed designs on them. You might also have like that sash thing that bachelorettes put on. I don't actually know what that's called, but I think you know what I mean. And it's important that you have some kind of logo or brand that is recognizable. So if you create a really good product and people have a good time with it, they're going to be much more likely to buy it again in the future. Or they might buy one product and decide to buy all of your other products as well. So it's a good idea to create some sort of logo. And again, you can do this inside of Printful, a logo maker, or you can use Photoshop, GIMP or hire a graphic designer. And if you do want to hire a graphic designer, Fiverr is a great website I've used many times in the past to create logos. Now, number four, you want to move on to the store setup. Now with the store setup, the first thing you want to do is choose an e-commerce platform to host your products. Now, the one that I've seen people have the most success with is Etsy. But with that being said, there's a ton of different platforms out there that you can use. Another one people use all the time, for instance, is eBay. And by the way, Printful does integrate to pretty much all of the different platforms and websites. Now you want to move on to step number five, which is Printful setup. You'll want to set up your Printful account to start fulfilling orders. Printful has just launched new memberships, Printful Growth and Printful Business. As a starter, you can benefit a lot from Printful Growth. Some of its advantages are, you get up to 30% off discount and up to 20% for direct to garment products. These are also known as DTG products. You also get product branding discounts of 7% and unlimited store accounts and product designs. Soon you'll be able to purchase the Printful Growth membership, so click the link below, check out the membership plans, and leave your email address to get notified when the subscription goes live. It will pay off in just 10 orders a month, and once you reach the sales targets, you can keep the membership for free for a year, and there's more. If you keep growing your business, you'll qualify for Printful Business membership, which means even bigger discounts and additional perks, like your sample order discounts increase to 25% and free digitization for all embroidered products. You're going to add a billing method to ensure smooth order processing and select a shipping method for your orders as well. And you can choose between automatic fulfillment, which I highly recommend, especially if you're a beginner, and manual confirmation for each order. And then you sync your product with the storefront by using the product push generator or manually syncing them. And then just make sure everything is properly set up to ensure a smooth fulfillment process. And typically it's a good idea to order one of your own products, not only to test how good the quality is and how long it takes to get to you, but also make sure that the billing and fulfillment process is squared away. Now, step number six is going to be legal. Now, I'm not a lawyer, so this is something that you're probably going to have to look up on your own, but something to look into is possibly registering a business and consulting a tax professional to make sure you meet all the legal requirements. Then you submit your legal and tax information to Printful and you do this by going to the billing section in your account and then you add your legal info and tax certificates to make your invoices valid. Now, this is going to change depending on your own personal circumstances. So this is something I can't talk on too much, but with that being said, most business owners out there don't spend too much money on their business at first until they know they're making money with it. But like I said, I'm not a lawyer. You have to look this up yourself. There's always going to be risks when it comes to physical products, so definitely make sure you do your research on this. Number seven on the list is going to be marketing. Now, you want to start promoting your products to friends, family members, and also people that you meet. And of course, if you spend a lot of time in Facebook groups, on Reddit, in different forums, you may already be direct messaging with people and you might want to send them a link to your product and see if they're interested in it. Now, this is something that I've seen people do over and over again and do keep in mind that a lot of Facebook groups, subreddits, et cetera, have rules against you doing this. But with that being said, I've seen this over and over again where people will get their start by just simply posting content on Facebook groups, subreddits, and forums across the internet. And then when people private message them, that's when they send them the link. But if you just try to spam your link across all of these different places without giving value first, chances are you're going to get banned and you're not going to give it any sales. So again, you have to look up the rules of the different groups that you're in. But with that being said, I've seen over and over again people get their start this way. For instance, a friend of mine is a seven figure business owner who teaches people how to get into management consulting and he started his business by simply answering people's questions on management consulting related subreddits. And then when people would private message him, he would offer to do coaching for a particular amount of money. So overall, being involved in these different groups and creating content in my opinion is one of the best ways to market your stuff right off the bat. Then once the algorithm sees that you're getting a few sales here and there, it's much more likely to promote it organically. Now, some really clever ways to do this is by making TikTok content about whatever you're marketing. So if you can think of a very clever idea to come up with for print on demand stuff, and you can also put that on Instagram Reels as well as YouTube shorts, post your link in either the comment, the description or wherever it lets you post it in the particular platform. And that can be a good way of getting sales as well. So there's a lot to go into when it comes to marketing, but this is a very important skill to learn too. Now, some of the best websites to sell on are going to be Etsy and eBay. And some of the best things to sell on these websites are going to be stickers, t-shirts, prints and photos, as well as artwork. Now, there's certain services you can use to sort of track what the popular products are. For instance, on eBay, there's a tool called Watch Count and this helps you locate popular eBay listings. You can also pay attention to different popular products and themes on websites such as Pinterest. A lot of the time, things will get really popular on a website like Pinterest before it ends up getting turned into a physical product somewhere else. You can also join different Facebook seller communities where they tend to give free advice and just collaborate with each other. Now, a few of the things you wanna do is make sure to write engaging product descriptions. And the best way to do this is to look around on different websites like Amazon or Etsy, look at some of their most popular listings and see how they write their product descriptions. Because chances are a professional copywriter wrote that. Now, you don't ever want to copy it verbatim, but you can use it to get ideas. And of course, you can always utilize chat GPT to help you write the descriptions as well. And then also keep in mind that like I said, this is a numbers game. So you need to keep uploading over and over again, try different things out and then when one of your products wins, figure out why it was so good and then create other products that are related to that. Now, one example of somebody who hopped on a trend and was able to make a good amount of money was Holly who is making Taylor Swift related merchandise. Now, Taylor Swift has a giant cult following of people who are mega fans around the world, but a lot of those fans couldn't afford to go to Taylor Swift shows, which were the only place they could buy certain types of merchandise. And so Holly realized there was a major gap in the market and she started making Taylor Swift themed hats, sweatshirts, t-shirts, candles and more. And she reported that she's consistently making four to six sales a day, which pays her rent. So these are the kind of things you want to look into and it's especially good if you're already really involved in a particular demographic. So if you're someone who's a mega Taylor Swift fan, it would make a lot of sense for you to make this kind of merchandise because you kind of have a good idea of what people would want to buy. Now, by the way, be careful doing that. That was just an anecdote. It's very easy to get in trouble with copyright infringement. So this is another one where you'd want to consult a lawyer and make sure you do your research on it. You want to get sued? So yeah, after you do all these steps, you do a bunch of research, you upload your first product, you want to go ahead and do it again and again and again and get the reps in. And I am still yet to meet a single successful entrepreneur who uploaded like one product or just did one product without failing at anything and then had success. Every single successful entrepreneur I've met has failed over and over and over and over again before they found success. And like I said, the reason for this is because it's a numbers game. But Printful is a fantastic place to get started if you want to start a print on demand store, which is one of the easiest ways to start making money online. So definitely check them out. Like I said, you can use them completely free if you use the link in the description below. And also YouTube thinks you're going to want to watch this video right here. So definitely check that out and I'll see you next time.