 In today's video we're going to cover everything that you need to know about dropshipping versus print on demand. What's the difference? Which one is better? Which one is right for you? Make sure you watch this video all the way to the end because in it I'm going to answer every one of these questions and more. And also make sure you stick around to the end because I'm going to give you a little bonus there that's really going to help you bring these two together. And you printed all of it. Now before we begin let me know down in the comments below what you think of print on demand and what you think of dropshipping. Which one's your favorite? Which one do you think is better? Which one do you use? Which one are you thinking of starting? Let me know all of your thoughts down in the comments below and with that let's go ahead and get started. Okay so first things first what is dropshipping and what is print on demand? So simply put both of these are fulfillment business models where all you have to do is fulfill the order. So with dropshipping let's say somebody places an order on your store for a pair of headphones. They make that purchase for $150 and instead of you going to your inventory taking those headphones packing them up slapping a shipping label on them and sending them out all you have to do is reroute your order to your supplier and they take care of all of that heavy work for you. You paid $50 for those headphones so the remaining $100 are your profit. Now what about print on demand? So what happens on print on demand is pretty much the exact same thing. Somebody's going to place an order in your store for a particular t-shirt they're going to pay $25 for it then you're going to go ahead and place that order with your supplier or with your printer and you're going to spend maybe about $7 for it. Your supplier is going to take care of the entire production and fulfillment so again you don't really have to do much the remaining $18 are your profit. Now the biggest difference between dropshipping and print on demand is going to be that dropshipping is primarily with certain types of items. Trending items things like headphones, dog toys, watches, furniture, office supply, tons of different electronics pretty much any type of product you can dropship. Now with print on demand the biggest difference is you're going to be printing your design on the actual product with print on demand. Now for the most part one of the most popular items when it comes to print on demand are going to be t-shirts, tumblers, a pair of shorts, a blanket, a bath mat, things like that. Now these products are going to have your own design on them so you're going to make a design upload it to your print on demand supplier and then they're going to print it on the product before shipping it out and that's pretty much it. Those are the two main differences between dropshipping and print on demand. Now you might hear the term print on demand dropshipping thrown around every so often. Let me go ahead and clear that up right now. There really is not much of a term as print on demand dropshipping. A lot of people associate print on demand with actually printing a particular product on demand so let's say somebody places an order for me for a t-shirt and I use my own equipment to print that shirt myself. Some people confuse that as print on demand which I can see why because technically I'm getting an order and I'm printing it on demand but the actual term print on demand does not reflect that type of printing or that type of business. The term print on demand is going to be used for the most part as an order fulfillment business model. So now you know that dropshipping and print on demand are pretty much their own business models. They're similar but they have their key differences. So up until now dropshippers and print on demand business owners have pretty much been at two completely opposite ends of the spectrum. They don't typically have much or anything to do with each other but when you really think about it and you start getting down to the nitty gritty both business models are extremely similar. The only biggest difference that I see is that print on demand is a bit more geared towards people who like to design or people who like to get creative but those aren't always the most successful people in the business. As long as you know what the demographic of people that you're targeting wants and what they're interested in then you can make sales regardless of the type of product. Look with both of these business models you're really not going to be fulfilling or doing much of anything once the order is placed. What you're going to be doing is simply rerouting that order unless your business is already automated which in most cases for print on demand it is and if you're using the out of the S system then chances are that your dropshipping business is automated as well. So that gives you a lot of time back that you can actually reinvest back into making more products and doing a bit more product research. So with dropshipping you're going to be doing product research in terms of looking for different types of products that are currently trending. Now for this you have tons of different sources that you can use to your advantage. For one you have things like the sell these now playlist over at the AutoDS YouTube channel. There we give you tons of winning products that you can sell each and every month. Aside from that we also have different types of blog articles our Instagram or TikTok channel so we have tons of different resources all at your disposal so that way you can use them to find some of the best products to dropship. But those aren't the only ways that you can use. You also have things like social media. TikTok is extremely powerful. There you can find what's really trending and what people are looking for at that same exact moment. Now when it comes to print on demand product research is also somewhat similar except the trends are going to be a little bit different. When it comes to product research for print on demand for the most part the main thing that you need to focus on is your design niche. You can also niche down for products but it all starts at the top with designs. Regardless of what you go with your design niche is going to come first and then you're going to pick relevant products to go with that design niche. So you're not going to be selling something like a personalized dog bowl if you're niching down to cars. It's just not going to make sense that the design niche and the product don't necessarily go together. They don't really mix well. But if you're niching down to cars then something like t-shirts or lanyards would go perfect. Alright what about money and profit margins? Well when it comes to profit margins dropshipping and print on demand can be kind of all over the place. It really depends on the types of products that you're selling and really how you're marketing them. So with dropshipping you have some very generic items some that you can sell for pretty cheap but then you also have some really expensive items that you can sell which is called high ticket dropshipping. So for things like that you're going to be selling pretty much some fancier items or some bigger ticket items. Some bigger items like let's say furniture, some high end jewelry, some pretty cool light fixtures. There's tons of different high end products that you can drop ship. Now on the opposite end of that spectrum you have the lower ticket items or some very generic items like let's say a backpacker or a super bright flashlight. Well these types of items typically are going to be on the lower end. So depending on the product again you're probably going to be making maybe five to twenty five dollars in profit. Again this can vary wildly but just to give you more or less of a ballpark general idea. Now when it comes to print on demand you are going to have more stable profit margins but they're not necessarily going to be higher. So let's take for example t-shirts. T-shirts for the most part depending on your supplier you're going to source them for about seven dollars. Again that really depends on how much you're printing, are you printing on the front, the back, the type of shirt and as far as selling it for the most part you're going to be selling it between 20 and 25 dollars. Taking best practices into consideration you're going to be covering shipping and that's going to run you about five dollars as well. So in total you're going to be paying about 12 dollars for your product. Let's say you sell it at 23 dollars then you made about 11 dollars in profit. Now while that might not seem like a lot you have to think about it this way. When it comes to print on demand people are going to be buying your items multiple times over. Now we can talk. So you're going to have a lot of people that go into your store whether that be your Etsy shop, eBay or your Shopify store and they're going to purchase the same item over and over forever. So a lot of people are going to purchase the same shirt. A lot of people are going to purchase the same hoodie. A lot of people are going to purchase the same bath mat. Now different types of products are going to have different profit margins so in my opinion one of the most profitable ones is always going to be hoodies. Hoodies depending on the hoodie itself you're going to source between maybe 15 to about 25 dollars and you can easily sell those for about 45 or 60 dollars. So the profit margin there is going to be a little bit higher than let's say your typical t-shirt and like I mentioned earlier it also depends on your branding. When it comes to drop shipping if you start your own line of products using drop ship products then you can charge a little bit more. People typically are willing to pay more for a branded product. Same thing goes for print on demand. A lot of people start generic print on demand stores where they have a little bit of everything but then there's other people that really niche down and they start a brand on let's say hustle or they start a brand based around animals. So let's say you start a brand called Hustle Incorporated and in it you have different types of hoodies along with t-shirts and maybe some hats. They're all being sold under your brand name Hustle Incorporated and they all have relevant designs regarding to the hustle getting money getting paid entrepreneurship things like that. You're going to be able to charge a lot more for let's say a hoodie than you would if you're doing generic products. So as your own brand you're easily going to be able to charge about $60 for a hoodie whereas with more generic designs or a generic store you're going to be charging a lot less. So let's say maybe $30 to $35. Again it really depends on how you market your products and the product itself but just to give you a general idea. Now when it comes to the actual sheer number of items you're going to have a lot more options to choose from when it comes to drop shipping. With drop shipping like I said you have access to pretty much any item imaginable. With print on demand you're going to be a lot more limited so there's only certain products that can actually be printed on. Just to give you an idea let's say with drop shipping you have access to tens of thousands of different items. With print on demand you're going to have access to maybe about a thousand or a little bit more. So you are going to be a lot more limited with your print on demand items versus your drop shipping items but you are going to have the ability to customize them. So as I mentioned earlier that's the key difference between the two business models. With print on demand you can customize your items. Now that's not to say with drop shipping you can't do the same. So for the most part when it comes to drop shipping a lot of the time it is going to be generic items or unbranded items but if you have a supplier that supports white label drop shipping then you can actually brand those items yourself. So working with a supplier that offers white label drop shipping you can start your own brand in terms of the packaging in terms of the branding the colors and sometimes even product customizability. So the packaging you can customize the entire way around. You can make it packaged exactly how you want. If you're automating your drop shipping business throughout a DS you can sometimes include a custom thank you card. So even though you can't fully print an entire design on your products with drop shipping you can still customize them and you can still brand them to your liking. Now one of the last things that I'm going to touch on is going to be shipping. So shipping speeds as we know is extremely crucial. We live in the day of Amazon where people want their packages literally tomorrow. But obviously not everyone is Amazon and customers understand that which you know it's good but that doesn't mean that they're trying to wait an entire month for the products either. So with drop shipping you have some really fast shipping speeds along with some really slow shipping speeds. This is all really going to depend on your supplier and how long it takes for them to actually get out your item. It's also going to depend on where your supplier is located. So with drop shipping you can have either one supplier that's located in China and you're going to have probably one to two month shipping speeds and that's no good. People are not going to like that. But if you look through websites like let's say Aliexpress or CJ drop shipping then you're going to be able to find suppliers that can actually fulfill your orders within two weeks and that's perfectly acceptable. People are willing to wait about two weeks for their product that's that's fine. Some might even be able to get it to your customers even quicker. It's all about partnering up with the right supplier and making sure that they actually have quick shipping speeds. It's also really important to work with a supplier that has multiple warehouses not just in a particular region but around the entire world. So that way it doesn't matter where your drop shipping whether it be in the US or in the UK your customers are going to get their products in a timely manner. Now when it comes to print on demand print on demand actually has some pretty stable and quick shipping speeds. Typically you can expect for your item to reach your customer in between about two to seven or nine business days. This is really going to depend on your print on demand provider and the product that's being sold but for the most part that's going to be the average shipping speed. Now as I mentioned earlier up until now drop shipping and print on demand have been two completely separate business models that pretty much have nothing to do with each other despite all of their similarities but everything is about to change right now. So for those people that are actually wanting to dip their toes into both business models because you can see the advantage that both of them have and how well they can actually work together then just make sure you're sitting down because your mind is about to be blown. So AutoDS finally implemented their print on demand section. So now you have access to drop shipping products as well as print on demand products. So just to give you a quick look right now we're looking through the marketplace over at the AutoDS platform and as you can see there's tons of different products all relevant to today's market. So all of these are trending right now. These are all things that people are currently looking for. So as you can see a lot of these are actually Valentine's Day themed. But aside from that let's take a look now to print on demand section. So on here as you can see there's tons of different items as well. You have your generic shirts, hoodies and onesies but then you also have a lot more items that you can choose from. So you have things like accessories for phone cases, sandals, cups, home and living for customizable home goods and a lot more. Now one of the biggest benefits to using AutoDS for both your drop shipping and your print on demand business is the fact that everything is going to be automated and it's all going to be done through one system through AutoDS. So if any orders come in for your drop shipping store then that's all going to be automatically rerouted to your suppliers. For your prints on demand store same thing it's all going to be automatically rerouted. Now if you really want to get creative and scale then you can start mixing your drop shipping and your print on demand business. So just to give you an example going back to pets you can do relevant prints on demand items for pets. So let's say you can do a bath mat you can actually print that with a dog design on it or something that's pet friendly and then market that as a pet pet or just simply a mat for pets. Aside from that though then you can also go to the marketplace and then you can start looking for other products that are relevant to pets as well. So let's say a portable dog water bottle. There you already have two products that are relevant to each other but also pretty different in the type of product that they are. So you have your print on demand product and your drop ship product both of which are relevant to your pet niche but fulfilled in two completely different ways. Now if I had to choose between print on demand and drop shipping which one would I go with? Well personally I mean I like both so I would probably end up going with AutoDS and taking advantage of the fact that I can actually use both for my business but realistically speaking you can't really choose one. You can't say one is better than the other because it's all really going to be dependent on you. So some people have success with drop shipping some people have success with print on demand some people have success with both. It's really all going to depend on your preference and what you like to do which one of these sounds more appealing. Do you like to design t-shirts? Do you like to design cups? Do you like to design products? Or do you prefer to just look for products and then offer those products? At the end of the day this one is really hard this is going to be one that's really going to be entirely up to you and the type of business that you're most comfortable with. Now that was print on demand versus drop shipping so let me know what you thought down in the comments below. Do you like print on demand? Do you like drop shipping? Which one do you plan on starting? Which one have you started? Are you doing both? Which one do you like more? Let me know down in the comments below. I want to hear all of your thoughts on this. Huge thank you to everyone for watching especially if you made it all the way to the end. If you did make it this far then that means that you obviously enjoyed this video so make sure you smash that like button make sure you hit that subscribe button and ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future videos. Huge thank you to everyone once again for watching and with that catch y'all next time.