In today's episode, I'm going to give an overview of print on demand. What it is, why it works, and offer some actual advice to stand out in a very saturated space. The reality is there's always room to rise to the top with POD, but it's not easy. I hope the advice I share today will make it just a little bit easier.
Grab your drink and get ready. This is the caffeinated hustle, the best place to learn about entrepreneurs, and FTS and life expert advice and guest interviews to launch your business and NFT journey further than you ever imagined. Now, here's your host, entrepreneur, coffee fanatic, and founder of the NFT project, caffeinated creatures, Ben Carson. Welcome back to the caffeinated hustle. I'm your host, Ben Carson. thanks for stopping by, let's drop some value on your day. So today, we're gonna talk about print on demand. And I'm pretty excited about this one, because this is kind of where I come from a successful print demand owner have a six figure business have been in the space for 1824 months, somewhere in there. It's a journey that takes little bit of time, there's some big competitors in the space that take up a big portion of the space. But there's always room for quality. All right, it's a saturated space. And that means if you're just going to produce the same junk you see everywhere else, you're gonna get the same junky results. If you produce something that hasn't been seen before, something unique, there's always room for you to stand out. So print demand is not really something I can just explain everything in one episode. So I just I'm going to focus on top level down right now and just try and give you a really good taste of it. Really good explanation, I'll probably give some more way in future episodes, might have to offer a course inside the caffeinated creatures. You know, all that stuff can be talked about later. For now, I just want to drop some value in your day. So let's go ahead and get started with print on demand. So the way you sell in print demand, is you have a design. And you basically upload it to any of these just big websites. And there's websites like guten, printify, Printful, I'll put some links in description. But basically, printer man works because you are taking your design, and you're putting it on a canvas on a t shirt, coffee mug, mousepad. I mean, the list goes on. But you don't have to pay for anything until you get a sale. And so print on demand allows a very low barrier to entry, you can get in on print on demand, probably less than 20 bucks, I mean, you can really get a pretty decent footing for $20 or less. And then if you know how to market organically, you can really just the sky's the limit here. I mean, I wouldn't use tick tock, if I really had to start over and I want to go to print demand, I would do something unique and go after tick tock and so the bottom line is, is that it's really easy to get into it. And so we're going to talk about what can actually work here. But before, I want you to understand that when there's a low barrier to entry, when there's something that you can get in for $20 or less to try, you're going to have a lot of competition. Now, if there's a low barrier to entry, there also has to be a high failure rate, they go together. If 1000 people can try print on demand for $20. How many of these 1000 people can generate $1,000 in revenue, not many, it takes a lot of hard work. Because if you were going to do it any other way, if you're going to import a lot of product for your business from a manufacturer overseas, and you had it in printed with your own logo, you had it stored in your own warehouse and packaged and delivered, you would have a hefty investment to get it off the ground. If however you use print on demand, you basically set a design up with a manufacturer that's already existing stateside or international, they will print it, they will package it, they will ship it, they will track it, they will handle the customer returns, they will handle the tracking information that you can get to your customer. As long as you know how to email and talk to customers. As long as you know how to market. It's almost a automated business. It's about as close to passive income as you can get. And it makes a lot of people interested because drop shipping doesn't really work these days. In my opinion, I'll bring on some specialists that it is working for we'll talk and see where that goes. But if you're going to import products and create an actual business that way, you have to have five to $50,000 in my mind to do this. And I'll bring on some other specialists to do that to explain it better down the road. But assuming I'm even close to accurate let's say it's 10 if you have $10,000 You can get a business setup to do this sort of branded dropshipping. If you have a funny design that sells well. You can get started for 20 bucks. Look at the difference. Look at how easy it is to get started. So lots of people are going to try this because they want to succeed. They want a side hustle and they don't have a lot of income to to waste on something new. They just have time and so they're going to try this. So if you are going into this understand there's a lot of competition. And if that doesn't scare you and you think you can still rise to the top then Let's talk about the types of designs that can actually work and actually get you to the top. Print On Demand is basically someone's way of showing who they are. I want you to think about sports teams you see on people's shirts, they wear those down the street, not at a game, but just casually walking, to help show the their support who they like. And then also, and more importantly, they show it so that other people can see them and immediately resonate with them. They can help find their tribe, what interests do you have, if you don't want to just cold call people walk up to people randomly and just start a conversation, what an easier way to get to know somebody just to see a common interest right out the gate. And so print on demand, can help in that process, put them on a coffee cup, put it on a piece of artwork for your office, put it on a t shirt, it's pretty easy to show what your interests are. And so primitive man works, mainly for two reasons. The first one is, it's something someone is passionate about, and they're willing to spend money on it. Now, there's two parts of that. Because passionate, like we just said, it can be a sports team, which you can't do because you don't have the trademarks for the logos are registered. Don't do that. But like a sports team, it's something someone's passionate about, you know, what is something people are very passionate about, that they also want to show off. And I can tell you right now, the number one answer is going to be politics. Because it is a polarizing angle. Think about the last US election, think about the vaccine mandates, think about things that had to strongly opposite majorities. And depending on where you fall, you totally understand and resonate with one side most of the time, and they're not everyone wants to shout their opinions out there on a t shirt. But some people do some people really enjoy. Just let's just go like this when when the mask mandate was going on. In the US, I saw many many people wearing a mask that had printed on there. This mask is stupid. This mask is pointless. Much like my president, I saw many other masks saying this mask saves lives. vaccinating proud of it. Like there's two polar opposite angles, polar opposite opinions. And both were selling the fact if you're walking down the street, and you're seeing someone wearing something like that, number one, you know what sells because they're wearing it. I mean, there's a small percentage they made that themselves. But most of the people that are wearing these types of clothing, are buying it outright from a website from an ad they saw on tick tock on Facebook on something like that passions, that are polarizing passions that are powerful, that that help people find other like minded individuals, or annoy the opposite side are very popular ways to sell. Religion is a good one. There's, there's a long list and you just got to put in little work because if I drop out too much here, people just gonna, you got to find your edge, you gotta find what has been done before, and testing your own way. But if you're not going to test on passions, you're not willing to go that route. Then the other option that really sells well is personal and personal sells because it's something you can't buy anywhere else. And it it just truly affects you. So think of things like Mother's Day gifts, Father's Day gifts, gifts, for birthdays, and Christmases where it's personal, it's got your child's names printed on something, it's got your grandma's picture, put into a piece of jewelry, that's no longer with them, you know, there's something personal, something printed that can't be made anywhere else, they can't go get this at Amazon, or Walmart or any $5 store, you know, print on demand is all about selling some sort of personal or passion connection. If you can find one of those two ways to sell something, you have a good chance of standing out. Now, the problem with printer man is because it's so easy to do. A lot of times designs get copied. And so if you put text on a t shirt, and it starts to sell, you better believe that within three weeks of this happening, you're gonna have 15 Other T shirts selling the same thing. And all they're going to do is change the background color, they're going to change a little bit. And before you know it, you're copying. And the thing is, is that you always have to come up with new designs, the more basic your designs are, and that's just the truth. My artwork, Wall Street prints.com You can check it out right now, the bull and the bear there, those two images have generated over six figures. They are extremely delicate. They're extremely difficult to copy. I've had eight people try and copy me I have copyrights on all of them. I've pursued on a couple and no one has beat me. And I say that because I don't mind saying my website even because I know for a fact it's not easy to copy. If my print on demand business was built on a t shirt that said just if it said anything, it was just a phrase. Right? The the moat which is the boundary around your business that keeps you safe is very small. If the artwork is delicate if it's very difficult to be copied, it's much easier for the competition to see it So you have to decide what you want to do, do you want to make a lot of designs and keep shifting around a little bit until you just start to get a footing and build off that? Or do you want to make really intricate designs that can still be personal or passionate and harder to copy, both options can work. And I'll tell you, once you have an established footing, people will rather shop with you because they know you, it's no different than would you rather buy from a random website, would you rather buy from Amazon, if you're gonna buy the same thing the majority of people will buy from Amazon because they trust Amazon, they know their money is not going to get stolen, that if it gets lost, they'll get replaced, they trust the seller. You as a brand new seller, whether you're selling online, on your website on Etsy on RedBubble, wherever you decide to sell for print on demand, you're gonna be brand new, and it's going to be harder to get your footing. But as you get it and you get copied, the competition will be brand new, and you'll have the same thing you will be there first, you will be there. More established with better reviews, and people will start to go with you even though you're being copied, it's going to get to a point where you don't mind being copied, because they're looking to you for the leader. Until that happens, these designs will get copied. And you have to just accept that more more often than not, any decent designs just going to get swiped. And you just have to make sure you're making it a little better so that it can't get swiped so easily. Right print on demand is a rough business. If you're only going to do text, if you're only going to do basic designs, it's going to take a lot. And I'm just being honest with you, you can make a lot of money with brand demand, you really can generate five figures a month profit doing this, but it takes a lot of hard work a lot of setup, it just doesn't require a lot of up front cost. And that's a game changer for a lot of people because some people really want to do the work, they don't mind getting copy, they don't mind anything. What they don't have is $10,000 to put into a business that might not work, what they do have is time and 50 bucks. And that can get you pretty far in this new freelance work from home digital economy we have. And so if you're willing to put in that type of work, I'm just letting you know, the print demand is a very viable option. Now we've missed a whole lot of details I haven't gotten over. This is just a very top down approach I just want you to understand, before I sign off today that you can do print on demand, you can succeed at it. And if you're going to take the plunge, be aware of all the competition and do it anyway. And if you're going to make sure you're resonating with someone that has a passion or a personal angle tied to your merchandise. Now if you'd like more information about this, just hit me up in the comments or drop a like drop follow. You know, there's more episodes we can make on here and I just want to keep providing value. This is just a top down approach. But I really think this should be enough to help you get started and to see if print demand is something that you'd like to pursue in your side hustle greatness. So till next time team talk soon. Thanks for listening to the caffeinated hustle sponsored by caffeinated labs LLC. For more information or to connect with Ben, check us out online at caffeinated labs.io. Or email us at support at caffeinated labs.io. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode, or give us a follow on social media by checking the links in the description. We'll see you next time.