AMA: I make 500/m from POD

Comrade Luigi said:

As the title suggests please ask me anything about print on demand as I am fairly knowledgeable about it. My expertise is in free traffic such as MBA.

This thread is for the people who want to learn or need assistance to make a small amount of income. Why am I doing this? It’s my way of giving back to the community and also a way to motivate myself to keep on growing my income.

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Can same design be sold on three platforms (MBA/Redbubble/TeePublic) at the same time?

Thanks for the details so far. I was just wondering if the usual image format to upload is png and what resolution to use? I understand the higher the better but I'm not the best at Photoshop/Illustrator, etc. Thanks.

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Follow the resolution guidelines set by the POD provider.

an same design be sold on three platforms (MBA/Redbubble/TeePublic) at the same time?

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Yes, they're your designs after all. Free to sell them wherever you want unless stated otherwise.

Very interesting topic, how do you deal with returns? What is the return policy of the various sales platforms? As a percentage, how much does the return of products affect the monthly income? Thanks for the answers.

POD is not exactly new, and it’s a tried and proven way of making passive income.

Based on your experience, how much of your POD income comes from fully designed shirts, hoodies, mugs, and other POD merchandise? And how much of that comes from just plain text designs?

I know somebody who makes five figures month after month, like clockwork, from print-on-demand.

And he told me his big secret.

His big secret was that plain text (and I'm talking about quotation, sayings, that kind of thing) sell really well because they are a great way to make a statement without the person viewing the statement getting distracted by the design.

This also saves a lot of money for people getting into POD because they don't have to hire a graphic designer from Fiverr.

They don't have to come up with some sort of hot idea for designs that few people have seen before.

They don't have to bother with any of that.

Instead, they're just going to look for a hot byline or some sort of buzzword.

What do you think about that concept? And does it work in your particular situation?

How long did it take for you to get approved on Amazon Merch?

Comrade Luigi said:

Follow the resolution guidelines set by the POD provider.



Yes, they're your designs after all. Free to sell them wherever you want unless stated otherwise.

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do you need to register for vat or whatever tax thing? I think that's preventing my collection from being public

Hello, i got accepted on Merch by Amazon but do you know how much time before i can find my stuff on the amazon search engine. That make like one week my t-shirt is live on the dashboard and i can't find no one. thx

wait, POD you mean you sell designs on etsy and other platforms? Sorry Im newb, whats an MBA?

AmberJones said:

wait, POD you mean you sell designs on etsy and other platforms? Sorry Im newb, whats an MBA?

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Merchant by Amazon

Croix said:

Hello, i got accepted on Merch by Amazon but do you know how much time before i can find my stuff on the amazon search engine. That make like one week my t-shirt is live on the dashboard and i can't find no one. thx

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how you got accepted??

WGCVBIZ said:

how you got accepted??

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Just by sign up and used a artist generator bio

hi
i work hard on redbubble, a lot of designfs over 200, my desings are good, i use niches and trends, still few sales 45 in more than 1 year =/

mangask said:

hi
i work hard on redbubble, a lot of designfs over 200, my desings are good, i use niches and trends, still few sales 45 in more than 1 year =/

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Lucky, 1 sale for me in last 2 month, im not a featured designer. Try others platform.

mangask said:

hi
i work hard on redbubble, a lot of designfs over 200, my desings are good, i use niches and trends, still few sales 45 in more than 1 year =/

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how much you make per sale_

Croix said:

Just by sign up and used a artist generator bio

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artist generated bio ? can you expand on that?? cheers

Hi, look for "artist statement generator" on the search engine of your choice

I just wrote something like " My art is an attempt to explore the relationships between various colour harmonies and surface textures. I also experiment..."

and got accepted.

Do you build your own website or through Amazon merch?

mangask said:

hi
i work hard on redbubble, a lot of designfs over 200, my desings are good, i use niches and trends, still few sales 45 in more than 1 year =/

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If you do 45 sales in one year with 200 designs you're doing it wrong. I have designs that pull in 50$ each months. Do you use text-based designs or very minimalistic ones? If not please try the former. You can also try to use a redbubble trend tool to get some advantage on what topics are hot

I don't know, it is hard. The fact is you can have hundreds of designs, but only few will sell. The Pareto principle is very dominant in POD (Print On Demand), originally it would sound like this: 20% of your designs will bring 80% of your profits, but I would say, it would be more like this: 5% of your designs will bring 90% of your profits.

If someone has a design that sold 5+ times (doesn't matter which platform - redbubble, teepublic, amazon, etc.), this is the winning design you should focus on. Make more designs like this or adapt same style/design for another niche.

The problem is when you have hundreds of designs and nothings sells. And it is not always that the designs are bad, it is that they are never found between the vast sea of similar items. It is very hard to find a niche in which there would be no competition or very little designs, but buyers would be searching for it. Is that even possible at all with all the tools available today? I don't think so. Even trending designs seems to be heavily uploaded fast. But at least you have a chance, because new trends are appearing everyday.

I though that if I would focus on high quality designs, this will be a win-win situation, but now I think that keywords or chosen niche is 90% of your success. For example, you have a super beautiful design of a cat, that really looks nice, looks super high quality from design/style perspective, and you would even buy it yourself. Well, good luck on that selling it in 1 million cat results.

Also, I think it depends on the platform you are using. I have a design that sold 10+ times, it is not much, but it is something to look at. I uploaded the same design to Amazon merch, but did not succeeded to sell a single item in 2 months. I am still not sure how to beat Amazon merch, I keep trying uploading all kinds of different designs there, keep trying to experiment with different text descriptions and titles, but I only had like 2 t-shirts sold in 3-4 months and can't even beat the 1st level (of 10 max design uploads). It is demotivating for sure. I think Amazon is too focused on ratings, and when you have an item with 0 feedback, it is very hard to beat that initial barrier. If anyone has tips on Amazon Merch, I will gladly hear them

Hi buddy, how do you deal with returns and disputes? I have tried it and it was the bigger problem.

Comrade Luigi said:

As the title suggests please ask me anything about print on demand as I am fairly knowledgeable about it. My expertise is in free traffic such as MBA.

This thread is for the people who want to learn or need assistance to make a small amount of income. Why am I doing this? It’s my way of giving back to the community and also a way to motivate myself to keep on growing my income.

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thats some beer money