How do people make money with POD ?

I looked at the cost prices of shirts, mugs and other products at the major POD companies (Redbubble, printful, teespring, etc).

For example, the cost to manufacture and ship a mug is 11 EUR, and then I go on Amazon and the price is 12 EUR. Delivery with Amazon Prime, in one or two days with free shipping.

And then there are Amazon fees. I have seen other marketplaces in my country and in European countries, things are also like this...so how do they make a profit with POD selling on marketplaces?

On Shopify we know there are marketing costs, so I would like to try with marketplaces.

Detail: I imagine that if I try to sell this for 19 EUR it would not be attractive for customers, while competitors are selling it for 12 EUR for example.

Are you referring to earning though POD via listing designs on (Redbubble, printful, teespring, etc) and getting a commission for each sale, or are you referring to earning from printing + marketing + shipping products yourself on your own store?

madacot233 said:

Are you referring to earning though POD via listing designs on (Redbubble, printful, teespring, etc) and getting a commission for each sale, or are you referring to earning from printing + marketing + shipping products yourself on your own store?

Click to expand...

the first option
create products in redbubble (for example)
and list them on amazon and big marketplaces

Have designs people are willing to pay more for. The stores selling for 12 dollars aren't getting their products from the sources you just mentioned.

Iuzzu said:

the first option
create products in redbubble (for example)
and list them on amazon and big marketplaces

Click to expand...

I have an ongoing journey regarding this, but it comes to either:

1) Scale - Pump out as many designs as possible
2) Copyright infringement - risky
3) Really high quality designs and build it up over a year or two
4) Push merch to an existing audience, most likely though spreadshirt

The 80/20 rule applies in regard to revenue: 20% of all sellers produce 80% of all revenue and 20% of all designs produce 80% of all revenue