How to Start a Successful Print-on-Demand Business

Whether one of your dreams has always been having your own clothing line or you stumbled into print-on-demand looking for a side hustle option, it's hard to start an online business from scratch. But you came to the right place to start. We are delighted to welcome you into our new blog series that will guide you step by step into how to start a successful print-on-demand business.

In this series, you'll learn all the intricacies about building a print-on-demand business from scratch, plus incredible tips on how to start a clothing line for free and with no experience necessary. We bet by the end of it, you'll know exactly how to launch a successful print-on-demand business and will be well on your way to become the next Fuel power seller! 😎  

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What is a print-on-demand business?

Print On Demand (POD) is an online business model in which you sell your own custom designs in different products like mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, posters, etc. To do this, you create an online store and team up with your preferred print-on-demand fulfillment partner, such as Fuel, and let them handle the rest.

Starting a clothing line with no money is totally possible with POD, and it can become an incredibly profitable venture. Believe it or not, there are tons of self-made millionaires thanks to the print-on-demand businesses. There's no denying it is an excellent option if you are looking to leave corporate life for good and choosing to be your own boss or as a side hustle.  ‍

Benefits of having a print-on-demand business

Many perks come with choosing print-on-demand as your ecommerce business. Here are the main ones: 

• No time wasted handling and shipping products. Say goodbye to packing and dealing with shipping services. Most print-on-demand companies make sure to create your product and ship it without you moving a single finger once the order is placed.
• Forget about keeping an inventory. You don't have to take care of things like inventory since you can trust your POD partner to have what you sell in stock to deliver to your customers. No more purchasing expensive merchandise you are not sure you'll use in the end.    
• Very low investment at entry business. On POD, you only pay for the cost of what you sell, once you sell it, while you earn a profit depending on the price you determine. So, all you need to do is focus on your marketing efforts to promote your products and not worry about any other costs involved in keeping a warehouse, buying equipment, delivering your products, etc.     
• More time to focus on what matters: Selling more! When you choose the right print-on-demand partner –ahem ahem, Fuel– you don't need to use your precious time worrying about all of the above points. Besides, some POD companies offer workflow automation to spend less time designing your products and more time marketing them and increasing your sales.
  

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Reasons to start a print-on-demand business 

If the benefits we enlisted before are not enough to convince you, here we lay out all the reasons why you should start today:

• You get the freedom to create your schedule 
• There is no one to respond to but yourself
• Easy enough to do as a solopreneur 
• Great way to get a passive income even while you are sleeping
• The sky is the limit! You can become a millionaire thanks to this business model
• You can easily contract for the things you may not be as good at, e.g., designing   
• It doesn't demand a massive amount of time; you can start it as a side hustle
• You get to create your own clothing brand!
   
  

Basically, this is the ultimate job that many people dream of, and there's a lot of resources online, like our blog, to learn how to do it for free.  

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Challenges you may face with a print-on-demand business

Of course, it is not all roses. There are some challenges that you may face when entering the POD business model. 

• You can't control product quality. Suppose you value delivering the best quality to your customers and are usually very hands-on in any projects you take. In that case, you may not like the lack of control a print-on-demand business usually offers.  
• POD products take longer to be delivered. As you may have guessed already, many of the benefits of print-on-demand come from the fact that the products are printed on-demand. In other words, they only exist after an order is placed by a customer, meaning no inventory, but also they can take a bit longer in the printing process as opposed to something ready to be shipped. 
• You put your business in other people's hands. If you love to control everything, this model may not be the right fit for you. If something goes wrong with fulfillment, there's very little you can do to fix it, hence the importance of choosing a reliable print-on-demand company.     
  

Thankfully, you can solve all of these challenges by having the right print-on-demand partner. A company you can trust to deliver the best quality consistently, that works fast, and that if any issue arises, you can contact an excellent support team to solve the situation as you can do with Fuel.  

How to create a POD business with no inventory 

Many platforms out there pair well with print-on-demand companies that allow you to sell custom t-shirts and other products. Among the most used ones, you can find Shopify, which lets you create an online store from scratch, or Amazon and Etsy, where you can access their entire customer base by uploading your products. 

Fuel is a Shopify app that allows you to connect your store, where you can easily customize new products to add to your store. Any placed order will automatically be sent to one of our facilities to be printed and shipped. As easy as that!

On the other hand, if you usually sell on Amazon and Etsy, you can easily import your orders in a .CSV format to the Fuel app and let us handle the rest.  

You can find all about how to choose a print-on-demand company here.  

Is print-on-demand a full-time job?

Good news! This is entirely up to you to decide. For some, this can be a great passive income to have on the side. For others, more ambitious, it can become the way they get thousands of dollars in sales. Of course, the effort you put in your store and promote your products will be key in how much income you earn.   
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Next steps

As you can see in this post, we covered what is print-on-demand, how it works, its benefits, reasons to start, and challenges that may come if you decide to embark on this business model. But to truly uncover how to start a successful print-on-demand business, you don't want to miss our following posts. Next up we have “Choosing the best platform for your POD store.”

To give you a sneak peek of what's to come, here are the topics we'll be unpacking in more detail, so stay tuned!  

• How to start a successful print-on-demand business 
• Choosing the best platform for your POD store
• Profitable POD niches
• How to create a buyer persona to market your products
• Create your branding
• Designing your artworks
• Top trending products to start your POD business
• Step by step guide: How to price your products online
• How to market your products/store
• Create your marketing strategy for POD
• Grow your ecommerce store with Facebook ads
• How to build customer loyalty 
• Best Shopify print-on-demand apps for ecommerce
• Best apps and services to improve your Shopify store
  

If you are already a POD ecommerce owner, you may already know some of these basics. But it would be best if you didn’t miss this series for valuable tips you can use in your store. As you already know, at Fuel, we have you covered with the latest tips and tricks to upgrade your print-on-demand business this Fall! 

Are there any more topics you would like Fuel to cover? We are always happy to hear your feedback👇