Starting a print-on-demand business can be an exciting and lucrative endeavor. However, the startup process can feel overwhelming! To simplify the process, we’ve put together this step-by-step guide on how to start your own print-on-demand company. Printful is an online printing service that can help you create marketing materials and a logo.

Who is Printful

Lauris Liberts, Agris Tamanis, and Davis Siksnans founded Printful Inc. in 2013. The business Printful emerged from StartupVitamins, which sold motivational posters, clothing, and other items to entrepreneurs.

With the expansion of its services in 2016, Printful now lets entrepreneurs sell electronics, jewelry, art prints, and posters.

By 2017 they introduced sellers to the option of printing on promotional items such as shirts, hats, and mugs. In the same year, Printful moved its headquarters from Latvia to San Francisco, where it currently has 100 employees.

In January 2018, they delivered around 1 million packages to customers all around the world.

Starting an eCommerce store from scratch can be very complex and expensive, particularly for beginning entrepreneurs. Printful is a terrific resource for those looking to start their own business. All of the information and advice you need to start your own eCommerce store is available online in our guide. We also have a guide dedicated to getting started with Printful if you’re looking to sell services or products. This guide is geared towards new businesses that want to start their online storefront with Printful.

Step 1

Who is your target customer? If your first store is targeted towards buyers, then you will need to include a custom product listing tool in your store to allow customers to create their own products. If you want to sell custom-printed apparel, hoodies, and other products that will eventually be shipped to your customers directly from Printful, then you may want to consider using our print-on-demand technology built into Printful. It makes adding products a breeze for any business! Printful offers different types of add-ons depending on the kind of collection you want to build. Build a collection based on your Printful products, which is perfect for using Printful as a marketing tool.

Step 2

Decide what kind of products you want to sell. If you already have a brand, then we recommend using Printful’s brand builder. It allows you to upload your logo and create a collection of products linked back to your website or another eCommerce store. There are some different ways for selling online: your customer creates and saves their product for later (like an empty shopping cart), or they can create their own product from start to finish in one session. Either way, you’ll need to involve your customer in the product creation process. You can use our Brand Creator tool to guide them to create their own printable products with your brand name, logo, and other details.

Step 3

Decide what price you want to charge for each product. Designate a price you want to sell each item and then add it into your customer’s cart when they create their product in the Brand Creator. It will announce when customers buy something – so if you only wanted the first one of something, then we can allow that item to go up for sale before anyone else buys it.

Step 4

Get your package ready to ship. Printful has a “drop shipping” program that will allow you to ship your products directly to your customers without having to keep them in stock in your warehouse. When customers purchase a product, Printful will notify them that their order is being shipped from Printful. Packages are shipped out on the same day they are ordered, and shipping usually takes 7-10 days.

Step 5

Get started selling! Once you’ve signed up and added some products, they will walk you through the process of creating a sales page and saving it into its own collection so customers can order directly from your website or listing at any time.

Step 6

Promote your store and brand! They already provided a free discovery service to help get you your first customer and help you rank in Google. However, we can also recommend you the tools you need to start marketing your new brand online. One of which is our Shopify product RSS feed. Printful will help keep your audience up-to-date with the newest products added to the Printful Shopify feed, so they have easy access to find great items for their needs!

Step 7

Make money from Printful! You’ll make money by selling products and services on Printful. The more you sell, the more money you’ll make – just like at any eCommerce store. Your profit comes directly from the money you make off of each sale.

Final thoughts

If you want to get started with Printful, follow the steps above. Printful will guide you through the process of creating product collections that you can sell on your website. Printful’s print-on-demand technology will help make it easy for you to sell your products online without having to worry about maintaining a stock of goods in a warehouse or waiting days for orders to arrive by mail. These features are beneficial when starting up a new business and can help you avoid the costs and hassle of running your own company.

Through Printful, you can start your online store and get started selling products so you can start making money immediately. With Printful, there’s no need to spend thousands of dollars on inventory that will sit in your warehouse for months with no sales. When you’re ready to start selling or want a new way to market your business online, then Printful is the perfect solution for you!

**Please note that Printful does not have the capability to design products themselves. You will need to come up with your own designs to use for your store’s products. When designing a product, keep in mind that you will need one large image to represent your product in the Brand Creator and two smaller images for creating a listing on your storefront. You can use the free design templates if you don’t want to spend extra money on custom art or hire a freelance designer or other service provider depending on your needs.

Sing up for Printful using the affiliated link HERE