Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: Hello and welcome
to my class today, I am actually really truly
excited about this one. I've had this idea for quite some time to
teach a class on how to start a print
on demand shop. And I know that's
something that a lot of people are thinking
through right now. A lot of people have the idea
to sell products online, and I am here to
help you figure out how to make that as
easy as possible, how realistic as possible. And I'm really here to share with you some tips
and strategies that I have from starting my own site has sold and my own or
print on demand shop. My name is Ben Hall's. I will tell you a little
bit more about me, but I am a side hustle coach and this class is only available. I'm on Skillshare, so
let's get into it. I'm excited to share a
little bit more about who I am and why I'm the person
to be teaching this class. First and foremost, I am
an online Etsy seller. I sell products online. Essentially what I sell is
mugs that I have designed and they are really based on
corporate humor, Zoom humor. I started the shop
in the pandemic when everybody was starting
to work from home. And there was a lot
of humor around that. And so I really capitalized
on making sure that what I was selling was relevant to people and there
was something that people actually wanted. But I have over 300 sales so far on my Etsy shop that I use
for through print on-demand. And what's cool about
that is that I don't ever have to actually
ship the items. So it becomes very easy on me as the business owner to own this business
and to operate it. I'm also a side hustle coach
and something that I spend a lot of time doing is
helping other people find, start and grow their own
side hustle businesses. Whether that is a print
on demand service, which is something I
helped with a lot, or an Etsy shop where people are handmade items or things like event planning businesses and
yoga education businesses. I help people find, start and grow businesses
that matter to them. And I hope that a print on demand service would
be something that you would be passionate
about as well. Lastly, I am a sales
professional and I love helping to figure
out how to make sales, how to get people to
sign up for things, how to really engage in
marketing in a way that matters. And so that's a
little bit about me. That's why I'm the one
teaching the class. I'm a businessperson
at first and foremost, and I love talking
about sales and marketing and also
this print on-demand. So today's agenda,
what we're gonna be talking about today is
first and foremost, we're gonna be talking all
about on-demand printing. What is it? We'll talk about how it works, what are the benefits? Then we're gonna move
into the best tools, and this will be the
media's part of our class. Today. We're gonna talk about the
tools that you can use to actually set up your own
print on demand company. And how you can actually
leverage those tools to be able to start
your own store. Then we're going to
end with some tips on how to actually sell online. And that will be a
really great section as well because I'm
going to teach you some tips on how to sell on Etsy and how to make more sales, which is something that I'm
really passionate about. With that agenda,
I really love to just jump into it
and get started. I hope you're along for
the ride if you are, let's click into the next video.
2. Print On Demand 101: Okay, So today what we're
gonna get started off is talking all about
print-on-demand. I really wanted to
take a moment just to explain really truly what it is, because I know that there's a
lot of confusion out there. And I want to make
sure that before we move on with this class, everybody in the
class understands exactly what print on-demand is. Essentially what is
print on-demand? It is a service that you can use where you design
the products, but you don't
actually have to have a warehouse of these products, or you don't have to
store the products in your home or your apartment. Printing on-demand allows
you to design the products, sell them online, but you don't actually have to
buy the products upfront, which is a huge, huge benefit. Lot of times in the past when people would
start a business, maybe they're selling t-shirts, maybe they're selling mugs, maybe they're selling notebooks. But a lot of times what you
would have to do is design something and order
a 100 of them or 1000 of them and
hope that they sell. What the cool thing
about print on-demand is is that if somebody
orders something, your company will print it for them and you never have
to buy the items upfront. That saves you a ton of time and it makes it so
that you don't have to forecast and predict
exactly what number of items you're going
to want to order. It makes it really easy for you. And that's my second
here is that it is easy. You can design your products
and sell them online and sell them without
having to actually deal with boxing
and shipping them. A lot of businesses that start, a lot of Etsy
businesses that start, and a lot of regular
businesses that start really focused on boxing
items and shipping items. And what print on-demand
does is it allows you to skip that whole
process and in return, you will pay accompany
a certain amount of money to print your items, but it ultimately
saves you money if you're just starting
a smaller business and you just want to get
started without having to order all of
those items upfront. Also, before we totally go into the tools that will really help you with printing on-demand. I really want to sit
here with you for just a second and talk about priorities and talking
about this disclaimer, drop shipping and
print on-demand. Businesses are not
simple passive income. I hear a lot of
people talking about drop shipping and print on-demand as an easy
way to make money. And while it can be easier
than a lot of other solutions, they do require talent, effort, time, and sometimes
a little bit of money. I don't want you to take
this class and think that you're gonna take an hour
and design some products, put them on Etsy, and then you never have
to think about it. And again, and you're
gonna make $1000 a month. That is not what
this class is for. This class is for people who really are interested
in selling items. They really think that what
they're gonna be selling as meaningful and
entertaining to them. And they want to put a little
bit of time and effort into building up a shop
that really matters. I will show you how to make
it as easy as possible. That's something that
I'm really committed to, but it does take some dedication to see success on your store. I just wanted to start
and level set with that with you to help you understand that in this
world there really are very few ways that you
can just take one night, set something up and
make a bunch of money. I had a friend recently who told me that she did one time setup a print on-demand
service company and she spent about an hour or two working on it
and setting it up. And now she makes about $5 a
month through that company. And that's great. And if that's your goal to make $5 a month, that's one way that you can
have some passive income. I would encourage
you to think bigger. Maybe you can think about
making $50 a month, $250 a month, $500 a month. Maybe you're thinking
about a $1000 a month. Maybe this is gonna be your full-time gig and you
really want to make sure you're building a company
that's really substantial. Whatever your goals are, make sure that you're
willing to put in the work to make that happen. That's my disclaimer. That's why I wanted to
share with you before we get into talking more about what tools you can be using to build your print
on demand company. But print on-demand
overall while it is, while it does take some
work to put into it, it is overall easier
to run a print on demand company than any
other type of company. So don't let that
disclaimer scare you. I am excited about showing
you ways that it can be easy. So let's move forward.
3. Best Tools For Print On Demand: Okay, so now what we're
gonna do is we're gonna take a little
bit of time here and talk about the tools
that you should know about as you build a print on-demand service as a print
on demand company business. And so what we just talked about was what print on-demand is. Essentially all of these
different companies, all of these different
websites are going to fit together so that your client or your customer
can go into a store, buy something, that store can tell some company
to make the item, and that company
can give you money. That's essentially how
print on-demand works. So essentially it
means that you're not having to sell the item, you are not having
to make the item, you're not having
to ship the item. It is very passive in that way. And so we're going to
talk about how all of these different tools
connect with each other. That's the next slide here. There are four tools that I
want to talk about today, and each of them are imperative to this process of
printing on-demand. I'm gonna have one
slide for each of these tools and I'm
going to tell you a little bit about
how you can each, how you can use each of them. What I want to also
say is that this is a very big picture class. We're going to talk about
the benefits of the tools. We're going to talk a
little bit about how to use them and how they
connect with each other. But if you're
interested in learning more of a how-to on how
to use these tools. Specifically, I encourage
you to go through Skillshare and look for more tutorials
on each of these tools. And so we're going to talk very high level about how
all of these get together. But we're gonna
start with Canva. If you haven't heard of Canva, canva is kind of like Photoshop, but it's much easier to use and it's much more
intuitive as a tool. You can use it for free or you can use it with the paid plan. I believe the paid
plan is about $12 per month and you can
design your products. We haven't talked a little bit. We haven't talked much
about what these products are or what you're
planning to sell. Print on demand, I
would say for me, I love to think about
t-shirts, mugs, notebooks, backpacks, sandals, all kinds of
things that people can, where people can use. Maybe it's key chains,
maybe it's hats. There are a lot of
different things that you can design
on something like Canva and then get printed on
demand with other services. But Canada is the place
that you're going to go and actually design
your product. And it's a really, really easy tool to use. And depending on your designs, depending on what
you want to design, it can be extremely
easy if you just want to make sure it's
that have text on them, canva is going to be really, really easy for you to use. If you want to upload maybe your own art to a tote
bag, for example, in Kansas is gonna be
an interesting place for you because you can upload the art to Canva and then you're going to move it over to
something called Print Full, which is what we'll talk
about in the next section. But Canva, I highly recommend as a tool for design and
anybody can use it. It's something that
is very accessible. It's something that is
fairly easy to use. And if you don't
know how to use it, there are plenty of tutorials here on Skillshare or over on YouTube that you
can watch to help you understand how to use Canva. But essentially it's
like Photoshop, but it's a much easier and
it's much less expensive. So I highly recommend going to www.canva.com and signing up for a free trial or signing up for a free account to be able to start designing
your products. What I will also
say about designing products is that
it would be really great for your shop if it has a theme and if it feels
cohesive with the other items, maybe before you get into Canva, it might be good to go into
your notes app or into a Google Doc and identify
what your ideas are, what the theme of your store is, and what kinds of designs
you actually want to design. Because if you go
right into Canva, you're probably
not going to know exactly what we wanted
to design right away. So it's good to come
to Canada a little bit prepared with your ideas. The next tool is
called print fall. This is the middleman of
your printing on-demand. So essentially, when somebody orders something from
your store on Etsy, etsy integrates with print full. And so Etsy is going to
tell printf full, hey, we just got this order
for this iPhone case. Will you go ahead and make it and then print TFL
is the company that will that will
print that product onto, print your design onto the iPhone case and
send it out for you. So prideful is
really the kind of key player in being able to have a print on
demand service company. Principle is highly. It's very easy to use. It has the best
prices in my opinion, and it has really good
customer service. So as the business owner who has who has a print
on-demand service, I highly recommend going
to print full.com, setting up an account
and integrating your Etsy shop with your
print full account. The cool thing about
principle is that printf prints anything you can upload your design to any item
that they have available. So you can, like I said,
you can make hats, iPhone cases, notebooks,
buttons, backpacks, sweats. There's so many
things that you can make that you really can start a full-on clothing line within
print full and sell on Etsy. The other cool thing that I
mentioned earlier is that you do not have to pay
upfront for the products. The way that it works is that when somebody orders on Etsy, etsy is going to
communicate to principle that you got an order and print TFL will charge you for the item that they're going
to make for you. If you order if someone
on Etsy orders a mug, then you will pay for that mug. The mug will get sent to
the customer and then ETC, will be the one to pay you
the full price for the monks. So it gets a little bit
complicated with the payments, but as long as you have money
in the account, print full, we'll go ahead and print your products.
You'll get paid out. So it's a really cool system, the way it all flows and the way it all
works with itself. Like I said, print full
integrates with FC. So this is a really
important thing that I want you to take away
from this course. When you set up print full, it's going to give you a
way that you can integrate your print full shop
with your Etsy shop. I'm going to talk a little
bit about Etsy next. But it's really important
that they're integrated and that you're not manually
uploading things to ETC. The reason is because when
someone orders on Etsy, you as the seller don't
want to do anything. You just want FC to tell print full that
you got an order. And then for Print Full
to send out the order. You don't want to you
don't want to touch it. You don't want to be the middleman between
print full and Etsy. So it's really
important that you have the integration
down and I'm sure there is a lot of
information online exactly about how to
integrate these things. Usually what it takes
is just finding a code on your Etsy shop and putting that
into print full. Just make sure you
have it integrated because that's a really good way that it's going to become a lot easier for you to
sell your items. Like I said, you
just want this to be as easy as possible because there are some things that I'll talk about in the next slide that you want to
stay active on Etsy. You want to make
sure that you are interacting with the platform to let them know
that you are there, that you're active on Etsy because that's a better
way to make a lot of sales. But let's talk about Etsy. We can kind of get
into it and talk about how to actually sell
these products. What we've talked
about so far is Canva, which is where you can
design your products, make your designs,
then print TFL, which is where you
upload those designs. Principle now is where
your store is housed. You can think of principle as your warehouse or
your factory because print full is the place
that gets the orders and makes the item, ETC. Now is the place is
your storefront. So think of Etsy
as a real store. What is the vibe of your store? What kind of items do you
have on your shelves? How much are you charging? All of these things
are good things to think about when
you go to Etsy, you can find ETC, by going to Etsy.com and starting
a store there. Again, there are plenty
of tutorials about how to start an Etsy store on
Skillshare or on YouTube. So I definitely
recommend looking for those and finding that. But essentially, once you
list things on Print Full, you can then list
your items on Etsy. There's an integration
that's really important to have and that's why I've talked about a
little bit so far. But it's really important
that when you poke, when you make something
on principle, that it automatically
uploads to Etsy as a draft. Then what you can do is
merchandise your item on Etsy. So coming up with a title, making sure you have your
tags and your descriptions, making sure that you have really great images of your product. It's really an interesting
thing because on Etsy, you actually need some
skill and some talent. You don't want to start
an Etsy store without any research or talent when
it comes to selling online, it's really important
that you actually take some time to learn about Etsy and to learn about how to be
successful on Etsy, which I'll talk about
in the next slide. But it's not a sure thing. I hear a lot of people talking about how they're gonna start on Etsy store and never
think about it again and they're just going
to make a bunch of money. It's really not how it works. So that kind of goes back to my original disclaimer in the beginning of
this course where I talked about how
it really does take some effort to actually
sell items on Etsy. You need to be active, accurate and your listing and
actually promote your shop. So these first three tools are really great ways to create a print
on-demand service. So you have canva.com, print full.com and Etsy.com. Those three things working
together will create a great system so that
anybody can find your shop, buy from your shop, and get the items
shipped to them without you having
to do anything. That's a really cool thing
that exists these days. That didn't exist
20 or 40 years ago. And so it's a really
cool thing that we have now that that hasn't
always existed. The last tool that I
want to talk about is where you are right now,
which is Skillshare. Skillshare is a great resource
for you as you continue to develop your store
and as you continue to work on this print
on-demand service. Essentially, I didn't want to go into too many tutorials
in this course about how to actually
where all the buttons are and how to upload everything and how to
design everything. I may do that in the future, but a lot of that already
exists here on Skillshare. This course teaches
you the basics, but if you need
more instructions on how to use the products, Skillshare is your friend. So type in Canva or principle or Etsy and
take some classes there because it's really gonna be an interesting thing for you
to learn more about Etsy, to learn more about print
full and Canada that you can develop as an
entrepreneur and as an, as an Etsy seller. Know that this is truly a skill. That's why I want to
point you to Skillshare, because skillshare
has focused on skills and it's not going
to be just a simple, easy, passive income for you to start a print
on demand service. It might be if you're a
famous person and you can just tweet out
the link and how people buy a 100 of your items. But if you're a normal
person like me, it's going to take some work. It's gonna take good designs, good search engine
optimization on Etsy, which I'll talk about
in the next slides. Good customer service. It is a business. You're running a business. It's not a key to
a golden rainbow. It's something that you
actually have to focus on, something you have
to pay attention to. With that, let's move
on to talk about how to actually sell
online with Etsy.
4. How to Sell On Etsy: Now we're going to
talk about really once you have those designs, once you've uploaded
it to print full, once you've got
everything on Etsy, we're going to talk about how to actually sell online with Etsy. And if you're wondering
why I chose Etsy, etsy is a really
great marketplace and it already has customers. A lot of times when
people start stores, they started on
their own website, which is a really good idea if you want to maximize
your profits, but it's a bad idea if you don't already have a lot of people
coming to your website, etsy is a really great
place because you can actually optimize for search. So that when people are
searching for items, your items will come up. People that you would
have never met before, people have from
across the world and they can buy your items. The main reason I would say use etsy is because
it helps you with your reach and it helps you essentially gain more customers, which lets you make more money. So I definitely
recommend using Etsy, but it is something
that's important. There's some concepts to know. There are three things
here that I think are key to being successful
as the seller. And the first one is search
engine optimization. So I'm not sure if
you've heard of search engine
optimization a lot of times it's referred to as SEO. And it's all about
how to show up first in the search
page on Etsy. So the way that I would love
to explain it is if you sell mugs that are
specifically about the show. How I Met Your Mother. That's just an
example that I have. Um, it's really important that if someone's
looking for a mug, that is about How
I Met Your Mother, then your mug would
show up first. So maybe there are a 100 mugs on Etsy that are about
How I Met Your Mother. And you are one of them. And it's the way to
explain it really is to say that those 100 mugs are not going to show
up on the first page. The person who's gonna show
up on the first page is the person who has the best
search engine optimization. It's really important
to look into this, to think about it, and to make a point of getting really great search
engine optimization when it comes to Etsy. When it comes to your
listings on Etsy, what I would say for
you is take a moment, write this down search
engine optimization and look it up on
Skillshare or YouTube. Etsy SEO is a great
search term for that and really dive into it. I'm not going to get into
it too much in this course. But it is really important on Etsy that you're
showing up in search using your titles,
tags and descriptions. And the more you can
optimize those for search, the more sales you will make. It. Is that simple? The next one is attractive listing interesting
and attractive stores. Like I said before, think of your Etsy
store as a real store, that when you go in, you want to feel
like it's welcoming and inviting, cool, exciting. And so there's a
lot of places in your store that you
can customize on Etsy, like your banner page, like your store policies, like the name of your store,
your profile picture. You know, a lot of
times people don't optimize these items in Etsy. And it really, it really
doesn't pay off to not really optimize your store to be a
really cool place to shop at, going in Canva and
designing yourself some assets that will help you sell your store
a little bit more. Making sure that your shop looks great and your
listings are attractive. And like I said, treat your
store like an actual store. The last one here is
customer service. This is where when
I talk about how Etsy is not necessarily a how, you know how Etsy
is not necessarily a passive income stream. It isn't a lot of ways, but you do have to have really
good customer service on Etsy because you want
really good reviews. And so if somebody messages
you with a question, you want to be able
to get back to them quickly with a
really solid answer. The more you can do that, the better off you'll be in your shop and the more
sales you will make. The other thing that's
really important about good customer service and being quick to answer people is that if they
like your products, they will come back
and buy more for themselves or for their friends. And so it's really important overall when you're
selling on Etsy. Definitely do a little bit
more digging on YouTube and on Skillshare on how to learn
more about these things. But search engine optimization, number one important thing, attractive store and attractive listings also really important. And then really nailing
down and getting good at that customer service
is going to help you with your print
on-demand service store. There's a couple of
other things that are really important to
know about Etsy. And I wrote down
two of them here. And it's like I said, it's just not it's just not going to be something that you'd never think about again and
you make a bunch of money, the more you put into ETC, the more you will
get out of Etsy. So the first step here
is to be active on Etsy. Etsy likes to know that you
are active on their platform. So do as much as you
can to ask for reviews, renew your products
every now and then, and answer messages quickly. The more active you are on Etsy, the more likely at c is going to be to share your products
with new customers. And that's gonna be
a great way for you to make more money on Etsy. The next thing is to promote
your shop outside of Etsy. And this is something
that I think a lot of new entrepreneurs of a new business owners
don't think about. But when you're
starting a business, it's important that you tell your friends and family
that you started the business because
a lot of times the first sales will be
from friends and family. So tell them that you
have new products. Tell them that you
opened an FT store. And really don't be
embarrassed or secretive about your business a lot
of times and this is something I
really want to level set with you if this is u. Lot of times when people
think about print on demand or were they
think about Etsy, they don't want to publicize it. They want it to be a secret because there may be ashamed of their idea or they don't want people to know that they're
starting a business. And I would just say that
through my coaching and through my experience
working with businesses, what I notice is that a lot of times when people don't want to talk about their business, it's because they're not proud
of what they're selling. And the reason I bring that
up is because if you are not proud of what you're
selling truthfully, it probably isn't that good. If it's not that good, it's
not going to sell online. What I would
recommend that you do if you're not willing
to tell people about your business is fine three people and tell them that you've
started this business. It makes sense for you. Ask them for feedback. If you can ask them
for feedback on your products and they tell
you that they're great, then you're going to
be more confident to share it more widely. And if they tell
you that they have two or three things
that you can change, That's really great
data for you to have and you can go and
change those things. And then you might become
more proud of your items. As a result of that, I
would say promote your shop outside of your Etsy is really important to make those
first five or ten sales. I definitely
recommend doing that. Absolutely. With that, let's move to the next steps in
the conclusion.
5. Next Steps & Conclusion: Okay, So we have made it
to the end of this class. Please stick around
because they have some extra things
that I wanted to tell you about your print
on-demand service and store. But the next steps I would love to share with you my assignment, which is to tell us down
below what you're planning to sell and which temp from
this class you plan to use. That would be really
great feedback from me, but it would also
be good for you to think about what it
is that you want to sell and which tip
you're thinking you're going to use an gonna
be the most helpful. So definitely leave that down
below and let us know more about your business and ask for feedback if you're
curious from us, if you want feedback, I'd be happy to share feedback. I'm sure other people in the feed would love to
share feedback as well. Just leave a note if you're
interested in feedback, but definitely tell us which tip is going to be the
most helpful for you. Please follow me
here on Skillshare because I teach other side
hustle success classes. I teach classes on Etsy. I teach sales classes and
customer service classes. And I have a lot of classes on online and social
media marketing. I would love for
you to follow me here on Skillshare because I have about ten or
12 other classes that might be very
useful for you. If you liked my style, if you liked my slides, if you'd liked my topic and
the way I taught this class, I highly recommend
that you go and take my other classes because they
are very relevant to you. They are very successful
classes here on Skillshare, and I would love to share
those items with you as well. Finally, if you're interested
in side hustle content and documenting my life as
a side hustle coach, I would love if you
would follow me on Instagram or TikTok, you can find me at
hustle with them, which is where I post
most of my content. But again, following me here on Skillshare
is just as good because I post new classes at least once a month and I would love to connect with you here. Definitely leave a comment,
do the assignment, and I will see you
in the next course. I really, really appreciate
that you took this class. I hope that you have a
great idea for printing on-demand and that this
class was helpful to you. Like I said,
definitely go and do more research on how to use these tools because
they can be really, really helpful as you build out your print
on demand company. But with that, I wish
you a great week and even better here and good luck.
Ben Hawes, Creative Project Consultant & Podcaster
