i try to do print on demand for one week
with printful and etsy
let's talk about how it went
before we talk about my results i think
it's really important that we talk about
what print on demand actually is print
on demand is a very interesting business
model it's actually where you create the
design and then you have a fulfillment
center such as printful take care of all
the details behind the scenes so they'll
take your design and print it onto the
hoodie or the crewneck or whatever item
you have that you're selling they'll
also ship it out to your customer and
hopefully they'll get it on time now the
second part to that is that you have to
create a store people usually like to go
with shopify or etsy in my case i went
with etsy and so what happens is when
you get a sale on etsy it's going to be
automatically linked back to printful
printful will take care of all the stuff
behind the scenes they'll print it on to
the hoodie they'll ship it out to your
customer etsy will take a little cut of
the profits and obviously printful will
take what you have to pay for the
supplies and then you keep whatever is
in the middle those little margins and
that's basically how print on demand
works and now that you know what print
on demand is we can talk about my
experience with it in this one week
trial now i'm not gonna stop after this
one week i'm gonna keep going i'm gonna
try to grow this business and make more
and more profit from it but i thought it
would be cool to let you guys know how
this one week went and what you can
expect to see if you're trying it
yourself realistic beginners stuff in a
week trial so on day one it was all
about setup i went over to printful.com
created my account got all the billing
stuff done and then i went over to etsy
created an account created my store
linked those two together made sure that
they work together and that's when i can
start creating my product designs now
over the next few days i was creating
more and more designs to put on that
store but on day one i created one
simple design put it on the store
launched the store and was hoping to see
some results i think you're probably
just as shocked as i am when i say on
day one we didn't sell anything we
didn't get any sales and i mean we
didn't really market anything either
right we just put one product on our
store on etsy and hope for the best and
that leads us into day two now on day
two i was set out to make a few more
products just so that the etsy store had
some more stuff to bring people in right
we wanted people to find our stuff on
the etsy explorer page
and hopefully entice him to buy
something i mean that was as much as i
could figure out at the time so we
created a few more designs there and we
hoped for the best i was starting to
think how can i advertise all these
things can i do instagram promotions can
i do facebook advertising maybe tick
tock advertising but on day two it was
still just about making sure everything
worked out at the end of day two i did
order a sample of our product so that we
could create more customized advertising
in the hopes that in the future we can
do more customized instagram advertising
for for this business along with tik tok
and facebook or whatever we decide but
to make it seem more legit not just a
picture not just a mock-up that we got
from printful on day three we woke up
again to no sales now that's not really
that surprising as we still hadn't done
any advertising for our store but i did
run into some problems with the order
for the sample now there were some back
end issues on printful something about
the digitization that didn't really work
out the right way they offered a
different image to put onto the mock-up
i responded to them with some changes
some things that i wanted to see i was
hoping that we could hear back from them
and get that sample come in our way so
we can make those custom advertisements
as soon as possible now on day three we
did make a few more i believe we made
two more product designs posted those on
there and we also found out about etsy
advertising so it turns out that you
have a choice to have your post
advertised on etsy if somebody searches
up your product something with your
product's name and it'll be posted at
the top and says advertised by seller
and once i saw this i decided that we're
gonna put a few dollars per day into
this advertising and see how it goes so
i first started with five dollars per
day
and the results weren't all that great
we started getting a few more views and
a few more clicks it didn't go too well
we didn't get any sales on day three now
on day four and five there isn't much to
say i kind of messed around with some
designs and some ideas but we didn't
really make too many changes we got more
views and more clicks on our posts from
etsy advertising but
no sales still so i guess that's going
into day six now on day six we started
to try something a little bit different
i created a tick tock account for the
business i also created an instagram
account for the business now i was
hoping to use these two accounts to
advertise our store and maybe pull in
some more buyers on day six i tried to
post a few of the products onto the
instagram but they didn't seem to get
much traction and on tick tock i did
happen to get 500 ish views on one of
the videos that i posted but i only got
likes no followers now on day 7 and
you're hearing me say no sales no sales
no sales for all these days well that's
kind of on me i didn't really know what
i was doing i jumped into this head
first and i was thinking i'll figure it
out on the fly
the good thing is we figured out a lot
about etsy advertising about tick tock
advertising instagram advertising here
we also learned that you can make your
products look a lot better if you use
placeit.com you can just create a free
account on there and put your design on
it and it'll look a lot better than
using the standard mock-ups from
printful so i've gone ahead and posted
on instagram with these new mock-ups
i've also changed the images on our etsy
store to make it seem a little bit more
appealing but since the week is over
since it's day seven let's talk about
the numbers that we see on etsy so on
etsy through the advertising we've spent
26.53
got
9451 ad views 87 ad clicks and zero
orders from the advertising ah now it's
not just zero sales from the advertising
it's also zero sales in total but if we
look at it a little bit closer we do see
that we got at least a few favorites and
somebody did put it in a cart
we've created these sales and discounts
to shoot out automatic emails for people
who favorite our stuff or if they had it
in their cart and they abandoned it
it'll send them a 10 off coupon hoping
to get that sale back
but at the end of these seven days we
have nothing to show for everything
we've done other than experience and
knowledge knowledge this isn't the end
i'm going to keep going forward with
this account i'm going to keep going
forward with this business and i think
what i got to do is gain more followers
on instagram so that i can promote it on
there keep posting on tick tock and see
if i can link it to my instagram so that
people can come there and basically just
try to advertise this a lot better and
outside of etsy i think i might actually
try to create a shopify account for this
as well in a shopify store instead of an
etsy store because i think the shopify
store will look a lot more professional
and it won't let people see the
competition if you guys like this video
found it at all entertaining or learned
anything from it be sure to leave a like
and don't forget to subscribe because in
the coming weeks i'll be posting more
about this print on demand journey i'll
try to be as transparent about it as
possible and i'll be showing you
everything that i'm doing in hopes to
create a successful business that's all
for me today though thanks for watching
guys and i'll see you in the next one