If you’re an artist or graphic designer or photographer or illustrator, you might have heard about print on demand, also known as POD, and you’re kind of wondering:
Is this worth it — should I look into this?
How do I get started?
. . . and how does it even all work?
If that’s the case, then this article is for you.
So, ready? Let’s dive in.
So what I want to do today is give you a high-level overview to help you understand how POD or Print on Demand works, decide if it’s something you want to try, and then talk about what you need to do to get started.
Let’s start with a quick overview of what exactly POD is.
Print-on-demand is a third party order fulfillment method where you can get your designs printed on products and packaged and shipped to your customers – on a per order basis.
The items are printed as soon as an order is made, and shipped directly from the third-party manufacturer to the customer.
So for example:
It has a lot of advantages for artists, the first being that it allows you to sell your work in various ways.
If you are an artist, a graphic designer, photographer, or illustrator, there may be some people who love your artwork, but they don’t necessarily want it on their wall. They may already have artwork or decorations on their wall, and even if they love your work, wall space is limited, so people don’t buy stuff for their wall all that often.
But people do buy other products out there — they buy mugs, and they buy stationery, and they buy things that have images on them. And if they love your artwork, they might want your artwork to be on those products.
So it’s a way of broadening – massively – the amount of people that you can reach and sell to by presenting your artwork in different formats and on different products.
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Another advantage is that there is no need to invest in inventory because of how print on demand works, which means that it’s very low risk – and it’s also very low cost.
Back before POD existed, you’d go to a print company and say “I want to print X amount of t-shirts with this design on them.” You had to pay for it up front, and take the risk of having that inventory in your garage and not knowing if it would sell or if you would get that investment back. Actually, you can still do that, it’s just that you don’t have to now and you can POD instead.
With POD you really only pay when you sell an item. So again, no need to invest in inventory and very low risk, low costs – so a really great alternative.
The logistics are taken care of, so that means that you don’t need to worry about the printing, the shipping, the packaging, and all that kind of stuff!
Which leaves you with more time to actually be an artist and create more products.
It’s also a really good way to try new things, to put more products out there without needing to again, invest in inventory and all that. So it’s easy to test new ideas without taking on much risk.
If you are listening to this and thinking “okay, I’m kind of interested – what do I need to do to get started using POD?” there are two things you need to think about:
First, you want to consider what type of products would work best for the specific type of artwork that you’re making. For example, you’re probably not going to print fine art on something like a duvet or a bedding set, but if you make digital patterns and illustrations, printing on duvets and sheet sets could work really well.
So you want to really think about what products are a good fit for your artwork.
Second, you also want to think about the type of people who are going to be interested in this artwork: what kind of products do they like to use? Will they want a rug for their dining room, or a coffee mug for their commute?
Once you’ve thought about those things, then you can start to look at all the product choices out there and you can choose some that are a good fit for both your art and the people who might buy it.
Let’s talk about some of these different product choices.
The first thing you can use POD for is the most obvious, the art itself. So here we’re not printing on products yet, we’re just doing fine prints, framed prints, posters, stretch canvas, you name it – all these different kinds of mediums for printing your art itself.
You can also print your art on apparel – there are endless choices: socks, dresses, hoodies, baby clothing, tshirts – everything! Just think about anything that people can wear, and you can print your stuff on it.
There is also an endless list of household items that you can have your art printed on such as:
These are just a few of the options out there so you will want to take the time to read about your options and make smart selections for your market.
Once you know which products you want to offer with your artwork, designs, or photos, then you need to find a production partner – which is the company that’s going to actually print your design on the product, package it, and ship it to your customer.
We’ve all heard of the big POD companies like Printful and Printify – but there are many many good choices out there. The production partner that you choose is really going to depend on the type of products that you’ve selected. For example, some companies would be better choices for stationery, other companies might be better choices for clothing.
Once you choose your production partner, the next question is “Okay, I’ve got someone that’s going to print this for me and send it to my customers, but I still need to sell it to my customers — and how am I going to do that?”
You have three different options to sell your POD products.
Your first option is using a production partner that is also a marketplace. For example, RedBubble and Society6 not only do the printing and shipping for you, but they also act as marketplaces – meaning you can list your product on there and for shoppers to buy.
The second way to sell your POD products is on an actual marketplace like Etsy. Most of the big production partners integrate very easily with marketplaces like Etsy, so you can open an Etsy store and sell your POD products there.
The final option is to sell on your website. Big ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce usually provide a really easy integration with production partners.
Once you choose the products you will offer, your production partner, and decide how you will sell your POD products, all that’s left is to market them – since you don’t need to worry about the logistics of the sale you can focus your time on doing the marketing and let your POD do the rest!
Now I’d love to know what questions you might still have about using POD to sell your art so I can create more articles on the topic for you. This is a huge opportunity I definitely want you to consider so PLEASE drop a comment below and let me know – what concerns, doubts, or more specific questions do you have about using POD to sell your art?
I’ll make sure to try and cover those in an upcoming article! In the meantime, check out this one about pricing POD products (so you actually make a profit).
Thanks for reading and until next time, aurevoir!
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