5 Reasons To Start A Print On Demand Side Hustle

Have you ever heard of Print on Demand? The first time I heard about it I thought it was too good to be true-

You mean I can start a business for ZERO dollars with NO INVENTORY and NO SPECIAL SKILLS???

Yep. You bet your butt you can!

So, what is Print on Demand? 

From here on out I’m going to refer to it as POD-

POD is essentially having another company put a design you’ve made onto merchandise they have in their factory and then shipping it out to whoever buys the product you’ve made!

Some POD companies include Printful, Printed Mint and Zazzle.

This is how it works:

You create a design→ Upload design onto POD website and put it on a shirt/mug/pillow/etc→ Connect your shop to the POD website via Etsy, Shopify or other selling platform→ Someone finds the shirt you’ve made on Etsy or Shopify and orders it→ The POD company receives the order, creates it and ships it to your customer→ You do a happy dance cause you made a sale and didn’t have to touch a single thing!

Here are my top 5 reasons why Print on Demand is an awesome side hustle:

1 You Don’t Need Inventory

The POD companies are HUGE. They keep all the inventory and each unique item is made to order. 

So many traditional businesses require you to have a shitload of inventory on hand- not POD. And you don’t pay a dime until someone orders one of your products. Each product has a base cost that you pay but the customer pays the retail price you set so your profit is the difference!

2 You Don’t Need To Make A Website

The internet is a beautiful thing. Etsy is HUGE. And they recently started allowing sellers to sell POD items- lucky you!

All you need to succeed on Etsy is some SEO (search engine optimization) knowledge, patience and enthusiasm! 

It’s free to create an Etsy account. Each listing you make costs $0.20 and lasts for 4 months. 

3. No Special Skills Are Necessary

Think you need to be a graphic designer to make t-shirt designs? You don’t! It takes some time to learn how to navigate Canva (which is free and user friendly) but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be whipping out designs in no time. 

My advice is to SIMPLIFY. It’s easy to think that your designs have to be totally unique and oh so complicated- they don’t!

Sayings and definitions do VERY well on Etsy! Think stuff like:

• Dog Mom

• Coffee Please

• Political sayings

• Sayings geared toward a specific niche- moms, animal lovers, beer drinkers, coffee drinkers, etc.

Another thing that blew my mind was discovering that you can outsource the design making process if you want to do it that way.

It does cost money but if you’re getting someone to make ONE design for you that could potentially be an endless amount of products:

• A mug

• A shirt

• Pillowcase

• Phone case

• Digital download

• Tote bag

So yeah, you might not want to spend a lot of money on that. But what if that one design only cost you $5 on fiverr.com and you got 10 products out of it? 

You Can Start Today With No Overhead Cost

The only costs in the beginning are:

• Internet access

• A laptop

• Listings on Etsy

• A paid design program like Canva Pro, PicMonkey or Photoshop (which is NOT necessary)

• Your time

5. Anyone Can Start A POD Business

This is truly my favorite reason why POD rocks. Anyone can do this. You don’t need special skills, you don’t need a degree. 

All you need is determination to make it work, excitement and belief in yourself!