Revealing the key to print on demand business success

Building a print-on-demand business has been a very popular topic for a long time. And looking at the forecasts it will become more and more popular in the years to come. If you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, you should.

There is a plethora of information and courses available to show you how to start a print-on-demand business. The only issue is that most of what is being taught is not going to help you build a sustainable profitable business.

Why? Because over 90% of them focus on only one part of the business, which is selling the product. In order to sell the product, you only need 3 things: A design to put on the product, a store to sell the product, and a customer to buy the product.

Now I won’t debate the fact that you need to sell your product in order to earn money. But if all you do is focus on selling your product you’re going to run into obstacles and out of money pretty fast.

Don’t believe me? Spend a few hours inside the different print-on-demand groups on Facebook. Same story, over and over again. People do what they are taught, and the only ones making money is the person selling the training, the software company and the company selling the products.

And every now and then you read a success story, because some people found out they need to approach things differently.

The difference that makes the difference

It’s pretty simple but easy to oversee when you just start out.

It’s not about your products, no matter how great you think they are. It’s about the customer and what they want and need, and how you can add value for them. If you want to build a sustainable business, you need to put the customer first in everything you do.

Forget about the product and setting up a store to sell it. You need to focus on other things first when you start your journey. You need to create a why, who and when, and after doing proper research create the what. After that it’s time to decide where to sell.

Let me give you a high-level overview of what I mean.

Why - what drives you to build your business

Building a business is hard work. There are many moving parts, and I can assure you that you’re going to run into issues as soon as you start to take action. It requires you have some level of problem solving skills, or know where to find someone that can help you solve your issue at hand.

That is the reason you need to define your WHY before you even start to think about anything else. Why do you want to start a business? What is the goal you want to achieve? What drives you to keep going until you reach your goal? What are you willing to give up right now to be able to invest enough time and money to get things rolling in the right direction?

Write your answers down - preferably on a piece of paper - and hang it on the wall near your computer. When things get tough, it will help you stay motivated to keep moving towards your goals

Who - define your target audience

Once you know why you want to start a print-on-demand business, it’s time to think about who you are going to serve. This is also referred to as niche selection.

Defining your target audience can be done in many ways. The most important thing in my opinion is to find a group of people that either have a problem you can help them solve, or have an irrational passion about something.

Once you have a group of people in mind, you can build a community for them (or join an existing one) to find out what they are passionate about and what their issues are. This information will make your life easier along the way once you start working on your products.

Building or participating in a community is the perfect way to get people to know, like and trust you, especially if you provide value to them for free. And as you are not just bombarding them with ads that scream ‘buy my stuff’, the level of trust can be achieved quicker.

When - create a big picture plan

Now that you have your audience defined, it’s time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture from a so-called ‘helicopter view’. Many starting POD business owners forget this step, although it is essential to build a long-term sustainable business.

The big picture plan consists of the steps you are going to take, and the order you are going to take them in. It is where you will strategically plan your resources like time and money, and determine what you can do yourself, or need to learn, or outsource to a 'valuable' assistant or agency. It’s also the place to determine your business requirements, and to plan the ideal customer journey.

Now don’t fall into the trap of diving into the nitty-gritty details. This is a BIG picture overview. I’m a strong advocate for working based on Agile principles, which means you create something, test it, and optimize it along the way instead of creating everything beforehand and then start. The latter will slow you down, where Agile principles will keep you moving forward.

What - create products that sell

Once you have researched your target audience and know their problems and passions it is time to create products that either solve their problems or trigger their passion.

Because your products are created based on research, the chance people buy them will increase rapidly. In case you built a community you can use the community to test whether or not people like your product, saving you a lot of money on marketing.

Where - select the right platform to sell your products

Once you see there is an interest in your products you can offer them for sale on an online platform or in your own store. Which platform will depend on multiple factors, one of them being the big picture plan you created for yourself.

In case you opt to build your own store you can start building it while you are building your community and testing your products. There is no need to have your store completely finished before you start to test your products. The store is just a vehicle to sell a product, not a goal by itself.

Win - Strategically grow your business

Now that you have found a target audience, created one or more products to sell and found a place to sell them from, it’s time to optimize, improve and expand. Your big picture plan will be your guide here, together with the data you collected along the way.

Data-driven marketing is key to building a sustainable print-on-demand business. Acting on emotion is great when it comes to building a community or communication with customers, but not when you need to make business & marketing decisions to grow or scale.

And remember the Agile principles I mentioned before. Create, test, adjust and optimize. Do this continuously and you will get results. Maybe not the results you are immediately looking for, but any result will give you an opportunity to adjust and optimize to eventually get you where you want to be.

Are you ready to start your print-on-demand business?

Print-on-demand is not a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. It’s a business model that requires doing work. It requires spending time and money to build it. It requires putting your customers first to make it sustainable. It requires you at times to think outside the box like there is no box.

If you are willing to do this, our system mentioned above is a good way to start. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a lot of time or a lot of money to start with. Although you do need both, time and money are assets that will only help you speed up things.

Most important: you need to start!

To help you, we're currently working on a free course based on the system that helped us build our business. If you want to be notified when it's ready, join our Facebook group to be the first to know. The password to enter is 'Empower'.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us. We're here to help you move forward!