Print on Demand Niche
In this blog, I am breaking down the print-on-demand niche. I will break down why I love and recommend the print on demand niche, I will give you seven print on demand niche ideas, and I will provide insight on the four best print on demand companies.
What is Print on Demand?
Print-on-demand is a program that prints your products and ships them directly to your customers after the order is placed. For example, if you create a t-shirt design, a print-on-demand company will print your design on a t-shirt and ship it to your customers. This means you don’t hold any inventory. The customer places an order through Amazon or your online store, and your print-on-demand company prints the product and ships it directly to the customer. You pay a small fee for the printing and shipping, and the rest is profit.
For example, if you are selling a t-shirt, you pay $10 for the t-shirt and printing, but you earn a $5.00 in profit on the $15 that the customer is charged.
Print on Demand Niche – Pros
The biggest benefit to the print-on-demand revenue model is you don’t hold inventory and you only pay when a sale is made. There is no upfront cost, other than hiring a graphic designer if needed (Unlike Amazon FBA).
With this revenue stream, your print-on-demand company will do everything for you. You just need to create the product. They will conduct all transactions, print your products, and ship it to your customers.
If you are truly looking for one easy, simple, profitable online business idea. This might be the niche site idea for you.
Print on Demand Niche – Cons
The only downside to the print on demand niche site idea, is you need some artistic ability to create a unique design for the product. Personally, I hire freelancers through Fiverr or Upwork to create designs for me. I have no artistic ability, so I outsource this part of the business. You can get a quality designed product for as little as $5, though I typically spend $25 to $50 for better quality.
Print on Demand Niche Site Ideas
Similar to the blog niche, there are countless possibilities for print on demand niche sites. Here are a couple of ideas for the print on demand niche:
Socks
There are some good opportunities to sell socks on Amazon. I have a pair of bright green socks with golf balls on them. They are my lucky golf socks. My wife has great Dane socks that she bought on Amazon. You can create a niche like this with a print to order company. There is a whole niche on Amazon for dinosaur socks. I just used the JungleScout chrome app to research dinosaur socks, the top 5 sellers for dinosaur socks are generating $3,000 to $10,000 in revenue every month from that ONE pair of socks.
Mugs
TeeLaunch offers a print to order coffee mug. Teelaunch is one of the print on demand companies that I use.
They actually offer about ten different variations of coffee mugs including a tumbler and a mug that changes color when hot. Sticking to the theme of dinosaurs from above, I used the JungleScout chrome app to research dinosaur coffee mugs. The top 5 sellers of dinosaur coffee mugs are generating $1,000 to $20,000 in revenue every month from selling a single dinosaur-themed coffee cup. I guess dinosaurs are a good niche.
Beer Stein
I love this one. On TeeLaunch you can design your own print to order beer stein. There is a lot you can do with this. This one is underutilized on Amazon, there are not many unique designs for beer steins. I just looked up random keywords with the JungleScout Chrome app like “golf beer stein” and “dog beer stein” and found that people are buying these types of beer steins with unique designs. Think of a niche and check it on Amazon, you can create a whole business around unique designs on a beer stein.
Stickers
TeeLaunch offers print to order stickers. You can find a niche for stickers. Whether it’s laptop stickers, car stickers, or refer to this niche site ideas blog to find opportunities. There are some good ideas for niche sites, you could have a sticker as one of the main products that you sell.
Dog Bowls
With one of my niche sites, I designed and sell a print to order dog bowls for the Pomsky breed (later sold this business for $95,000).
You can definitely find a niche for this. You can use TeeLaunch to create a print to order dog bowl for your niche that you sell on Amazon (Teelaunch is one of the best print on demand companies).
In my opinion, this is one of the best print on demand niche ideas.
T-shirt
The t-shirt business is so saturated that I’m reluctant to add this to my list of niche site ideas. I’m only listing it here because a lot of new entrepreneurs that I coach seem to want to start a t-shirt business. It’s possible but tough, and if you are going to do it, I HIGHLY recommend you use a print on demand service rather than ordering inventory upfront. You need to find something specific, different, and something that people are searching for. My wife has three shirts with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s face on them. Now that’s a niche. Maybe people are searching for t-shirts with a polar bear on them. Maybe you can catch a popular quote spoken by a movie star before it goes mainstream and get a t-shirt up online. Maybe people want dinosaur t-shirts. I don’t know. The point is, you have to do something different and look for what people are searching for but aren’t finding online.
Books
You can self-publish a book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble for free. I did this with my book Step One: The Surprisingly Simple Process To Research, Validate, And Choose The Perfect Online Business.
It cost nothing to do this. You do not need a professional publishing company. There are three types of books you can sell: eBooks, audiobooks, and print books. The only downside to this revenue stream is the profit margin; books are low-margin products. For reference, when I sell a print book for $19.99 through Amazon’s KDP book printing program, I take home a profit of approximately $8.00. For audiobooks, I only make around $4.00 per sale. You need to sell a lot of books to make a living from selling books. Books are a great tool for building an audience and building authority, but if you want to make a living from selling books you will need to sell 600+ copies per month. Not an easy feat unless you are someone like Tucker Max or Tony Robbins with a gigantic following. Here’s a pro tip: combine this with the Amazon affiliate program to increase your profit per sale (more about affiliate programs here). If you are recommending your book to someone, make it an Amazon affiliate link. Then you get paid for selling the book and earn an affiliate commission for recommending the book.
Print on Demand Companies
There are a number of viable print on demand companies. Below are my favorite:
- Teelaunch – Teelaunch is one of the best print on demand companies. It is the primary print on demand company that I use. I used this for my dog blog business, I used this to sell customized dog bowls, tshirts, and mugs. They have a ton of print-on-demand products including t-shirts, sweatshirts, socks, hats, backpacks, totes, coffee mugs, canvases, blankets, dog bowls, and so much more. The whole program is run through Shopify, which makes it remarkably simple to use. You can sync your products with Amazon and your website with just a couple of clicks. That means all you need to do is upload a graphic design and drive traffic to the product; TeeLaunch will do the rest.
- Printful – Printful is probably the most popular of the print on demand companies. I am now testing Printful and I love the platform, it easily syncs with high-profile marketplaces including Amazon, Etsy, and Shopify. I’m using this to sell prints, canvases, and puzzles. There are plenty more products including shirts, hats, bags, posters, mugs, totes, and phone cases (among many many more options). This might become my favorite of the print on demand companies, I am loving the platform so far.
- Printify – I have not personally used Printify, but a number of my colleagues and clients have. Printify is very similar to Printful, and offers similar print on demand products such as socks, totes, candles, lunch bags, and more. This is one of the best print on demand companies.
- Amazon – Yes, Amazon is one of the best print on demand companies! Amazon is the best option for print on demand books. You can print paperback and hardcover through Amazon. Amazon also offers a print on demand program for t-shirts called Merch but you must be approved by Amazon (I tried and was not approved)
Best Print on Demand Niche Ideas – Conclusion
The print on demand niche is a viable business. There is plenty of opportunity there. The trick is finding a niche to focus on. Will you focus on print on demand socks with dinosaur prints, print on demand stickers for skateboards, beer steins with golf prints, or something else within the print on demand niche. All you need to do is find your niche, the rest will be handled by your print on demand company.
Ready to Start Your Business?
If you find yourself saying “I want to start a business, but I don’t know what to do,” this is the book for you.
In Step One you will come up with over one hundred and fifty business ideas, you will conduct market research to narrow your list of ideas down to one viable idea, and you will validate the idea so you can hit the ground running and launch your business.
Ready to start your business? Pick up your copy of Step One today, and get started building your business.
