If you want to get started with your own print-on-demand business, but don’t have a clue about how it works or how to get started. You have landed on the right passage. Starting a print-on-demand business is a great side hustle for people who want to earn a few extra bucks, but it also has the potential to be a real full-time business capable of generating hundreds of thousands even millions of dollars, but just like any side hustle venture or business opportunity there are pros and cons. In this article, we will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of a print-on-demand business.
Three Important Things To Know About Print On-Demand
Introduction
Print-on-demand is a business model, where you don’t stock your products like you would in a traditional merchandise business. Custom t-shirts and sublimation coffee mugs can represent this new business model. It is relatively easy to set up this business as there are many companies that offer relative services and can handle the printing and fulfillment process for you. Here you finalize your designs, and when you receive an order it will be printed and shipped directly to the customer, and that is the beauty of this business, this makes it a low-risk and low-investment model, and you can just get started in days. It won’t take you more than two weeks including low motivation downtime to get your business up and running. now this model is not only for the person who wants to start their clothing business or product brand, but also businesses artists writers content creators can also monetize their audience with this model.
Advantages
There are some other benefits that make print-on-demand better than others. One of the key advantages of this business is a low investment, as you don’t have to pile inventory, it makes it effortless to get started. let’s take a moment and calculate the price of running a print-on-demand business. Suppose you are creative enough or you have a friend who can help you make some designs for your products, or you get some copyright-free images, so it would be zero dollars. Then you have the cost of blank coffee mugs and ink, which would not cost much. Also, you get to choose your own selling price whether you want to sell a t-shirt for like 25 or 40 dollars. The last and only cost you would have to bear would be to make the website and again that’s not that expensive for a Shopify basic plan, it’s 15 a month and built annually so once you have your store up and running, the only thing you would have to focus is to drive sales by either sharing it to social media or running ads, that’s up to you.
Disadvantages
There are a few cons to this business. With the traditional company, we generally place a bulk order, which gives us some discount bringing the cost down. However, the product cost tends to be a little higher, leading to smaller margins. But you can pick the exemplary service that might be able to tackle it to some extent. For instance, if you go with Dhgate, you can find many coffee mugs that only cost as low as 1 dollar. Lastly, as there are no options to customize the packaging, you cannot enhance the customer’s unboxing experience.
Conclusion
We have discussed the print-on-demand business model and some of its pros and cons. We must understand that there is no one right way to build a successful business, but understanding the advantages and disadvantages of different models helps you pick the right one for your company. Print on demand is a great way to get started in eCommerce with little risk or investment, so if you are ready to give it a try then go ahead!