First of all, you need a specific niche. In the crowded space like POD, it’s important to not sell what everyone else is already selling.
Offering products that are not generic, and tailored to your target customers. Studying your competition can help you understand the popular trends within your niche and spot gaps that your products can fill.
For more on niche and target customers, start the Etsy Niche Discovery System course.
You're looking for someone who provides high-quality products and printing, delivers reliably, and has positive reviews. Look for suppliers with high number of reviews and pay attention to these aspects.
If you choose Printful, you don’t have to consider this as their printing is done in-house and there are no different suppliers to choose from.
Don’t spread yourself too thin. Start with a clear brand and a limited line of products. If you offer too many different kinds of products, it can confuse customers about what your brand stands for.
To add more products, you can offer different variations on these products to provide variety without getting overwhelmed. For example, having a wide variety of tshirt designs, instead of selling t-shirt, mugs and candles in the same shop.
Once you've established your brand and have a steady customer base, you can slowly introduce new product lines that complement your existing ones.
Ordering sample products is great for quality control and long-term success. This allows you to make sure that the products being sent to your customers meet your standards, which can lead to better customer reviews and repeat business. It also helps you understand the customer experience better.
High-quality photos are crucial to your success on Etsy. Of course you can take your own photo, but usually for POD products, product photography is done with mockup photos.
Printful and Printify offer mockup photo generators, but most of the POD sellers on Etsy also use photos made with them. So it’d be hard to stand out if you have the same mockup photos as other competitors.
I use Artboard Studio to generate my mockup product photos, or you can also find high quality mockup photos on sites like Creative Market.
Successful Etsy POD shops often have over 1000 listings to allow them to target a wide variety of keywords. Think about variations in designs, colours, related products, bundles, etc to create more products. But keep in mind to still keep the products in your shop cohesive.
Your branding should be consistent across all aspects of your shop, from your shop name and logo to your product descriptions and customer communications. This consistency helps build trust and recognition with your customers.
When it comes to product photography, the style, and color palette should be consistent across all your products. This doesn't mean every photo should look the same; rather, they should all feel like they belong to the same family. This is achieved by using a consistent color scheme, lighting style, and composition across all your photos. So keep that in mind when choosing mockup photos.
Many successful Etsy shops use about 3-5 different, but similar photos for their thumbnail product photos for the same line of product.
Read this course for more information on branding for Etsy shops.
This could be a great way to grow especially in the beginning. This could be as simple as offering to print a customer's name on a product.
It will take extra manual work, but it can help you stand out in POD markets as most sellers are not willing to put in the extra work. Doing so can help you gain good traction in the beginning.