What Is POD And How Does It Work

Print-On-Demand (POD) is a scalable business model that allows you to sell products without needing to manage an inventory, package products, or handle shipping. The POD company provides you with a selection of white-label products like t-shirt and mugs. You then can customise the products with your own designs. You don’t have to pay until after you’ve sold the products.

All the tasks like making the products, packaging and shipping are handled by the POD company. This leaves you more time and energy to focus on coming up with the designs, setting up the Etsy shop, handling customer service and promoting your products.

POD products often has a smaller profit margin due to the cost of physical products. But like digital products, the upfront costs for starting a POD business are very low. You don't have to invest in inventory, making it a low-risk business choice, which is particularly attractive for small business owners.

POD Services That Integrates With Etsy

Printful and Printify are the two main POD services that integrates with Etsy. There’s also Gooten, Printed Mint, Teelaunch, Gelato and more.

Here are some differences between the two main POD suppliers:

Printful

1. Quality Control: Printful handles all their printing in-house, which leads to more consistent quality across all their products.
2. Customer Service: Their customer service is relatively high quality and efficient.
3. Branding options: As Printful handles their own printing, they are able to offer more product and packaging branding options.

Printify

1. Lower Cost: Printify generally has lower prices for their products compared to Printful, which can increase your profit margins.
2. More Print Providers: Printify has a larger number of print providers, which can give you more options in terms of product variety and shipping locations.

I personally prefer Printful because of the more consistent quality across products, but if cost is your priority, then maybe Printify is a better choice for you.

How To Connect Printful To Your Etsy Shop

Connecting Printful to your Etsy shop is a relatively straightforward process. You can find a detailed step-by-step guide in this YouTube video.

In the next chapter, we will look at some best practices for running a successful POD Etsy shop.

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