Getting T-shirt printed. Print-on-demand thread reopened

No idea why previous thread dead. I think it was active enough.

Original question was
>Anyone ever tried any of the print on demand services online? Are any of them good?

Some dude from Printful came in, would be nice to hear his responses on this:
warosu.org/biz/thread/S1441256#p1442820

Other urls found in this thread:

shortrunposters.com/
ebay.com/sch/generalgraph/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Breathing some air into this cause the topic interests me.

Sites previously mentioned:

printful
cafepress
teespring
scalablepress
printaura
zazzle
>Teelaunch
>Teelab
>Teescape
>Customink

Anybody know of any cheap print-on-demand poster printers that can compete with
shortrunposters.com/

Gearbubble.Represent.and Viralstyle are goat

Do any of you guys own a print on demand shop?

Nope afaik, but some user from printful came in yesterday. I asked him a bunch of questions but he did not come back. I would love to hear the low-down about that place.

This needs bumpage

Bumping, I was OP of the last thread. Was surprised it was deleted too, wtf. Recently ordered a test shirt from Inkeasy.com fyi, waiting for samples from 3 places now.

Checking these out now.

That's how the company makes money - people buying samples of their shit to test quality. You don't actually make any money, you're their actual customer.

That being said, it's a good learning opportunity for your first terrible ecommerce idea, and could provide some pretty valuable experience when you decide to make an actual online business.

>mfw 28 and have been making money online literally my entire life, never had a job once
>mfw sitting on a software company worth over a million already
>mfw selling a few thousand a week in t-shirts
>mfw print on demand sites are an excellent way to test new shirts without blowing money on dead inventory

Time to kill yourself, buddy. ;^)

>no proof

Let me guess you're also an astronaut cowboy scientist named Warren Buffet?

Nice try shilling, faggot. You do know you have a post id where you just said you were a noob, right?

It's literally right here

>You do know you have a post id where you just said you were a noob, right?

Literally what?

Back to /tv/, and wash your Best Buy polo so it's ready in the morning.

kek

>your first terrible ecommerce idea
>decide to make an actual online business.
You are on /biz, sperglord. Not everybody is here to create the next Uber. *Cough* neither will you.

Print on demand is perfectly viable. I went into it half-arsed, and three months in I cover my rent and all my food with about 25 hours of real work per month. The rest of my time I can spend on my other projects.

how did you start? i want to get into online business, i just dont have the balls or good info to start yet..

Not gonna go into specifics, but here are the general aspects:

1. The thing about print-on-demand, as you know, is having zero stock.

2. So this means that this is a numbers game. You make peanuts from one listing (if u are on ebay,), so put up hundreds or thousands.

3. So then figure out how to procure enough images to print without getting dragged to court for IP infringement.

4. Then put up listings on Ebay, outsource it or do adderall or something else to handle this tedious task.

5. Ebay Stores is your friend. It would be very costly to put up 100 listings and pay per listing, so get yourself the right type of Ebay Store.

6. Cut the analysis paralysis. Get the fuck off /biz and start working.

7. Backup. Install Turbo Lister and back up your stuff all the time. If your account gets removed you could lose all your hard work.

Holy shit, are you me? Pretty funny, that's basically what I've been doing, even down to #4.

I'll add to this, for anyone that is reading, that sourcing over seas once you have a good selling item is a good way to get a lot of inventory cheaply.

I'm currently doing this but I've been researching local print companies lately and many of them are quoting me even lower than the Asian manufacturers, which is great since I can get them faster and the quality should be higher.

Shipping from China takes forever and the biggest problem is shirt sizes usually run smaller.

Thanks.

Yeah, I've been checking out cowcow.com. They are cheap, but not that cheap compared to the usual suspects when all the discount coupons are applied.

Cool!

So how many designs do you have, what is their average price and how much are you making p/m?

Just curious.

I do 400+ products. Mid-size Ebay store and I make 1000-1200 profit per month.

No real costs. I get outsourcers now and then to jump up in scale.(IE, went from 30 designs - 100 - 400 in steps).

Right now only about 4 or 5 ones doing good volume, but I started by just posting a ton of designs and seeing what did well and basing a lot of it off what I thought would do well/knew would do well (based on what was already selling on eBay and other sites). I won't say the average price but I'll say my margins are about $12 on each shirt, net.

Nice, thanks a lot man, ill start doing this

Could you post an example of a shop?

ebay.com/sch/generalgraph/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=

this please

Also can anons tell me how, specifically, you acquire all these fucking designs?
I'm no artist...

thanks user.
1. So.... If you have 0 inventory, you could start this with $0 (unless ebay store costs dollerydoos). Or am i misunderstanding something?
2. This may be an autist level question but once they order from you, how do you order from china/the t-shirt printer/etc.? Like does the information about where to send and the print and size automatically go to them, meaning there's little upkeep? Or do you manually receive the info and then send it off? (Besides keeping new prints and stuff, obviously...)

An ebay store does cost money. Your looking at Monthly Subscription
$74.95 per month
for 1000 free listings

>I'm no artist...
Well, if you don't do Photoshop, I suggest you start now. You will find that most "making money online" methods require some type of WP, Writing, Design skills. If you don't understand basic concepts about pixels and DPI you could start there.

>print and size automatically go to them?
If you find a print on demand place that syncs with Paypal IPN, then yes. But I suggest you do it manually in the beginning to reduce the chance of fuckups.

What do you think? Would someone buy this?

fiverr

Is the misspelling a thing?

That is just another can of worms.

I suggest getting a shitload of ideas together, then get a really good designer in Bangladesh or Ukraine or some place to make them happen. When you find a good designer, stick with him/her.

How are you currently fulfilling orders? Who prints them?

I print from 3-4 different sources.

My comment about getting a cheap outsourced designer was just theory for someone that does not master Photoshop.

I am quite good with Photoshop myself, probably thousands of hours of experience (not bragging, just saying). If I did not have that, I would outsource that part. When I do design on a larger scale, I will hire designers too, so I can focus on core issues.

Printaura does print on demand of phone cases, 1 unit for $13 plus $.3.50 shipping in the US.

Does anyone do cheaper?

Answering myself:

Scalablepress seems to be unbeatable on price for phone cases, however, their user interface is terrible. No scrolling, no built in cropping, no nothing.

I'd have to spend 10x as much time preparing the originals, but I'd save 6 bucks per unit compared to Printaura. (mind you, I have not figured out the shipping price at scalablepress yet)

Ok I got one of my shirt samples in from Teelaunch. From time of order to arrival took 8 days.

Total cost of my shirt was $11 + $4 flat rate shipping, total cost of $15. For my purposes this is a decent profit, and the quality is better than expected. Waiting on a few more samples to arrive shortly and I'll compare quality/price.

and what price do you expect to sell, $25?, so its $10 profit per shirt?

At least $10 a shirt, depends though. I'm only going to use print on demand type stores until I know what's doing good volume, then I will have those locally printed and fulfill orders myself. This will bring the cost of each shirt down to around $5-$7 each.

Update: noticed there is a strange, faint brown/orange hue or discoloration around the image, in the shape of a square. I'm guessing this has something to do with the direct to garment machine's contact with the shirt leaving a residue or something behind, it's hard to notice but definitely there. Bit of a deal breaker, going to see how common this is with the other shirts as they arrive.