I got contacted by the folks at Printful with an invitation to set up a shop and sell products. I took them up on the offer even though I had tried to launch a product sales using older online eCommerce platforms like Cafe Press and Zazzle with modest success.
Like those other companies, with Printful, users create a design, place it on a website or some other platform and start promoting. Users market and promote their stores and when customers buy, they are then auto shifted to the Printful’s back office which takes and fulfill the orders and ships the product and even sends it in packaging branded by the user’s shop.
Like other print-on-demand, drop shipping platforms, like,Redbubbl, Teespring Society, Spreadshirt, TeePublic, Threadless, Teefury, Design by Humans and SunFrog, there is no need to mass or bulk produce especially if you don’t know if the shirts will do well.
Having not used those others, but having ordered samples from Zazzle and CafePress, I can attest to the superior quality of the products created by Printul which make the higher price point worth it.
I have ordered samples but in the meantime, it was relatively easy to create my shop. Here’s how it went down:
First, I create my designs some using Canva and hired some creatives via Fiverr to make some for me.
Second, I uploaded the designs onto Printful and used PlaceIt.net’s mockup generator.
Third, I created a shop store page using a WooCommerce WordPress theme and downloaded the WooCommerce plugin and customized it for my shop.
Fourth, I added some of the products to my Digital Publishing Academy‘s Etsy shop.
Fifth, I integrated my WordPress shop with Printful so that the transfer from hitting buy to getting the product is virtually seamless without me having to do anything.
Finally, when I’m completely done and ready to launch, I will start to market and my marketing plan includes:
- An Orange Twig social media promotion plan ($9 per month)
- Ads via Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Etsy
- Pinning the images and make them buyable
- Adding the shop to the Facebook Page
- Blogging about the shops and year round promotion
I’m giving myself a couple of months to feel it out but it was very easy actually to set up.
Here are the products I’m selling which you can have a sneak peek of though I’m not done setting up my shop.
Jay Jay Ghatt is also editor at Techyaya.com, founder of the JayJayGhatt.com and JayJayGhatt.com where she teaches online creators how to navigate digital entrepreneurship and offers Do-It-For-You Blogging Service. She manages her lifestyle sites BellyitchBlog, Jenebaspeaks and JJBraids.com and is the founder of BlackWomenTech.com 200 Black Women in Tech On Twitter. Her biz podcast 10 Minute Podcast is available on iTunes and Player.fm. Follow her on Twitter at @Jenebaspeaks. Buy her templates over at her legal and business templates on Etsy shop!
