Print-on-demand has become one of the most popular industries, with an expected growth rate (CAGR) of 22.7% from 2024 to 2032.
However, this promising statistic poses one question: With such a saturated market, is print-on-demand still profitable in 2024?
With the right strategy and tools, it can be a lucrative business.
Read on to learn the ways to be profitable in the print-on-demand market.
Let’s dive in!
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5 Reasons That Make Print-on-Demand so Popular
Print-on demand remains a profitable business model in 2024 despite increasing competition and market saturation concerns.
1. Low Risk and Investment
One of the primary advantages of POD is its low entry barrier. You don’t need to invest heavily in inventory upfront but only pay for production after a customer buys your product.
As a result, you minimize financial risk, making POD attractive for new business owners.
2. Flexibility and Customization
The POD model offers high flexibility, enabling you to customize products easily.
This adaptability is particularly beneficial if you need to update designs frequently or respond to market trends quickly.
Thus, you can experiment with various designs without incurring additional costs.
💡 ProTip:
Dynamic Mockups offers versatile customization options to save time and money. Our bulk feature enables you to create 100 mockup variations in 10 seconds!
Thus, you can upload multiple designs and color combinations and automatically create all variations of mockups.
3. Quick Turnaround Times
With advancements in printing technology, POD services can fulfill orders rapidly, leading to higher customer satisfaction and potentially increased repeat business.
Consequently, you can respond swiftly to customer demands and market changes.
4. Diverse Product Range
POD is a vast space, so you can sell a wide variety of products, from apparel and accessories to home decor and stationery.
This diversity allows you to cater to customer segments and preferences, increasing market reach.
5. eCommerce Integrations
eCommerce platforms have definitely made it much easier to reach customers globally.
Now, you can list your products on multiple platforms, such as Etsy, Amazon, and Shopify, expanding your audience without needing physical storefronts.
💡Pro Tip:
With Dynamic Mockups, you can skip manual editing and automatically generate high-quality mockups to add to your Etsy listings quickly.
Furthermore, we offer integrations with WooCommerce, and our Shopify integration is on its way.
Thus, not only can you directly create high-quality mockups but also highly personalized and custom ones for your online store.
What are The Most Common POD Challenges?
In order to fully benefit from a POD business, it’s important to pay attention to potential pitfalls to avoid them successfully.
1. Market Saturation
While the market is growing, it is also becoming more competitive. Thus, standing out in a crowded place is quite difficult.
Thus, to succeed, you’ll have to find profitable niches and implement effective marketing strategies.
If you wonder how to do that, just read on since we’ll soon share tips on how to boost your POD business.
2. Lower Profit Margins
POD typically has higher per-unit costs than traditional bulk printing, leading to lower profit margins.
Due to the nature of on-demand production, you can often face increased costs and may have limited pricing power as consumers expect lower prices for custom items.
So, striking the right pricing balance is crucial. You need to consider your work, target audience, and competitor offerings.
In addition, you should take profit margins within your industry into account.
3. Longer Fulfillment Times
Production and shipping times can be longer than traditional retail methods because each item is printed on demand.
Furthermore, issues like stock shortages or overall delays can hamper customer satisfaction, having a negative impact on your business.
One way to prevent this from happening is to be transparent. Inform your customers about the expected delivery times right from the start.
4. High Shipping Costs
Shipping fees for POD products can be higher than those for bulk orders, which may deter potential customers or eat into profit margins.
This aspect is particularly relevant when shipping directly from manufacturers to buyers.
5. Difficulties with Customer Service and Returns
Managing returns and refunds can be complicated since you must coordinate with your POD provider for resolutions.
Consequently, it can slow down customer service responses and lead to frustration on both sides.
How to Make Your Print-on-Demand Profitable?
As promised, we’ll share a few hot tips to help you avoid common mistakes and give you a headstart.
1. Identify a Profitable Niche
The POD market is a crowded one. As such, it doesn’t make much sense to try to penetrate an already saturated niche.
However, finding a sub-niche within a popular niche is a whole different story.
✨ Tip:
Google Trends and social media analytics can help you understand customer preferences and emerging trends.
This way, you can tailor your products to meet specific customer needs.
Another great solution is Merch Informer, which helps you find information about the gaps within your niche.
For example, the topic of pets is a highly crowded niche and probably not the best one to try to enter.
With Merch Informer, you’ll get the list of all related entries showing current competition and gaps.
Another benefit of using Merch Informer is that it has the Trademark Alert tool to check if your slogans, designs, etc., are copyright-free.
If you are thinking about starting a T-shirt POD business, our blog, 9 Tips to Start a Print On Demand T-Shirt Business, provides all the essential info you’ll need.
2. Focus on Unique Designs
Regardless of your niche, you should create original and appealing designs that cater to and resonate with your target audience.
In addition, your designs need to align with your brand values and communicate your brand message clearly.
Remember that your products’ uniqueness can justify higher prices and attract more customers.
💡 ProTip:
Our AI Mockups feature lets you switch up your scenes without changing your original designs.
For example, you can test different looks to see what gets the most engagement, helping you find what sells best without losing your original work.
3. Partner with Reliable POD Suppliers
One of the biggest challenges in POD is finding a supplier that offers high-quality products and reliable fulfillment services.
You should definitely do your homework and check the reviews, delivery, and fulfillment times before making a decision.
In addition, you can opt for providers that offer to send samples so you can see the final product firsthand.
Some POD suppliers offer free samples within their subscription plan, while others charge separately.
✨ Tip:
To help you get started, you can check our curated list of 12 Best Print-on-Demand Sites To Try.
Furthermore, we’re about to release the iframe Embeddable mockup feature, which will enable you to embed our app on your website and create designs there without using third-party platforms.
As a result, you’ll be more in charge of the whole process, as well as the product and design quality.
4. Automate the POD Process
A great thing about POD is that you can automate the entire process, from product design to marketing.
By doing so, you can:
- Process orders faster and more accurately
- Reduce mistakes typical for manual processes
- Reduce inventory costs
- Improve customer service and experience by automating orders confirmation, shipping updates, and customer support.
✨ Tip:
Our blog, How to Fully Automate Your Print-on-Demand Business, is packed with helpful tips and steps to automate the key POD elements:
- Product design
- Product uploading
- Fulfillment
- Customer support, and
- Marketing.
5. Leverage Effective Marketing
Social media is an excellent way to spread your brand and its story and connect with potential customers and like-minded influencers who can boost your brand.
✨ Tip:
Think about creating engaging content that showcases your products, especially with real-life images, if possible.
In addition, consider running targeted ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram to reach specific demographics.
Finally, continuously track ad performance to optimize spending.
💡 ProTip:
Dynamic Mockups lets you speed up advertising by creating bulk designs for multiple platforms.
This way, you can use the visuals to promote your products on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, etc.
For more effective ways to promote your POD, check out our blog, 10 Tips to Promote Print-on-Demand Business.
6. Expand Sales Channels
Diversify your sales channels by listing products on multiple platforms such as Etsy, Amazon, or Shopify.
This broadens your reach and increases visibility, potentially leading to higher sales.
✨ Tip:
Don’t spread yourself too thin. You don’t need to immediately “conquer” all the platforms.
By doing thorough research, you’ll find out where your target audience resides the most and just take it from there.
Then, gradually, as your business grows or changes, you can add more platforms to your list.
7. Regularly Assess Market Trends
Any industry or market is prone to changes that may catch you by surprise if you don’t follow what’s going on.
It is particularly important to stay on top of market changes so that you can adapt and be positive your product offerings remain relevant.
✨ Tip:
Stay updated with industry trends and consumer preferences by evaluating your niche every six months.
As a result, you’ll be able to spot any occurring changes and react timely and accordingly.
🎁 Bonus: What are The Best Niches for Print-on-Demand in 2024?
Let’s see which niches promise to be profitable this year.
1. Pet Products
Although the pet products category is a very saturated niche, custom, highly personalized items such as:
- Custom pet portraits,
- Personalized collars,
- Bowls with engraved pet names,
- And themed apparel for pet lovers are always high in demand.
2. Apparel
- T-Shirts — Vintage and nostalgic designs are trending, especially with themes like Barbie and retro aesthetics.
- Athleisure — The demand for comfortable yet stylish sportswear continues to rise, driven by the body-positive movement.
- Leggings — Remains a strong category, with the potential for high sales volume due to their popularity.
3. Home Decor
Items such as custom wall art, throw pillows, and blankets are consistently in demand.
Furthermore, the emphasis is on personalized products that enhance living spaces.
4. Eco-Friendly Products
Sustainable items made from recycled or environmentally friendly materials are increasingly popular.
5. Fashion Accessories
Custom patches, socks, and beanies are trending accessories that allow for personalization and unique designs.
In addition, they can cater to seasonal demands and specific customer preferences.
6. Hobbies and Interests
Niche products related to specific hobbies can create loyal customer bases, and items like custom T-shirts with hobby-related quotes, Marvel mugs, aprons, etc., can resonate well with the demographics.
7. Business and Office Supplies
Custom planners, notebooks, and office decor items tailored for professionals can open the door to corporate gifting markets and personal workspace customization.
8. Drinkware
Personalized mugs, tumblers, and water bottles continue to be popular, especially with the rise of remote work culture.
9. Seasonal Products
Holiday-themed items like Christmas sweaters or Halloween decorations see spikes in demand during specific times of the year, making them lucrative opportunities.
✨Tip:
Remember what we’ve said — popular niches are saturated, but exploring sub-niches within can give you a great headstart, allowing you personalization and catering to specific interests.
How Can Dynamic Mockups Help Your POD Business?
Dynamic Mockups is a robust online mockup generator that enables you to create bulk mockups automatically in a few clicks.
However, the scope of our tool exceeds mere mockup creation — It provides solutions to customize and personalize your designs and products to your customers.
What do we have in store for you besides bulk mockups?
🔥 Versatile Customization Tools:
- Robust integrations with WooCommerce, Etsy, Zapier, WordPress, Make, Adobe, etc., for a fully customizable experience.
- The AI Mockups feature lets you use an AI text prompt to automatically create a new scene or a background perfectly placed behind the subject.
Therefore, you can change the colors of the product and adjust the size and position of your design.
- Advanced editing options, such as
✨ Countless color edits thanks to the color picker and integrated Printful and Printify color combinations.
✨ Various Photoshop blending modes for more realistic designs.
✨ Flexible layout to perfectly place your assets, move and resize them, automate fitting modes, do post-adjustments, etc., in your designs.
🔥 An ever-growing mockup library with top-niche mockups, including T-shirts, Hoodies, Wall art, Pillows, Blankets, Tote Bags, Phone Cases, etc.
🔥 A centralized design library to easily find and apply uploaded designs to new mockups.
And the list goes on.
Ready to tap into Dynamic Mockups?
Join Dynamic Mockups for free to customize your designs easily and maximize profitability.
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Keep Learning:
How Much Does it Cost to Start a Print-on-Demand Business?
