An eCommerce store can be a good source of income that you can build as a side hustle. What’s more when selling a product you don’t own. We call this a print-on-demand business model. Today, we will be sharing how to sell Printful Products on Etsy.
What is Printful?
Printful is a print-on-demand service provider that produces and ships out products that business owner creates. This includes all different custom products such as t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, and phone cases.
As a business owner, you just need to focus on product design, selling the product and customer service. Printful will handle the production, inventory, or shipping.
Printful as one of the biggest print-on-demand suppliers, integrates with popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy, and Amazon, making it easy for businesses to create and sell their products online. When your online shop is integrated with Printful, all the orders will be sent for production and fulfilment automatically.
What is Etsy?
Etsy is an e-commerce platform that specializes in handmade, vintage, and unique items. It was founded in 2005 and has since grown into a global marketplace connecting millions of buyers and sellers around the world.
The platform allows individuals and small businesses to open a shop and directly sell their handmade, vintage, or unique products to customers. The products on Etsy can range from jewellery, clothing, home decor, digital downloads, and more.
Etsy is known for its emphasis on individuality, creativity, and personalised shopping experience. It allows sellers to connect with customers and build a loyal following through features such as messaging, reviews, and customization options.
And today, we will be showing how to combine both Printful and Etsy to sell your products on the marketplace.
Why Selling Printful Products on Etsy?
First and foremost, Etsy is a platform that is specifically designed for handmade, vintage, and unique items. This makes it perfect to sell custom products without brands. This niche market makes it easier to attract customers looking for unique items, which is perfect for your custom print-on-demand product.
Furthermore, Etsy’s marketplace is designed to help sellers build a brand and a following. The platform allows sellers to customize their shop page and product listings to reflect their unique style and personality. Additionally, the platform provides various tools and resources to help sellers manage their business and grow their sales, including payment processing, shipping labels, analytics, and marketing tools.
Another benefit of selling on Etsy is the sense of community and support that comes with being part of the platform. Etsy has a strong focus on supporting small businesses and individual creators. The platform regularly features sellers and their products in newsletters, social media, and other promotional activities, which can lead to increased visibility and sales.
Not only that, Etsy’s community of sellers is supportive and collaborative. The platform provides various forums and groups where sellers can connect, share their experiences, and offer advice and support. This sense of community can be invaluable, especially for new sellers who may be unsure of how to navigate the platform or grow their business.
Finally, Etsy’s fee structure is relatively low compared to other e-commerce platforms. Etsy charges a small listing fee and a percentage commission on sales, which can be a more affordable option for small businesses or individuals who may not have the budget to pay for expensive e-commerce solutions. You don’t need to pay a minimum subscription to sell on the platform. You only pay based on the number of listings and the order fee.
How to Sell Printful Products on Etsy Shop
If you decide to start your first Etsy print-on-demand store today, let’s go.
First of all, you will need to register on Etsy to start a store. Then, you will also need to create your Printful account. Both are free to apply and start.
On the Etsy homepage, scroll to the bottom and click on “Sell of Etsy”. Then click “Get Started” and register for an account.
Just follow the instructions and complete the registration. Then you will become a seller on the marketplace.
You can start setting up other important information for your Etsy shop.
Then, you need to go and sign up at the Printful POD supplier sites. All you need to do is to sign up for a free account and you are good to go.
Remember to integrate with your Etsy shop so that all the products that you created will be published on your Etsy shop as well. And the order fulfilment process can be automated after both are integrated.
Print-on-demand Printful Products Ideas to Sell on Etsy
If you are looking at the product offerings in Printful, there are hundreds of products available from apparel to home & living for you to customize and sell.
Here are some popular products that most new business owners start with on Etsy.
1. Printful T-shirts Products – Etsy
T-shirts are undoubtedly one of the most popular products for print-on-demand. There is a huge market for T-shirts and is suitable for most people to wear all year round.
Not only that, a T-shirt can be very easy to design. You don’t need to be a designer to create a simple best-selling t-shirt design.
On Printful, there are different types of t-shirts for men and women, adults and youth. You can choose the material and the print method for the product that you want. Of course, all these will affect the product cost.
If you have a niche market that you want to sell, for example, if your target is lover shirts, teachers, parents, or youngsters, you can start to work on a design that will resonate with your target customers.
For instance, one of the easiest designs that anyone can do is the inspirational quote design. You don’t need too many complicated designs, just type the quote and then change the font type, size and colour to fit different t-shirt colours. If you are not sure about the design, you can go ahead and do a simple research of what is selling best on Etsy and learn from them.
2. Printful Wall Art Products – Etsy
Wall art is a great wall design for every home. The right art will add personality and warmth to a house. And for a plain wall, nice and simple wall art can really give a different look for it.
If you ever went to an Ikea store, you will see their wall art’s popularity. People simply love it. And most important, it’s not hard to create print-on-demand wall art.
If you are an artist, you can draw your own piece of art. Else, you can always search or buy from the plr store or the stock image websites to get the image you want for the wall art. All you need to do is to change the dimensions to fit the frame size by Printful.
You can have the same piece of artwork to be resized for different frame materials and frame sizes.
3. Printful Mugs and Tumblers Products – Etsy
Mugs and tumblers are some of the very popular homeware products on Etsy. Both are great gifts for different occasions. People buy personality mugs for gifts during festive seasons or as a token of appreciation.
When you gift someone a mug, you’re gifting something a practical tool. For example, you can give your colleagues coffee mugs or tumblers for them to use for daily coffee in the office or at home.
A mug or tumbler is also very easy to design due to the simplicity of the mug and tumbler designs. A simple floral design or funny quotes can really brighten up the day.
How to Get Your First Sales for Printful Products on Etsy
Now that you already created your Etsy store with Printful integrated, then decide which product to sell. Now, it’s time to see how to get your first sale and build your business empire on Etsy.
To get sales on Etsy, your products need to be shown to potential buyers. The more visibility you get, the more potential sales you will get. And we call this Etsy SEO. There are a few things that will affect the ranking.
Product photos and descriptions
To sell something online, the first impression will be your product photos and descriptions. People are not looking or touching at the actual products. So their buying decision will be solely based on how the product looks in the product photos and also the descriptions.
Not only that, when you search for a product on Etsy, the first thing you will see is the product thumbnails. So, before even reading the product title, you will click on the product listing based on the attractiveness of the product thumbnails.
Not only that, having professional product photos will give a good impression to your customers showing that you are a trusted seller. Besides, you may have some clickbait elements on your product photos to stand out from other listings and make sure people will be attracted and click on your product listings.
You can always use a mockup like Placeit or Canva to create your thumbnail. There are many mockup templates available for you to customize and create your attractive product photos.
After they click on your product listings, it’s time for your product descriptions to persuade them to buy. We call this the sales copy. In your product descriptions, you should explain the benefits of the product to your potential customers. And at the same time, manage their expectations by sharing your shipping policies and your shop terms. This will avoid disputes or refunds.
In your descriptions, you should also include some popular keywords so that it may help in your Etsy search ranking as well.
Increase your Etsy SEO Ranking
Etsy is a huge marketplace. There are many products sold on the platform. The best way to get visibility is to get on the top of the search results. For Etsy to show your product on the first page or the first few rows, you need to make your product easy to search on Etsy. This means knowing what people are searching for and optimising your listings to rank higher on Etsy search results. We call this the Etsy SEO strategy.
We will briefly share the 4 important elements for Etsy SEO to rank. For a more detailed guide, you may check our complete Etsy SEO guide.
1. Title
ON Etsy, there is a word limitation of 140 characters for your title. However, the search engine algorithm will put more weight on the first few words. So, when writing your Etsy title, focus on the first few words first.
Don’t repeat words in the title and avoid keyword stuffing. Your title has to make sense and still contain all the crucial keywords.
Etsy doesn’t allow titles to contain more than 3 words in all caps. Some special characters like the percentage symbol (%) and ampersand (&) can only be used once, and the dollar sign ($) and caret (^) aren’t allowed at all. So, think carefully about which three words are best suited to describe your product.
As far as Etsy tags are concerned, they have two roles. To help Etsy buyers find similar products to the one they are looking for and to help Etsy’s algorithm with the query matching process.
Etsy lets you add up to 13 tags for each listing. So you better make good use of all of it. Your tags can cover a wide range of terms so you can get ranked for more keywords.
Not only that, Etsy allows up to 20 characters for each tag and it can contain multiple words. This means you should use multi-word tags to get a more precise keyword tag.
Another pro-tip. You should focus more on long-tail keywords than standard keywords. This is because people will search for specific terms for what they want. Also, long tail keywords tend to be easier to rank with lesser competition than a generic term as not many people will focus on ranking it.
3. Attributes
Attributes are the additional details you use to describe your products. They’re displayed on the left side of the search results page for customers to filter what they want to view.
You can include as many attributes as possible in your listings and use that to broaden the match potential of your listing.
4. Categories
Start with your category and then narrow it down to the sub-category so it will be easier for Etsy to show your products in the different related categories.
To ease product searching, Etsy groups different products in each category so it will be easier for us to search based on the category they want. And if you can group your product listings in the right category, it will help people to view your product.
Offer Product Personalization
Personalization is a very popular product type on Etsy. People are selling personalized gifts on Etsy for different occasions and festive seasons.
Printful offers customized personalization products for your Etsy store. In your Etsy store, enable the personalization section on your store and then head to Printful Dashboard and watch the personalised orders appear, ready for editing.
Offer Free Shipping
You might think that the shipping charge is not important. You are wrong. Having the right shipping strategy will help in a few ways. First of all, customer buying psychology does not favour a shipping charge. They can buy a few hundred dollars in your shop. But not willing to pay for a $4.99 shipping cost.
They will think that it should be free since they already made a huge purchase. Not only that:
A product with a price of $10 and a shipping cost of $4.99 is different from a $14.99 product with free shipping. Although they are getting the same product at the same price, the user experience is different. They will appreciate the free shipping offered.
You are not losing anything by doing this. Your revenue for each product is still the same. But this act will boost your sales as it is more likely for them to buy from you. Not only that, but Etsy also favours free shipping.
Etsy SEO for Free Shipping
The Etsy SEO algorithm will rank products with low shipping or free shipping higher. This is especially useful for retailers and shoppers based in the US. You can have different shipping options for your products. For example, if you are focusing on the US market, you can offer free shipping for US buyers. This is a feature by Etsy for US buyers. When they purchase over $35 in a single order, they will be entitled to free shipping.
So, it is advisable for you to include the shipping cost in your product price and offer free shipping. This can be done easily in Printful by changing your product price to include Printful’s shipping rate and then checking the Display My Products with a free shipping box. Submit these edited products to the Etsy shop and now your potential customers will see that you offer free shipping.
When using free shipping, make sure that you do your calculations well and don’t lose money by offering free shipping. Cover your shipping cost in your product price to offer free shipping, but not to earn more on this. You don’t want to give your customers the impression that you are charging too high.
Know Your Numbers
When you are selling online or doing any digital marketing, data analysis is the most important to know what’s working and what’s not. Also, knowing what you can optimize in your product listings or marketing strategy.
Etsy provides excellent reporting features in the Etsy Stats Tool to show where your Etsy shop traffic comes from and what keyword they are searching to reach your product listing. You can use this information to optimize your title, description and tags to focus on those keywords.
In your Etsy Shop Manager, in the Stats section, you can see which listings are not getting views, and you should optimize the listing to get a better rank.
Testimonials & Review
Testimonials and reviews are the very important things that you need to grow and boost your sales. When you are starting out, your store will be empty without any reviews. But when you are getting sales, you can message your customers to let them give a review on their purchase.
This is a good way to interact with your customers and build relationships with them so they can come back to buy again. However, don’t offer any incentive in the message to get them to leave a review. This can lead to a violation of Etsy terms.
Final Thoughts – Selling Printful Products on Etsy Shop
Etsy is making the process of opening an online shop easy for artists and creators. Etsy works on getting traffic to the marketplace, and you as business owners can turn hobbies and crafts that you love into a profitable business.
What’s better, you don’t need to be technically savvy to start it. It’s as simple as filling up forms to start an Etsy shop. And integrating into a print-on-demand service provider like Printful is seamless as well.
When both are integrated, the product publishing and order fulfilment process will be automated. You will focus on product designs getting customers and closing sales.
If you are still thinking about whether you should start it or not. Go ahead. Every successful seller starts small and dreams big. All you need to do is to take small steps forward and take a leap when possible.
You can start as a solopreneur and hire a Virtual Assistant when required to handle some customer service tasks. This will help further reduce your start-up cost. With the print-on-demand business model, there is no inventory cost. You only pay Printful after someone pays you for the product.
All you need is the courage to start and continue to work on building a successful Etsy shop. With determination and consistency, you can build a successful business on Etsy too.