Last week I started a series where I am taking you on a journey with me as I embark on running a Print On Demand ecommerce website at https://AdventuresInSkiing.com. This is a very relevant topic if you are already running a website. For example, if you have an affiliate site about hunting and fishing and you are promoting goods from Bass Pro Shop or other sporting goods stores, you could add in your own products and get a much higher percentage of the sale.
Or perhaps you have a website that sells dog treats. You could create pet-related Print On Demand products to sell alongside your goodies, such as a car-seat cover.
Maybe you run a travel business and you want to promote cruises by offering custom luggage wraps.
Or let’s say you sell fitness equipment, or just run a fitness blog. You could sell accessories with your own designs like this.
If you are a Texas based company selling Texas based products, why not have products you designed yourself?
The possibilities are endless – you can create your own designs and put them on products that appeal to your target market, thus making the products unique to you. Of course, you don’t even have to currently have a website – you could build out a brand new site based upon your interest. This works great both as an add-on to a current site, or a new site with only POD products, much like my skiing website.
I showed you how to create a simple t-shirt last week. This week, using the same POD supplier (Printful), I’m going to show you how to make an all-over-print product. For example, I recently added this backpack to my shop with a Colorado argyle pattern that I created. Unlike the examples above, this is a live product that you can actually order (even though it is printed until you place an order). Click on the image to go to the product page.
Here’s how…
We’ll start by picking an overall print product. In this case, let’s Choose women’s leggings.
Next we will want to add our design to the product.
We can upload a new design or select from previously uploaded designs.
By default, the pattern will fill the entire product. This is the case with most POD suppliers, so you will want to make sure your file is large and covers your product at a good print quality.
However, with Printful, you can actually make a pattern from your design without having to do this ahead of time using PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro. Start by scaling your design down to the smallest setting.
Obviously, this no longer covers the entire garment, so choose the option to “Make a pattern.”
If you have created a seamless pattern, you can choose the “Block” pattern option to completely fill the product. If you don’t have a seamless pattern, you can select a different option to give you various looks to completely fill the printable areas. In the case of the leggings we are working with, we upload a single print file. Some products will require different files for different parts of the product, such as front and back, left and right sleeves – you may need to specify the pattern file for each part of the garment. Once all the pieces are designed, you can view 3D images or mockups.
The rest of the process is similar to what I shared in last week’s article. First you select a mockup view. I recommend using one of the “lifestyle” options where it looks like a model is actually wearing your product.
Now add in the product details.
Then, set your prices and submit it to the store.
Be sure to visit your online store to make sure the product looks correct. If you need to edit anything, you can do this right from your ecommerce store and the changes are reflected on the Printful site.
Nice right? Stay with me – next week we’ll talk about selecting the right POD supplier(s) and the differences between them.
Greg Jameson has been writing blog articles on ecommerce and internet marketing for over 10 years. Learn more about Greg at https://webstoresltd.com/about/
