Well, hello everybody out there. Welcome to another Printify webinars. My name is Martin. It’s my pleasure to be your host and you are in for a treat today because we are joined by one of the most famous faces in all of print on demand, Christina Umrez. Christina, how you doing today? I’m doing great, Martin. Thanks for having me. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Um, are you ready for a winner of a webinar? Excellent. I’ll take that as a as a positive sign. Great. Well, uh, Christ, as I mentioned, Christina is all over the web, including our podcast, Printing Profits. If you want to hear, uh, about how Christina got started, a little bit of her origin story, I highly recommend you check that out. We’re going to pop that link into the chat right now. Um, and give that a listen and make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel while you are there. Okay, but we’re going to have a lot of fun today. For those of you joining live, we’re going to be giving away some prizes. is we’re going to be uh there will be a trivia question based on today’s uh based on today’s information that will be uh that you from which three lucky winners who answer our our trivia question correctly will win uh some prizes. We’ll be giving away some Printify sales credit at a couple points in today’s presentation. But no need to worry if you’re watching this on repeat. All the links uh that that we talk about today, you’ll be able to find those in the description. Okay, so let’s get right into it, folks. Uh, as I mentioned, uh, for the three lucky winners that answer our our trivia question correctly, you’ll you’ll be uh you’ll win a Printify webinars hoodie, a personalized Printify webinars mug, and $50 of Printify sales credit directly into your account. So, pay attention and answer our trivia question at the end of today’s webinar. And I also mentioned that we’ll be giving away some money. So, uh, I’m going to ask you to get your Printify accounts out. Navigate using the little green button in the upper right hand corner. Scroll down to where it says payments and then find the coupon code section because at two points in today’s presentation, I’m going to be giving out a coupon code and whomever out there enters it into that spot the fastest will win instantly $50 of Printify sales credit right into your account. That is pretty cool. And before we get started, I want to invite everybody out there, whether you’re watching live or on replay, to join me for my live Q&A sessions on host that I host on Mondays and Wednesdays where you can sit down with me and we can talk one-on-one about anything about print on demand. Whether you are are a beginner, whether you’re intermediate, whether you’re advanced, we can always find something to talk about. I love seeing where the conversations go. So, join me 100% free Mondays and Wednesdays. We’re going to put that link into the chat as well. Okay? And as we as we get as we uh as we get into our conversation today, you’re going to have questions. So, pop those into the chat as as soon as you think of them. No need to wait until the end because uh at the at the conclusion of today’s presentation, Christina and I will do a live Q&A session and we’ll answer your questions live on the air. So, pop those into the chat as you think of them. Okay. Wonderful. All right. Well, let’s get into it. Christina, we’re gonna be talk we’re g we’re going to be talking all about niche selection and not only that, we’re going to go a couple layers deep and you’re going to talk about exactly your process for selecting products, your product, your uh your your planning and things like that. So, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of today’s presentation. But before we do, let’s talk I know you covered this during your podcast, but I think it’s super important that that we cover it again. Why should we even choose a niche at all to to sell our our print on demand products? Yeah. So, niching down is super important, especially on Etsy when it comes to print on demand because one, you need something that people know that you specialize in, but especially a lot of people are on Etsy, a lot of people are doing print on demand, and unfortunately, a lot of people are all trying to do the exact same things. There are a few niches that come to to everyone’s mind that every single print on demand store that I take a look at is attempting and unfortunately as new sellers to compete with stores that have thousands of sales and reviews behind them already. It’s going to be really really hard for us to be able to make sales and compete against those people. So niching down is where we can really get that advantage and stick out. Okay, great. So, but there are a lot of people out there that talk about uh oh, you don’t even need to select a niche at all. So, why should I even bother selecting a niche? Why shouldn’t I just sell everything to everybody? So, sorry guys, I’m going to give everyone a heads up. I am sick today, so I’ll be taking lots and lots of water breaks and um my mind might be a little bit of everywhere. Um, but to answer your question, um, you need a brand, something that ties together your store. So when people come to you, they know what they’re getting. If they come to your store and you have tons of different products in tons of different niches, it doesn’t look like you specialize in anything and it doesn’t give off this feeling of trustworthiness. How are you going to sell a mug about this, but then you’re going to sell something completely opposite? It’s just like all stores. When you go into a place, you know what you’re like getting when you go into a Chapters or into an apparel store. And when something’s out of place, you don’t trust it quite as much. And for me, what I actually do is I tell people, you either want to be niching down in terms of your niche or your product. So for me, I actually have or it started as a general apparel store. But if you wanted to stick to one niche and try many products, then maybe just stick with one niche like a bachelorette store where you have say mugs and party favors and shirts. But you do need something to tie your store together so that people feel like they’re buying from a trustworthy brand. Sure. And there’s a psychological aspect. uh uh uh at work as well. The human mind seeks order and when and it may and on a subconscious level if they’re looking at something and something doesn’t it doesn’t look quite right, it looks out of place, that’s going to register and it’s going to give them a sense of unease. So yes, definitely choosing a niche and specializing it and looking at subniches. We’ll get into subniches a little bit later in our conversation. Uh but that’s definitely a great way to uh uh get some sales right at the beginning of your of your uh of print on demand journey. Okay, great. So we’ve discussed the need to uh select a niche but how does one actually go about finding a niche they want to target? Yeah. So I have for new people I have two ways I mostly suggest. The first way one is my favorite and this is one completely stepping away from those niches that are overly targeted aka mom shirts, teacher shirts, nursing shirts, positivity shirts. And if you’re a new store, you’ve probably tried that. A lot of people um whose new stores I look at have those niches in there. But as new sellers, we want to sell to people that don’t have that many options to them. So there are niches out there that are not even attempted at all on Etsy. And usually how I tell people to find those is really sit down and create a list of everything that you love that is super specific. It can be do you go to Pilates? Do you work as a data analyst? Do you own a tarantula? Things that are like super specific things that you like. Like, do you love ramen? Do you drink tea all the time? And just create a list. And it can even be like what your family does. Like my dad loves to play pickle ball, so I’ve added that to my like two checklist. Those types of niches that are just really, really, really specific and less broad. And then if you’re in those niches already, they are extra great for you to create in because you have that advantage that you understand the niche already. So you can do inside jokes that other competitors can’t do and you know what that type of niche wants to buy from. There was I did this like one audit with a student once. Sorry, water break. That’s that’s fine. Thank you for joining us in your uh in in your state. Hey, you’re doing great. Yeah, thank you. Popped up on on lots of Advil and Tylenol cold. But, um, so there was an audit I did and this one student, he had just started his store a month ago and he had 30 sales already, which is pretty incredible for like your first month. And I looked in his store and I told him, I was like, I don’t know what one of your t-shirts means. I was like, I don’t understand the jokes at all. like I would and he was explaining he’s like, “Yeah, it’s all about this career. He works in this career.” I never never even heard of the career name before. And all the jokes were super specific, but there was no one else targeting this group because he was in that like group and niche already. He already knew all the inside jokes. All of his shirts were just textbased designs, so he was able to get them up super quick. And things like that are how you can get found as a beginner. Okay. And if if I could just add two more things to that. Yeah. I always advise people if you’re looking for a niche, do something focus on a niche in which you are a participant of. One, like you said, it’s it instantly gives you access to like you already know what it’s about. Shortens that learning curve. And plus, it also gives you some bonafides because people understand they they understand, hey, this is someone like me that uh so it gives you instant credibility. And plus, if you’re going to if you’re going to do this, it might as well be fun. So, focus on something you enjoy. And and it really makes work uh uh if if you uh it really makes the work you do and the and the time you put in rewarding because it’s uh it’s it’s close to your heart. Okay. Wonderful. So, what about if let’s say I I how do how would I find a niche say that I’m not interested in that that that is particularly popular or something I want to focus on if I want to diversify my business. Yeah. So, if there’s So, if you do not want to go that route of going to things you love and you want to be more data driven, I’m going to show you how to be data driven with those as well. But one, there’s two ways or two things that I call it when you want to stick out in an already saturated niche, and that’s subniching down and combining niches. And you can often find those by doing data. And I actually did want to show you guys um I’m going to do a quick screen share on E-rank.
So, say you wanted to create a mom shirt. I had already talked about how often mom shirts, teaching shirts, nursery shirts are very, very specific. And I would like to say I talk in terms of shirts, um, just because that’s something a lot of people relate to. This does not have to be apparel. Everything I’m speaking about can apply to your stickers, um, tote bags, and we’ll talk about product a little bit later. But say I did want to create a mom shirt. I’m going to type in mom shirt and e-rank.
And you guys are able to see my screen, right? Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Okay, perfect. And you can see here at the top there’s 9,000 searches a month for mom shirt, which is great, but over a,300 competition, which is going to be very, very, very hard for you to rank high for. But if we scroll down, E-Rank has this wonderful data that when you start scrolling down, they show you your average searches versus competition. You are going to need to pay for E-Rank Pro to see this. There is a free version, but they only show you um competition, which the data isn’t that helpful um without the searches really. So, this is the pro version that I have. And you can see what these subniches I’m talking about. We have cheer mom shirt that has still has quite a bit of searches, less competition, way less than over a million for sure. Senior mom shirt, dance mom shirt. This one’s even better. Over 1,200 searches a month. 12,000 competition. So things like this are subniches. And I like to think of them like a triangle. value of mom, then you have lower levels underneath mom that are more specific that still applies to moms, but only a certain subset within moms. And people are usually do buy things that are really, really, really specific to them. So, I find usually the buying patterns of these really specific shirt like shirts and subniches are better than just like general mama shirts. So, volleyball mom shirt, homeschool mom shirt, and this is the best way that I usually come up with some lower niches. And then there’s also, while this is subniching, we have what’s called combining niches. So, that’s picking two separate niches that aren’t related at all and doing certain designs that tie them together. So you can do like I love cats and books only speak to me about Pilates and reading things like that. Having two separate niches, they don’t really have to be related at all, but having a design that brings them together. It’s kind of like those ven diagrams where you have like two circles and then part of it crossing over. So while subniching is kind of like the triangle and moving down, the ven diagram is cutting off people that only apply to one of those, but in that middle section you have a very very loyal base of people who are part of two niches instead of one. And this is really helpful also if you are doing holiday um products. So, if you did want to do a Christmas sweatshirt, Christmas sweatshirts are also something that is very very attempted by pretty much every print on demand store. But if you scroll down often, you can find ones I wouldn’t do. Don’t do things like Nike funny. That one’s not really a double niche, but things like Christmas nurse, two completely unrelated, but can help you stick out. Instead of just a Christmas shirt, now you’re only applying to people who are also a nurse and also looking for a Christmas shirt. Same with things like
Oh, one other Christmas one. If you scroll down, you’ll find a bunch of them. Oh, Christmas cat. So, cat lovers and Christmas. So, this is combining niches to stick out. So, these are the two ways instead of create finding a brand brand new niche, how to stick out in those ones if you still wanted to design for them, but they are oversaturated and overdone by a lot of the other print on demanders out there. Sure. And you, as the printon-demand merchant out there, are uniquely poised to be able to take advantage of this particular strategy because, well, you don’t have to buy a whole bunch of cat mom or cat nurse Christmas shirts. You can create the designs, put them up for sale, and if uh and and sort of uh attack uh these these niches in different in different areas, in different ways, and boom, if you if you capture some sales, then then uh then more the marrier. Okay? But one thing I want to say about this before we move on because as you niche down, okay, and you start subniching and sub subniching and sub subniching, okay? It’s uh it’s it’s a great way to decrease your uh level of competition, but if you go down too far and get too specific, you start running out of customers as well. So, it’s important to do your research to make sure there’s a viable customer base in these sort of subniches. Uh otherwise, uh you’re you’re uh you’re not going to be able to uh find the customers that you’re looking for. An example would be left-handed auto mechanics from rural Ohio that are also into jet skiing. Now, I’m sure there’s somebody out there that that fits that bill. Uh whether or not they’re going to be on Etsy searching searching for your products is another question. Okay. But just keep that in mind as as you develop your strategy. Okay. Wonderful. This is why I like to look at the searches. Make sure there’s some searches there before going too crazy with it. And that is the other thing I like about Etsy is like you can if you wanted to post that under an engineering niche, you could you could keep it up and that one might sell. It’s not like that’s the only thing you sell, but yeah, but wouldn’t be writing or hoping that’s your best seller. Exactly. And I really like the fact that you’re using a tool like like E-rank because that is essential for doing your research so you know exactly where to spend your time and and focus your efforts. Okay. So, anybody out there who is uh thinking about using the strategy, find a keyword research tool like E-rank and make it part of your workflow. Okay, wonderful. Great. So, I’ve done all the heavy lifting. I’ve selected a niche. Now, Christina, what do I do next? Yeah. So, it really depends if you already know what product you want to sell or not. So, one thing I want to go over first is if you have picked I’m going to use like Pilates for example. You’ve done your research. We found out Pilates is kind of where we want our store to be, but now we don’t know what product. This is another really great use for E-Rank as well. If you already know what product you’re selling, then you’re finding the niches in which you want to sell under. But if we’re doing it the other way around, earlier I had mentioned in the like list of things that um were my kind of like passions that I would have designed for was Pilates. So, if I just type in Pilates, we’re going to see what types of things in Pilates people are searching for with E-Rank. So, you can see Pilates, we have Pilates gifts, Pilates shirt. So, this is super helpful because we know that we can use this with print on demand. But people are also searching for Pilates sweatshirts and a long sleeve Pilates shirt, which you might not have thought of. And this long sleeve Pilates shirt, you can see, gets quite a bit of searches, but barely any competition, even less than the Pilates shirt, even though this is already a great niche to begin with. Um, guys, do your own research. I know whenever I talk about Pilates, I know there’s a lot of people going to try Pilates up there. Now, it’s even better if you can find one of these, which is one of your passions, which I can guarantee you’re going to find if you start writing out those specific wants of yours. And I would like to also mention E-Rank and any other tool out there is not 100% accurate. They’re all based on really really intense algorithms to guess. So it’s not set in stone. you might find some discrepancies between like if you’re using E-rank or Sales Samurai, but it is such a fantastic way to get ideas and um yeah, it’s not 100% accurate, but is really helpful in just finding out where you want to go and what you want to test with your store. So yeah, if you’re doing a Pilates niche now, you have know that you should maybe try a Pilates shirt which you can print on demand. Pilates sweatshirt, you can put up some long sleeves shirts. We have Pilates tank tops, Pilates sweatshirts, Pilates stickers. So if you are going the product route, this is how you could decide what products you want to put into your Pilates store.
And then and yes, incorpor in incorporating this kind of data into your regular workflow is definitely a good thing for any print on demand merchant to in to make a part of their regular routine. Okay. As as you said, it’s based on a uh an an an an algorithm and although it’s not 100% accurate, what in this world is, okay, it’s it’s at least a great stone for you for you to use so you know where to spend your time. Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s a big thing is using data is really important when we’re trying to do things like this because yes, there is a lot of competition out there, but a lot of people aren’t using data. They’re just putting up things they think about um right away, which is how I started my store, but I feel like I could have gotten so much further if I had actually done any research or known how to do the research beforehand. and not only research and what we’re talking about now about niches, but in terms of finding the designs that are working, which I want to show you guys um soon as well um to also bring data into your designing for these niches. Exactly. And it’s a great way for you to separate yourself from the pack because as we know being an Etsy seller is very popular these days, but just like you said, not everybody is doing the right moves. They’re not incorporating the data. they’re not taking in in information from from from people like you that that know what they’re doing. So, do yourself a favor out there, incorporate this and grab some more of that pie. Okay, before we get on to the designs, I did promise our viewers that I was going to give away some money. And I am a man of my word. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to ask all of you to get out your Printify accounts. Navigate to the uh navigate using the little green button in the upper uh right hand side of your Printify dashboard. go down to where it says payments and then scroll down to where it says coupons and we’re going to give away today’s first coupon code. Whoever enters it in first will win $50 of Printify sales credit directly into their account. Let us know in the chat if you’re the winner so we can all celebrate. Okay, today’s first coupon code is see you online as in that is where you can find Christina on YouTube. Make sure you click on on her uh page, subscribe, and uh after you’ve subscribed to our YouTube page, of course, but just type it in just like this, and the first person who does so will be $50 richer. Congratulations, okay? But if you didn’t win, no worries. You will have a another chance later on in today’s presentation to win another 50 bucks. So stay tuned for that. All right. Well, let’s get into it. We teased it a little bit there at the beginning. Let’s talk about designs. How Okay. I’ve I’ve I’ve chosen my niche. I’ve chosen my products. How do I come up with designs that people actually want to buy? Yeah. So, I think the best thing for new people to do is spend a lot of time researching, and I’m going to show you how, but other people’s designs and what’s working. I think a lot of people start their store and start their designing without ever actually looking what’s selling for other people. And I’m not talking in terms of copying, but just looking at these helps you start almost doing it yourself. You need to see what’s working for other people. Otherwise, you’re never going to be able to implement the same things in your designs. So, I’m going to actually move over to my Etsy. So, I am going to give you guys a screen share. Share this tab instead. Okay. Let me know when this is up. Wonderful. We see your beautiful Etsy store right there. All right, perfect. So, say I’m going to again talk in the terms of Pilates. So, say I wanted to do a Pilates shirt. First, I want to know what’s selling for other people in this niche. So, I’m going to look up Pilates shirt. And the way that I like to find data, I’m going to show you two ways. Is one, I use Everbe, which is an extension. Um, it is also there is a free version. I currently have the paid version. I believe the free version gives you everything. You just have like a certain amount of searches a month, but I’m using this every day for tutorials, so I’m paying for it. But I’m going to go into product analytics and I’m going to filter by sales and see what’s selling. So, this one here, Pilates sweatshirt, has 260 sales. That’s pretty good. I’m going to take a look at it. I’m just going to open it. And you can see this is something pretty simple. So, I’m going to take note of this. I maybe take a screenshot. I’ll maybe like create a folder on my computer of just designs that I like. Maybe I can find a completely different font. Maybe I can turn this into a Pilates instructor shirt. Maybe I can change this heart into a completely different text. Maybe somewhat similar. Maybe I can make it a pocket design. I’m going to find ways to see what’s working for other people, but turn it into my own. And again, I’m going to take a screenshot. And then I’m also going to go through other niches that are maybe adjacent to this. So maybe I’d go through some yoga sweatshirts. Maybe I’ll go into some meditation sweatshirts. I’m going to think of other niches that are somewhat similar and see what’s selling for them. Let’s move back to this one.
I’m just going to see do a quick look at what else is selling in here. So, we have this one here. You had me at feet and straps. I’m not a huge fan. That one’s kind of funny. I’m not a huge fan of the font here, but one thing I’m getting is that textbased designs seem to be doing really good in this niche. The top two sellers are a very simple textbased design. Maybe I actually do like this type of font and this layout, but I don’t want to copy one. Maybe I think maybe I should put something similar onto a sweatshirt since this is doing so well as a t-shirt. But if another thing that I’ve been doing lately is using AI to help me come up with some textbased sayings to put on shirts.
Let’s move over here. So on Chat GPT, a lot of people have been using AI to help them come up with designs, but I love doing textbased designs and sometimes it’s just hard to kind of be punny in our own mind. So using AI and leveraging that has been really helpful. So Pilates is the art of controlled wobbling. I bend so I don’t break. I like that one. Sorry I can’t. It’s Pilates day. And then sometimes maybe they’re a little too long. So you can just like ask them to make it shorter. Pilates junkie. Which one did I like? Pilates over pizza. And I just ask them for 10. You could ask them for as many. If you don’t like the ones that you get, you can regenerate response. I found with certain niches, it comes up with some hilarious ones that I like have used on many designs. Some of them not as great. You can see on my side here, punny fishing t-shirt ideas, earth t-shirt ones. One that it came up with that I really loved was like planet over profit. Really, really good um to use. helps save some of that creativity thought when you are trying to get some text ideas. That’s wonderful. I love how you’re incorporating all these tools into uh running your print on demand business because a lot of people do this themselves and they don’t have a a support staff. So, finding all these little shortcuts and finding what works, I I think it’s absolutely wonderful and I hope everybody out there’s paying attention. Yes. Oh, and I did mean to show you guys. So, if you don’t have ever be another quick little way to look at best sellers um if you are doing research like this. So, there used to be a bestseller filter on Etsy, which unfortunately they got rid of, but it’s just hidden now. So, if you go to all filters, scroll down. We’re going to turn on stareller. And I don’t think you guys can see my URL bar, but at the top in the URL, can you can you switch your screen over to uh Etsy? Oh, yes. Sorry. There we go. So, I’m going to show you that again then. So, once I looked up Pilates shirt, I’m going to go to all filters. I’m going to turn on Star Seller here and hit apply. Stareller is not besteller. And I wish I could show you guys my URL, but I’ll just explain it up here. If you look in the URL after you’ve added the star seller, you’ll see a is_star_eller
in the URL. And what I’m going to do is I’m just going to change the word star to best. And now all of these page these things on the first page that are not an ad. I’ll say that. Make sure things are add those are paid to be there. These are going to be bestsellers. So I’m just going to open one. Share this instead. So, this is a bestseller. So, if you did want to not use any paid tools or any tools at all, this is a free way within Etsy to see what designs are doing really good in all of the niches that you’re looking in. That is a super cool hack. That’s awesome. Yeah, I wish it used to be an easy button click. I don’t know why they hid that one on us, but wonderful. Okay, great. So, um, wonderful. Uh, so, uh, great. I’ve got my products. I’ve got my niche. I’ve got my my designs all ready to go. Um, so let’s switch gears a little bit because I want to I want to I want to talk about that first little bit of success that you had. Okay. Now, what was it like to uh to get to finally realize that, oh my god, this this print on demand thing actually works? What’s that feeling like? It felt really I still remember my first sale. Um for a lot of people who don’t know um how my full story on how to get started. I did talk about my whole journey on how I got started with print on demand on the printing profits that first episode. Um so you guys can take a listen to that. But I’ll do a quick summary of like I had started many many different side hustles that were just not working out. Um losing money. So when I when I did start print on demand and saw it starting to work, it was such a relief. I remember my first sale. I don’t even think I made a profit on it. Um but it I remember sitting there and I was just like this is possible. And I remember like googling and everything like what do I do now that I made a sale? And the fact that you have to do nothing once you get a sale is just the weirdest feeling. It feels wrong. You’re like I feel like I need to do something. It’s just all automatic, which I was never used to because I did have a little business, Etsy business prior to print on demand, which actually had me burning out because every time I got an order, I had about 1 to two hours of work to do after each one. And now from going to that to this was just mind-blowing of like, wow, this is scalable. And that first sale is what really led me to like just going crazy in designing and really trying to make this work. Well, that’s great. That’s that’s the coolest thing about being a print on demand seller is because once that sale is made, boom, everything happens in the background. You can just concentrate on getting that next sale and that next sale and the sale after that. Okay. And and and you mentioned the word scalability and you mentioned the word word word scalable. So great. Now I’ve done all my research. I’ve optimized my listings. People are buying my products. How do I take my my uh print on demand business to the next level? Yeah. So, there’s a few ways. First, so my one favorite way is I just love to build up my store on what’s working. So, when I’m first starting my store, a lot of times I’m doing is I’m testing new niches, new designs, new keywords. But then once you start actually seeing what’s working is that’s when I’m starting to scale up in terms of what’s working. So if I see a certain product is the one that keeps selling for me, I’m going to be putting all my best sellers on that product. If I have a certain niche that’s selling like crazy and all my other niches that aren’t selling and I’m still trying to add those new ones, I’m just going to focus on what’s working. So finding what works for your store and really zoning into that and then making your storefront maybe more tailored to that is where you’re going to be able to start scaling your store even more and more because now that you also have more of a niche that has proven to work because you’ve already done your testing. Any marketing is going to become way easier. Personally I actually don’t do any paid marketing. I don’t do any Instagram, Tik Tok. That’s all for my content creator side of the business. I don’t want to do it for my print on demand side at all. Um, my whole thing with starting my print on demand business was to make it literally as passive as possible. And so doing any marketing for me wasn’t the way. But now that you have a niche, if that is where you want to go, if you want to start an Instagram, a Tik Tok, start your Pinterest or any other marketing, it’s going to become a lot easier because you have a niche and targeting those people who are going to be interested in it is going to be a lot easier. Sure. And by and by the time you you’re successful in in that niche, whether it’s something whether it’s a niche that’s close to your heart or not, you’re going to be you’re going to have learned so much about that. So when it comes time to take uh to take that step into social media, you’re you’re going to know exactly uh what to do and in which direction to take it. So that’s absolutely wonderful. And um um and and I want to go back to something you said earlier about uh about your socials because you’re super active on on social media, on Tik Tok, on on YouTube, and I want to I I want to explore that here. um why did you make the decision to become this voice in in print on demand and and and give back to the community? So, it’s actually funny how it all started cuz it didn’t it being a content creator was not something I ever saw for myself. It was not planned. Um, so what had happened, I was actually just a year and a bit ago, just right before I started posting on TikTok, was extremely camera shy. Um, even the fact that I’m doing this now, still had lots of nerves for the last few days, but even just posting anything online was a lot. Um, so I actually had a dare with a friend. This was at the end um of 2021 when my store had just had its biggest month. her and I made just a bet that we would both post something on social media with our face talking to it so we can practice getting over um talking in front of a camera. And I decided to make mine about my success that I had on my print on demand store that month and my first Tik Tok blew up and I woke up with 800,000 views with about 40,000 subscribers in the first day. um sorry 40,000 followers on Tik Tok and tons of people just asking me how I did it and I remember waking up I was like oh god I I guess I have I’m helping people now I just never thought I would get any traction didn’t see it but after that I just started posting some tips um because so many people are asking I was just doing like the respond button like reply to comment um button and helping people with that and it just started getting more and more comfortable with it. Um, started having a lot more fun with it and it’s just been this ever growing thing since that started happening that’s just been running on the side. Again, my print on demand business, the whole point of it was to be super super passive. And that print on demand also allowed me to quit my job. So, I had a lot of time. So, it’s kind of been all my extra time on top of my print on demand store, which I honestly maybe spend a few maybe a few hours on my print on demand store um a week now. Um I also I can’t remember if I’ve told you, but I’ve hired help um someone who manages my print on demand store now. So, I have the extra time and it’s just been something one that’s pushed me like crazy because it was something I would have never pictured for myself. And two, just hearing some of the comments that you get that someone got their first sale or someone started because of you and those have just been really, really, really rewarding to hear and pretty much why I’ve continued doing it. Okay. Well, that just shows you how passionate this community uh really is. Print on demand. I mean, it brings in so so many people from so many different walks of life, all with a passion to uh to have the kind of success that you did. And you mentioned something there in passing that I I want to get across to our to to our audience there because you said you hired some help, which is something um that not everybody that reaches the your level of success does because they want to keep it all under one roof, that sort of thing. But uh I I it’s it’s what I like to call a good problem. There’s so much business that you that you need need to bring someone on board. So if if you do excuse me when you reach that level of success, really consider getting some outside help so that you can focus on uh growing your business and and that sort of thing. Okay. Wonderful. Okay. Well, before we get to the live Q&A uh portion of today’s webinar, if if everybody watching can take one thing away from the discussion that we had today, what would that be? Christina, I think what print on demand requires is that research and that research is not hard to do and everyone can do it. The problem is and the reason a lot and a lot of people fail on Etsy and print on demand is because they are expecting this immediate payoff. And unfortunately, when you’re first starting, it is going to be really hard to stick out right at the beginning. This is why we’re testing and throwing in those niches where we can stick out in. But you’re also going to need some patience and just accept that you are in a learning phase. You’re starting in a business where you are going to have to learn a lot. And that includes that research on both niches, on product, on your competitors. And to get your first sale might take a little bit longer than you expect because a lot of people just expect their first listings to be great. But I can guarantee six months in, if you were still doing the six months in, you are going to look back at those listings you did in the first month and you are going to see and understand why they didn’t sell. Right? We think things are great right away. But print on demand is very exponential growth. You start getting traction. You start ranking higher. People trust you more. So a lot of people fall off before they overcome that learning curve, that research curve, and before their store can really kick off. Exactly. Take in that data, make datadriven decisions. And I will say working with the with with the biggest merchants here at Printify over the years, I have come across some people that did find that initial success. And it’s almost a curse because none of them have long-term success because they get that they get that initial success and they think this is easy. I don’t have to work at this. This is I don’t have to do anything. But eventually that success peters out and they think, “Oh, well then then this isn’t for me.” So, take a page out of Christina’s book, do do the heavy lifting, incorporate the data, do what it do, do do what it takes, build your success over time, and like you said, six 6 months in, you’re going to look back and and say and and and really be thankful um that you that you put in that effort. Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much, uh uh Christina. Um and we’re going to switch it over to uh our live Q&A portion here just in a minute, but I promised to give away a little bit more money. And again, I’m a man of my word. So, I’m going to ask everybody to pull out their Printify accounts, uh, uh, navigate to the payment section by clicking on the little green button in the upper right, go down to payments, uh, find the coupon code, and, uh, shout out to Papa John52. I believe he was the winner of the first uh, $50 giveaway. Congratulations. Now, if you want to be just like Papa John52 out there and win $50 of Printify sales credit, get ready to put in the second coupon code, and it is subscribe right now. All one word written just like this. And once you are done trying to win uh $50 of Printify sales credit, subscribe to our YouTube channel while you’re there if you haven’t already. We’ve got tons of awesome videos in our video section about everything in the print on demand universe and also uh our podcast featuring uh awesome superstars like Christina Umrez who is joining us today. Um but if you have missed anything in today’s presentation, you want to go back like say you missed her describe that cool little Etsy hack that she described earlier about putting the uh about messing with the URL, all you need to do is go to the live section of our YouTube uh of our YouTube page, re-watch this video. It’ll be up as soon as we’re done today. Um, but uh, take advantage of that. Watch it over and over and over again until you know it like the back of your hand. Okay. All right. Well, let’s transition over and talk about our live Q&A. Okay. All right. Um, so our first question today comes from Bonnie. Thank you so much for joining us today, Bonnie. Bonnie’s question is, “I make digital mandalas. Can that be a niche all by itself? Currently selling canvas art, tote bags, mugs, and wall art clocks. So, I would definitely start doing the research on that exactly like we had shown earlier. One, I would look up Mandala on E-rank. And another thing you can do, um, sorry, can I let me do a quick screen share again? Um, if you guys are okay with me moving over. Another thing you can do is on Etsy, if you just type in Mandala right at the top here, you can actually see recent searches for Mandala. So, I just looked it up. Ignore this little B that you see. The B is actually my Everbe. So, you’ll see this if you have ever B and you pay for it. But otherwise, you’re just going to see these. So, you’re going to see people are actually commonly searching for Mandala art, Mandala wall art, Mandala coloring pages, Mandala stencil, Mandala SVG. So you can use this type of data to kind of work out what you want to sell those mandalas on and what type of products. U mandala tapestry is another great one that I’ve seen do really well. So if you wanted mandalas to be your main niche I do think that could work. Just test the different products. Wonderful. Well, there’s a a a free little hack and then you can take it to the next level by using one of the tools like E-rank uh to sort of uh see see uh see the uh trending keywords so you know how to build your titles uh titles and descriptions. Okay, wonderful. Thank you for your question, Bonnie. Um our next question comes from Woodcrafter in your pocket. Thank you, Woodcrafter in your pocket for joining us. What a wonderful name. Um, Woodcrafter’s uh question is, “How do you change a six-month-old semi-niche store with no traffic into a branded niche store that is seen?” So, I would start testing out those new niches. I’m not sure what your old store was, and if it’s related, if it’s not related, I and you’re not moving forward with it, I would just take everything off. I have revived old Etsy stores, completely changed them, took down everything, redone the branding. If you’re not getting any views, there is definitely an issue with either SEO or niches. Um, so I would definitely first try to figure out what the point was in the last one that didn’t work out, but you can definitely revamp your store. Pick that niche that you would like and start testing with that already knowing that the last one wasn’t working out and just like leaving that one. But if you did want to keep that old one alive and keep it up, maybe just again revisit what’s not working, see if you can get it to work and then maybe eventually take it down when you find things that are working for it. Sure. And uh you can all you can always just start a whole new Etsy store and connect that to your Printify account as well. So you can kind of keep that one going that has been around for six months and maybe kind of use that sort of data driven research to see if you can get that going again all while starting up a whole new store um and uh and connect that up to your Printify account. You can connect up to five stores uh to to your Printify account. But if you have Printify Premium, you can do up to 10. So there you go. Okay. Um wonderful. Thank you for your question, Woodcrafter in Your Pocket. Uh moving along, the next question comes from Ben. Ben asks, um, if I want multiple Etsy store/niches, do I have to pay more for, uh, pay for more DBAs? Is there a free fee to having multiple Etsy stores? Well, here’s that multiple Etsy again. Yeah. So, I will give a warning. Managing multiple Etsy stores can become a lot, especially if you’re trying to grow one. Um, that’s why my store was more general growing. You are not going to be paying more because again, multiple stores. Etsy, you’re not paying. You’re only paying for um like new listings going up. So, it doesn’t cost you anything to have multiple. I have had multiple in the past. I’ve shut down other ones because I’ve realized just how much managing multiple stores becomes. So, do be careful with that. Instead, I would try to pick one and stick with it and focus on growing one um and doing research for one, which is going to become a lot easier. But there’s no cost issue with it. Well, there you go. Yes. Oh, and uh back to uh if you if you’re revamping your Etsy store, I think Etsy allows you to change your store’s name like up to five times. Um and then after that, you kind of just have to reach out to them and say, “Hey, this is what I’m doing.” Uh but there’s there’s nothing in the uh system to prevent you from uh revamping, rebranding, that sort of thing. Okay. Uh next question comes from Cappy Bravo. Um uh what do you use to write your SEO? So a lot of times, so what I’m doing is again I’m using E-Rank to find that main keyword. So say we talked about like Plotty’s mom sweatshirt. I found on Egank is my main keyword that has tons of searches, tons of um or less competition. Usually I have certain ones I always use, but the best way that I can say for other people to quickly come up with new SEO and find what other people are using is look up that main keyword. So if I’m going to look up I have this open. So if I look up mom’s sweatshirt, I’m going to open all the other listings that are showing on page one that are not an ad. And I’m going to take a look at the other um like keywords and tags that they’re using. So I’m going to switch over to my screen share again on this same page here. This breeze symbol. I’m not a fan of their title here, but I’m going to show you how you can take a look at other people’s tags. So if you have ever, you can use it this way. Um this way is also great because it gives you volume. So, if I was doing a yoga shirt, I could see that namaste is getting some searches. I don’t really like this one for an example. But another way, if you don’t have everbe, if you scroll down and you take a look at explore related searches, these are all the keywords that they’re using. So, you can use this for help. So, I’m just going to show a better example. Let’s do like Pilates shirt.
Let’s Let’s do this one here. So, we have workout motivation shirt, Pilates mom shirt, Pilates shirt, Pilates gift,
and then their tags that they’re using. Pilates yoga shirt, Pilates gift, Pilates gifts, Pilates shirts, Pilates shirt. So often what I’m doing is I’m going through other people who have a similar design and seeing which ones are working for them but are also applicable to my design. If they don’t apply to my design, it doesn’t matter because you need to think if someone types this in the search bar and my listing shows up, is this what they were looking for? If it’s not relevant, it’s not going to work for you anyway, even if it has tons of searches. So just by grabbing the ones that are applicable to you is how I quickly come up with SEO. Okay. Wonderful. Wow. Thank you for the demonstration. I hope you’re paying attention. Copy bravo. Okay. The next question comes from Natalie. Thank you Natalie for joining us today. Um can there be too many designs on a store? So, what I like the one of my top the top selling print on demand stores that I take a look at, a lot of people know this name um is Ikerson Ltd. They have over 6,500 listings up. They are making hundreds and hundreds of sales a day. On Etsy, there’s a difference between on Shopify and Etsy. On Etsy, people are finding you by your individual listing. They’re not searching by your brand name. They didn’t come into your store because they know you sell mom shirts only. They found you on this search page and they found this exact listing they want. And another great thing what Etsy does, so say I found this store through a Pilates shirt. If I click into their store, let me show you here. If I click into their store right here,
what they actually do is under relevance, which is automatically usually applied. Oh, let me show this tab here. Etsy is going to sort this by related shirts only. So, if I had found this store through, say, one of their funny, sarcastic shirts, all of these other listings that are showing me first are going to be the funny sarcastic shirts. So, it’s not the same for everybody. So, actually, the more you have out there, the more terms and terms and keywords that you’re covering. So, like this person, they broke it up by different um sections, which I highly recommend doing. Breaking down your page by different sections and you’re being found by those individual listings. So, having many, many up there is not bad. But I do would say still be focused on quality, not just quantity. Your shirts still need to be good. Exactly. I think they have a team. They are putting up so many new ones a day. Yes. Qu Don’t forget about the quality when you’re going for quantity. Good. Good. Good. Uh good way to end wrap up that that question. Okay. The next question comes from Marcus2401. Um for a beginner Etsy seller, what is your recommended way of marketing? paid ads or social media. So, I would focus first. This is the tricky. I don’t do ads. Ads can really help you out starting, but they might not be profitable, but I really think you need to nail down your organic marketing first, which is your Etsy SEO. I don’t do Etsy ads and I don’t do social media. What you first want to nail down is getting the right niches and nailing the right designs. Otherwise, your marketing is going to be mean nothing. So, even when people talk about running Etsy ads, they often say only run them for your designs that are already selling organically because they’ve been proven to work. So, that’s kind of my advice is focus on nailing your SEO, which is your organic marketing, first and getting those sales and views without having to rely on any marketing. And then you can scale upwards with your social media later when you find out what’s working and what’s good. Yes. And I want to double down on that because my advice to new people that are starting is always the same. Um if you think that you just uh start up start up everything and on day two you just start running ads and and think the uh sales are going to come in. What you’re going to do is you might you’re probably just paying for views but they aren’t going to add up to conversions. Okay? Because you haven’t um you haven’t optimized the SEO. you maybe haven’t uh done the uh done your mockup images correctly. Um but so I always recommend for people to do all that free stuff first like uh like the organic and and things like that. And then once you understand the business, once you have a a firm grip on which direction you want to take your store, that sort of thing, and the sales start coming in and you and and eventually after a while, those sales are going to plateau. And then that’s when you start making those decisions to take it to the to the next level, whether that’s paid ads or getting uh hiring uh hiring outside marketing firms, whatever it might be. But yeah, in the beginning, save your money because you likely be just throwing it away anyways. Okay. Yeah. Uh we have two more questions. Uh the uh this one comes from Linda Blford. Uh Linda says, “I’ve sold a couple of Jewish New Year coffee mugs and napkins. What other products can I add for the same customer?” Very specific. very seriously. So, this is again where I would start finding out what selling within that niche. One, I don’t know what designs exactly there were. Maybe they were really applicable to only just mugs, but if they could be put on new products, I’d be putting them on new products. It sounds like those might have been like holiday related. So, you kind of want to find some evergreen niches within that Jewish niche. So, same thing as before, I’d be looking up on E-rank some of the keywords that you were found with for that product and see what else you could be making that’s similar. Um, could you remind me what did she say was the m the best seller? Something on a mug? Uh, yeah, she was sell she sold a couple Jewish New Year coffee mugs and napkins. Okay. So, yeah, Jewish New Year. Is there any other niches or any other holidays you could apply to? But one thing I love to do is grow evergreen. So, I’d be making maybe focus on the Jewish niche, but finding some other evergreen Jewish niches that aren’t tied to holidays so that those can sell year round. So, again, this is where I’d be. Yeah, definitely using E-Rank, doing my research on Etsy, searching up what else is selling within this niche. Okay. Yeah. And do and do yourself a favor, too, and put yourself in the mindset of the customer that you’re targeting. Take a uh browse through our catalog. We’ve got like over 800 some products and think about what they would like to receive as a gift, what they would like to receive themselves, what they would like to buy and give to others, that sort of thing. Okay? Because the beauty of being a printon- demand seller is you can try out these new products, put your designs on them. And if and if it it it uh if your if your target customer wants it and they buy it, well then great. But then if they don’t, you’re really not you’re really not out any any big money. You’re really out only your time. And you’ve learned something. you’ve learned that this product doesn’t work and then you move on to the next product. Okay? And you never know what’s going to catch on. You never know what’s going to be popular in that zeitgeist. But if you are a participant in that niche, you can react super quickly to uh to things that are going on and uh if you have the designs already or using a uh design tool, come up with a design quickly and you can literally be selling in minutes. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, today’s last question comes from Zik Safia. Hope I’m pronouncing your name correctly. I’m probably butchering it, so my apologies. But, uh, the last question for today’s webinar is, I sell canvases of different cities all over the world. Do you think that niche is specific enough? I definitely think that is very specific. Um, I’ve had great I think cities, one you can be super super specific with cities. There’s so many cities. Um, and they don’t have to be the main ones out there. There was actually, I’ll tell a quick story. Um, someone once had me create a shirt for this city I had never heard of. It was somewhere in Europe. Never heard of it, not a travel town. And it was a custom order, but I left it up in my listings and it kept selling. And I was wondering like why? But it’s because no one’s ever designed for them before. No one really knows about it, but the people from there know about it. So, I think cities is somewhere where you can really expand. Um, another thing I would highly recommend is for people who um, you’re trying to design for, maybe you could have a custom listing for those cities that you haven’t covered yet. Custom City canvas um, could really help out. Every time you make one of those custom ones, list it on Etsy and now it’s up there for other people to buy as well. Um, so yeah, I think that could be a great way to go. Just make sure you’re studying competitors, make sure you’re doing it better than them or finding a way to stick out. Sure. Yeah. and make sure you’re able to uh accept requests for I’ll I’ll do I’ll do your town and boom, you never know if it’s going to be that one town like you said nobody’s designed for and then boom, you’re selling your products are are walking the streets of small town Europe uh left and right. Okay. Wonderful. Well, before we say goodbye to Christina, I want to do one more plug for my live Q&A sessions that I do myself on Mondays and Wednesdays. We’re going to pop that link into the chat. Join me. We can talk about anything that we discussed in today’s webinar or anything in the printon demand universe. I love doing whatever I can to share my expertise with you to make you more profitable and more knowledgeable. Join me Mondays and Wednesdays 100% free. I’ll see you there. Okay. Wow. Well, Christina, we’ve learned a lot and so there is so much information on this. Don’t feel don’t feel bad if you if if you missed a bit of it. Just go back and and watch it on replay as soon as this goes up in the live section of our YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe. And speaking of subscribe, follow Christina on all her socials, on her Tik Tok, on our on on our YouTube and everywhere else. We’re going to put those in into the chat and those will live on in the description. We’ve learned so much today. We’ve learned about uh making data driven decisions. We’ve learned Christina loves Pilates and we learned that she’s just a little bit under the weather. So, we wish you the best and a speedy recovery. Christina, thank you so much for joining us. I think this was uh this may be the best webinar we’ve ever done and it’s all because of you. So, thank you for sharing your time with us and should thank you for sharing your information to make everybody watching a more uh profitable print on demand seller. Okay. Oh, and be sure we’re going to pop the link into the chat for uh the uh for the survey. And on that survey, well, you will find today’s trivia question based on the information that we uh discussed. And three lucky winners, three random winners who answer today’s uh trivia question correctly will win a Printify webinars hoodie. a Printify webinars mug that is personalized and uh $50 of Printify sales credit. And Christina, you’re giving away something, too. Tell us what you’re giving away. Yes, for one of the lucky winners that fills out the trivia question, I am giving away um one free access to my course along with my live membership. So, the course is covering everything Printify, Etsy, designing with Canva. And then as well, you’ll get access to my research newsletter. So, every two weeks I do trending, I do niche ideas for people. Um, and then as well bi-weekly live calls, plus 247 access to my private Facebook group where we are a super super active community. Um, you’ll hear back on any question you have extremely quickly. So, been loving running that group and would love for one of you guys to join it. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. So, one of you lucky winners will will win access to that. We’ll be in contact with the winners. Fill out the survey, answer the question. Thank you for joining us and join us next time. Christina, thank you for sharing your time. and everyone out there, good luck, happy sales, and we’ll see you next time. Awesome. Thank you so much, Barton.