This article is based on my personal experience in starting a successful print-on-demand business on Amazon. Let me begin with a disclaimer: it took me over 12 months to make my first sale. It was definitely not an overnight success, but sales are now growing steadily.

230 items sold on Amazon from January 1 through November 4, 2024.

In this article:

• How to get started
• Choosing what to sell
• Keys to success
• Enhancing listing quality
• Automating your print-on-demand business
• Scaling your business

How to get started

There are 2 ways to sell print-on-demand products on Amazon:

• Seller Central Amazon Seller Central is a platform for third-party sellers to sell a wide range of products directly to Amazon customers.
• Merch by Amazon Merch by Amazon is a print-on-demand service primarily for custom apparel, where sellers create designs that Amazon prints, lists, and ships to customers.

You can spend a study on what is best, I have chosen to use Seller Central. This gives me the freedom to choose a fulfilment partner myself. This means that you can always change to another fulfiment partner if they offers better quality or pricing. The downside of seller central is that you immediately pay $40 per month.

What Do You Want to Sell?

In my opinion there are 2 types of designs sold by print-on-demand sellers:

• Generic and trend-sensitive designs.
• Unique designs with names.

The advantage of generic designs is that you can sell a lot of them in a short time. The disadvantage of these designs is that you have a lot of competition on them. For example: print-on-demand products related to the presidential election.

I prefer to sell designs with people's names. You have little competition on these designs and you also sell them outside the sales seasons. For example: AJ you are the sweetest dad. (This does require some automation and scaling)

Keys to Success

Don't quit too early! You need a lot of patience and it takes a while to get the Amazon buy-box. And it may take a while before you get your first order.

I have the following tips to become successful:

• Set up your seller central account properly. Your shipping profiles must be accurate. Don't promise next day shipping if you can't deliver.
• Sell ​​high-margin products. (I sell mostly ceramic mugs with a margin of $10 per unit)
• Upload at least 1.000 listings per month for 12 consecutive months.

Enhancing Listing Quality

In a competitive world, it is important that your listing stands out. Your product title and description must contain relevant keywords. For example, rather than "Funny Coffee Mug," a more effective title could be "Funny Coffee Mug - Cute Ceramic Mug with Dog Lover - 11oz Gift for Pet Owners."

High-Quality images (that's the main reason I developed MockupLaunch 📷). I want to provide all my listings with multiple high-quality images that show the design well on the product. Customers are savvy, and they expect an accurate preview of what they're buying. High-quality visuals create trust and help reduce returns due to unmet expectations.

Listing mockup example: Woman with 11oz Mug.

Automate Your Print-on-Demand Business

As mentioned before I like to make products with people's names and I currently upload over 1.000 new products per month and I want to do this in as little time as possible. It currently takes me only 5 minutes per month. I use a free upload tool (you can ask me which one 😁).

In the upload process, mockups are created using the MockupLaunch API. So I can be sure that all listings has the best quality.

Scaling Your Business

Achieving growth in this competitive space can be hard. Growth is achievable with a strategic approach that prioritizes differentiation, listing quality, and customer engagement. Here are several tips to scale your print-on-demand business effectively:

• Differentiate your product collection from t-shirts, hoodies, mugs to wall art.
• Consider selling on other platforms like: Etsy or Shopify
• Keep uploading at least 1.000 listings per month.