📝 How to Make $10,000 a Month with Print on Demand: 7 Tactics to Stand Out
Are you tired of seeing other shops generate tens of thousands of dollars a month while you're left picking up scraps or worse, getting nothing at all? After growing my own multi-million dollar print on demand business for four years, I can confidently tell you that reaching $10,000 a month isn't too difficult if you follow the steps that are in this video. In this article, I'll share with you seven tactics that will take you from being one of many to one of few without having to outwork everyone or burn out in the process.
🎯 Step 1: Getting Started
One of the primary reasons that 99% of people don't actually reach their financial goals is because they simply don't know where or how to get started. You may feel lost in information and potential opportunities that are around you, paralyzing you from getting started. In my experience, starting is the hardest step. Just getting signed up and positioned to start your business or side hustle puts you ahead of 80% of the other people, which makes you 80% more likely to reach your financial goals. This is the first and most essential step that can never be skipped, and it only has to be done once.
📈 Step 2: Overcoming the Oversaturation Myth
A common belief with dropshipping and print on demand is that the market is oversaturated. The idea that there are more sellers than buyers for the products that are available can be discouraging. However, with over 7 million competing sellers, there must not be any room to actually win, right? To explain this, we have to talk about a video that I made about a year ago. If you had followed this tutorial from the beginning of the year where I showed you how to use AI to make digital download art, you could have done something pretty incredible like the handful of people who actually got started. A lot of people were scared since there are millions of other listings in this niche, but a few people pushed on regardless. See if you had decided to try this out as well, you may have found that like this shop called Antique White Art that opened on February 18th, which was just 22 days after I posted that initial video. What they did was ignore the competition and consistently post listings for months until things really took off. Now with over 30,000 sales and about $189,000 in revenue over the last 11 months, this shop is doing quite well, and all this beautiful artwork that's making them a fortune is made using AI. This is just someone from Austria using this strategy to make a bag online, and sure, maybe this is just a one-off example, except that it's not. This shop called Lexington Prince uses the exact same business model that I dove into in detail a year ago, and they've just been slightly less successful with about 13,000 sales. But what makes this shop so unique is they started selling all of their AI artwork on August 8th of 2023, which means that all of their success happened in the last 4 months' time. They clearly didn't care about the millions of other listings that they were competing with. I think it's safe to say that t-shirts are another competitive niche, right? With about 10 million other listings, how could anybody be successful? Well, what about this shop called US Quality Shirts? They're not doing anything too crazy. All of their designs could be made in Canva or Inigma like what I teach. But what's most interesting is that they joined Etsy January 27th of this year. They didn't make any sales at first, but because they were consistent in March, they finally started to take off, and they ended up making over 28,000 sales so far in their first year. Were they worried about selling one of the most competitive products on Etsy? No, they just made it work. Becoming a successful seller doesn't mean running away from the competition or finding a hidden niche. It means finding competitive products that have high demand and adding a small unique twist. If you had followed my AI product tutorials, you would be set for years. The problem is that 99% of people get paralysis when they see all the competition, and they feel like there's no spot for them. With the billions of dollars that are spent on Etsy each year, there's a spot for everyone. You simply have to carve out a spot for yourself. Competition means that there's demand.
💪 Step 3: Learn and Try
Maybe you did watch my videos from a year ago when AI was blowing onto the scene, and you were part of the few that actually tried it. But as the year went on, you didn't see as many sales as you would have liked. So over time, you slowly stopped trying as hard. But what if I told you that to reach 10 or even $20,000 a month, all you had to do was simply follow the method of learn and try? See some shops open up and post 137 listings for sale. They're all basically the same product, and they seem simple enough. And after just being open for 6 months, they're pulling in well over six figures. That's obviously ideal, but for a lot of shops, it takes months of work without seeing any kind of payoff. That's definitely the case with this shop that's selling AI-generated mockups, which I mentioned in a video earlier this year as well. They had to post over 2,900 listings to finally grow their shop to the point it's at. I'm sure that a lot of their mock-ups didn't sell, but that's okay because look at how successful they are now. When you have a longer-term mentality, you're able to keep going, keep making products without feeling like a failure or like you're wasting your time. This beautiful meme explains success quite simply: "I'm telling you that all you have to do is learn and try." The issue is that most people will reach the upper stage where they don't get any results, and they feel overwhelmed with all of the work that they have before them. This is also known as the valley of despair. But eventually, if you keep learning and trying, you'll get the results that you're after. The difference between the 99% and the 1% is twofold. First, they don't give up on learning and trying because that's all there is to do anyway. Second is arguably the hardest sacrifice that you'll make in growing your business, and that's the sacrifice of time. It's incredibly painful to spend time working on something with uncertainty that it's going to pay off in the way that you had it planned out in your head. When you're learning and trying to grow your business, you have to just allow time for it to grow.
📊 Step 4: Build a Strong System
If your motivation fails, and you're feeling discouraged, you have to fall back on a system. A good system allows you to sit down and work on your business at different stages of the process, regardless of how you feel about the work. This is why I developed the templatized produce post system. You build out a template, which is an almost finished product that we can slightly modify in multiple ways to get a completely new product. Large shops have understood for a while that having more listings directly correlates to more sales. Just looking at the top seven-figure shops, they all have thousands of listings, making them millions of dollars. So if listings are a variable that we can control, a good system would allow us to post more listings while working less on our business. Back when I got started out, I opened up my shop and posted a few listings for sale, and then I'd work on it a little bit here and there, some weeks being much more consistent than others. I remember sitting in the corner of my room at my desk, staring at the screen. I had made maybe my 10th sale online. I felt like it was never going to be enough money if I could only make 10 sales every month or every week or whatever it was. Now, instead of being like, "Ah, this kind of sucks. Maybe I should switch businesses or get a higher paying job," I decided to double down and build out a system that would allow me to increase the only thing that was in my control: my output. If I work the system enough, I can predict the output. The strong system means that even when I don't feel like doing something, I can walk through the process, and the system will help me knock it out. 99% of people who start this business just start throwing stuff at the wall, hoping that something will stick. Only a very, very small percentage of people take the time necessary to build out a great system that allows them to continuously scale their business.
🎁 Step 5: Master One Product at a Time
You must master one product at a time. This is difficult to do because 99% of people will post multiple products to widen their net, thinking they'll get more sales. But it'll backfire because the other 1% of people who are only focused on one product will always beat them. You do this by making the product your niche and then targeting customers using designs and positioning. But again, don't believe me. Look at the numbers. This shop is selling mugs and even more specifically, just print on demand camper mugs. If we look at their overall sales, they've sold over 21,000 units, and Allura estimates that they've made $111,000 just this month. This shop is selling just ornaments. Now, this might not seem too special or impressive. Plus, people only buy ornaments once a year for Christmas, so their sales probably aren't that good, right? Well, Allura estimates that this shop has made millions of dollars since they opened up just 5 years ago. Even the newer, less established shops that are still focused on just one product, such as ornaments, are able to compete and make hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a couple of years just by staying focused. This approach can make you feel like you're missing out on selling everything else when, in reality, you're just maximizing how much you're going to make with one product. My own six-figure shops are each focused on just selling one product. One shop just sells print on demand products like the ornament shops that we just looked at. By focusing on one product, I can be more effective than any of the competition who's trying to master two or more products at a time. They'll be half as effective selling each of their products. Now, at my stage, I do run multiple shops that each have their own product, but I'm able to do that because I've grown each of the products and learned how to scale them past six figures.
🌟 Step 6: Believe in Yourself
The final reason that prevents people from reaching their financial goals with print on demand dropshipping is that 99% of people genuinely don't believe that it's possible, or they do believe that it's possible, but they aren't sure if it's possible for them. This disbelief will cause most people to never take even the first step towards success. Why would you even start if you don't think you can get there? This is why it's important to show you behind the scenes of real-life shops that you can check out for yourself. All of the numbers and data are available publicly. This is also why I've built the Alec Discord, where our community can check out some of the wins from other people in the same position as where you might be doing the same exact business. This is why I'll show you the actual numbers from the viewers who are subscribed to my channel and making thousands of dollars a month. This is why I recommend coming and scrolling through and looking at these seven and eight-figure shops, looking at these businesses and studying what they're doing so well, absorbing their vibes and their success, and basically surrounding yourself with success will program you to believe and act differently. You'll start to see frequencies and patterns, and you'll notice that you start to choose to act like a successful business owner, not just some random shop online. I show you these things not to flex on you because there's plenty of other people who can do that better than I can, but rather to get you to believe what's truly possible. This business is not reserved for anyone special but rather just those who are willing to commit to learn and try.
🤔 FAQ
Q: Is it really possible to make $10,000 a month with print on demand?
A: Yes, it's possible. Many shops have done it, and with the right tactics and mindset, you can too.
Q: Do I need to be a graphic designer to succeed in print on demand?
A: No, you don't. There are many tools and resources available that can help you create designs even if you have no design experience.
Q: How long does it take to start making money with print on demand?
A: It varies from person to person, but with the right approach and consistency, you can start seeing results within a few months.
Q: Is print on demand a saturated market?
A: While there is competition, there is also high demand for unique and personalized products, making it a viable business opportunity.
Q: Can I do print on demand as a side hustle?
A: Yes, many people start with print on demand as a side hustle and eventually grow it into a full-time business.
🌐 Resources
- [Voc.ai AI Chatbot](https://www.voc.ai/product/ai-chatbot) - An AI chatbot that can automatically reduce a large amount of work on customer services.
