[JOURNEY] Road to 1k POD designs

good luck

This might interest you: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/how-to-sell-print-on-demand-products-in-2020.1197493/

An interesting journey, wish you success

How is it going? Looking forward for update

Hey mates, hope you've been well. Finally, I have the time to do this now, so yeah, I'm back and couraged.
I decided on the overall strategy for next month, I'll update on what I'm doing soon.

Razen666 said:

Keep doing what u do! it makes u money so u should keep uploading more designs. Do a chalenge and see if you can do like 50 designs in 1 day with keyword research etc.

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Thanks, bro. The thing is, right now quality matters because artists are moving to POD. Some of them making thousands of $$ with just 30-50 extremely high-quality art designs, while other POD designers with 2000-3000 designs making hundreds.
So the best challenge I can do right now is to finish f*cking lessons.

resickh said:

Hey mate best of luck. I will be following and supporting this.

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Thanks! I wish you success in your things too.

LordChap said:

Fantastic journey - keep pushing bro!

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Thanks, mate! Appreciate it! I hope you'll do well too.

thescrrr said:

Interesting journey, why don't you add amazon merch to the mix?

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Ah, I got rejected by amazon merch over and over again, so to get into amazon with other options is quite expensive for me. I mean, it's f*cking expensive.

hiciki said:

good luck

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Thanks! I wish you luck too!

TheVigilante said:

This might interest you: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/how-to-sell-print-on-demand-products-in-2020.1197493/

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Sorry, bro, I despise that. There is no any proof of the success of what that article described. There is no valuable info for me, also I have doubts about too many things. I literally can crush almost all points of that article, and that unmasked affiliate promotion of crap software is really disgusting. I know you want traffic, but sorry, to be honest, you failed to provide really nice stuff.

Zerks said:

An interesting journey, wish you success

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Thanks, mate! I wish you success too!

tum01 said:

How is it going? Looking forward for update

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I'm polishing my methods now.
Instagram seems harder then I thought, so yeah, need some more time to learn.

I'll make some case studies if I succeed in my current ideas.

the only way to make good money with POD is if you sell it yourself (from your own store) instead of relying on zazzle, redbubble, etc to sell it for you

FrostPepe said:

the only way to make good money with POD is if you sell it yourself (from your own store) instead of relying on zazzle, redbubble, etc to sell it for you

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That's incorrect, mate. I personally knew the guy who makes 80-100k $$$ per year from marketplaces. Though, half of that from Amazon Merch. He does ZERO marketing, but he is an artist with amazing skills. That's why I began this journey but stopped multiple times by IRL issues.
There are hundreds of people like him, and I believe that with skills and persistence it's achievable.

Hi, I am newbie here , are there any platforms for design other than merch by Amazon

any updates ?

alexismcbx said:

any updates ?

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Sure, friend. Thanks for your interest.

I came down with the flu last week (luckily, it's just the flu), so I didn't do much and there is nothing to report.

However, things are not standing still, I'm taking lessons about AI, and, also, began to warm up IG accounts. The funny thing here: I have 2 personal and 2 business accounts. And it seems like both of my business accounts are shadowbanned. Literally zero engagement, while, on the other hand, some posts on my personal accounts went viral. I'll post 2 more days and look at the results. If they won't be satisfying, I'll just switch back to personal accounts.

What am I aiming for right now:

1) Adobe Illustrator skills. There will be no questions about creating designs ever. Better quality of the designs = better possibilities and earning potential. Also, there is an idea of selling "personalized" designs (as service).

2) Direct marketing. I'll do IG F/uF and dm new followers for that, also I will try Twitter and Pinterest. IG is very strict, while latter social media websites ain't. There is a decent post at Oberlo I got inspired by:
How I Built a Dropshipping Store That Made $6,667 in Under 8 Weeks
There is indeed a section about IG DMs (Getting Feedback From Instagram), I want to try that.

3) I took a serious look at this method: [Method] How to make amazing designs and sell them in bulk. Well, I said before I won't go in an easy way, however, this shit can be done while I curate social media, so why not. Also, it seems like a perfect thing for Pinterest (and, probably, Twitter), so I'll test this one.

4) I want to build a content syndication network for parasites. After pondering about SEO for a while, I decided to not put it aside.

That's it for now. Have a nice day!

Sup.

Yesterday my friend asked me about the things I'm doing, and I told him about this journey.

He asked me why I stopped creating designs by the method I did at the beginning, and why I'm spending my time learning graphic design instead of just rinse and repeat the thing that brought me money.

Well, after pondering for a while I decided to make a post here. I think it might be useful to know about the current direction of the POD business, and why $5 designs become irrelevant with the flow of the time.

So this post is about

Why being an artist/illustrator is a way more profitable and better than just a t-shirt designer?

To begin with, I read my first guide about the POD business and how people raking 5 figures per month with dirty cheap Facebook ads and simple text designs about 3 years ago.

I was stunned by it because it seemed to be legit because of proofs and reviews. However, I was focused on other things, so I ignored POD stuff for a while.

After I got my first money in affiliate marketing, I decided to give another look at that ebook, and I found it dated 2014 or so and after some research (and tests) I found that e-book was completely irrelevant in 2019. Facebook was already not cheap, simple text designs were just things of the past, and so on.


After that, I met a person who is running POD stuff on marketplaces, and I decided to start the same thing.

I learned how to create simple designs from the really old course called "Robert Baldwin - Design a T-shirt in 10 Minutes". In short, trace images to vectors, smth like this:



After that put some text on it, and the design is ready. If you checked some old POD guides, you probably know that those kinds of things worked in the past.

Well, even now almost all sales (except for one sale from text design) in this thread are from those kinds of designs.

When I started POD I followed the advice which told to create images+text designs, so that's why I did that stuff. And It worked. However, as you can see, I hadn't earned much. Why? Because of the freaking competition and the irrelevant way of creation of my designs.

You can tell me that I uploaded too few designs. Well yeah, but this dude from Reddit made $1000 in one month with just 68 designs with Redbubble only, while I have 64 designs on multiple marketplaces and made just $50 in 8 months. And there are many similar stories. I'll show you more examples later.

Another thing, some people told that their text-only designs were selling the best, and this is fucking bullshit atm.

Before my subscription of merchinformer ended I checked bestsellers on Amazon (which was selling simple designs the best out of all marketplaces), and I found that out of top 46 bestsellers, there were only 3 text-only designs. Most of the bestsellers were to be high-quality stuff, followed by simple but good looking text+image things.

In my niches that I prepared for social media, situation is similar.

So what, you can ask. @Pridelord , just learn how to customize the traced vector image, and things are done.

But you know, most of the t-shirt sellers are doing it. There is a crapload of designs from different sellers with the SAME vector images. They might buy it from stocks, download from google, or use the same photos to trace it, doesn't really matter because they get it from the same sources.

But hey, If YOU can recognize it, customers can do it too. And they are getting tired of closely similar designs.

The best way to be original is to create things by yourself. Better your skills = better your stuff = more recognition from the audience = more sales.

And do you know who is the best in graphic design stuff? ARTISTS.



So what are you talking about, @Pridelord ? Artists earn from other ways. Well, yes. There are quite a few methods of earning money as an artist. This is actually a pretty demanded profession, and it's a good reason why you should learn some graphic design and illustration.

But hey, there is another reason, and I mentioned it before. And this reason is crucial that impacts POD business overall:

Artists are moving to POD

This is the reality. This is the current trend. And you can't compete with them with just $5 designs.

Here are some examples:

1. Fernando Nunes, Illustrator. Here is his RB profile: https://www.redbubble.com/people/fernandonunes/

35 designs, 531 favorites.
15k IG followers, 7k Behance followers, 63k YT followers.

Insane skill. I don't dare to guess his earnings, but it's not small. He's selling his art on multiple marketplaces, also he is Rick and Morty licensed partner.

2. Ten Hundred, Artist running POD store. His YT channel here

267k YT subs, 86k IG followers.

Demanded AF, Rich AF. Pretty often opens Fiverr drawing gigs to his followers.
In this video he makes $455 a day from just one limited Fiverr gig announced to his fans:

It's just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds (thousands, maybe) of artists in POD right now. And, as time passes, there will be more.

3. Just look at the featured designs of DBH: https://www.designbyhumans.com/discover/

There are no cheap-looking things there. Same situation on the Threadless challenges (where you can win $1k), and on shirt-of-the-day websites like teefury.

So yeah, folks. The POD market is becoming artsier. And the only way to become competitive here is to git gut.

The best advice I can give you here, that If you lack fundamentals you just need to build them from scratch.

When I started to learn Adobe Illustrator, I didn't even know how to draw this simple cloud (or whatever is it, lmao):

After that, I took some time to practice and learn basic tools:


Ugly AF, like 3 y/o learning how to draw. And I'm almost 30.

But hey, I took some more time to practice those basics, and this is my today's homework illustration (watermarked for whatever reason lmao):


And I'm extremely excited to track my own progress here.

Ah, if you still think that art is useless, I have one more thing to tell.

Do you know that one of the best ways to sell POD is to recruit brand ambassadors (ask influencers to promote your products for % of the profit)?

And which person do you think they choose more happily - the person who can create just a simple cloud, or a professional illustrator/artist?

Everyone loves professionals to work with. And that's it for today.

Pridelord said:

[...]

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I think that's the best road to take (learning illustration) even if it takes the most time, once you get there your designs are gonna be next level.
And great progress with your illustrations, do you use a graphics tablet so you can draw by hand or you do everything with mouse (pen tool, bezier or whatever it's called)?

PS: I'm a little triggered by the spider image

Xyox said:

I think that's the best road to take (learning illustration) even if it takes the most time, once you get there your designs are gonna be next level.
And great progress with your illustrations, do you use a graphics tablet so you can draw by hand or you do everything with mouse (pen tool, bezier or whatever it's called)?

PS: I'm a little triggered by the spider image

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All 3 things from a previous post made with mouse only, using mostly pen tool That's the magic of the adobe illustrator as it is.
I want to buy a tablet, but it's a long way to go for it.

PS: sorry about that

Pridelord said:

All 3 things from a previous post made with mouse only, using mostly pen tool That's the magic of the adobe illustrator as it is.
I want to buy a tablet, but it's a long way to go for it.

PS: sorry about that

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One thing i forgot to ask, how long did it take you from not knowing how to draw the cloud to being able to draw the violin girl?

Xyox said:

One thing I forgot to ask, how long did it take you from not knowing how to draw the cloud to being able to draw the violin girl?

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About 30 hours of practice in total. A lot faster than I thought because I'm not a fast learner.
Also, today a found this bezier training tool: https://bezier.method.ac/
Nice thing.

Your journey is gold to me (i'll get into the POD), thank you and keep going !

Just a question :
On all the websites you have tested, can we upload an unlimited number of designs to sell them or is there a limit (paid, or something like this) ?

I think you are emphasizing too much on quality of designs, while it seems that these websites love cheap and dirty designs

alexismcbx said:

Your journey is gold to me (i'll get into the POD), thank you and keep going !

Just a question :
On all the websites you have tested, can we upload an unlimited number of designs to sell them or is there a limit (paid, or something like this) ?

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Thanks! FineArtAmerica is $30 per year, others are free to use. Some of them have quite frustrating limits (on DBHit's 500 designs, and Cafepress not supporting many countries), some are big (redbubble 3-5k ???). But it doesn't really matter, because you can create more than one account with different emails.

I asked the support of the most marketplaces I'm using and their answer is quite similar to this:

Smtppop3 said:

I think you are emphasizing too much on quality of designs, while it seems that these websites love cheap and dirty designs

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Well. In this post I wrote that even amazon merch, which liked "cheap and dirty designs", becoming more artsier. Requirements to the quality of designs of any other websites had always been much higher.

Of cause, I could be wrong, but things on my sight are very opposite.

I saw that artists earn a lot more than cheap designers by myself.
I never saw cheap designers earn more than artists.
It would be great to see any successful redbubble account with cheap designs and compare it to any decent artist I know.

goodluck, POD is probably one of the most competitive things for online marketing...

I hope your mother is doing better.

Meanwhile, thanks for the update and the girl drawing is pretty neat!

Good luck further on!