https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mjz_CehiF4
I’m going to talking about why you should start with just one platform at the beginning of your print on demand journey before expanding onto other platforms. Whether you start with a Redbubble, Merch by Amazon, Teepublic, Spreadshirt, Society6 or any of the hundreds of print on demand websites out there.
Note that this article is written more for people that are producing a lot of designs and have a little bit amount of time, or they’re still trying to get from point A (the start) to B (making money).
For somebody who’s doing this more for the revenue rather than the creative outlook or the fame, you want to just stick to one platform and here’s why: you want to be able to master that platform.
You want to be able to figure out, okay, here’s the descriptions that work well. Here are the tags or bullet points, the description, and the title that works well.
Think of it this way. Say you only have 2 hours to design and upload per day. It takes you 5 minutes per design to create and 3 minutes to upload to each website. You can create 15 per day and get them online with one platform, 10 per day with 2 platforms, 8 per day with 3 platforms, and it keeps going down.
By sticking to one platform, you can create a solid workflow to upload quickly and easily so you can spend more time designing. More time to design means more chances of hitting a winner.
And that’s step one: find a winning formula that works for you.
So when should you move onto a second platform? Well, it depends on what goals or milestones you set for yourself. They can be a design milestone like 250 designs live or 500. It could also be a monetary goal, like $100 earned in a month. The bottom line is you’ll want to see some success on one platform that you know how to replicate, that way you can continue creating those types of designs.
When it comes to the monetary goal, avoid using November or December as they’re both large months for commerce as a whole. If you reach your goals in say, March, that’s good to go.
Here’s how I would start today if I was a beginner. I made the mistake of not keeping a spreadsheet when I started keeping track of my titles, descriptions, bullet points, and tags all in one central file. This really slowed down my growth when it was time to expand onto other platforms. Another thing you can keep track of is how much each individual design has made, which will really come in handy when planning which designs to start with as you move to a new platform.
Trust me on this: keep a spreadsheet!
Wit the revenue per design column, that’s which designs you start with because, for the most part, what sells on one platform will be selling on another platform.
Another plus side to expanding when you’re ready is that the different platforms have different audiences. You may have designs that were duds on one platform but turn into best sellers on another platform.
Seriously, the biggest tip out of all of this is to just keep a spreadsheet. Trust me on that. Trust me. Keep a spreadsheet with your title, your description, your tags, your bullet points. And if you want your amount earned based on design, cause it’ll just help you so much, so much when you expand it onto another platform.