How Print On Demand Works

Print on demand (POD) is a business model in which sellers work with third-party partners to make and sell custom merchandise. With a print on demand model, the POD partner manufactures, packs, and ships every custom product as soon as someone orders from your ecommerce store.

POD is a simple way to start earning passive income. We asked Squarespace’s Custom Merch partner, Printful, for a behind-the-scenes look at how print on demand works, the types of custom merch that can be sold, and the benefits of POD.

How does print on demand work?

In a POD business model, you provide the design for your products and choose which products you want to sell. Once someone buys that product from your online store, a POD provider like Printful takes care of the rest. 

The print on demand process includes:

1. Manufacturing: Printful carries blank, customizable products and products produced entirely in-house.

2. Packing: Your packaging is white-labeled, meaning your POD partner’s branding won’t show up anywhere. Printful offers options to show off your brand, like custom packaging and branded tracking pages.

3. Fulfillment: Where your POD partner has fulfillment centers affects where you can ship and how quickly orders arrive. Printful has fulfillment centers across five continents.

4. Shipping: Your POD provider packs and ships your product and lets your customer know it’s on its way. 

Custom merch reflects your brand in every way, so it’s important that your partner delivers quality products. Printful runs a quality check on everything they manufacture at three points before shipping.

1. Before fulfillment: Automated software checks graphics and an AI tool evaluates if the image needs any adjustments before printing.

2. During fulfillment: Specialists check for quality as they fulfill each order.

3. After fulfillment: Specialists conduct a final quality check before shipping.

Types of custom printing

There are a few ways to translate your logo or design onto a piece of custom merchandise. How that’s done varies by POD company. Printful uses a few different techniques depending on your design and product:

• Direct-to-garment (DTG) printing: Ink is sprayed onto garments, like printing on paper. DTG printing is best for those who want to add complex, multi-color designs to t-shirts, tote bags, and other fabric items. DTG-printed designs soak into the clothing fibers so they won’t crack over time and feel comfortable to wear. 

• All-over printing: Your design covers the product seam-to-seam. Printful prints your design on fabric then cuts and hand-sews it into the product. All-over printing is best for patterns and large-scale designs.

• Sublimation: Your design is printed on paper with dye ink, then transferred directly onto the fabric with heat. Sublimation is used to transfer designs onto ready-made products, like a mug or a phone case. 

• Embroidery: Your design is embroidered onto a garment or an accessory. This customization technique gives your design some texture. At Printful, the graphic design team converts your file into a format that their embroidery machines can read. This conversion is called embroidery digitization.

Getting the right customization technique for your products helps you ensure that your customers get high-quality merch.

What are the best print on demand products?

Choose the types of products that feel like a fit for your target audience. Digital artists might prefer to sell posters and t-shirts. A podcaster might sell everything from branded stickers to drinkware and more. 

Printful’s most popular products are:

• T-shirts

• Hoodies and sweatshirts

• Dad hats

• Beanies

• Posters

• Drinkware (mugs, water bottles)

• Stickers

• Leggings

• Bags

Try standing out with products customers might not expect, like custom shoes, puzzles, flags, swimwear, and candles.

How to earn money with print on demand

Squarespace’s Custom Merch feature, powered by Printful, makes it easy for content creators and entrepreneurs to start monetizing. To get started:

1. Create an ecommerce website or add a store page to your existing website.

2. Connect with a payment processor.

3. Connect the Custom Merch feature to your store.

4. Design and upload the images you want to use.

5. Choose your products and pricing.

6. Add the products to your online store.

7. Promote your POD products.

Once you’re set up, there’s nothing else you need to do to get paid. Printful handles the production, fulfillment, and shipping. You set your retail price, so you keep the profit. And since products are made to order, there’s no upfront cost to start using POD. You’re only charged when someone makes a purchase.

Read our guide to making a fashion website

Other benefits of print on demand

Print on demand opens up brand new ways to earn for creatives and entrepreneurs. And creating custom merch has a few extra benefits:

• Sustainability: Manufacturing products on demand leads to less waste from unsold inventory or unused materials. Printful has several sustainability initiatives, including sustainable packaging, efficient shipping, eco-friendly product options, and a product and excess fabric recycling program.

• No order limits: On-demand manufacturing also means no minimum order amounts for you. Instead of forcing business owners to over-order or not order at all, POD puts no limits on getting started.

• Custom Merch: Our Custom Merch feature connects your POD operation seamlessly to your Squarespace store. Custom Merch automatically syncs your products. Whenever you make an edit in Printful, it’ll sync to your Squarespace product listing. 

Ready to launch Custom Merch for your brand?