How To Start A Printify Etsy Store (Complete Guide!)
If you want to start an online business to earn passive income, print on demand, or POD, is one of the most popular business models.
With print on demand, you don't have to worry about creating and shipping products yourself. This lets you focus on creating unique designs and effectively marketing your stores.
However, choosing the right POD partner and platform to sell on can make or break your business.
But, thankfully, using reputable POD companies like Printify and massive online marketplaces like Etsy provide you with everything you need to make money online.
So in this post, I'm sharing my personal experiences with opening a Printify Etsy shop.
This guide is covering how to start using Printify with Etsy, from designing your first products to launching your store. And, I'm also sharing some marketing tips that I found helpful in getting my first sales.
My Experience With Opening A Printify Etsy Store
When I opened my Printify Etsy shop in college, I decided to try making money with memes since these types of viral products can do well in the POD world.
I wanted to design and sell cheap merchandise that was funny and eye-catching. And I didn’t want to put in hours of painstaking graphic design work since I'm not good at graphic design.
Ultimately, I opened a shop called Easily Amused Designs – a store specializing in plastering silly images on mugs or other common gift items and selling them for low margins.
If you think this post is a joke and are wondering who in their right mind would buy this stuff, you’re not alone.
I mean, this is a list of the Printify Etsy products that I was ready to sell:
All of these items required about five minutes of work to create, and they certainly look the product of a low effort endeavor.
But hey, after running my Printify Etsy experiment for a few weeks and putting in less than 10 hours of work, two customers purchased my Spongebob Caveman Mug:
Now, unbeknownst to me at the time, you can’t use POD websites to sell copyrighted material. So, after Printify refused to manufacture my merchandise, I refunded both customers.
While I’m disappointed in this result, I still consider this a win. My experience with sell Printify products on Etsy really proves that you can make money by selling these types of products.
And, if you look to the Etsy marketplace, you find scores of other sellers who are generating substantial income by selling hastily manufactured gift items and meme products:
I’m not advocating for intellectual property infringement or suggesting you rip off some artwork and plaster it on your own merchandise. But this entire process has proved that the barrier to entry for starting your own Etsy shop with Printify is low in terms of skill and effort.
So, if you lack artistic capability like me, using Printify with Etsy could be worth considering.
And now it's time to break down the exact steps you can follow to start dropshipping on Etsy with Printify!
How To Sell Printify Products On Etsy
One of Etsy’s main strengths is the low barrier to entry and ease of setting up your own shop.
Etsy is a marketplace, not a eCommerce website hosting solution/website builder like Shopify or WooCommerce. When you open your own Etsy shop, it’s basically the virtual equivalent of opening up a stall in a marketplace or bazaar.
You still have to design your shop and list items, but when you sell on Etsy, you are ultimately just a shop in a marketplace. This will come with some inherent advantages and disadvantages.
Anyway, starting your own Etsy shop doesn’t take much time.
And when you add in Printify products to the mix, it's possible to start selling on Etsy without ever having to make and ship products yourself. Here's how it all works.
1. Create Your Etsy Store
To begin, head over to Etsy and hit the ‘Sell on Etsy' button in the top right corner:
Etsy then prompts you to provide an email address for registration, so be sure to use the email you want to associate with your Etsy shop.
2. Enter Shop Preferences
The next step in setting up your Printify Etsy shop is to enter the shop preferences for your store.
This should take less than a minute. Just be sure to select the right shop language and currency to start off correctly.
3. Name Your Shop
Etsy lets you name your shop, and this is the customer-facing name people see. I named my Printify Etsy store Easily Amused Designs, but you can basically pick any name you want as long as it's not offensive.
I suggest going with an Etsy shop name that is either brandable or directly explains what sort of merchandise you sell.
4. Sign Up For Printify
You have to add products to your Etsy store to launch it. This means it's now time to create some Printify products for Etsy so you can finish setting up your store.
Personally, I recommend using Printify as this is the POD service I use and got sales with on Etsy.
To get started with Printify, you create an account and provide an email address.
I suggest using the same email used for your Etsy shop. This video from Printify walks you through the process of connecting your Printify store to Etsy:
In a nutshell, you need to:
- Make sure your Etsy shop is set up.
- Create an account on Printify.
- Select ‘manage stores' from ‘Store View.'
- Select ‘Connect Etsy.'
- Allow Etsy to access your Printify account when prompted.
5. Create Printify Etsy Products
Now that you have an account with Printify, you're ready to design products to sell right from your Etsy shop.
In my experience, using Printify is incredibly beginner-friendly. And it also has an excellent product catalog with over 100 items, including:
- Accessories
- Backpacks
- Blankets
- Buttons
- Cell phone cases
- Stickers
- T-shirts
- Sweaters
- Tote bags
Additionally, most of Printify's manufacturing partners are located in the United States or the United Kingdom. This can dramatically reduce shipping time and increase quality compared to Chinese manufacturers.
For my Etsy Printify store, I decided to stay away from apparel since people are picky about sizes and materials. And, I picked coffee mugs since they're popular meme gifts and have a decent margin.
In any case, once you decide on an item to design, select the item from the Printify product catalog and choose your manufacturing partner:
As you can see, these production partners differ in terms of their pricing. But manufacturing time isn't significantly worse for the cheaper option. I'm going to pick WPaPS in the United Kingdom and start designing!
Once you're in the Printify product design window, you should see a screen that looks like this:
If you haven't created a design for your merchandise, you need to do this now using whatever photo editing software you are comfortable with.
If you have your graphic already, upload it via the ‘Add your design' button.
Once you upload the design, you can verify that the resolution is adequate and also expand or reduce your graphic size to fit the item. This is my favorite part of using Printify for Etsy selling since this design tool is very easy to use.
Once you're ready to finish your product, just hit ‘Save and continue.'
6. Write Your Printify Product Descriptions For Etsy
The next step in getting your products live is to write product descriptions that will go live on your Etsy store.
On the edit product details screen, you can verify that your product looks the way you envisioned. This is also where you edit your product title, description, pricing, and publish the item directly to your shop:
This section is where I suggest peppering in keywords that will slowly help your Etsy product rank strongly in their marketplace.
As you can see in my example, the default Printify description mentions qualities about the coffee mug I'm going to sell. But you should add context like who the gift is good for, and those Etsy keywords like I just mentioned.
Additionally, consider all of the Etsy fees, shipping, and how much you will have to pay Printify to handle manufacturing fulfillment when setting your price.
Just remember: publishing an item to your Etsy shop will automatically charge you $0.20.
I suggest making your item invisible to publish a hidden product to Etsy (that you can edit to perfection before paying the $0.20 to have it listed).
To do this, select ‘Make this product invisible on your online store' in the Printify product editor:
Additionally, you should conduct the final product detail editing in Etsy. This is because product description and other information can appear differently in their user interface compared to the Printify description.
Once your shop is stocked with a few items, you are ready to set up billing and then market your store.
7. Setup Payment & Billing
Etsy is fairly cheap for merchants, but here is some general pricing information you should be aware of:
- Listing items: Adding items to your Etsy shop costs $0.20 USD, and items are listed for 4 months before expiring. Expired items can be manually or automatically renewed for another $0.20 USD.
- Transaction fees: Etsy charges a 5% transaction fee for your item price plus shipping.
I recommend taking some time to familiarize yourself with the shop layout, edit your shop information, describe your return policy, and write a flushed out ‘About' section.
The more genuine your shop looks, the better.
Optimizing Your Printify Etsy Product Listings
The listing details for items in your Etsy shop are immensely important for driving traffic to your products because Etsy is a very competitive marketplace.
It might not be Amazon keyword stuffing level, but it's still a marketplace. Any advantage you can gain is critical.
So, take some time to research other successful products in your niche and see what the best sellers in the niche are doing.
Name your products with search friendly titles that grab attention while still using the main search phrase you want your item to rank for.
Additionally, take advantage of the product description space you're provided with.
Pepper in the keywords and search phrases you want to rank for. Also describe the benefits of your products, situations where a buyer might want to purchase your merchandise (i.e. ‘this is a great gift for X') and other relevant bits of info.
If you are going to use a POD service on Etsy, you must also specify this in the ‘About this listing' section.
To do this, enter that another company or person will manufacture the particular item in your shop.
Once you've added your product description and listing details, you can finish the process by adding tags, material information, and pricing:
Tags are optional, but I suggest including as many relevant tags for your item as possible to help your results when buyers search for items.
Examples of tags could include phrases like ‘gift ideas,' ‘gift ideas for men,' or ‘funny coffee mug gift.' You should also include relevant information regarding the materials your item is made of.
If you are using a POD service, set the quantity to ‘999.'
Finally, I suggest you remain competitive with your pricing.
I aimed to sell most of my merchandise for under $10 USD because this seems like a low enough amount to prompt impulse shopping. My pricing also included shipping on the buyer side of the equation, assuming they lived in the United States.
Ultimately, this meant I was only going to make between $2-$3 for every single product I sold since Printify also charges me a few bucks for making and shipping each product.
However, most of my sales would still result in a 20-30% profit margin. And selling on Etsy is largely about figuring out what works and then scaling.
Printify Product Quality
Before you start using Printify to sell on Etsy, you're probably wondering if the product quality is even any good.
I actually bought a test mug from Printify to test out their merchandise quality before setting up my Etsy store, and let me tell you, the quality is quite decent (for mugs anyway).
The mug I ordered came within 2-3 weeks, and the packaging was solid so it was unlikely to break during travel.
I highly suggest buying your own POD merchandise before scaling your Etsy shop to test out quality and shipping time to make sure you don't get burned.
How To Market Your Printify Etsy Store
Now that you know how to sell Printify products on Etsy and launch your store, I want to cover a few tips to help you actually find your first customers.
While you can pay for advertising on Etsy and push your products to the front page of specific search terms, I never experimented with this system,
So, how did I generate 2 sales?
Honestly, I just relied on bits of organic traffic from Etsy and an Instagram account I made to promote the shop.
My Etsy shop only received about 100 visits in the time it was open, so 2 sales is a 2% conversion rate.
To generate traffic for my shop, I wrote keyword rich product descriptions and product titles. I also created an Instagram account called Horrible Gifts to promote my shop.
At its peak, the Instagram account had roughly 150 followers, and my posts all included a variety of trending hashtags to generate as many impressions as possible.
I also relentlessly followed and unfollowed other accounts, which is very spammy, but also a loose form of direct marketing (wouldn't you be curious to check out a page that followed you if it was named Horrible Gifts?)
Here was the breakdown of shop traffic:
And here are my most highly searched for keywords:
These metrics are incredibly valuable for Etsy shop owners because it can highlight commonalities in keywords that result in shop traffic.
For example, my shop was clearly benefiting from search terms containing the phrase ‘meme,' and if my shop had continued to operate, I would have optimized my listings to take advantage of this.
Ultimately my shop didn't really take off. But I think this experiment has still shown that you can start your own Etsy shop with Printify and slowly generate sales and grow.
Pros & Cons Of Selling Printify Products With Etsy
Pros:
- Printify handles all of the manufacturing and shipping for you
- The design tool is very easy to use
- Etsy has very low seller fees
- You can get organic marketplace traffic to your Etsy Printify store
- Printify has over 100 popular products
- Printify has numerous shipping locations so customers get their products quickly
- You don't have to pay for upfront inventory with POD, so its a great low cost side hustle
- Printify has a free plan so you just pay for your product's base cost plus shipping when you make a sale
Cons:
- Printify product quality still isn't as high as many boutique stores
- You need a bit of graphic design skills to design products (or you can pay a designer)
- Etsy charges $0.20 for every listing you publish
- Ranking highly on Etsy still takes time and practice
- Printify and print on demand can lower your Etsy margins versus selling on your own
Tips For Growing Your Printify Etsy Shop
If you're ready to launch an Etsy store with Printify, here are some tips that I've found pretty useful during the process of setting up my shop and getting my first sales.
- Pick A Niche: Picking a niche is critical so your store has a consistent theme and feel. This also encourages repeat buyers and helps your store rank well on the marketplace.
- Research The Competition: What are other Etsy sellers doing within your niche? Research their prices, product descriptions, and the types of designs that are selling well.
- Know Your Numbers: You really need to factor in Printify's base product costs and Etsy fees when setting prices for your products. POD margins are generally low, but aiming for 10-30% is what some sellers I know do.
- Keep Learning: You can check out Printify's Etsy Bootcamp – an 11 module course that teaches you everything you need to know about selling POD products on Etsy. And you can get 70% off by using the code ‘tomblake' right now.
This YouTube video from Emma also shares some valuable tips from her three different Etsy Printify businesses.
Emma stresses how you shouldn't go overboard with listings since you need to find out what sells well before scaling. And you want to avoid the $0.20 renewal fees from getting steep.
Extra Reading – The Best Side Hustles For Couples.
Alternatives To Using Printify To Sell On Etsy
Using Printify with Etsy was honestly very fun. I think this is an amazing side hustle idea if you're a fan of design and want to make money online.
However, it wouldn't be a complete Etsy POD breakdown without explaining some Printify alternatives that are at your disposal.
Etsy actually works with numerous POD partners, including:
- Printful
- ArtofWhere
- Gooten
- Shopify
- Prodigi
- Printed Mint
- Big Cartel
However, since I used Printify to sell on Etsy and really liked their mug quality and design tool, it has my vote. But, you can also try expanding to other print on demand options, like selling on sites like Redbubble or sites like Zazzle.
Really, using Printify to sell on Etsy is just one method to dabble with this money making idea.
I think Etsy has numerous advantages since you can rank organically on their marketplace and begin making money on autopilot. But, other platforms also have pros and don't require a $0.20 listing fee, which could be a dealbreaker for you.
Whatever the case, I hope you try out Printify and a few other options to find what works best for selling POD products on Etsy!
Extra Reading – The Best Passive Income Side Hustles.
Final Thoughts
In my opinion, starting a POD business is also one of the easiest ways to get started with making money online. And by selling items on Etsy, you maintain a low amount of risk while learning valuable skills in the world of eCommerce.
Granted, opening your own Etsy shop with Printify probably won't make you rich. But if you can grow a shop to sell a few products every single month, you can easily develop a modest passive income stream on Etsy.
Personally, I found that selling Printify products on Etsy was both fun and easy to get started. And who knows, maybe one day thousands of people will be buying your funny meme merchandise or other products you design.
Want to learn how to sell POD on Etsy?
Jump right in and design your first Printify product! You honestly learn this side hustle through trial and error, and if I could figure it out with zero design skills, you certainly can!
Want to try other money-making ideas? Checkout:
