Complete Guide To Earning With Printful

Printful is among the best choices when it comes to selecting a print on demand (POD) provider. Its value comes from its supreme user-friendliness. It’s entirely possible for even the least tech-literate entrepreneur to figure out. In theory, you can go from a new member to selling designs in about 20 minute. In fact, Printful goes one step further and will even teach you how to make the most out of POD and dropshipping for free.

We’ve got our own (free) guide to POD, which you should certainly take a look at if you’re unfamiliar with this potential source of passive income. To summarise it in a sentence or two, you make a design and a POD service like Printful will put it on anything from cups to cushions (though most famously T-shirts) and ship it to those who like your work. You don’t need to pre-buy stock since new items are, as the name suggests, printed on demand. Here’s why Printful are an excellent choice of POD service.

Important features of Printful

Much like any POD service, Printful’s major feature is the range of items you can get your design printed on. This includes a wide range of clothing, from standard T-shirts to polo shirts, tank tops, hoodies, an impressive selection of hats and even underwear and swimwear.

Beyond clothes, the choice of canvases for your design include various types of bag (from tote bags to backpacks), phone cases, face masks, pillows, blankets, beach towels and, perhaps most impressively, even jewellery. In this last case, the design is engraved rather than being printed – an impressive and relatively rare addition to the usual array of options. In total, there are 245 products that can display your design.

The Printful website has a very effective mockup generator, showing you exactly how your design will look on your chosen canvas. And not just a flat image, either – it shows the shirts being worn, giving you an idea of how your design will look in a real-world situation.

In fact – here is one I just whipped together using the Profit Hacks brand – I actually quite like that! (If you agree, let us know in the comments and we might put a few product lines together)

One of the more useful features of the site is that it integrates effectively with a wide range of eCommerce platforms. This allows you to market your product on your own website, regardless of what system you decided to build it with. Supported platforms include the major players in the field, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix and Squarespace, as well as Ecwid, Weebly, ShipStation and more. You can also sell your designs through marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, eBay and others.

Many of these features are pretty common in most POD services, so what makes Printful stand out from the crowd? Well, it’s mostly the ways in which they make your life easier and better as a designer. The service is free to use, so you only start to pay once you have an order you want to be fulfilled and shipped (as in, after you’ve received an order, which will naturally be charged slightly higher than the fulfilment cost). Printful can receive orders directly through your store so you won’t need to manually enter the details yourself. They have no minimum purchase requirements and can ship around the world using your custom labels and branding.

How does Printful work?

Getting started with Printful is very simple – you just need a custom design. This can be anything from a simple PNG picture file or even just a witty tagline. There are certain guidelines to follow, which you’ll find on the Printful website, but these guidelines are mostly to do with the size and format of your design. Following them will ensure that the finished product looks professional and high quality.

Once you’ve uploaded your design, you can use the site’s interactive visualisation software to show exactly what your design will look like on T-shirts, baseball caps, mugs, posters and more. If your plan is for a slogan rather than an image, you can add that directly in the software. You get a good (if finite) amount of choice when it comes to customisation. For example, the location of your design on the shirt can be adjusted slightly, but don’t expect to be able to go completely crazy with it.

Of course, being a POD service (Print On Demand), you can only see the finished product once a payment has been made. However, the bright side of this is that Printful handles every aspect of production and shipping for you. All you have to do is create the design and they’ll take care of the rest.

On average, customers should receive their items about two weeks after purchase. It’s worth noting that Printful have factories dotted around North America and Europe, as well as partner facilities in Australia. This means it is possible to reduce both shipping costs and delivery time a little, in some cases. Most products have a flat shipping rate of about €4-€6 per item in Europe and $5-$7 in the US. However, if you want to deliver an item to a customer in Asia, Africa or South America, it’s going to require international shipping.

Printful vs Printify

While Printify offers an equally impressive range of products, the degree of customisation they allow is severely restricted, compared to Printful. For example, with Printful, you can have your brand on inside and outside labels as well as all of the packaging, making it seem as though the product is coming from you rather than a POD service. This option is not available with Printify.

A further difference is that Printful have their own production centres while Printify outsources production, making them effectively a middleman. This slows down the production and delivery rate and increases the risk of mistakes.

Printful vs Gooten

If you are looking for the cheapest possible POD service then Gooten is a clear winner over Printful. On average, their prices are 15% lower, meaning you can theoretically increase your profits substantially. However, as is often the case, a lower cost means a lower quality.

Gooten also outsources their production, which is an immediate mark against them. They also lack the impressive product range of Printful, with less customisation options available. As an example, neither Printify nor Gooten allow you to put your design on the sleeve of a shirt, while Printiful does.

Some final thoughts on Printful

Printful has one of the biggest product ranges in the POD industry, a worldwide production network and integration with more than 20 eCommerce platforms, making them probably the best of the options around. While their prices are comparatively high, which can reduce your profits per sale, their products are of much higher quality. In particular, the customisation options are exceptional, though you do need to make sure you follow the guidelines properly.

Overall, if you’re getting into print on demand as a source of income, you’ll find Printful to be both easy to use while not being so simple that it becomes impossible to do anything interesting with it. Most importantly, you’ll have no shortage of satisfied customers.