Ecommerce is a rapidly-growing industry that offers a wide range of software and apps to help you improve your online store. Print-on-demand is a growing area. There are many tools available online that can help you to adopt this method of selling. In its simplest form, print-on-demand allows you to design and sell a product like a shirt while another company prints it and delivers it to your customer (with no minimum orders). There are many apps and services that can be used to set up a print-on demand operation. Printful is one of these services. What is Printful, you ask? Printful can be used to sell unique items such as shirts, backpacks and stickers.
This article will cover all things Printful. It includes information about Printful’s basics, what you can do with it, and what it costs.
Continue reading to find out more about Printful and how you can make more money with it.
What is Printful?
Printful integrates with your online shop to send printed products to customers. You can also design and print your merchandise to create company-branded products.
Printful is a complete design platform that allows you to create clothing, accessories and home goods. Printful allows you to quickly create designs or import designs created by others.
Printful can then be synced with popular eCommerce platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce. This allows you to push new Printful products into your ecommerce store and sell them to customers.
Printful takes care of everything, from printing to storage to shipping back to returns. Printful does all the work for you, so all you have to do is create a website and sell custom-designed products. Printful will start printing the item once a sale is made. Printful packages the item and sends it to you.
Printful therefore technically is a mix of a print on-demand and dropship service. This is because Printful handles all aspects of storage, packaging and shipping.
Here’s a sample:
Let’s suppose you own or want to start an online pet merchandise shop. Printful allows you to create designs for dogs, cats, and other animals. Printful provides a product mockup from the mockup generator, pricing details (you can set your profit margins), as well as product details that you can sync with your online shop.
You can view all product details and photos displayed on product pages via your Shopify or BigCommerce shops, WooCommerce or Squarespace shops.
Printful stores and warehouses the blank merchandise, so you don’t have to spend any money marketing. Once you have a customer come to your shop, they can check out your merchandise. Let’s suppose they purchase a flat-brim hat with a bulldog print on it.
The purchase makes money deposit into your merchant account so you can get the money immediately. Printful is notified to print the bulldog design or embroider it on the flat-brim hat. Then, it packages it up and ships it to the customer.
Printful will charge you for these costs and leave you with a profit margin. All returns can be sent back directly to Printful, so there’s no need to store them in your home or physical store.
Printful: What products can I sell?
Printful has a complete list of customizable product options that you can browse and select which ones you want to sell.
Printful currently has the following product categories:
- Men’s clothing
- Women’s clothing
- Children’s and Youth Clothing
- Hats
- Accessory
- Living and Home
Many of the products are also placed in categories to aid your search and increase sales. Some collections include:
- New Products
- Bestsellers
- Autumn and Winter
- Loungewear
- Beachwear
- The Year’s Style Trends
- Eco-friendly
- Southern Europe: Sell
- Amazing gifts
- Express shipping to certain countries
You can also filter by brands that you have found customers to be popular, such as American Apparel Flexfit Gildan and Rabbit Skins.
There are hundreds of products on the Printful full list. We encourage you to have a look and decide which ones will work for your online store. You should consider selling the most popular items as they are more likely to be a success. You may also find that customers love quirky products such as beanbag chairs or pillowcases. It all depends on your creativity, as always.
Printful offers a variety of products. Here’s a list.
- Tank tops, polos and tank tops, 3/4 sleeves shirts, long sleeves, hoodies and sweatshirts, as well as jackets, short sleeves, tank tops, polos and tank tops
- Sweatpants and joggers. Leggings, shorts and underwear.
- Skirts and dresses, swimwear and sports bras
- Baby clothing includes baby bibs and baby bodysuits as well as hats and swimwear for children
- Hats in styles such as snapbacks, mesh hats and 5-panel hats.
- Duffles, toe bags, backpacks and fannypacks are all available.
- Cases for iPhone and Samsung phones
- Necklaces, bracelets, and earrings
- Socks and face masks, keychains and flip flops
- Get water bottles and coffee cups
- Pillowcases, pillows and blankets
- Canvas prints, posters, and framed posters
- Towels, aprons and bean bag chairs.
- Stationary such as postcards, notebooks and stickers
There are so many options for blank items that you can choose from. All of these products have variations depending on their brands, which is the best part. A t-shirt might come in 20 colors, while a canvas may be available in different sizes. A coffee mug could also have magic revealing properties.
After you have found a product, a mockup is displayed so you can upload your design to see how it looks on that item. For example, you might find that one your designs is too small to fit in a pillow, but works well in a mug. Also, be cautious with the colors you use to print your designs on clothing. There are many issues when printing certain colors on similar-shaded fabrics.
Printful products have great product information that allows you to fully understand the products. You can order samples and view reviews from buyers to check if shipping costs and time frames are appropriate for you.
How does Printful work? This Guide will walk you through the steps.
Sign up for a Printful account by visiting Printful.com. A website that is compatible with an ecommerce platform will also be required. Shopify will be used as an example.
Once you have your Shopify and Printful accounts set up, head to Shopify and click the Apps button.
To open the App Library, click on the Shop for Apps link.
Select Printful to walk you through the installation process. This will link the Shopify store to your Printful account.
Next, click on the Stores tab within Printful.
Click the Choose Platform button to begin the installation process.
Your ecommerce platform shop will appear on Printful’s Stores page after the sync.
To proceed, click on the Add Product button
Select the item that you wish to design from the product library.
For this article, we’ll be using women’s tanktops.
Although not every product has multiple suppliers all products do. Before you commit to one supplier, make sure you check out reviews, materials, colors, and other information.
After you’ve selected a product, you can go to the Printful design maker.
Click on the Drop Your Design here button to upload a file from your computer.
You can add clipart, premium images and layers to the Design tab.
To choose the colors and sizes that you wish to sell, make sure to return to the Product tab. This is especially important to ensure your design looks professional on the right colors.
Don’t forget about the other print areas. These may not be available on all products, but some offer multiple printing options. Extra prints will cost you more.
Click the Proceed to Media button.
You can choose which mockup style to display on your website.
When you are done, click the Proceed to Detail button.
Printful already has default information for the product title and description. This information should be changed for branding and SEO purposes.
You can also add tags and product collections to your order.
The most important thing is the box to publish the product to your store.
Go to the Pricing page, and enter the retail price of each size product.
The right-side column shows your profit for each item.
After you are satisfied with your profit margin click the Submit to store button.
If everything goes according to plan, you will see the new item in Printable.
You can view it in Shopify, or edit it in Shopify.
You can see that the product synced successfully with Shopify.
It’s also listed in the Products section, where you can edit everything from photos to titles and descriptions to collections.
After that, everything is automated. Shopify sends an order and it appears in Printful. Printful receives the order notification and begins to print the item.
To keep your customers informed, you can set up email notifications or shipping codes.
Where is Printful located?
Printful has many offices and fulfillment centers. Printful’s headquarters is in Charlotte, North Carolina.
You can also find fulfillment centers in these other locations:
- Tijuana, Mexico
- Los Angeles, California
- Dallas, Texas
- Toronto, Canada
- Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Birmingham, UK
- Riga, Latvia
- Barcelona, Spain
- Amakusa (Japan)
- Brisbane, Australia
- Melbourne, Australia
Is Printful legitimate?
Printful, an established print-on demand company, handles millions of orders from multiple warehouses across the United States, Mexico, Latvia and the UK. It has seen its net revenue steadily increase since 2013, and continues to offer excellent customer service and quality control to merchants who sell custom goods.
Printful provides global fulfillment, design tools and an automated process to print and send items to customers.
Printful has a number of suppliers, but it manages all fulfillment centers. This allows them more control over the quality and delivery of products to customers. Printful offers comparable pricing and customer support to other print-on demand services. We also find superior quality control. Printful’s large network of fulfillment centers means that you can ship almost anywhere in the world.
Printful is a legit company with a proven track record. Printful has user reviews that you can view online. Printful is free and requires no payment after you have made a sale. Printful is therefore confident that it can deliver.
Printful also offers samples at a reduced rate for merchants. You can test the durability of the garments, as well as the quality of the printed products. It’s nice to be able to view the products in person, but it’s not as expensive as owning a physical store.
Is Printful available for free?
Almost entirely. You can sign up for Printful free of charge and create an account. There are no monthly fees.
You can upload your own designs and use the product designer to create product mockups. These mockups are available for free from Printful to help you create your product pages on Shopify.
Printful will only be charged if a sale occurs through your store. The sale must make enough money to pay Printful a cut and leave you with some profit.
Printful charges only after the products are shipped to customers. Printful doesn’t charge for the use of their design module or holding raw materials.
Printful will likely include shipping and printing costs as well as the cost of selling the item. Printful is transparent about their prices. You can see the rates for each item.
Note: While Printful can help you reduce the cost of buying one item, they will not be able offer wholesale pricing. This is simply the nature and function of the business. It is possible to save significant money by not having large quantities of products stored. The products can also be printed and shipped electronically. The cost of each item is slightly higher than if you bought 10,000 shirts directly from a wholesaler.
Printful’s fulfillment and warehousing services are another option. Printful’s fulfillment services are an additional benefit if you need to store or fulfill products that have not been printed. Printful might not offer a particular item but you want to make it available in your store. Printful will then include them with the rest of your orders. This ensures that customers don’t get multiple boxes from different shippers.
Your location, as well as the type of materials and picks used, will affect your warehousing or fulfillment service rates. The product fulfillment fee for orders in the US, for example, is $2. The custom packaging picking fee costs $.50 The location of your storage unit and how many units are stored in the Printful warehouse will also affect the storage fees. Storage of anywhere between 1,001 and 10,000 units in the US is $1 per cubic feet. There is a $25 minimum monthly charge.
What is the Maximum Money I Can Make?
It all depends on:
- The product being sold
- Your profit margin
- You can pass shipping costs on to your customers.
It’s not expensive to create an Printful account. You can also use the design tool to create mockups for your website. You get all the profit, right?
You still need to consider the per-unit cost of each item you sell. Printful sells products at a different price. You can also set your own sales price so that you can bring in different amounts of money.
You should also consider other costs such as marketing, advertising and web design for your ecommerce platform.
Printful charges shipping fees. You can choose to either pass the cost on to your customers or to pay it yourself. We recommend that you include at least a portion of the shipping cost in your product pricing. You can also offer free shipping. Your customers will be happy with the free shipping and may not care as much about the slightly more expensive t-shirts.
Once you have established your costs, you can use Printful to determine how much you want to charge for your products.
Look for the product cost in the product catalog. It is located at the bottom section of each item. Printful is able to maintain consistent prices and make a good profit.
You can see that we have three identical t-shirts made by different companies. They come at completely different prices. The one with 8 colors costs $13.25 per shirt and has slightly lower reviews than other shirts. The price of a product is often determined by its origin, supplier and quality. We recommend reading reviews and comparing materials to determine if the shirt is softer or more durable. Also, samples are helpful.
Next, a Bella + Canvas shirt is available for $12.95 and a Gildan shirt at $7.95. The $7.95 price tag is attractive, so let’s take a look at that one. Although the reviews are great, we have limited options for sizes and colors. It seems that designs can only be placed on black, white, and grey shirts.
The $12.95 shirt is a better option for brighter-colored shirts, but we still have the Gildan shirt in neutral colors such as white, black, and grey.
Keep in mind, however, that certain products allow you to add custom designs to multiple areas. Each additional print on a product will increase your unit cost. The cost of an inside label placed on a shirt can increase by $2.49 per shirt. A front, back and outside label could increase the cost of the shirt by $2.49 per shirt. This is even before you consider your margin.
The Profit Calculator on the Printful website is the best way to determine how much you can make with Printful.
After you have created the product and added elements such as a title and description, this appears. It displays the Printful Price in one column, and the Retail Price in another. The Retail Price column can be customized and shows how much you intend to sell the product on your website.
We recommend that you play around with the numbers to determine how much profit you would like to make for each item. It calculates the profit per sale in the last column.
A $16.99 t-shirt can be sold for $9.04, but Printful must pay $7.95 for printing and shipping.
Where do payments go through Printful?
Printful does not collect any payments for you. This is the responsibility of your ecommerce platform or payment processor. Printful integrates with Bigcommerce, Squarespace, and Shopify.
Printful only syncs your online store to pull in product details. Printful will notify you of any sales.
Shopify guides customers through the checkout and shopping cart process when they buy a product. Your payment gateway, such as Square, Authorize.net or Shopify Payments, processes the payment and runs a fraud test. The money is then transferred to your merchant account so you can spend it however you like.
Printful does not take any payment from customers.
Printful gets paid.
Printful can be paid in two ways. First, you can load money into a so-called Printful Wallet. This is a prepayment, similar to a gift card or preloaded phone plan. As Printful delivers your orders, the amount in your Printful wallet will decrease automatically.
You could also add a billing method, such as a checking or credit card. This option is the best, as you don’t have to refill the Printful wallet every day and can also earn points on a credit-card.
So, is Printful technically a Dropshipping service?
On-demand dropshipping is a part of the Printful process. You’re creating and printing your own products, rather than buying pre-designed items from a manufacturer. Dropshippers are known for selling cheap products and taking a long time to ship (considering how many dropshipping services originate from China). Printful, however, has its own fulfillment centers located in many countries around the globe. You can have your product printed in the USA or UK and then have it shipped to customers in those countries.
Printful’s dropshipping feature allows you to store your products and then ship them directly to your customers. Print-on-demand is more than just those two steps.
Are Printful’s benefits right for your business?
To understand how Printful could fit in your business processes, we suggest that you examine your current business practices. Do you have suppliers or printers that can print your custom-made goods, or are you looking to start your own business?
You may find that printing on-demand can be a cost-saving option for your business.
The Printful review shows that the service is completely free up to the point you accept orders. We recommend it as a great printing and shipping option for any company, large or small. It’s so low-risk that it’s worth investigating.
If you still have questions about Printful or how it works, please let us know in comments.
