53 – Getting Started with Print on Demand Marketplaces

Nikki

0:00
For the first episode of our second year, we’re taking you back to where we left off with print on demand. To refresh your memory, in Episode 50 we introduced you to the idea of print on demand and we talked about all the different types of print on demand that’s available. And we also discuss some pros and cons of each. So this week, we’re gonna go into more detail about print on demand marketplaces.

Laura

0:23
Marketplaces are great when you don’t know where to start. And you just want to get your art out in the world without having to manage the tech side of your own website. They handle the customer service, the order fulfillment and the shipping. All you have to do is upload your art and add tags and descriptions. Oh, yeah, and tell everyone that you actually have a shop.

Nikki

0:45
Oh, yeah, that’s the part that we always forget.

Laura

0:50
Now it’s important to note that you don’t have to be a digital surface designer. You could be a photographer or an illustrator or a painter and still use these marketplaces.

Nikki

0:59
Laura, I even recently met a poet who writes little snippets that he sells both on print on demand products, and even licenses to companies.

Laura

1:08
Cool. Well, some popular POD marketplaces include Society6, RedBubble, Zazzle, Spoonflower, and Tee Republic.

Nikki

1:20
Yeah, we can’t possibly talk you through all of them, but for the most part, they operate very much the same way. They’re the same in functionality and really similar in how to set up. So today, we’re gonna go into the two that we have the most experience with, which are Society6 and Spoonflower.

Laura

1:41
Hi, this is Laura Lee Griffin.

Nikki

1:42
And this is Nikki May, with the Startist Society, inspiring you to stop getting your own way and start building an art biz and life that you love.

Laura

1:52
We are artists who believe strongly in the power of community, accountability, following your intuition, taking small actionable steps and breaking down the barriers of fear and procrastination that keep you stuck.

Nikki

2:06
Follow along with us on our creative business journey as we encourage you on yours.

Laura

2:16
Okay, so I gotta tell you, Nikki, I just created my Society6 account last week. So I’m really happy to share everything that I’ve learned about how the platform works and how you just get started on it. And I’ve already had six sales. There’s nothing like seeing that earnings number on your page and knowing that you didn’t have to lift a finger to do anything. Yay for passive income.

Nikki

2:44
Yeah, I had a Society6 shop years ago when I first learned about them, but the products were a lot more limited then, and I really didn’t do that much with it. So I close it down when I started using other POD sites. But after hearing more about other surface designers that are doing really well with it, people like Cat Coq and Charlie Clements, and now you of course, I’m thinking about starting it up again. But Laura, since you’ve done it more recently, why don’t you walk us through the process.

Laura

3:13
Okay, so here’s how you get started. Step number one, sign up for an account.

Nikki

3:19
That sounds easy enough.

Laura

3:21
So you’re going to want to link up your PayPal account to your Society6 account and they’ll charge you $1 verification fee for that. Then, let’s talk briefly about how you actually earn money on this platform. So you earn 10% commissions on all products, or you get a 10% artist discount on your own orders, with the potential to earn more on art prints, framed prints and canvas prints where you can set a markup percentage. For markup items, discounts, coupon codes and sales applied by Society6, which are outside of your control, will impact your earnings and reduce them unless you up the percentage of your markup. So you kind of have to be following the sales and know when to adjust your percentages. But for all other products that they sell your 10% commissions are earned based on the retail price before discounts, which is great since you can’t actually control those sales that they offer.

Nikki

4:23
Yeah, the way that they the way that they figure out the commissions is a little bit confusing. So in the show notes, we’ll link to exactly how earnings are calculated.

Laura

4:33
Now to get an additional 10% on top of your earnings, you can join the artist affiliate program, where you can add links to your social media, your website, etcetera to your shop, and then earn commissions from people who click and purchase products from those links. So there’s a simple application process on the Society6 website and we’re gonna link to that in the show notes.

Nikki

4:58
That’s really awesome. So you can earn your commission and an affiliate on the same products.

Laura

5:03
Yeah, so you could basically earn up to 20%.

Nikki

5:06
That’s fantastic.

Laura

5:07
And if it’s a, I don’t know, if it’s an art print, you might even make more than that if you have it marked up. So it’s pretty cool.

Nikki

5:14
Yeah, awesome.

Laura

5:15
Earnings get paid out via PayPal between the first and third business day each month and are credited to your earnings 30 days after an item has shipped. You’ll see pending transactions that are under 30 days on your account, so you can kind of see how you’re doing.

Nikki

5:30
Yeah, and be sure to watch out for the great sales that Society6 offers, they occasionally do up to 30% off plus free international shipping, which is really great for our non US listeners.

Laura

5:42
Or for shipping gifts to your friends abroad. Just be aware that there are some customs taxes that you would still have to pay beyond the regular free shipping.

Nikki

5:51
Okay, so let’s get back to setting up your shop. What do you do after you set up your account and connect PayPal?

Laura

5:58
So the first thing that you want to do is click on edit shop and it gives you an option to add an avatar. Basically, that’s a profile pic or you could use a popular piece of your art or your face.

Nikki

6:11
What do most people do for that? Do you use your your face, your logo or a piece of art?

Laura

6:16
I’ve honestly seen both. I ended up just using my face. But I have seen like if somebody has an illustration of like a girl or a portrait, I’ve seen them use their illustration instead of their own face.

Nikki

6:29
Okay, so it’s up to you what you want to choose.

Laura

6:32
You’ll also want to add a cover image, which is basically just a thin banner that goes across the top of your shop. And I personally used a repeat pattern for that. You can also add a shop description, which is who you are, and why you’re here in just a few sentences.

Nikki

6:50
And why we should care.

Laura

6:51
And why we should care. You can add your website and Instagram handle in your description, but just know that it won’t be hyperlinked, but I did notice that everybody does that, they kind of you know, have that in there so that people can find them in other places.

Nikki

7:06
Okay, so that sounds easy enough. So now that you’ve set up your shop, how do you get started with products?

Laura

7:13
Okay, it’s time to upload your first design or your first piece of artwork. You always want to ensure first that you have copyright to whatever you’re uploading and that there’s no infringement to others’ rights, and it isn’t too heavily inspired by someone else.

Nikki

7:28
Yeah, so don’t be a jerk, and steal other people’s art. If you can’t create art yourself, then you really shouldn’t be trying to have a shop, right?

Laura

7:38
Right. If you have multiple colorways of a piece of art, you have to upload them as individual design. Society6 doesn’t allow you to upload one design with six different colorways. And you want to make sure that the color mode that you’ve used is RGB color mode, that’s the one that’s required for the digital printing on Society6. You want to be conscious of your resolution, and also the pixel requirements. And there is an awesome tech page that they provide that has specs for every single product that they sell.

Nikki

8:10
And of course, we’ll link to that too.

Laura

8:13
Yes. Now, some Society6 products have downloadable PSD templates, like socks. Otherwise, if you’re just uploading your pattern, and your pattern isn’t multi-directional, you’re gonna end up with one sock design being upside down, or both of them being sideways. And that happened to me. So Society6 doesn’t let you rotate that image in the app that I found, but you can upload a new version that looks exactly the way you want. So you can go for larger dimensions is what I would recommend to cover more of the products. So I basically created my first product images in Illustrator with a butterfly and rainbow pattern in three different dimensions and sizes. So once you get those uploaded, you’ll be taken to a page that shows all the different products with your artwork applied basically a massive market page. And it’s got everything, Nikki from shower curtains to beer koozies

Nikki

9:13
Because everybody wants butterflies and rainbows on their beer koozie?

Laura

9:18
Of course Nikki, it’s so cute. Don’t you want one on your beer koozie?

Nikki

9:23
I gotta admit, I’ve never owned a beer koozie. I pretty much hate beer. Do they have bourbon koozies?

Laura

9:32
I am not sure about that. If not you should invent them or send it into Society6 as their next best seller.

Nikki

9:39
I don’t even know what a bourbon koozie would look like. So anyway, once you’ve uploaded your artwork and chosen the products that you want to put them on, I believe it automatically places them for you, right? But do you have the option to edit the placement per product?

Laura

9:57
Yes, you can click on each product and change both both the scale and the placement of your image. And you want to be careful not to scale down too much, or you’re going to end up with this white margin outline around your image. You can scale something bigger, but beware of making it too small. Now, products that don’t have enough pixels will be grayed out. And if you didn’t upload something high enough resolution or large enough, you’ll be able to tell that they are unavailable to you, because there’ll be grayed out. And that means you just have to go back and upload a higher resolution image. So when you change the scaling or placement of an image, Society6 gives you a pop up screen. And it asks if you want to apply the same cropping and dimensions to similar dimension products that are in the store. You can check mark them, and then you can hit yes to make the products active. Now the big question I had when I started this process Nikki was do you need to have your artwork on all the products? I mean, should you should you select only those products you think look the cutest with a specific design. There are so many cool products out there. There’s backpacks, duffle bags, shower curtains, clocks, yoga mats, shirts, I mean, you name it.

Nikki

11:12
So I think you should give it some thought and not just slap it on absolutely everything. For example, with your cute little butterfly and rainbow pattern, there are some products that it naturally makes sense on and some that it doesn’t. I think it would be great on backpacks and phone cases and pillows, for example. But I wouldn’t put it on art prints, you know, unless maybe you pulled out the motifs in the pattern and made it into an illustration instead of a pattern. Then you might have some coordinating pieces that someone might buy, say an art print to match the pillow they bought. And really the same works in reverse. If you’re using a photograph or an illustration and not a repeat pattern, there are definitely some products that will be more difficult to make it work on like say leggings or a backpack.

Laura

12:02
Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I actually really liked that idea of creating a coordinating illustration for your patterns. I hadn’t actually thought to do that.

Nikki

12:10
That’s what you have me for.

Laura

12:12
It is! Nikki to the rescue.

Nikki

12:16
Okay, so that seems easy enough. So what do you do once you have all your products chosen and everything is placed and scaled just right?

Laura

12:26
First, you’re going to want to choose a category for your artwork, like pattern or drawing. There is a drop down list where they have a select few that you can choose from. And then you’re going to want to add a description, like what inspired you to make it and then you want to make sure that you add tags, you can add up to 20 tags on Society6, and I absolutely recommend that you use them all.

Nikki

12:50
Yeah, and you definitely want to do some research on the best tags to use. For example, don’t use really generic ones; be as specific as you can and choose tags that don’t have like 100 pages of results. Someone might be willing to scroll through, say 10 pages to find the product they want, but not like hundreds of them.

Laura

13:13
Yeah, for example, using rose in your search gives you 100 plus pages of results on Society6. But using the term yellow rose produces only 16 pages of results. You can also look at the tags that popular art is using and maybe steal some of those tags that others are using. And always include the color of your artwork in your tags and your title where you can, especially if you’re going to be uploading multiple colorways, like if it’s a pattern, or if it’s an illustration and you have several different colorways of the same piece of artwork.

Nikki

13:48
Yeah, and I don’t remember, can you control what people see when they go to your shop page? Or does it just randomly show all your products? Can you categorize them in any way?

Laura

13:59
Yeah, you can customize what you want people to see when they land on your shop. By editing your shop settings. You click on edit shop, and you may just want to narrow it down to just art prints, for example. So when they land on your page, they can see one of each design instead of seeing 100 products of the exact same design, where they would have to like scroll through pages to find the next design. Or if you’re a pattern designer and you have all of your repeat pattern designs on, I don’t know, coffee mugs or pillows for example, you could use those if you don’t have your patterns as art prints.

Nikki

14:36
Okay, that makes sense. And it would look a lot better than seeing just an entire page of the same pattern right? Okay, so let’s talk about some strategy for being found on Society6, how can you stand out from the mass, just the huge number of artists and designers on the platform?

Laura

14:53
Having a consistent style can be good to be found or to be highlighted by Society6. There are communities that you can get involved in and challenges that you can participate in to try and get noticed by those that actually curate the collections for the platform. You always want to tag your products on social media with @society6 as well, which could help you get noticed.

Nikki

15:16
And if you order some of your own products, it’s a good idea to create your own images, so they don’t look like every standard mock up that everybody else is using.

Laura

15:25
And share across all of your social channels, tagging the POD company and using your affiliate link. Think about your customer and what season you’re in. For example, in summer, beer koozies could be a big seller, Nikki, especially with rainbows and butterflies on them.

Nikki

15:43
Not for me. Where’s that bourbon koozie?

Laura

15:48
Now in the winter, blankets might be big. So think of art and colors that match the themes of the season.

Nikki

15:55
Black. Pretty much black matches every season for me. Anyway, so Laura, what do you think about designing for trends? Personally, I’ve never done this myself, I just tend to make the art that I want to make. And then I decide what products to put them on and who I think might like them. What do you think? Should we design to trends or not?

Laura

16:20
It’s a big question. I think it’s pretty common across all of surface design, for example, and for print on demand, trends can be a huge win and get you noticed, but if you’re all about rainbows and butterflies, maybe you shouldn’t be illustrating, I don’t know skulls and snakes. Or something else that might be popular, but just outside of your brand.

Nikki

16:44
Yeah, I gotta say, I might draw butterflies, but I’m pretty much never gonna draw a rainbow.

Laura

16:50
Awww, I feel sad for you.

Nikki

16:52
Well, that’s okay. I’m pretty sure you’re never going to draw, you’re never going to be drawing rats or skulls.

Laura

16:58
Yeah. True.

Nikki

17:00
And don’t even get me started on Christmas.

Laura

17:02
You’re such a Grinch.

Nikki

17:04
Well, yeah, I can’t deny that.

Laura

17:07
So Society6 chooses artwork along certain themes each week to highlight in both their blog and their newsletter, and being included could create a huge jump in sales for your shop. So what if nothing is selling? Can you find it in your own search? If not, you might want to tweak those 20 tags we talked about. Look at what has sold already and what is favorited. That kind of tells you which designs people like the most. And the algorithm favors those that post new work consistently. So search results basically have a newness factor, right? So they want you to be posting on a regular basis.

Nikki

17:51
Right. Okay, so what about sales tax? Is that something that you have to worry about with Society6?

Laura

17:57
Well, for sales tax, it’s my understanding, it gets collected by Society6, and they submit to each state and we’re talking about the sales tax, for example, in the US. Okay, so the only taxes that you have to worry about are your own income taxes from your commission earnings.

Nikki

18:14
All right, but, but not all companies work the same way, right?

Laura

18:18
Right. I know that Red Bubble is very similar to Society6 in a lot of ways, but it works differently on sales tax, it’s my understanding, they collect the money on your behalf, but then they pass it back to you with your earnings, and they don’t actually file it for you with the state. And it appears that they collect that tax based on their own state nexus status and not your own. So you basically have to remit taxes to multiple states, or send a check back to, you know, Red Bubble saying, here’s the money back, which really isn’t ideal for a small business. So personally, I’m avoiding starting a shop there for that reason.

Nikki

18:54
Yeah, I mean, that’s reason enough, really sorry, Red Bubble, but that’s reason enough not to recommend you as a platform.

Laura

19:03
Now, it may be different for people in other countries, that might be a better solution for them. But I know for the US, that’s a significant problem.

Nikki

19:11
We are absolutely not claiming to be knowledgeable about how taxes work in other countries. We’re only talking about the US here.

Laura

19:20
And disclaimer, we’re not tax accountants.

Nikki

19:22
I mean, I can barely file my own taxes, I don’t know about you, you’re a finance person, so you’ve probably got that down.

Laura

19:36
So next question: Nikki, will my designs get stolen if I put them on Society6 or any of the other POD sites?

Nikki

19:45
Well, this seems to be a question that a lot of people ask and my opinion is, when you share your work publicly, you always run the risk of somebody either copying your designs or stealing your art outright. But really, what’s the alternative? If you don’t share your work and put it out there for people to buy, you aren’t going to have a career as an artist, right? You just pretty much have a private hobby. Which there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you want to be a professional artist, you have to put your work out there and take that risk, right? There are things you can do if your work is copied or stolen, mbut that sounds like another episode for another time, right? Let’s have you an intellectual property attorney for that one.

Laura

20:30
Yeah, for sure. Now, what about licensing – will accompany not want to license my work because it’s on there?

Nikki

20:36
Well, in my admittedly very limited experience, and what I’ve heard from other licensed artists with way more experience, that’s never really an issue. In fact, artists are often found by art directors and agents from their Society6 shop, it won’t stop them from wanting to work with you, they’ll likely just ask you to stop selling that particular design that they want to use, or they’ll have you create work just for them.

Laura

21:05
Well, it makes sense, it’s sort of proof of concept, isn’t it?

Nikki

21:08
Yeah, totally.

Laura

21:09
If you can sell products on society, sex, and the products look great then they know that you could probably sell products for them.

Nikki

21:15
Absolutely.

Laura

21:17
All right. So let’s talk about another one of the most popular POD marketplaces, one that is especially popular with surface pattern designers. Spoonflower.

Nikki

21:26
SO Spoonflower has been around for a long time, and it started as a small independent print on demand fabric company. I believe that at the beginning, it was mostly designers using it to create fabric for themselves to use for their own sewing projects.

Laura

21:42
Yeah, it quickly grew to being a hugely popular marketplace for others to buy fabric. And more recently, wallpaper, pillows, curtains, tea towels, bedding, and a lot more.

Nikki

21:54
Lions and tigers and bears..

Laura

21:56
Oh my. And it was recently purchased by Shutterfly, causing a lot of sellers to speculate about how it might change from that kind of cool indie company that it has been.

Nikki

22:11
So I actually opened a Spoonflower shop back in 2018 after I did my 100 day project of creating 100 repeat pattern designs. I absolutely don’t consider myself an expert on Spoonflower, but I do have a little bit of experience. So setting up your shop starts very much like all of the other print on demand shops, you upload your images, making sure they’re repeating tiles in RGB for Spoonflower. But they have a little bit of a twist that might be slightly annoying.

Laura

22:44
Yeah, I think this twist is why I haven’t opened up my own store. To be honest, once you’ve uploaded a design to Spoonflower, you can’t actually put it for sale to the public to purchase until you’ve ordered a proof or a swatch of it to confirm that the repeat works correctly and that there aren’t any pesky lines or mismatches in your pattern, right?

Nikki

23:05
Yeah, I mean, yes, it’s a pain, but I get what they’re going for. It’s really easy with a repeat pattern design to have it not quite right, you might have those lines that you mentioned. Or you might have it where the repeat doesn’t quite match up and you have just like a hard line somewhere that you really don’t want. Right. But But what’s great about it is they do have a, what they call fill-a-yard option where you can add a whole bunch of patterns on one yard. So you don’t have to order, you don’t have to order a sample of each pattern that you upload. So it won’t cost you that much to do this verification.

Laura

23:47
Yeah, but I think, I think you can actually fill a yard with just your repeat block, so you won’t be able to tell if you have a problem with your repeat or not. Which kind of defeats the purpose.

Nikki

23:59
That might be an issue.

Laura

24:00
That might be an issue.

Nikki

24:02
Anyway.

Laura

24:03
Anyway. Well, another constraint I see around Spoonflower is that you need to have skill in creating repeat pattern blocks. So they can be just basic repeats or they can be half drops or half bricks. I think when you upload it gives you options for the different style of repeat that you can select. So it’s really best for those that work in Photoshop or Illustrator, Affinity Designer or procreate and that know how to make repeating patterns.

Nikki

24:35
Totally, but that doesn’t mean your art has to originate on your computer or iPad. You can be a painter and import a photo or a scan of your artwork into Photoshop and create a repeat tile from there.

Laura

24:48
Yeah, I’ve seen some really cool watercolor designs and also abstract painting designs that have been done that way. So I have another question. I am super confused. And this is another reason I’m intimidated by Spoonflower and don’t have a shop yet. I am very confused by how Spoonflower shows scale, like, does the DPI matter? How do you know exactly what your finished pattern size will be, Nikki?

Nikki

25:17
Okay, so Spoonflower has a page on their site with a lot of detail about sizing your design, and we’ll link to that in the show notes. But basically, it comes down to this, the minimum dpi for Spoonflower is 150. So once you upload it, you can scale it up and down if you want to for different applications. For example, you might want the repeat larger on wallpaper than you do on fabric for pillows. So if you design your pattern the way you want it to look at a specific size in inches and save it out as 150 dpi, you really won’t be able to increase the scale. So what I recommend is saving it at a higher dip. If you think you’re going to want to scale the repeat up. You can always go smaller, but you can’t go bigger if you just have the minimum dpi.

Laura

26:10
Alright, so maybe upload it 300 or something, and then that’ll give you the option to go either bigger or smaller.

Nikki

26:15
Definitely.

Laura

26:16
Okay, awesome. That makes sense. Maybe I can actually test this out this week.

Nikki

26:23
I recommend that.

Laura

26:24
And be brave and create my Spoonflower shop. And even though I don’t have a shop open yet, I have to admit that I’ve actually ordered their color map. They basically provide a yard of fabric with all of the hex colors on it so that you can see exactly how colors will look on a specific fabric. And I bought the, I bought the quilting cotton one. And that’s really great so if the colors on the fabric look different than the colors on my screen, I’m kind of gonna know what they’ll look like when they print out. And I can make tweaks and adjustments to my chosen colors that way. And that could basically save you a lot of heartache later if your teal turns out to be sky blue when you get it in the mail.

Nikki

27:06
Right. So that’s great. Either they didn’t have that available when I open my shop, or it’s possible that I just wasn’t aware of it. But I was still very happy with the colors of my initial test patterns when I got them. It’s good, however, to make sure that you’re aware of the way different fabrics take the ink. Depending on the material, some are kind of soft and fuzzy looking and some are really bright and crisp.

Laura

27:32
Yeah, you can buy a sampler set of all the fabrics as well. I think I did that too. So that I would be all prepared for the moment when I was ready to upload my designs.

Nikki

27:42
Of course you did, Overthinker?

Laura

27:45
Of course I did. All right. So let’s talk about how you make money on Spoonflower. Similar to Society6, you receive 10% commissions at the time that we’re recording this episode. And if you exceed $300, in sales in a given month, you can earn bonus commissions up to an additional 5% depending on on how much extra you sell.

Nikki

28:11
Yeah, that would be nice. I’ve never done that.

Laura

28:16
But those that, you know are very popular on Spoonflower probably do quite well with that. Commissions are paid out every two weeks if your earnings are over $10. So if you earn under that, then it’ll roll over. I think that’s the way Amazon Affiliates works to like if you don’t reach a certain threshold they don’t pay out yet.

Nikki

28:33
Yeah, I mean, that’s the truth of most commissions and affiliates, you have to earn a certain amount before you actually start receiving money. Spoonflower’s prices are pretty high. So while I think it’s great for fabric and products to buy for yourself or for a gift, you aren’t likely to be able to make much profit reselling it. So I think it’s great to sell your designs on Spoonflower but not really to use it for a wholesale business.

Laura

29:02
Yeah, and if you want to create sewn products for your own unique brand, I think that’s where the Pro Membership comes in. So Spoonflower has a paid Pro Membership. It’s currently $249 a year, I believe. And once you’re part of that you get things like free standard shipping worldwide, guaranteed one week turnaround times, half price expedited shipping, unlimited half price swatches and swatch samples and a dedicated help team. So if you want to design retail products with your fabric, this could be worth your money. But if you’re a dabbler probably not.

Nikki

29:43
Yeah, that would definitely help. If you want to make Spoonflower part of your business. We’ll link to the Pro Membership page in the show notes Okay, so now let’s talk about how to get noticed on Spoonflower. Very much like Society6 there are so many artists on the market plays, although fewer than Society6, there’s still quite a lot. So it can be really difficult to stand out, but Spoonflower has these really great weekly challenges where people vote on their favorite designs, and winners get announced every Thursday.

Laura

30:17
Yeah, these challenges can get you to work outside of your comfort zone and test out themes that you’ve perhaps never tried before. And some recent ones that they’ve had are Palm Springs, mid century wallpaper, vintage canned goods, adventure block prints, etc. And you can win up to a $200 Spoonflower credit.

Nikki

30:38
Which is great to order all the samples that you need in order to sell your work on Spoonflower, right? But the good thing is, you don’t actually have to order a sample of your designs to enter the contest. So it doesn’t cost you anything out of pocket.

Laura

30:54
And if you’re in the top 50, enter a verified seller, your artwork will immediately be placed in the marketplace for sale without having to purchase a swatch.

Nikki

31:03
Right. And even if you don’t win, it’s still gets your design in front of a lot more eyes than just normal designs that you upload to your shop.

Laura

31:12
Yeah, and another way to get found similar to Society6 is to ensure that you’re using unique tags.

Nikki

31:19
Totally, you can have a description of your design and up to 13 tags, so be sure to use them all.

Laura

31:25
I think back on our episode number 33 that we had with Liz Kohler Brown, when she talked about her Spoonflower shop that she created with her husband. And she basically earns a full time income from her shop still, because she found niches in the market, especially with, I believe with hers, it was masculine designs where there weren’t that many options available in searches. And so I think she’s found a lot of success there.

Nikki

31:52
Yeah, she really found a great way to make Spoonflower work for her, right. All right, Laura. So that was a lot. So what are our key takeaways?

Laura

32:03
Well, first print on demand marketplaces can be a great platforms to begin selling your designs on products, diversify your business and provide a stream of passive income without having to worry about all the technology and customer service issues.

Nikki

32:18
Yeah, and although it can be difficult to stand out on these marketplaces, there are definitely things you can do to be found. And it’s another way to add multiple revenue streams without a huge amount of extra work.

Laura

32:30
Now it’s your turn. Do you sell your designs on print on demand marketplaces? Or have you always wanted to? Come share your thoughts and experiences with us in the Startist Society Facebook group.

Nikki

32:42
For today’s Startist Society show notes and links to all things print on demand marketplaces, go to startistsociety.com/podmarketplaces.

Laura

32:54
If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, we’d love for you to leave us a five star rating and review. Reviews help us reach more startists like you and keep us inspired to continue creating new episodes.

Nikki

33:04
Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.

Laura

33:08
So for markup items, discounts coupon code has been so for markup items discounts coupon… I can’t say the word coupon!

Nikki

33:27
Okay, you gotta save that for the blooper reel!