Etsy Third Party Print on Demand

    After moving to the big city of Los Angeles, I had to learn how to navigate surviving. Things in Los Angeles are very expensive, and being a full time student with a minimum wage job left money to be very tight. I had to think of a side hustle that would be easy yet yield a decent flow of income for the payoff. With my obsession with TikTok, I learned about print on demand through online shopping websites, such as Etsy. Print on demand is a somewhat recent business approach where people can use third party services to make and ship products with their design on it. This business strategy makes it so the individual who is selling on a website, like Etsy, can focus on creating designs, posting them, and messaging customers who are interested. When an item gets purchased, the individual who owns the shop does not have to worry about making or distributing the item at all

    I chose to try this myself after some inspiration from others sharing their experience with it. I used an online service, called Canva, to make simple designs I believe would sell on products like shirts, mugs, bags, hoodies, etc. I opened an Etsy shop, created a name for it, and opened an account with the third party service, Printful. This service links directly with your Etsy shop, so when someone makes a purchase through Etsy, Printful will immediately get notified to make the order for the buyer. This makes my job much easier. I am only responsible for the creativity aspect of the business, and occasionally some customer service as well. I am separated from the manufacturing process, making this easy side hustle a very passive form of income.

    When I started my shop in October of 2022, I just wanted to make as many designs as possible just to get my shop started. I created seasonal, festive, funny, current, clever, and visual designs that I thought other people would buy. With little to no experience, it was a game of trial and error. I was able to see which of my early designs got the most views, and from there, I would make more designs similar to the ones getting the most attention. About two weeks into the process, I got my very first sale. Now that I new all of my hard work finally paid off, I was motivated to make more. Shortly after my first sale, I was making a sale every other day. To this day, I still update my store, and I am still learning about the long term maintenance of a small business. Although it is little effort, I learned that it is important to just stay consistent and never give up even when business is slow.