I Tried Print On Demand For 7 Days, This Is How Much I Made

People are making thousands of dollars in passive income every month selling products that don’t even exist until someone places an order. $34,000 per month. The realistic earnings I’ve been able to make with print on demand. Well over a million dollars. $63,000. $21,000 per month. Multiple six figures in profit. But is this actually a realistic side hustle and possible for anyone to do? Well, as an experienced millionaire businessman, I’m going to put this to the test myself by making and selling my own print-on-demand product.

As this is a side hustle challenge, I’m setting myself the usual rules. Rule one: I must sell under a fake name. Rule two: I can’t spend more than zero dollars. And rule three: I must launch the business within 24 hours. Start the timer.

The first thing on my plan is to find a supplier with easy-to-use software. For anyone that doesn’t know how print on demand works, here’s a very quick breakdown. You make a design and partner with a company, and in return they print and ship your product when someone buys it. This means if we execute everything correctly, then all we have to do is collect our paycheck. So, I’m just going to make a a free account with Gelato, as they seem to have fulfillment centers all around the world, and from what I can see, have the most straightforward software for me to use.

Right, so now we need to decide what kind of product we want to sell. There are lots of different products perfect for print on demand, such as t-shirts, mugs, and bags. But instead of just guessing, I’m going to do some market research to find out what’s actually selling well. I like to use TikTok for this kind of thing, as lots of people are using it to promote their print on demand stores, because they have an integrated shop feature. You’ve probably seen the little banner that pops up at the bottom of some TikToks giving you the option to buy what’s in the video. Honestly, my son’s girlfriend has bought so much on TikTok shop. I’m not just looking for one-off videos, I want to find an account that consistently sells the same product. If someone is investing their time in creating multiple videos, it’s safe to assume that the product is selling well.

Right, I think I’ve found the perfect product: wall art. Firstly, based on what I’ve seen on TikTok, there’s a large market of aspiring entrepreneurs who love putting motivational artwork on their walls to keep themselves motivated and working hard. Secondly, wall art is very cheap to make, but it seems from my research that I can sell it for a high price, as it’s more of an impulse purchase. This means that my profit margins will be very good, as I’ll make more money per sale. And thirdly, there are so many different ways I can scale this business. Just think, if I grew it big enough, I could even branch out into premium artwork that wealthy people can hang in their mansions. Imagine how much I could sell those for, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. First, we need to make some designs.

Right, I’ve got a confession to make, and I’m not proud of it. As you know, I’m under a time limit here, and I don’t really have enough hours left to make my own designs and do everything else on my list. If I was a bit younger, then I could probably use an AI tool like Midjourney to create the wall art for me. But you guys know I’m a boomer, so it would take me a little while to get the hang of it, and time isn’t something I have lots of right now. That doesn’t mean I’m about to die, by the way. So, long story short, I’ve ordered five different wall art designs from three different sellers on Fiverr. I sent them all this brief: “I would like you to create an entrepreneurial poster that could be framed and used as wall art. Please come up with your own quote, idea and theme. I think something entrepreneurial and motivational would be best. I intend on using the poster size 30 by 40 centimetres. That’s 12 inches by 16 inches for all our American viewers. I look forward to seeing the design”. This is going to be pretty interesting, as I really don’t have time to make any changes, and I’m kind of leaving my fate in their hands.

While we’re waiting for those designs to come back, let’s use this opportunity to make an online store. I’ve decided I’m going to sell on Etsy, as it’s relatively simple and has a low barrier to entry. Platforms like this are great, as they already have an established customer base for you to tap into. The downside is that it’s often a race to the bottom, as your product is nothing but a commodity and it’s only compared on price. Although my designs are unique, there are still a lot of people selling similar products. If you want to build a business that stands the test of time, I suggest heading over to something like Shopify and creating your own store.

So, it’s the next morning and I’ve been sent some designs to review. I haven’t looked at them yet, so let’s look at them together. Actually, I quite like this one. The design looks pretty cool and the quote is very true. I tell you what, if I had a penny for every time someone said my success was due to luck and not hard work, then I’d be rich. Oh wait, I am. This next guy seems to have made five different designs. Let’s take a look. Honestly, these designs do look pretty basic, and the quotes are just stating the obvious. The only one I really like is the last one, and even that looks like something I could have done in two minutes. Okay, so it’s all riding on this last seller. This is actually my favorite design so far. This next one, I’m not so keen on, but I can see he’s at least tried to play with the text a little bit. Maybe this will appeal to the girls as it’s got that sort of swirly font. I think they like that sort of thing.

Right, now we’ve got to upload these designs onto Gelato. Since this is a print-on-demand product, I don’t have to pay for anything until a sale is made. So, this is great if you’re starting out with zero dollars. So, I’m just going to go to the menu on the left-hand side and select “Product Catalog”. As you can see, there are a lot of different options here, but I’m, of course, going to select “Wall Art”. This pulls up a selection of different types of posters. Now, I’m going to pick a wooden framed poster. I’m then going to go with the premium matte paper option, as I can see that this is the best seller. And to be honest, I don’t think people will really be able to tell the difference between this and the museum quality one, but my profits certainly will. So, I’m going to select 30 by 40 centimetres, as I think this is the best size poster for most houses, and it seems to be the size most people select. Then I’m going to pick vertical, and a black frame color, as that’s pretty sort of gender-neutral, and ready to hang because, “Ain’t nobody got time for that”. I’m just going to repeat the steps with all my designs, including the ones I didn’t like. After all, I’ve got nothing to lose and who knows, I might even sell some.

Now I’ve got all the designs uploaded, I’m going to go over to the menu and select “Stores”. This is where you can link your Gelato account with your Etsy store. If you don’t want to sell on Etsy, as you can see, there are a lot of different options. Right, I could just upload the designs from Fiverr right onto my Etsy listing, but to be honest, they don’t look very premium. So, I’m going to use the built-in Mockup Studio by clicking here. This tool will help me bring the posters to life. First, we just have to set the dimensions for our file size. Oh, they have actually on here an Etsy preset, so I’m going to just select that. But you can also set custom sizes if you’d like to create mockups for things like Instagram stories. Now we need to select a scene for our mockup. Oh, now that one looks good, so let’s go with that. You can zoom in and move around the scene by just double-clicking on it. So, I’m going to adjust it to make the scene a little bit bigger, so there’s more focus on my poster design. Next, let’s select our poster size. I’m going to set it to 30 by 40, as I said before, most poster designs are this size.

These are looking pretty good. Now the last step before we can sell our wall art: setting a price. I’ve just taken a quick look at the price navigator tool, and in here, it lays out exactly what the product costs, how much shipping will set us back, and even the total profit per sale. Looking at all of this, I think a good price would be $49.99. This is a bit high compared to most competitors on Etsy, which will definitely impact sales, but I’m willing to take a bit of a risk, because I always think a nice profit margin is around 50%.

Right, so I’m over in Miami on business, but I’ve been keeping an eye on our side hustle challenge, and I’ll tell you what, I’ve got some results, but before I share them with you, check this out. I actually ordered a couple of our products and got them shipped to me over here in the USA, and I think they’re pretty good. And the quality, as well, is absolutely fantastic. I think I’m going to keep these. Actually, I’m really impressed with the shipping time as well. It took three days to get these to us, which is far better than the Chinese drop shippers, and that should give us an advantage. I’d actually always recommend ordering your product before you start selling it because reputation is everything, and you don’t want customers speaking negatively about your product.

So I’ve left it just a few more days, because things were going nicely. Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: did we make any sales? Well, yes and no. Some of the posters generated a few sales and some didn’t even catch a bite. Overall, we generated 11 sales, which led to £549.89. But of course, this isn’t all profit.

First, we had to pay for designs on Fiverr, which was £60.77. Then Etsy takes a small cut of 6.5% on each sale, which came to £35.74. And let’s not forget the product and shipping costs, which came to £371.69.

With all those expenses deducted, it leaves us with a grand total of £81.69.

Considering that I accomplished all the setup within 24 hours and now have the designs, I’d consider this a success. This means I can continue selling these products over the next few weeks with minimal additional expenses. If you guys would be interested in seeing a part two, where I allow myself more time to revamp the business and see how far I can take it, let me know in the comments.