Today, I’m going to talk about the most profitable print on demand products to help make you the most money possible. And guess what? T-shirts aren’t in this list!
Also, keep reading until the end because I have a bonus tip on how to increase your profits even more!
When you think about print on demand, most likely you think about printing on t-shirts and that’s it. But the reality is that there is a huge range of different products available to you for print on demand.
Although t-shirts are the most popular products within the print on demand arena and are usually where people first start when diving into print on demand, they don’t really have a great profit margin.
Especially if you are selling on a third party website such as Redbubble, Teespring or Merch by Amazon rather than your own website, once all their fees have been taken you are probably only making $2-$3 in profit per t-shirt sold.
With profit margins like that, how many t-shirts are you going to have to sell to make the amount of money you want to make?
It just doesn’t make sense to put all that time and work in for so little in return.
Let’s go over which print on demand products can make you double, triple and even more in profits than what you can get for t-shirts.
JEWELLERY
Jewellery is one of the oldest forms of self-expression and is one of those products that has a higher perceived value. It’s a great print on demand product because people love buying jewellery as gifts and when people are buying gifts, they are generally willing to pay a higher price than they would normally.
In 2018 the jewellery market in the US was estimated to be worth $279 billion dollars and is expected to increase to around $480 billion by 2025. That’s incredible, so why not tap into that demand now?
Let’s take a quick look at GearBubble, which is a platform that connects you with print on demand suppliers and then integrates via the GearBubble website with the marketplace you choose to sell on.
I’m only using GearBubble to show you the possibility of what you could do with print on demand jewellery not to recommend them as your print on demand supplier.
I have never used them, so I can’t vouch for what it’s like to work with them.
Head over to GearBubble and click on Top Sellers. There are other products in the top sellers, but there is also a lot of jewellery here.
We can see here that the top selling piece of jewellery is a gift from a Dad to his Son and through the GearBubble website, this product has sold 24,552 units and it is selling for $27.95.
That is almost $686,000 in sales for that one product.
One of the most popular print on demand jewellery suppliers is Shine On.
You can get a very similar looking necklace on Shine On for $9.90. If you are selling a product like this for $27.95 Dad to Son necklace, that’s an $18.05 profit.
As an example, if you wanted to make an income of $1,000 per month and you are selling t-shirts on Merch by Amazon, you would need to sell around 350 t-shirts in a month compared to only 55 necklaces to make that $1,000.
CANVASES
Printing art onto canvas is the next product which can have really big profit margins and it’s a product that has a low base cost.
People are willing to pay a lot of money for art for their homes and offices because it’s pleasing to the eye, it can inspire creativity in whoever is looking at it but most importantly, it’s an emotional purchase. Artwork invokes people to feel a certain way and if they like that feeling, price isn’t really a factor when it comes to buying it.
Something that is really popular with canvas art is typography type of prints. So, artworks that are things like inspirational or motivational quotes or words.
This type of artwork is also great for you if you aren’t a typical “artist” as such who would create drawings or painting types of artwork.
Let’s have a look at icanvas.com to get an idea of what you could possibly create.
I’d stay clear of any kind of brand or product names or famous people as you don’t want any issues with copyright, but people love inspirational and motivational quotes.
These are all just word-based types of designs so you can easily create your own designs in Photoshop or Canva and have them printed on a canvas.
Let’s take a look at this music quote print. Prices for this start at $43.99 for a 12×12 inch canvas then go up to $60.49 for the 18×18 inch canvas, $87.99 for the 26×26 inch canvas and $148.49 for the 37×37 inch canvas.
If we have a look on Printful at their base cost for canvas prints you can see that they don’t do these exact sizes but let’s get an idea of what similar sized canvases will cost us.
Printful do a 12×12 canvas, which is $29.95. There is a 18×24 inch canvas for $45.95 and a 24×36 inch canvas for $65.95.
So, the potential profit for you here ranges from $14.04 for the 12×12 inch canvas up to a massive $82.54 profit for the 24×36 inch canvas. That’s just insane.
If you are already creating print on demand designs for t-shirts then you could use those same designs and print them on canvases, so you wouldn’t even have to go out and create all new designs.
CAR SEAT COVERS
I bet you never thought about putting your print on demand designs on car seat covers, right?
It’s a great product because you have car lovers who are extremely passionate and love to spend money on accessories for their vehicles.
You can purchase car seat covers from Pillow Profits and have your designs printed on them for a cost of $34.99.
Let’s head over to Esty to do a search and see what kinds of designs are selling and for what prices.
Now, this is showing up in Australian dollars because I’m in Australia, but I’ll do the conversion into US dollars.
So, just like any other print on demand product you can put any kind of design that you like on car seat covers. Over here on Etsy they are selling for between $55 and $70 US dollars.
This gives you a profit of between $20 and $35 per product.
I feel like this would also be a niche that isn’t oversaturated so it could be a really good opportunity to build a dominating brand in this niche.
LEGGINGS
Athletic or lounge wear – particularly leggings – have become pretty much the standard dress code these days for anyone wanting to relax, be comfy and just chill out around the house or go out and run errands, that sort of thing.
A lot of print on demand companies offer leggings as one of their products and what’s great about them is that it’s one of those products that you are able to do all over printing on.
So, with a t-shirt for example, you have a specific area on the front or back of the shirt to place your design and that’s where it gets printed. If your design falls outside of this area, it won’t get printed, it will get cut off.
With leggings you can create pattern designs or all over colour designs which cover the whole garment.
I’ve headed over RedBubble to take a look and see what kinds of leggings are available there and how much they sell for.
On RedBubble it looks like prices are around the $45-$50 mark for leggings. And looking on Printful at the price of their leggings, they will cost you between $25 and $30.
Now, Printful isn’t the only company to offer print on demand leggings so if you shop around you might get them at a cheaper price but for the sake of this post that’s who I have looked at.
So, if you are selling your leggings for $50 you are going to be making a $25-$30 profit. That’s pretty exciting. And at this point, it seems like the demand for this type of product isn’t going to die down any time soon.
SHOES/BOOTS
This product (I personally think) is really exciting because you could just do so much with it and that’s shoes.
If you take a look at Pillow Profits they have a big range of shoes to choose from, from sneakers and boots to thongs and slippers.
I came across an online store called The Bandana Blanket Company and they sell printed shoes.
Now, I’m not sure who originally came up with this design, but it took off and a lot of people have used it and that’s this license plate design with different messages on them.
This website is selling the low top sneakers with the license plate designs for $55.
Here’s another online store selling low tops and sneakers. The site is called Ava Thread and they have a range of different designs on print on demand sneakers. They are selling theirs for $59.95.
Back over at Pillow Profits, the low top sneakers will cost you $31.99 and if you are selling your sneakers for $59.95, that will give you a profit of $27.96.
Also, the thing with Pillow Profits is that the prices they give also includes the shipping cost to your customer.
So, if you charge your customer a shipping fee, that’s an even bigger profit going into your pocket.
BONUS
To make an even higher profit on your products, personalise the product.
If you can find a way to personalise your product you will be able to charge a premium price and make even larger profits from your sales.
Firstly, take a look at Gossby Mugs. This is a website that sells personalised mugs. Now this site isn’t actually selling their products at a premium price – their method seems to be selling a higher quantity rather than getting higher prices. But it’s a good site to see ideas for personalising products.
Looking at some of their best-selling products they have almost 5,000 reviews and their about us page says that they have had 1,000,000 customers since they opened the online store 3 years ago.
That’s just crazy and shows just how much people love personalised stuff.
Take a look at these personalized pint glasses from Uncommon Goods. They are selling for $32 per glass because they are personalised.
Or these personalized socks on Etsy for around $25 per pair.
Or maybe my favourite is these personalised print on demand leggings. Pop the face of your favourite person all over your legs and sell them for $60.
If you remember earlier, we talked about the profit for leggings potentially being around $25-$30 you could get another $10 in profit just by offering personalisation.
If you think people would buy something like this, well that Etsy store has had almost 1,300 sales.
So, there you have five products that aren’t t-shirts which have the potential to make you massive profits in your print on demand business. If you are already selling print on demand t-shirts and are finding you’re struggling to make the kind of money you expected, perhaps it’s time to start looking at producing products that will substantially increase your profits.