Unpopular Opinion: Maybe You Can't Afford Print on Demand

Added: 2026-06-10

[00:00:00]Today is episode four, and I'm answering nine questions that most print on demand gurus either overcomplicate, they ignore, or they just flat out lie about.

[00:00:10]Hi, I'm Shirin Morris, a seven-figure print on demand seller, and I've decided to make this series answering all of these various different print on demand questions because it seems like no one else will, and these questions are really important, and you need to have the answers. On last week's episode, I asked you to leave a comment down below if you had any specific question related to print on demand or your business. And in this video, I'm going through all of those questions that I got in the comments. Now, if you want your question answered in next week's episode, then just leave a comment down below on this video, and I will get to it on episode five. For now, let's get right into this. I've got all the questions here on my iPad because, well, I'm not going to remember all of them off by heart. The first one is, "How many meta ads do you run simultaneously if you're doing broad targeting to the same audience?"

[00:01:01]So, honestly, the number of ads and the audience and all of that doesn't really make the biggest difference. It's all about the creative. So, I can't remember off the top of my head how many ads we have running right now. I believe it's about 40 or 50. Um we we we launched a whole load of ads last weekend for July 4th, so I can't remember the exact number.

[00:01:25]But, the way we do up with the way we've done our targeting is, yes, it's all broad targeting. We either target the UK, Canada, or whatever, whatever country we're trying to sell in.

[00:01:34]And at the end of the day, the audience is pretty much the same. And in fact, the designs that we're selling are the same. The differentiating factor between the ads is the um is the actual creative. So, it's the the mock-up that the customer is seeing. Some stand out more than others. Some people resonate with certain mock-ups over others. So, by having lots of different creatives, we're able to reach lots of different people who will resonate with lots of different types of ads.

[00:02:03]We have some catalog ads, some video ads, some static image ads, all sorts.

[00:02:07]So, in terms of how many ads do you run simultaneously? Well, I don't really put a number to it. There's no cap. I would happily run 500 if I had the capacity to make all of those creatives. It I mean, I guess I do. It just takes a little bit It will It will take a long time, not a little bit. It will take a really long time. Um but But yeah, I don't think that the fact that it's broad targeting or it's the same audience, that doesn't really bother me. It's more just is the creative different?

[00:02:33]Question number two, I'm curious, how much do you do you realistically recommend setting aside for testing products and ads before expecting consistent sales? That's a really good question, um but it's also an impossible question to answer. And here's my warning to you. If you do watch a video or you do ask another print-on-demand seller this question and they answer it and they give you a number, then what's their ulterior motive there?

[00:02:55]What are they trying to sell? Because, honestly, there isn't a specific number that when you cross it, you suddenly start making money. For some it could be 500 bucks, for some it could be 2,000 bucks, for some it could be 10,000 bucks. There are so many variables um in order for this to actually work. Right?

[00:03:14]Your your your niche, your designs, your mock-ups, your website, your ads.

[00:03:19]There's just so many things. So, whilst I can't say set this amount of money aside to get a consistent results, what I can say is set this money aside um and be willing to use that to test and potentially lose it before you decide you need to move on or maybe you need to start over or, you know, make some more money to add it to the pot. And that amount would be about 1,000 to 2,000 dollars. I would say just go into this business with that amount of money and that give yourself a really good fighting chance of making it work. That doesn't mean after $2,000 you're going to be profitable. Maybe you'll be break even. Maybe you'll still be in the red, right? But, you'll have some data to be quite near the green. So, I don't want to like say $2,000 means a profitable, but I like to say $2,000 as just a good fighting chance to get yourself in there.

[00:04:16]Three, how many designs are enough to evaluate the potential of a print on demand niche? So, we've always said 100 designs, give or take. If it's 90, if it's 110, whatever, but around 100 designs on your store, and these are well-researched, well-intentioned designs that really resonate with the audience. You really understand your audience. They're not just random crap that you've thrown onto your website.

[00:04:40]They've got to be good. And they've got to make sense.

[00:04:44]And the reason we say 100 is because with those 100 designs, you'll create a Facebook catalog ad, and that will cycle through all of those 100 designs. And ideally, you want to find a couple of winners from those 100 that you can then iterate from and make more similar designs and build your store like that.

[00:05:02]Question number four.

[00:05:04]How did you funnel traffic to your store before you could purchase ads?

[00:05:08]This is a huge milestone for beginners with not much to invest up front. So, I guess that kind of goes back to question number two, which is how much money should you start with? So, in terms of how did I funnel traffic to my store before I could purchase ads? Well, I started with ads straight away.

[00:05:23]And I mean, if I had no money, I would either start with organic traffic like Instagram and other various ways to to just to post organically. Uh but truthfully, I don't think that's a very good idea. I think you should work, save up, and start with a lump sum of money that will give you a fighting chance of actually making this work.

[00:05:43]Don't start with like 200 bucks and try and rough it because you'll probably run out of money and then have to stop and you'll lose momentum. So, what I would actually say is save up money, go and earn money in a different way, whether it's just getting a normal 9-5 job or selling something, maybe going around the house selling some stuff. And at that same time, start researching your niche, start building up your designs.

[00:06:05]Then give it a really good shot with, you know, a thousand or two thousand dollars. What is your percentage of profits from email marketing? That's a very good question. I don't know it off by heart, but from memory, looking I just remembering um the last month or so, it's between 18 and 25%.

[00:06:25]It's not amazing. It could certainly be better. And the more campaigns that we do, the better it gets. So, we've been a bit lazy with the amount of campaigns that we've sent out, but we're getting a lot better at it now. We're doing, you know, at least three campaigns a week and we've seen that percentage increase.

[00:06:43]And in this business type, in this model with print on demand, because cost of goods are so expensive and because Facebook ads are so expensive, email marketing is really, really, really important because you make huge margins on emails.

[00:06:56]So, you really want to get your marketing as close to 40% as possible.

[00:07:00]And I have no doubt that in the next two to three months, we will be there with the number of campaigns that we have scheduled to go out. But as of now, with our flows and and with our random campaigns that we've done for, let's say, Father's Day or July 4th, we're around 18 to 25%. Number six, I'm in the UK, what's the best credit card to go for?

[00:07:21]Um okay, so well, I'll tell you what I'm using and why I'm using it and if you want to go for the same, then so be it. So, we use the gold American Express card.

[00:07:31]I wouldn't say that's the best. In fact, American Express have become really bad as a company recently. Uh their customer service is just diabolical. But, we use the gold American Express card. Now, the reason we use it is because of the points. So, for every pound, we get a point. Because we're spending upwards of $100,000 a month on cost of goods, on uh advertising, on various other things, we end up with a lot of points. So, I want a point credit card. Now, there are various credit cards out there. I recently got advertised one called Poodle.

[00:08:03]Never tried it. I have inquired about it because with that you get three to one on marketing spend, which means if I spend $100,000 on ads, I get 300,000 um air miles, which is significantly better.

[00:08:14]So, as I said, I use the gold American Express card. It's free for the first year, and then it costs, but there are many other free options that you could go for that could be better.

[00:08:25]I really wouldn't overthink it.

[00:08:27]Uh number seven, how do you keep track of your design names with hundreds of designs? That's a very good question.

[00:08:31]So, we actually have a spreadsheet that my wife made, and she does all the organization stuff for the business, and it's fantastic. And we have the spreadsheet with all the names um on the spreadsheet. So, everything's numbered and named. That way we can keep we can keep good track of it. Um and how we come up with all those names, we use ChatGPT. Um it's really easy.

[00:08:52]Number eight, how many Facebook ads should I be running at the start?

[00:08:56]Just one.

[00:08:57]When you first start out, you've got your 100 designs you've added to your store, and you just want that one catalog ad.

[00:09:03]Back in the day, you would have had to create loads and loads of static ads. It would have cost you a fortune. It would have taken you hours and hours and hours. Now, you could do that just with a catalog ad, and it's really, really simple. You well, you'd obviously create a sales campaign. You would select your catalog.

[00:09:18]You would obviously go through all the settings. I have videos on this. This is not that video. Um and you would submit it. And what happens there is Facebook now cycle through all those products. It won't spend on your entire catalog. In fact, it might ignore quite a few of them. It might look like it's ignoring them, but it's not ignoring anything.

[00:09:34]What it's trying to do is find the ones that resonate best with the audience and then it pushes the budget towards those and then with that data you can figure out what you should make more of, what you should make less of and just what steps you should take next.

[00:09:49]Number nine, should I be spending money on Etsy ads, Facebook ads and Pinterest ads all at the same time when you're just starting out?

[00:09:57]No. Gosh, that amount of ads just gives me a headache and you forgot Google ads cuz that's another one.

[00:10:02]But no, keep it really simple. Um I don't know if you've ever heard of this business acronym KISS which is keep it simple, stupid. And it it it couldn't be more uh relevant in this business model when it comes to designs, when it comes to store, when it comes to your ads, when it comes to your mock-ups and specifically when it comes to operations like this. So please don't start this business with all these different types of ads, all these different types of products, all these different types of niches. Just keep it really simple. One really well-researched niche, 100 really good intentional designs and one catalog ad with Meta and see how that goes and start iterating off of that. Now, as I said, if you have any questions that you want answered in next week's episode, please leave a comment down below and if you want to work with me further, either one-to-one, through my community, through live calls, whatever it is, then click the link down below, check out the community. It's uh free to cancel. It's not free to join though, but it's a monthly paid subscription. So if you like it, you can stay. If you don't like it, you can leave. You don't have to you know, you don't even have to tell me. You can just kind of quietly leave.

[00:11:08]Um but I don't think you will because it's really really good. We have loads of a loads of pre-recorded training. We have multiple live calls every single week where we do design critiques and we do design um creating um like classes. We do um ad classes. We do scaling classes. We do all sorts of things and these are all live. And then of course you've got the community wall as well where I am and where hundreds and hundreds of other community members are where anyone can help you just just like that with whatever questions that you may have.

[00:11:38]So, if you are interested in working with me or having me help you with your business a little bit, then click the link down below and check that out. And other than that, don't forget to leave a question down below if you want it to be answered in next week's episode. Thank you so much for watching.