Print-on-Demand with Shopify and AI

Everyone dreams of making money while they sleep. But passive income is a conditional concept. Some methods require minimal work and money investments. Of course, you still have to do some work to make money. 

The development of artificial intelligence gives unprecedented opportunities for this. Now you can produce products without expertise or special skills from your side. The machine makes everything you need. You just manage the process and ensure compliance with your terms. I will present to you some Print-on-Demand ideas for 2023 that could make you rich.

Print-on-Demand (POD)

Print-on-demand is a very attractive business model for beginners and start-ups. You do not need to spend money on equipment or rent. Service manufactures the end product when a customer orders it on the platform. There is a short description of the process.

The seller chooses a type of product where his design should be. It could be T-shirts, cups, or phone cases. Any merch that the POD service offers for printing. The main part of business for sellers is creating unique and stunning designs for the goods. Another important part of the process is integrating service with Print on Demand Provider. It is elementary to do if you have a Shopify store.

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There are a lot of plugins that could be build-in into your Shopify online store. They are similar but some of them have special features that could be useful for your company. Just take a look at some of this.

Best Shopify print-on-demand apps

• Printify allows merchants to create custom-designed products and sell them on Shopify. It offers a vast catalog of items such as apparel, accessories, home decor, and more, which can be easily customized with unique designs or logos. Printify connects businesses with a network of reliable print-on-demand manufacturers, enabling seamless production, fulfillment, and shipping directly to customers.
• Printful is a comprehensive print-on-demand app for Shopify. It simplifies the process of creating and selling custom products by providing items such as clothing, accessories, home decor, and promotional items. Merchants can use Printful to design and personalize products, while Printful handles production, packaging, and shipping, allowing online stores to fulfill orders seamlessly.
• CustomCat is a versatile Shopify app that specializes in print-on-demand services. It provides products like apparel, accessories, and home goods, all of which can be customized with unique designs or logos. To streamline order fulfillment, CustomCat integrates with Shopify, printing, packaging, and shipping are handled.
• Pillow Profits is a Shopify app that specializes in custom footwear and apparel products. With Pillow Profits, entrepreneurs can build their own branded products by adding custom designs and patterns. It allows merchants to design and sell unique shoes, sneakers, and other fashion items. Using the app, Shopify store owners can manufacture, package, and fulfill orders in a hassle-free manner.
• Using Gooten, merchants can sell customized products without managing inventory. It offers apparel, accessories, home decor, and more. Gooten is a print-on-demand app for Shopify. It integrates seamlessly with Shopify, simplifying the process of designing and selling unique products. It takes care of printing, production, and shipping, allowing businesses to concentrate on their online business.
• With Sunfrog, entrepreneurs can create and sell unique designs on clothing, accessories, and home decor. It is a Shopify app that specializes in custom clothing and merchandise. While the app takes care of printing, production, and order fulfillment, the merchant is able to customize and personalize their items easily, while customers are able to enjoy a smooth shopping experience.
• Gearlaunch is a comprehensive Shopify app that empowers entrepreneurs to create and sell custom merchandise online. It offers a wide variety of products, including apparel, accessories, and home decor, which can easily be customized with unique designs or branding. With Gearlaunch, merchants can focus on growing their businesses, while Gearlaunch takes care of printing, packaging, and shipping.
• SPOD is a print-on-demand app for Shopify that allows merchants to create and sell custom-designed items such as apparel, accessories, and home decor. SPOD integrates seamlessly with Shopify, allowing easy customization and personalization of products. The app handles production, fulfillment, and shipping, ensuring a smooth and efficient experience for Shopify store owners.
• Apliiq specializes in custom apparel and accessories. Shopify offers a wide selection of blank products that can be customized with unique designs, patches, or embroidery. With Apliiq, merchants can focus on building their brands, rather than manufacturing, customizing, and fulfilling orders. The app integrates seamlessly with Shopify, simplifying the process of creating and selling custom products.
• The Teelaunch app offers print-on-demand services for a variety of products. It allows entrepreneurs to create and sell custom-made items such as apparel, accessories, and home decor.

Now you know who could realize your ideas. But what is about ideas? What to do, if you are not a professional designer and don’t have the skills to create a masterpiece? This article is right for you. Let’s go!

Generative art on your merch

We will observe an AI service that creates incredible art and is free for users at this moment. It is Leonardo - AI generation tool. There are plenty of videos on Youtube on how to sign up and sign in to Leonardo and get free access. We will avoid this part and will try to make our first commercial design.

I am going to create an image for a T-shirt with a 3D effect. Let’s go to the “Finetuned models” link on the left sidebar There are a lot of patterns and models of Leonardo, but I chose the “Cute Animal Characters” model because I want to see a white wolf on my merch.

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In the prompt field, I typed the simple message “Create a white wolf with a 3D effect for printing on T-Short”. Service generated four different images related to my prompt but I save just one of the best, I think.

Ok, our first product is ready. You can experiment with other models to get more experience in this. There are a lot of patterns for generating human portraits and fantasy characters.

After registration, you receive 150 fast generations per day. The minimal commercial plan starts from 12$ where you obtain 8,500 tokens per month.

Another close to Leonardo AI image generator is Midjourney, but now it is not free anymore. As a newbie, you get just 25 free generations, after the spending of this you have to buy a subscription for a minimum of 10 dollars per month.

Profiting from POD

After creating hundreds of projects with impressive designs on different merch, you can apply your price. If clients like your project, they make an order, and the POD provider receives the order details and starts the process of production. Also, the provider cares about the delivery of an order directly to the customer. The difference between expenses for manufacturing + delivery of the products and your price will be the money that you earn.

Creating Funny Stickers for the Stock

BlueWillow

Another easy way for your start-up is to generate stickers for stock. It could be as physical stickers with print-on-demand conditions so digital stickers for different messengers. For this, we can use a free AI artwork generator BlueWillow.

BluWillow as Midjorney works via Discord, but now there is a beta test so you can try it for free. After registration, you come to Discord chat. Everything is similar to Midjorney. Type “/imagine” and put the description in the prompt field. I put the next “Stickers with a funny cartoon cat drinking coffee. There is a script "Good morning!” The machine displayed 4 pictures in cartoon style for me.

As you could see, the inscription “Good morning!” is absent. But it is not a problem! We can type it in another convenient online service Canva. I chose one picture and add “Good morning” with a Fun Retro Script text effect.

Now we can upload this sticker to the stock service RedBubble. There is a particular direction for stickers where I save my work. Also, I have to select merch where my work could be printed - stickers, magnets, phone cases, pillows, etc. After uploading, RedBubble put the prices on my sticker.

Now it is ready for sale and I am waiting for a money flow to my account. As you could see, you make it once and sell it forever. Of course, it is just a sample, better to design a set of stickers with funny bright characters.

Some questions about intellectual property. All rights belong to you for generative images in BlueWillow. It is your assets. Remember that you create it in a public chat in Discord and it is accessible to everyone who described this chart. But you can cooperate with the developers of BlueWillow and work in a private channel.

Using AI to Create a Kid's Coloring Book

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is the perfect self-publishing service for the next idea. It gives authors a chance to reach a large audience and possibly make money from their books.

I check the bestseller rank of a random kid’s coloring book about cars. The lowest rank of this book is #132 which means we can check how many books with this rank we can sell per month. Open the Amazon Bestseller Rank calculator to define it.

If royalty for the book is just 1 dollar you can imagine how much is it. So, we can pay attention to this print-on-demand way to make some money. Moreover, that is not as difficult as it looks at first view.

Let’s make this in three steps:

• Creating the interior of the book;
• Creating the cover of the book;
• Publishing the book on the platform.

Everything we need is Canva online service and AI image generator - Midjorney. The main topic of this kid’s book would be dinosaurs. Children adore dinosaurs and it is out of intellectual property as comic characters, for example. Using the paid plan of Midjorney we obtain all rights. It is essentially important for our publishing.

Go to the Discord Midjorney channel and type this instruction:

/imagine prompt coloring page for kids, Tyrannosaurus Rex in a jungle, cartoon styles, thick lines, low detail no shading --ar 9x11”

Tags “--ar 9x11” means aspect ratio - width and height expressed in inches.

Midjorney generated 4 images for us. I am going to choose the third picture. Save it on your computer and upload this file to Canva.

Now, we can add the next page, but since we are dealing with coloring books the next page must be blank. That is because sometimes, depending on the type of pens a kid uses, it could bleed through onto the other side of the page.

With a similar prompt, we have to create a color cover in Midjorney. Remember that we can use any font we need in Canva, just additionally upload it from an external source. We have to write a title for the cover with related font and the kid’s age which this book recommended.

Finally, we have a nice cover. After creating 80 pages with different dinosaurs and putting a colorful cover, we can download this book in PDF format for uploading to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

A few explanations about royalties and pricing. Writers command over setting the cost of their digital books inside specific boundaries. They can browse two choices: a royalty of 35% for books priced lower than $2.99, or 70% for books priced between $2.99 and $9.99. The royalty is calculated based on the list price of the book, minus any applicable taxes and delivery costs.

Main Benefits of Print-on-Demand Business Model

No inventory risk. You do not spend money on means of production. POD provider keeps all necessary equipment and consumable materials for manufacturing. As a rule, all technical stuff is high quality because a provider is interested in large volumes of production and sales. Also, there is no stocking of unsold products.

Low expenses for the beginning. Compared to the traditional retail models, you do not need to care about real estate and rent. Also, you are out of hiring and payrolls of employees. POD manufacturer has all facilities and qualified personnel. Extend of this you can invest money in a corresponding commercial plane of AI image generator, Shopify dropshipping, or additional apps and quality hosting.

Globalization of business. The POD model of distribution lets sellers reach customers whole the world because a lot of POD providers can deliver designed products with international dropshipping services.

What Depends on You?

With the help of artificial intelligence, you can reach unlimited opportunities for your online store that is based on POD. You have to learn AI image generators creativity to use correct and related tags as a promt of design. After that, you have to scale your experience to make thousands of uniquely designed goods to take in this highly competitive market.

Popular print-on-demand platforms include Printful, Printify, and Redbubble, among others. These platforms provide the necessary tools, integration options, and manufacturing capabilities to support sellers in creating and selling their custom-designed products.

It's worth noting that while print-on-demand offers convenience and flexibility, success still relies on factors like marketing, design quality, and customer service.

Focusing attention on the demands of customers and trends can bring you prosperity and wealth. You do not need to have the skills of an artist or designer, but you must have skills in the management of different business processes. No one AI can replace you with it.

Print-on-Demand Ideas 2023 with Shopify and AI FAQ