Do you want to cre­ate a print on demand shop in WordPress? 

You can use print on demand shop as a new online busi­ness idea, or use it to sell t‑shirts and oth­er swags to sup­port your exist­ing brand. 

In this arti­cle, we will show you how to make a print on demand shop in Word­Press, so you can run an online store with­out deal­ing with any inven­to­ry or shipping. 

What is Print on Demand and Why Use It?

Print on demand is a man­u­fac­tur­ing method where a design is only print­ed on a prod­uct once a cus­tomer orders it. This is very sim­i­lar to drop­ship­ping except the prod­ucts are cus­tom made for you.

It can be used for cloth­ing, bags, home­ware, and more.

Print on demand isn’t as cost effec­tive as mass pro­duc­tion man­u­fac­tur­ing meth­ods, but it has some big advan­tages for small busi­ness­es, and it can still be very profitable.

With print on demand, you don’t pay any­thing until a cus­tomer pays you which makes it much eas­i­er for small busi­ness­es to get started. 

There’s no need to buy inven­to­ry upfront, and you don’t need any stor­age space either. Plus, you can eas­i­ly exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent designs to see which is most popular.

There are a few dif­fer­ent print on demand com­pa­nies out there. In this tuto­r­i­al, we’ll be using Print­ful. It’s well estab­lished and inte­grates eas­i­ly with your Word­Press site through WooCom­merce.

As well as print­ed designs, Print­ful also offers embroi­dery for some prod­ucts, such as base­ball caps and backpacks.

You can use it to eas­i­ly sell your cus­tom brand­ed mer­chan­dise such as t‑shirts, hood­ies, shorts, hats, back­packs, bracelets, phone cas­es, key­chains, cof­fee mugs, blan­kets, and over 249 products. 

Creating an Account with Printful to Sell Your Products

First, you need to sign up for a free account with Print­ful. Sim­ply go to the Print­ful web­site and click the ‘Start sell­ing’ button:

Next, enter your name, email address, and pass­word. You also need to check the box to agree to Printful’s terms and conditions:

Print­ful will ask a few ques­tions about how you plan to use their ser­vice. Once you’ve answered these, you will see the Print­ful dashboard.

You will also get an email with a link that you need to click to con­firm your email address.

You can go ahead and set up your prod­ucts straight away. Sim­ply go to ‘Prod­uct tem­plates’, and then click the ‘New tem­plate’ button.

Here, you will see a wide range of dif­fer­ent tem­plates. Just click on the prod­uct you want to use. We’re going to cre­ate a basic T‑Shirt:

If you already have a design for your prod­uct, go ahead and drag it here to upload it. For exam­ple, you might use your busi­ness logo or com­pa­ny slo­gan. Here’s an exam­ple of a T‑Shirt using the Opt­in­Mon­ster logo:

We’re going to add text and cli­part from Print­ful to cre­ate our prod­uct. In the mock­up gen­er­a­tor, you can change the size and col­or of the text, and you can eas­i­ly drag it to resize or repo­si­tion it. 

The tabs at the top of the screen let you add designs to oth­er areas of the prod­uct, where applic­a­ble. Once you’re hap­py with your design, click the ‘Con­tin­ue’ button:

Now, it’s time to give your tem­plate a title and save it. It’s easy to go back and change it if you want to make changes in the future. You can find it by going to the ‘Prod­uct tem­plates’ tab again:

Go ahead and cre­ate as many prod­ucts as you want. 

You also need to set up a billing method for Print­ful. Your cus­tomers will pay you through your online store for the prod­uct, and Print­ful will charge you the cost of ship­ping it. We will show you how to set­up your online store in the next step.

For now, let’s set­up Print­ful billing. Sim­ply go to Billing » Billing meth­ods in Print­ful, then click the ‘Add new billing method’ button:

Then, you need to enter the details for either your cred­it card or your Pay­Pal account. Don’t wor­ry, you will not be charged unless you order a shirt from your account.

Connecting Printful to Your WordPress Site

The next step is to con­nect your Print­ful account to your Word­Press site. You need to have the WooCom­merce plu­g­in installed and acti­vat­ed on your site.

If you don’t have an online store yet, then don’t wor­ry. We have a step by step guide on how to start your online store.

You’ll need a domain name and web host­ing for your store. Domain is your website’s name, and web host­ing is where your web­site files are stored.

We rec­om­mend using Blue­host. They’re one of the largest host­ing providers in the world, and they’re offi­cial­ly rec­om­mend­ed by WordPress.

They’re offer­ing WPBe­gin­ner read­ers a 60% dis­count + free domain + free SSL + auto­mat­ic WooCom­merce set­up. This means you can get start­ed for $3.95 per month instead of $13.99 reg­u­lar price.

→ Click here to Claim this Exclu­sive Blue­host offer ←

Once your online store is set­up, you’re ready to con­nect it to your Print­ful account.

In order to con­nect Print­ful to your online store, you need to enable the Lega­cy REST API fea­ture in WooCom­merce. In your Word­Press admin area, go to the WooCom­merce » Set­tings page:

Next, click on Advanced » Lega­cy API. Here, you sim­ply need to click the box for ‘Enable the lega­cy REST API’ then click the ‘Save changes’ button:

The next step is to install and acti­vate the Print­ful Inte­gra­tion for WooCom­merce plu­g­in. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a Word­Press plu­g­in.

Upon acti­va­tion, go to the Print­ful tab in your Word­Press admin. Then, sim­ply click the ‘Con­nect’ button:

You will be prompt­ed by WooCom­merce to approve the con­nec­tion. Sim­ply click the ‘Approve’ but­ton to con­tin­ue, then fol­low the on-screen prompts to con­nect and con­firm your account.

Once you’ve done that, you will see a mes­sage let­ting you know that your prod­uct data is being syn­chro­nized. After a minute or so, your WooCom­merce store will be linked. 

To put your prod­ucts live in your store, you need to go back to your Print­ful account. Then, go to the Prod­uct Tem­plates tab in your Print­ful dashboard.

Then, click the check­box above the prod­uct you want to add to your store, and click the ‘Add to store’ button.

Note: You can­not add two or more prod­ucts to your store at the same time. You need to go through an approval process for each product.

Now, sim­ply fol­low Printful’s prompts. You will get to select col­ors and sizes, view the mock­up images, and give your prod­uct a name and description.

The final step is to set the pric­ing. Print­ful will auto­mat­i­cal­ly sug­gest prices for you. These are marked up from the price that Print­ful charges so that you can make a prof­it on each item:

Once you’ve set your prices, sim­ply click the ‘Sub­mit to store’ but­ton to send the prod­uct to your WooCom­merce store. It will now be live on your site:

Go ahead and repeat this process for each prod­uct that you want to add to your store.

You will then be able to see and edit your Print­ful prod­ucts in your Word­Press admin by going to Prod­ucts » All Prod­ucts:

You can cre­ate as many prod­ucts as you like in Print­ful. You don’t need to pay any­thing until you get orders. Print­ful will han­dle all the pro­duc­tion and ship­ping for you.

Here’s our fin­ished online store, with a range of Printful’s products:

We hope this arti­cle helped you learn how to make a print on demand shop in Word­Press. You may also be inter­est­ed in our arti­cles on the best WooCom­merce plu­g­ins and best email mar­ket­ing ser­vices to help you get more sub­scribers and sales.

If you liked this arti­cle, then please sub­scribe to our YouTube Chan­nel for Word­Press video tuto­ri­als. You can also find us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

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