Printful Etsy integration for starting an Etsy print on demand shop is one of the most underrated ideas for making money through an eCommerce marketplace.
For those who don’t know, Etsy is an online marketplace for selling handmade, vintage, custom, and unique items. Etsy stores have an untapped potential with a targeted traffic of more than 350 million shoppers.
This means you can make an awesome profit on Etsy with little marketing effort.
In this post, we are going to be talking about how you can use a print on demand company (explained below) with Etsy and create a shop with no inventory. Let’s start!
What is Printful Etsy Print on Demand integration?
Printful is a print on demand company that gives you a free mockup generator to design your own products. Once you design a product, you can use the Printful Etsy integration to import the product to your Etsy storefront. Once an order arrives via Etsy, Printful will produce and fulfill the item under your brand.
This way you get to create your custom designs and generate good profit without keeping any inventory or making an upfront payment. I’ve seen many Etsy sellers make money using this exact strategy.
There are also other print on demand companies with a little higher margin, but I really like Printful for its product quality (which is really important from a business perspective).
How to create Printful Etsy print on demand shop
While Printful.com is free, Etsy charges $0.20 per month for listing and an additional 8% + $0.25 upon product sale.
Step-1 Set up an Etsy storefront
In order to start selling, simply create a shop on Etsy. You will have to enter the basic details for your shop preferences like location for selling. Next, you will have to name your Etsy shop.
Once you are done naming your Etsy shop, it will take you to a page where you can stock your shop, where you’ll have to fill in the listing products, etc. While you will be adding products later via Printful, you can put it as dummy data.
Once you enter the dummy listing, you’ll have to go through two more steps:
- How you’ll get paid – Select a payment method for your sales.
- Set up billing – Automate your monthly billing cycle of $0.20 (listing fee).
At this point, your Etsy shop is ready. Now all you need to do is integrate it with Printful.
Step-2 Register on Printful and sync Etsy
For integrating Etsy with Printful, go to the Printful website and click on the Connect with Etsy button. It will then take you to the registration page where you can sign up and connect Etsy in a few clicks:
On the Printful admin panel, click on the Connect to Etsy button. It will then take you to the Etsy dashboard where you need to allow access for Etsy Printful. You can start designing your products immediately after this and even import them to Etsy directly via Printful.
Step-3 Optimize your Etsy print on demand store
At this point, your Etsy store is officially ready, but in order for your storefront to show the best results on the Etsy marketplace, you must optimize it for SEO.
The most important thing to do for optimizing your listing is to find low-competition keywords. Use tools like Kwfinder for keyword research. Enter the title of your product or a keyword you want to check competition for.
As you can see, the keyword “handmade greeting cards” has a smaller competition and will thus perform better. Use this keyword and semantic keywords (other similar keywords you can think of) for optimizing your title, description and tags. Additionally:
- Try to add semantic keywords in all 12 tags
- Choose eye-catching, personalized product images
- Add size chart images if possible
that will do the on-page optimization, but you can further improve it by using Etsy’s official SEO checklist.
What to sell on your Etsy shop?
Etsy’s best-selling trend keeps changing. You need to be creative and design a product that is related to the current best-selling items. For instance, a few mask designs really stood out among other products during the Corona crisis.
Items like handmade cards, jewellery, and stickers never go out of fashion. Some of the best sellers are:
- Heartbeat pizza shirt
- Made in USA face masks
- Scottish cattle wall art
Additionally, you can also keep your Etsy shop focused on posters.
As an Etsy print on demand store owner, you can get your own clicks or commercially available elegant images. For instance, this beach photo set of six prints sold around 16k pieces (by the time of writing).
What to do after creating Etsy Printful Print on Demand Shop
Etsy is a print on demand site with a lot of room for creatives, and Printful Etsy makes it even better.
You don’t have to buy the inventory or even create a product to sell on Etsy. Simply design the best products using Printful and list them automatically. For images, you’ll have to get a sample order to click unique, trendy images. They even offer a 20% discount on sample orders.
Printful has a bit of a higher price tag for its products, but I mainly recommend them for the excellent product quality. If your Etsy-Printful items perform well, you can place a bulk order with a 30% discount. Check out my eCommerce marketing guide for a heads up.
