How to Start a Print on Demand Business on Etsy With Nigel Wymer

# eCommerce Podcast — Nigel Wymer: Print on Demand for Beginners

**Recorded:** 30 March 2026
**Guest:** Nigel Wymer (podlaunchpro.com)
**Host:** Matt Edmundson
**Duration:** 54 min

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[00:04] **Matt:** So welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson. It is great to be with you on this bright and sunny day here in the UK for, the — I think it's the day we get sunshine, Nigel, isn't it really here in the UK? So it's a little bit.

[00:25] **Nigel:** Yeah.

[00:25] **Matt:** Now if this is your first time with us, very warm welcome to you. We just talk about all things ecommerce and try and help you guys and myself, if I'm honest with you, because I run my own ecommerce businesses. I'm just here to learn like everybody and figure out how to make more online. Really, it's just fun. It just is what it is. So if it's your first time with us, this is what you've turned up to. And a very warm welcome to you.

Of course, we have the usual stuff which you can check out. We've got the website ecommercepodcast.net. You'll see all the past episodes there with all the show notes and everything per episode. It is a cracking website, even if I do say so myself. We have updated it a lot recently. So the functionality of it now is so much better if you want to find out information and topics.

And we also on the website have something called Cohorts, which you may want to check out. Because if you're in ecommerce, Cohorts are just these groups that we have where we just meet up together online on Zoom once a month. It's totally free. And you get to talk with other ecommerce entrepreneurs who are trying to do what you're doing. And it's just great community, great camaraderie. So do go check that out. They are free. Like I say, it's at ecommerce.cohort.com, or in fact, at the website ecommercepodcast.net/cohort. Either way, it will get you there.

Now, we're going to do something a little bit different today, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, we are. And I'm excited for this. We've got Nigel on the call today, recording the podcast. And when Nigel and I were doing the pre-call, which is, I always talk to guests before I bring them onto the show, and listening to him and his business and what he does and where his expertise lies, I thought it would be fun to do something a little bit different. So I'm hoping this turns out all right, because it's the first time we've done it, but I feel with Nigel, I'm in safe hands.

Nigel is an expert in print on demand. And so we're going to be talking about that and how to make money from that. And I am going to be — I'm gonna be sitting in the seat of my daughter. And the reason why I'm doing this, Zoe, my daughter, I've not got her permission, by the way. It just is what it is. I'll just give her the episode when it's finished. Zoe, my daughter, is going to university, possibly in the next few months, trying to figure out what she wants to do. Does she go to uni? Does she not go to uni? And it's just that phase of life. And I thought, I wonder if between Nigel and myself, we can create an idea for her, a business plan, a strategy, a methodology to get her from where she is to having a reasonably good chance at doing print on demand. So Nigel, welcome to the show, man. It's good to have you.

[03:12] **Nigel:** Thank you.

[03:15] **Matt:** Yeah, well, you say that now.

[03:18] **Nigel:** I'll let you know at the end.

[03:20] **Matt:** Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Nigel, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

[03:28] **Nigel:** So I've been doing print on demand, well, I've been doing ecommerce for nearly 20 years. But with the threat of Brexit back then, I had a problem because I was importing a lot of my items from Europe. I knew I was going to have a problem. And so during lockdown, I looked at what else I could do and settled on print on demand. And I've been doing it ever since. And it really is a fantastic business in as much as you don't need any stock or anything like that. So I just been perfecting it ever since. And so that, well, I mean, I worked all through lockdown so that I was ready to launch when we were released back into the real world, doing it ever since.

[04:25] **Matt:** Fantastic. So just for those that might not know, for the three people on the planet that don't know, what is print on demand?

[04:32] **Nigel:** Print on demand is a business where basically you design your own products, and there are a huge number of products. Those who are familiar with it probably think of mugs and t-shirts, sweatshirts, maybe. But there are so many different products you can diversify into. So I do things like calendars, which are a great seller. I do wrapping paper, I do compact mirrors, all sorts of really unusual products.

[05:03] **Matt:** Okay.

[05:04] **Nigel:** What you're actually doing is creating a design and you then get a print-on-demand manufacturer to make and print your item and ship it direct to your customer. So you will never buy anything until you've sold it.

[05:21] **Matt:** Very good.

[05:22] **Nigel:** Right.

[05:22] **Matt:** Why? This is very helpful because there's lots of things in my head straight away. Right. So let's — let me overcome some of the objections maybe that Zoe might face. Does she need any money to get started?

[05:34] **Nigel:** Very, very little. So Etsy will charge you £15, which is a one-off fee to start an Etsy shop. After that, they will charge you, whether a US company, so they charge you 20 cents to list an item, but you're not actually, as I said, not buying any stock, anything like that. Your only other things is you will need a Canva Pro account so that you have the ability to download in quality, etc. Maybe another program, you're making a couple of little programs, that's all really, just to generate your images and to create mockups, etc. So it's very, very cheap to start.

[06:24] **Matt:** Very good. And Zoe's going to be happy because she's a big fan of graphic design. This is her whole thing. So this is right up her street. Now, that said, I'm assuming I don't need to be a designer to get started?

[06:36] **Nigel:** Absolutely not. I mean, I'm not a designer, of course. So really, you have the option, of course, now to use AI. With Canva, where we do the bulk of the design work, you can use their stock images. But I personally find it much nicer to generate AI images. As they are then, do you need — and you can get AI to create the whole design without you doing anything. That's the way you want to go. Yeah.

[07:12] **Matt:** Okay. So I don't need to be a designer, which is great. Let me just circle back because you said here, start in terms of cost, Etsy. So that's the platform I'm using. I'm not using Shopify. I'm not using anything, I'm just going straight to Etsy.

[07:28] **Nigel:** Shopify is great. And my recommendation is always to start on Etsy. So with Shopify, you have no traffic. So you've got to start paying for ads, which obviously is the first thing, because we were just talking about costs. So you have got to drive all your traffic either through ads or by doing crazy amounts of social media.

With Etsy, there's — latest figures, 86.6 million buyers last year, people who actually bought the minimum of one item. So you've got potential customers there, which is why you start on Etsy. If you want to go on to Shopify, then that's something I recommend that you go on to later, once you know what sells, because you've got the audience there now that you can trial it with if you like on Etsy. But you don't really need Shopify or anything. You can make a lot of money on Etsy itself.

[08:28] **Matt:** Okay. So this is where the ecommerce guy in me comes out now, Nigel, the dad. I remember years ago we had Nancy Badio on the podcast. She was talking about selling digital products through Etsy. Nancy's great.

I guess one of my questions would be, like, if I sell a product on Amazon, for example, that's Amazon's customer and Amazon's customer data. I don't know who that person is. I don't know their email. I can't market to them later on. So it really is just like a — I mean, they've got the customers, but in effect, I don't know who those customers are. It's their customer, part of the deal. Is that true on Etsy? Is it the same principle, or do I find out the customer's details?

[09:17] **Nigel:** You do get a certain amount of customer's details. The other thing, of course, is that people will follow you. So as you are putting new items and things like that, then they will get notified. So it's a little bit —

[09:36] **Matt:** Okay, but I don't get their email?

[09:40] **Nigel:** There is a way of getting usually —

[09:44] **Matt:** Okay. But again, I guess it becomes a little bit dubious about marketing and GDPR, I would have thought.

[09:51] **Nigel:** Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[09:53] **Matt:** Okay. So in this print-on-demand business, what we're not doing, going down my standard default ecom route, is we're not doing all the necessary work in setting up marketing email campaigns.

[10:11] **Nigel:** No, we don't do any of that. That's the reason why we use Etsy, because the audience is there. Something I did mention as well when we were talking about cost was that there is an option on Etsy, what they call a Plus Shop, which allows you to have a revolving banner, some bigger images, things like that. My recommendation for everyone is to have the free shop. All of mine are free shop. You really don't need a full one.

[10:42] **Matt:** Okay. You mentioned something there. It says free shop, and then you said all of mine are free shop. So it sounds like you've got more than one Etsy store.

[10:48] **Nigel:** I have. Yeah. Yeah.

[10:50] **Matt:** Okay. Do I — so do I need more than one Etsy store?

[10:55] **Nigel:** No, it depends. It depends on the individual. I mean, the majority will perhaps only need one shop. The reason for having the multiple — a couple of possible reasons. Let's say you wanted to create a t-shirt brand and later take it on to Shopify, then obviously you would create a shop which was just t-shirts.

The other reason really is that you have the option to have a general store which would have all sorts of different types of products, but also be targeting lots of different niches. Targeting niche is very, very important. The other reason is to have a shop which is entirely for a niche, and that way, of course, you build a very strong following because it's somebody's hobby, their interest, the type of pet they've got, that sort of thing, which is a big interest. It's something they spend money on, and you are creating for them and they're more likely to follow you.

[12:01] **Matt:** Okay. And so you said niching is important. So I'm assuming that this is where we need to start in terms of how to figure out what the niche is that Zoe needs to be working on, right? So we've got the basics. We're going to do Etsy. We don't really need to think about email marketing because it's Etsy. I don't need to think about payment providers. I don't need to think about any merchant accounts. I'm just literally, I just need to put a store on Etsy. And I, to do that, I guess there are settings and things I need to think about, but it sounds like the first place I need to start is understanding what my niche is going to be. And that's going to help determine what my Etsy store is going to be called, look like, I'm assuming.

[12:41] **Nigel:** Absolutely. Well, the place I always tell people to start is with research. It really is. The most important thing, and this is where a lot of people go wrong, they will just conjure up a design, if you like, out of their head and then create a product which they don't know if it's going to sell or not. So it's very, very important to find out what's selling and to find niches.

And of course, something like a dog or a cat is not a niche. We need to — people think it is. We have to dive right down into sub-niches. I did a live session a couple of weeks ago actually with some of my students. We were researching live niches. Somebody said, well, what about sports? So using AI, we looked at the 10 best sports niche stores which had the most potential. And one of them which came up, ice hockey, that's probably not something you would think of as underserved.

But then, of course, it's still relatively high-level niche. I mean, a big market for the US, other international markets. So then we had to niche further down and we said, well, how else can we niche down? So we then looked at targeting ice hockey goalkeepers. And then using AI, we can read all kinds of unusual terms like that, the slang which is used by ice hockey players, to generate totally unique products which are really, really targeted.

So that's the thing we need to do. I will say to people, if your — pets is a big niche, people spend a lot of money on their pets. And as I said, dogs and cats isn't a niche, but then there are lots of things. There are people who keep reptiles, people who keep corn snakes and bearded dragons, all these things. So you really want to go into these smaller areas where you are being very specific in your targeting. But also there is much less competition.

[15:06] **Matt:** Okay, this is helpful. So let me ask a few clarifying questions if I can, Nigel.

[15:12] **Nigel:** Sure.

[15:15] **Matt:** I like what you're saying about niching. We've said it a lot. You can't sell the ocean as it were. You need to think through what you're doing. There's a trade-off I find between becoming so niche and market size, right? So you could go, using your example, ice hockey, ice hockey goalkeepers, ice hockey goalkeepers who are left-handed, left-handed ice hockey goalkeepers who were born in Ireland. You can keep going with that whole thing till you've got like two people on the whole planet and your market size isn't massive. So how do you balance that trade-off?

[15:58] **Nigel:** Basically, what you do is you're stacking up lots of different niches. The thing is, you're — it's very, very niche, and obviously it's not going to become a bestseller in its own right. But what you can do is target lots and lots of different niches, and in that way, you're getting a small amount of money from each, if you like, but stacking it up over the year will add up to a lot of money.

[16:23] **Matt:** Okay, so I like that. So actually, what you're saying is, okay, ice hockey goalkeepers. If we're going to niche it down to left-handed ones, we can also niche it down to right-handed ones. And we can then target both those. Collectively, they might be small, but when you join them together, actually, they're quite large groups.

[16:41] **Nigel:** Exactly. And it all adds up. Depends on what you're putting them on. If you were doing Shopify for ice hockey, then you would have other positions. You might have, I don't know much about ice hockey. Maybe ice hockey wingers, if they love that sort of thing.

[16:59] **Matt:** This is funny, two guys talking about ice hockey niches and neither of us know anything about ice hockey. We should probably stick to safer examples.

[17:09] **Nigel:** This is the beauty of AI, that it can then give me all the slang that they use and I can actually sound like I know what I'm talking about when it comes to ice hockey.

[17:18] **Matt:** Oh yeah, you can do the research. So this is an interesting question. So where do I start? Where does Zoe start with AI? I mean, what's your AI platform of choice? Are you agnostic?

[17:29] **Nigel:** I just tend to use ChatGPT, I'm afraid. It's perfectly good enough for what we need. I know people are saying that maybe Bard is better, etc., nowadays. But I'll use GPT for image generation as well, and it is pretty good for image generation. Sometimes I'll use a platform just for image generation. 99% of what I do is all on ChatGPT. You can do your research, you can do your image generation, all on that one.

[18:03] **Matt:** Yeah, fantastic. Okay, so I can just picture Zoe going, this is great, Dad. What's the very first thing she needs to type into AI when she's thinking about niches? Is it — I suppose, does she think about things that she's interested in that she knows about? Does she think about none of that and just ask ChatGPT just to go find some niches? I mean, how broad does she start at the beginning?

[18:33] **Nigel:** I mean, if she's got something she's interested in, then it is always a good idea. Maybe start with that. It's something where she could explore niches within that. If you're interested in something, then it helps. But as we know, I'm not into ice hockey. So you can just go in and research. You could simply go in and say to ChatGPT, suggest 20 niche areas which have high potential on Etsy. Then what you would do is pick one and then dive down further in that particular niche. You'll find some, you'll get lots of really, really good ideas. Others you won't. It's just a case of working your way through, really, finding which ones will work.

[19:29] **Matt:** I'm going to try this right now. So let me, whilst you're chatting away, if you hear the keyboard clicking, I'm not being rude, everybody. I'm just actually — so I'm on Claude. Give me 20 niche ideas. Niche ideas for Etsy. What was this thing you said? The top 20 niche ideas for Etsy.

[19:50] **Nigel:** Top 20 niches with, you could say, underserved on Etsy with high potential.

[19:58] **Matt:** Which are underserved.

[20:02] **Nigel:** Be interesting to see what it comes up with.

[20:04] **Matt:** Yeah, yeah, and have — I'm really bad at spelling when people are, when I'm trying to do it like this. People and have high potential.

[20:15] **Nigel:** When you're trying to do it quickly as well is the worst. Yeah.

[20:21] **Matt:** Spend some time. I'll tell you what, it comes back within a minute or two. Spend some time on this research, please. Okay, so I have typed into Claude, give me 20 niche ideas for Etsy which are underserved and have high potential. Spend some time on this, please. Am I — I've not mentioned that it needs to be print on demand.

[20:47] **Nigel:** Yeah, I was going to say perhaps for print on demand.

[20:50] **Matt:** Okay. So give me 20 POD niche ideas for Etsy. Okay. Let me put this edit. Brilliant. Away you go, Claude. Let's see what it comes back with. I'm genuinely quite curious. And this is where I feel like, Nigel, if you're like me, this is where I could spend half my life just going down these rabbit holes.

[21:16] **Nigel:** Right.

[21:18] **Matt:** But I like how this is where you started. You've gone, well, no, what are the ones that are — and I suppose if I had an area, like my daughter, for example, she — in fact, I could run a second command. Let me try this. I'll copy that same command. I'm going to put it in a new screen. Give me 20 print-on-demand ideas for Etsy that are niche and in the crochet area. So what I've done there is I've just told it to go and look at a specific area because my daughter is into crochet. It's one of the things she's into and you just associate that with Etsy.

Okay. So I'm liking this because you're just starting at the top, aren't you? And you're then hammering it down. I suppose, how do I know then that I found a reasonably good niche market?

[22:17] **Nigel:** What you can do is just have a general store. So you could create, if you find something you think is a good niche and you can create four or five products for it. And list them, see what response you get. From there, of course, you can start tweaking depending on whether people are clicking on them, whether they're favouriting them, whether they're buying them. And that will all tell you whether your content is there or isn't.

[22:45] **Matt:** Okay. And you've got access in Etsy to that data, like who's favouriting them, who's buying them, et cetera. Well, I suppose sales you'll see, but who's favouriting and — can you see how many people have visited your page and things like that?

[22:57] **Nigel:** Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can see all the basic info, if you like, in the stats. So you can see the number of visitors, the conversion rate, all of these type of things.

[23:09] **Matt:** That's interesting. Now, I guess my next question then is talking about AI. Does Etsy have an API where you can actually plug — you would plug ChatGPT into it. Me, I'd use Claude, but where you can plug the API into the AI. I'm hearing in my head what I'm saying, Nigel. Plug the API into the AI and have it analyse the analytics automatically.

[23:41] **Nigel:** To be brutally honest, I don't know.

[23:44] **Matt:** I'm going to find out.

[23:47] **Nigel:** I will quite often point ChatGPT at my store and say, analyse different things, which of course it will do. You can actually get it to analyse your store, look for improvements.

[24:07] **Matt:** Oh, that's true. So you get ChatGPT to look at it, look at the data, and then make suggestions and tweaks. Yeah. Is that right? Okay.

So I've got my idea, my left-handed goalkeepers for ice hockey. In fact, let me see if I've — I've not got any data back yet. Oh, here we go. From Etsy. Yes, Etsy has an official API. So if you are a bit of a coder, and you like your vibe coding in ecommerce, you could actually connect to that API, which will get the shop stats, the listings, the orders, the receipts, the reviews. What it doesn't do, it seems, is full analytics dashboards. That's not exposed through the API. So you're still going to have to get — but of course, what you can get ChatGPT to do, I think you can get ChatGPT to do it. You can certainly get Claude to do it — is you can get Claude just to look at the webpage now, because it will take over Chrome and it will just pull the data down.

[25:10] **Nigel:** Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[25:12] **Matt:** That's what I do.

[25:14] **Nigel:** You can do it with your whole shop or even an individual listing.

[25:21] **Matt:** Yeah. That's really interesting. And of course, yeah, we can always download the CSV as well, I'm guessing. And have AI analyse that. Okay. That's interesting.

So answering the question, give me 20 print on demand niche ideas for Etsy, which are underserved and have high potential, it has come back with a list of 20. And then because Claude's been trying to be really helpful, it's gone, and these are the standout opportunities. Number one, adaptive clothing and sensory friendly. So neurodivergent and disabled communities are enormous but massively underrepresented. Number two, grief and memorial keepsakes.

[26:06] **Nigel:** Okay.

[26:07] **Matt:** So most sellers avoid —

[26:10] **Nigel:** Sorry, I don't know. Yeah.

[26:13] **Matt:** Well, it says here most sellers avoid emotionally heavy topics. So I think if you're brave enough to go into that space.

[26:20] **Nigel:** Yeah.

[26:22] **Matt:** Niche outdoor micro hobbies, not hiking or camping, but gravel biking, bouldering, disc golf. Now there's a guy listening to this called Sean, Sean Dobbs. He's got Disc Golf Australia, actually. He's a great guy, he's part of Cohort. Let me shout out to his website. If you're into disc golf, go to his website. He's got a disc golf website which I've got to understand a little bit more recently, Nigel, talking a lot more to Sean, and it fascinates me. So it's come up with things like that — cultural celebration decor, so things like Diwali, Lunar New Year, Eid, et cetera.

[27:02] **Nigel:** Disc golf actually came up in that when we were talking about hypothetical e-sports, it was one of them that came up. And of course, all of the things like pickleball and all of the new sports.

[27:19] **Matt:** Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I won't go, I won't read through the whole lot, but Sean, if you're listening and you set up a print on demand store as a result of this, you owe Nigel and me a beer. That's all I'm saying.

And so it's come back with niche ideas in the crochet area. So the best print-on-demand product types for this niche. Yarn chicken merchandise. I don't even know half of what these phrases are, so I probably won't read them. Yeah, but it's definitely saying the things that you should do are going to be mugs, tote bags, t-shirts, stickers, notebooks, wall art and mouse pads.

Okay, that's interesting. So we've got some ideas. I'm just going to pick a random idea off this. So let's say I'm going to go with — I won't do disc golf because I don't want to steal all of Sean's thunder. That would be really bad. But let me — yeah, let me do gravel biking. Gravel biking sounds fun.

Okay, so I'm going to choose something like gravel biking, Nigel. Zoe wouldn't, but I feel like I can talk a little bit about this, which is going to be useful. So I'm going to start with gravel biking. I guess my next question is then, where do I go from here? Do I set up my Etsy store first? Are there things that I need to think about when setting up the Etsy store to help me be found by people on Etsy? Yeah, or do I start with product?

[29:00] **Nigel:** Well, the first thing is to do your research, which is what we've looked at. The other thing I would say just before we move on to the SEO thing, if you like, is that funny sells. So you can then get Claude to generate funny sayings to go with your design, which will actually help you sell things. Funny sells.

[29:25] **Matt:** Yeah, it definitely does for me. The other thing that sells is retro. Yeah, I buy retro all the time. Like, my kids are like, Dad, I don't know what to get you for your birthday. I'll be like, retro '80s t-shirt is cool. So I've got Back to the Future, I've got A-Team, I've got all kinds of stuff, and it's — I guess that sells as well.

[29:44] **Matt:** This is where you can — we would say, cats, if you like, is a high-level category. So not something you would call a niche, but then you can actually, instead of going down into, if you like what we were doing just now, you then say, right, I want to target different styles. So it could be retro cats, anime cats, etc. This is another way to take things and niche down.

[30:09] **Matt:** Yeah, no, very good. And that's where you're going to spend hours on AI just finding something, aren't you?

[30:15] **Nigel:** Yeah, this is where it — I mean, what I've started doing now is I dedicate a certain amount of time each week and say, right, that is my research time. Because otherwise you can get completely lost in it. But once you've got a niche, then obviously you can train ChatGPT to produce more and more on that particular niche without having to dive back in doing all the work again.

[30:45] **Matt:** And how would I do that?

[30:47] **Nigel:** Basically, well, it'll pick up on your product. So I will, because I've got different shops, I need to tell it which shop I'm working on so that it knows products which I want. So I have some niche stores. So I'll say, right, I'm working on this store. So I'm looking for design ideas for this store. And then I'll give it some — okay, very good.

[31:14] **Matt:** So, sorry, but back to the question then. I've got my gravel bike idea. Funny sells, so jokes, humour, retro, all those things which are good. So I know where I'm going to head. Do I now start — like I say, am I working on the store? Does the store dictate the products or do the products dictate the store? How does that work?

[31:40] **Nigel:** It depends which way. I mean, if you've settled on gravel biking, then obviously you would build a brand around gravel biking if it's a store for that particular niche.

I mean, this is one of the beauties of Etsy, unlike Amazon or eBay, where you're just another seller, that you can build brands. So your name and brand, so it's very, very important. But also you can create your own banner, which you can just do on Canva. And by doing that, that is your branding. Also, you can change that banner throughout the year, which is quite nice. So Christmas in particular, I will change my banner to something seasonal. You could change it for different events throughout the year if it's relevant. So you are building a brand, if you like.

And it's all about building the SEO in the store and the products. So for example, the About Me section on your store is very important. So you would be doing that all about gravel biking, how you got into gravel biking, why you started designing products or that type of thing. And of course you could, in your case, get Claude to write that section for you, give it some basic facts, but get it to write in a human sound — that is very important — because that About Me section is one of the sections in your shop which will count towards your SEO and getting found basically. Even the shop announcement will do that as well.

[33:29] **Matt:** Okay, what else do I need to think about on the store?

[33:33] **Nigel:** So once you've got your store set up, you need the other things. A simple logo, you could say, important that it's all part of your branding again, and it makes your store look professional, particularly when you're starting out. I will often recommend under your banner, your logo on one side, you can have a little head and shoulders photo on the other. And I strongly recommend that because such a huge percentage, over 90% of sellers on Etsy are individual. And people, buyers if you like, looking, they quite often want to know about you.

I can't remember the exact figures at the moment, but there is a large proportion of people in a survey done last year said that they will be influenced by the About Me information in their decision to buy. They want to know about you as a supplier, they want to know who they're buying from, etc., and that is influencing the decision. And also the shop name can be influential. So all of that is very important.

That's really the visual side of things, if you like, the branding. After that, of course, it's building the SEO into your individual products. So your title obviously is very important. Your description then is very, very important. And you have, of course, the meta, the bit which is shown by Google, just how you fix on your search results. So you want to have your meta in there as well, which again, you want to have correct keywords in right at the beginning.

After that, obviously, you will tag things or put your listing keywords. So these are basically keyword phrases, because you don't want to be using single words. So always a relevant keyword phrase. Also alt text, so the text which is hidden behind images. Etsy won't particularly pick up on this, but as you know, the search engines like Google are text-driven. So they won't see the usual mockups you've created, but they will see the text behind them. So again, to have SEO built in.

[36:10] **Matt:** Okay. So just standard ecommerce SEO stuff, isn't it? It's all — there's nothing rocket science there really. It's the standard stuff we do on ecommerce. Yeah.

[36:19] **Nigel:** It's very, very straightforward. Yeah.

[36:21] **Matt:** How do I deal with the fact that I'm a new store and therefore will have no reviews? Is it just a case of there's not really a whole great — you just need some people to buy and get reviews. Does — what strategy could I have there?

[36:41] **Nigel:** You're very limited on what you can actually do to influence that. This is where creating this very professional-looking store to begin with, banner and logo, is very helpful. But after that, it's really a case of listing regularly. And that will get results. So you don't want to create 10 designs and throw them all on in one day. You want to do it gradually. The algorithm will look at your new product you've uploaded and say, is anyone going to be interested in this? Is anyone going to favourite it? Is anyone going to buy it? And they will rank that listing higher, maybe 24 or 48 hours.

So by listing something today and perhaps another tomorrow or the following day, you're drawing more people to your store. But the importance of listing regularly is telling the algorithm you're active and they will therefore rank you higher. So it'll take a little bit of time. This is where people, they'll put a couple of listings up, they'll think, oh, nothing sold, doesn't work. You need to keep going early and keep putting some more items. Once you've got 10 sales, then the algorithm knows what you're about and who to show your product to, and so it will then start growing.

[38:14] **Matt:** So are you, on your existing stores, Nigel, are you still putting like a new product on every day? Or are you — you're doing this to build to get your 10, 20 sales and then you don't need to put as many products on?

[38:27] **Nigel:** You don't need to put as many products on at all. Once — I always say the more product you put on, then the more you are going to sell basically. Last year we moved house and I was renovating the house. And so I actually did very, very little work. Just adding a new item from time to time just to show that I was still active. But obviously because my store was established by this stage, I'm getting sales coming in as well. So you can get to a certain stage and take a step back and not do so much. Certainly when you're starting, it's all about listing regularly.

[39:11] **Matt:** Yeah. Okay, so I suppose then a big question now is, again, with AI, I've done a bit of research on products. I suppose I could look at people in the same niche or similar niches and see what's selling well for them. So for me now, the big question is, how do I source the products? I mean, is it just a case of just go to Google, type in print on demand calendars, and I get a list of people and I contact them?

[39:41] **Nigel:** You would really want to do it — there are lots of manufacturers all over the world. So you can't — we're in the UK. What I would say is go in and type in print-on-demand manufacturers in the UK. I have got an email. You're welcome to look it down. The benefit of different manufacturers — you can do it. And the thing is, pick one manufacturer you'd like to start with and then produce — somebody that does basic products. So if you're targeting a niche, so if you're doing gravel biking, if you like, you would want to not stick — probably not stick to one type of product. You probably want to do t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, these type of things. So find a manufacturer who does those type of products. Later on, you can find more manufacturers because you can link multiple manufacturers to your store. So then you can move into perhaps other products where you can charge an even higher price and make great profit.

[41:02] **Matt:** Okay. So it's just literally a case of what I would call the old-fashioned Rolodex, isn't it? You just, you're going through finding some suppliers that do what you do, but you're starting with the basics, t-shirts, the mugs, and then you're expanding out from there, right?

And I'm guessing that the t-shirts and mugs are probably going to be the most competitive because I imagine that's where everybody thinks to start. So how do you start to find interesting product ideas? Well, I suppose the question is, how do I find niche products for my niche market?

[41:41] **Nigel:** Those products, I mean, that type of product is all available. Really it's where it is going to niching the product because you're doing something different, something which is totally unique, which is how you're going to get sales. Not — a lot of people will tell you, go and copy what someone else is doing, change a couple of words, and that's the worst thing you can do, to be quite honest, because if somebody's got a better-selling item on there and they're probably dominating, Etsy's always going to show that product because they know it sells. If you're trying to sell something almost identical, that's not going to work. So that's why you're really targeting totally different ideas.

[42:30] **Matt:** And I take it the whole purpose of print on demand is I don't carry stock.

[42:34] **Nigel:** Yeah, absolutely. So you do not — when you link your Etsy to your manufacturer, the order will go from Etsy to the manufacturer. They will then make it and ship it. It works very much like dropshipping, but without most of the disadvantages. Because you link your store, they will even mark that in your Etsy store and import the tracking number as well. So the only time that doesn't work is if you're doing a personalised order, in which case you've stopped the automation and the order's got to come to you, add usually a name, before forwarding to the manufacturer manually. But it literally takes a couple of minutes.

[43:21] **Matt:** And so is there a limit to how many suppliers I can link to in my Etsy store?

[43:28] **Nigel:** You can obviously only link one manufacturer to each product. But no, there's no limit to the number that you can link. So you get to a stage where you're going out and you're looking for more and more unusual products. Once you've got a niche, and you know it sells and you've got a following, then more and more products are really going to work for you because a lot of people just stick with t-shirts or mugs if you like.

[43:56] **Matt:** Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. One word that you mentioned there that I want to pick up on is personalisation. And we've talked about this on the podcast before, but various people have talked about this actually. The idea of you get a product from a manufacturer and you offer some kind of personalisation, you're obviously going to need some mechanism to do that. I've seen people do it with 3D printers or laser printers or all kinds of things. And you can personalise it. And that I think, again, makes it even more niche, doesn't it? But it makes it a bit more complicated.

[44:40] **Nigel:** Well, only in as much as you need to manually add them. So you will have your item which you've created, and if it's a personalised item, you don't upload it onto the manufacturer's website. So when an order comes through, Etsy will send you the order form. You can allow the form on your shop, you can allow the buyer to put in the name or details that they want. They can then simply add that information and that comes through to you. All you do is go to your original design and just type in the name if you like.

[45:18] **Matt:** Ah, I see.

[45:20] **Nigel:** Download and forward to the manufacturer. So there's nothing much more complicated than that really. The manufacturer is still dealing with it all in the usual way. It's just that little manual bit. I mean, there are odd manufacturers — there's one I know of where you can pay them to automate the order. In reality, it really takes a couple of minutes to do, so I don't bother.

[45:50] **Matt:** Yeah. And then you know it's done right then, don't you, as well?

[45:52] **Nigel:** Yeah, exactly.

[45:55] **Matt:** How do I figure out pricing?

[45:59] **Nigel:** Obviously you can see the price from the manufacturer. Some people like to start fairly competitive, but you can make good, you can get a very good markup on items once you've got that niche because people want that product. So the answer is not, as a lot of people will do, I'm not getting sales, I'll discount it, I'll go cheaper than everyone else. That's not the answer. The answer is create your totally unique product. So then you push your price up because people will have to pay for it. So, for instance, a mug I could pay around £4.50 plus the shipping. So I will charge customer basic mug maybe £10.99 plus the shipping.

[46:53] **Matt:** So you're passing on the shipping cost to the customer?

[46:55] **Nigel:** I pass on the shipping. Yeah. People have tried both and said it really, really doesn't make a difference.

[47:07] **Matt:** Okay. And what about international markets? Do you ship just to the UK? Are you going all over the world? Do you not really —

[47:13] **Nigel:** All over the world.

[47:14] **Matt:** Okay.

[47:14] **Nigel:** Yeah. So the US is a massive market. And I will ship to the US every single day. But you'll ship to places you would never expect, to be quite honest.

[47:31] **Matt:** Very good. So I guess then the question is, if you're thinking like US market, do I need to find a print-on-demand supplier in the US for US customers?

[47:44] **Nigel:** So you have different types of manufacturers, if you like. So we have, obviously there are UK-based manufacturers, near UK companies, but then the shipping cost will be much higher. If you choose some big companies, they will have manufacturing outlets in different countries. So for instance, if an order comes in from the US, they will make it within the US, which keeps the shipping costs down and obviously the import duty.

[48:17] **Matt:** Yeah. And also the speed is quicker, which is also helpful.

[48:21] **Nigel:** Yeah.

[48:23] **Matt:** Very good. I guess my — I'm aware of time and I have a thousand more questions, but I suppose my final question here, Nigel. What's — and I appreciate this is a bit like how long is a piece of string, right. But what sort of income could my daughter hope to achieve by doing something like this?

[48:45] **Nigel:** It's, yeah, I mean, the sky is the limit, to be quite honest. It really is, depending on that research, which is so, so important, and how much effort you put in. So last year, we were not doing much. Cleared net £38,000. So you can go way over that if you want, if you really put the effort in, or you can just use it as a nice sideline.

[49:17] **Matt:** It becomes a really interesting side hustle, doesn't it?

[49:22] **Nigel:** Yeah, you may have seen me on that Channel 4 programme presented by Scarlett Moffatt earlier this year. And they investigated all different types of side hustle and print on demand absolutely came out top as being the easiest to make a £10,000 a year side hustle. That was their target, which was the easiest to make £10,000 a year. And print on demand came out top.

[49:49] **Matt:** This is fascinating. So challenge accepted. I'm going to talk to my daughter and we're going to do a print on demand business that will generate at least 10 grand a year for her as an income. I'd probably — hopefully more. So 10, 20. I think if she's generating 20 grand, why not?

[50:03] **Nigel:** Yeah, it's — put the effort in, the niche is — it's easily achievable.

[50:09] **Matt:** Yeah. I found this absolutely fascinating. Nigel, I know you do courses on this. I know your community — you've got a community or something, haven't you? How do people find you? How do they reach you, find out more about that if they want to?

[50:21] **Nigel:** Okay, so the website is podlaunchpro.com. So you'll find me on there. You'll obviously find me on LinkedIn, etc. The, yeah, I mean, I offer a membership because I used to teach people via courses and I found that people will get stuck, etc. So now I offer membership community and do live sessions a month because I just find people need it ongoing and that really, really speeds things up if you like. Keeps people motivated and keeps them going.

[51:04] **Matt:** Yeah, well, being part of a community is quite — we found that actually community is the most important thing in many ways. Yeah. And figuring out how to do that is good.

We will of course link to Nigel's website in the show notes. We will link to his LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well. And so whatever podcast app you're listening to this on, you can just scroll down, you'll find the links there. If you're watching on YouTube, it will be in the description. And of course, if you signed up to our email marketing newsletter, it will be in the show notes that's going to be in your inbox.

And if you're a Slingshot AI member, let me just say, I'm really excited about Slingshot AI. I've not talked about it at all on the podcast. This is a very, very brief interlude. It will also be in there. More information coming soon. I am being deliberately cryptic.

That said, Nigel, genuinely, really appreciate it. In closing, is there anything else I need to know or Zoe needs to know beyond what you've told me?

[52:02] **Nigel:** I don't, nothing in particular, I don't think. I mean, talking about AI, interesting thing is that I developed a prompt, which I'll be redeveloping, which will generate everything for you. I'm sure you could do it for her. Obviously, I have one people can use. I think it's about a 9,000-character prompt, but that would generate every single thing for the listing. It would generate the title, the description, the meta, it'll generate the tags to your content. But of course, the problem with AI is getting it to generate something which sounds human and it's actually gonna sell the product rather than churning out AI nonsense. So that's what I keep perfecting. That saves a huge amount.

[52:55] **Matt:** Yeah, absolutely. Using AI like that.

[52:57] **Nigel:** Oh yeah.

[52:58] **Matt:** How do I get ahold of that prompt, Nigel?

[53:01] **Nigel:** Join the membership. Join the membership.

[53:07] **Matt:** Brilliant, Nigel. Listen, I genuinely appreciate you coming on, man, and sharing the knowledge and the wisdom. I think you've made it sound remarkably straightforward, which in itself is quite a good skill and something that I think I can definitely give to my daughter and tell her to run with it. But loved it, man. Love the conversation. Thanks for coming on the show. It was a bit of an experiment. I think it worked. I quite enjoyed it. So lots of good stuff out of it. But yeah, thank you.

[53:35] **Nigel:** Thanks very much.

[53:37] **Matt:** No problem at all. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us this week on the eCommerce Podcast. Hopefully you enjoyed that. A little bit unusual, and maybe we'll do some more of these. Tell me what you think. Do you like these kind of things where I get people to come coach me on their business ideas? Genuinely interested. Anyway, that's it from me. That's it from Nigel. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a phenomenal week wherever you are in the world. I will see you next time.

[54:00] **Nigel:** Bye for now.