How to Fully Automate Your Print-on-Demand Business Using AI

To fully automate a print-on-demand business with AI, split it into three stages and take yourself out of each one: product creation (use ChatGPT or an AI design tool for niches, quotes and designs), product uploading (let software write the titles, bullets and keywords and publish listings every day), and fulfillment (route each order to your print supplier automatically). You still pick the niches and check the results, but the daily grind runs without you. Below is exactly how I set up each stage and what it costs per month.

I have been in the POD business for many years, and I can say that I’ve seen enough to know the best practices for making good sales in it.

So, there’s someone that I know in this print-on-demand business who started this internet marketing business right about the time that I began to mine.

When I started, I delegated some critical parts of my business process to my virtual assistants, and using automated upload systems, it seemed as though I was losing money.

But my friend was a workaholic, a perfectionist, and did not give out his work. He got the best quotes via his personal research.

He also made his designs on his computer and handled all of his product uploads and sales management. For the first couple of months, he made some money. But he lacked consistency, so he had to quit eventually.

Long story short, he eventually burned out in less than a few months. He couldn’t keep up with his business, and with time, it took a nosedive. Bummer, right?

But why did he burn out that fast? As his workload became heavy, he began to slack, lost consistency, and eventually quit. This is why we shouldn’t do all the work ourselves.

Morals? Do not try to belabor yourself all in the name of trying to save a few hundred bucks.

Here’s the thing: I have been selling print-on-demand products for ten years, but I have never created designs myself.

Surprised?

Don’t be!

I have spent a few hours a week building my POD business in the last three years.

How did I manage this?

One word – AUTOMATION.

In this guide, I will be walking you through a detailed approach to how you can successfully automate your POD business without burning out yourself…

Let’s dive into it!

Why Automation?

First, what is automation? I know you all have different perspectives on this.

I mean, it’s just one google search away! 🔍

But here’s what I mean by automation.

The key to being successful in this POD business is consistency.

Any system or process that can help you achieve a consistent workflow, steady product uploading, and sales management – that’s the automation I’m talking about.

I tell you, this is the secret of the most successful internet marketers you know. Automation helps you to achieve more in less time.

In this AI era, automation becomes significantly more powerful with the integration of AI.

Consistency is vital if you want to make a fortune in this business. Yes, so much goes into market research, product preparation, and finally, selling the products.

But with a tremendous automated process, you can get all of these done in a short time without killing yourself over it.

Frankly, it might take a few hundred bucks out of your pocket, but it is a worthwhile investment in the long term.

At the end of the day, you would have earned so much that the cost of your automated processes will be less burdensome.

When it comes to the POD business, you cannot do well without a good game plan.

If you’ve ever seen a good soccer team play, you’d notice how each player seems to know where and when to be there. It’s like an automated system with 11 pieces working harmoniously to achieve a goal.

I mean that, literally.

This is because they have a good game plan. One that instructs every part of the game, distributing responsibilities to each of the players without stressing anyone out.

If you’re not a soccer fan, apologies. That was the best analogy I could come up with. I’m a Liverpool fan! 😜

This same rule applies to your POD business.

Your POD business has different “players,” and you must find a way to make each one work to boost traffic and increase sales.

Remember: Consistency is vital for POD success. Your production flow should enable daily product uploads without stressing any single part of your business.

In essence, you have to set up a production flow that ensures you upload products every day. Remember what we said earlier about consistency?

As your business begins to scale, you might need to create a plan to enable an efficient production rate.

Your production flow is the continuous movement of products through a near-seamless production process. To achieve this, some part of your business needs to either be delegated or automated with valuable tools.

An excellent production flow method will involve product creation, product uploading, and fulfillment processes.

Product Creation Process

Creating POD products involves several processes. This simply means that there are different parts of the process that can be automated or delegated.

The goal is to get things done quickly and perfectly.

The process of creating a new POD product starts with market research. Other aspects, such as searching for quotes and creating the designs, follow.

So, here are some practical ways to get this usually tedious process done in no time.

Niche Selection

In this AI era, niche selection is much easier than before.

For example, in the past, when I wanted to find a list of top-paying professions in the United States, I needed to search on Google, then copy the profession niches to my Excel sheet.

I added “top-paying” to the search query because I wanted to find professions with disposable income for purchasing items like personalized mugs and tumblers.

But today, you can simply ask ChatGPT, “Give me 100 top-paying niches in the United States that are likely to buy gifts for their coworkers,” and you’ll get a more accurate list of niches in seconds.

To sell print-on-demand products on marketplaces like Amazon, it’s easier to list products horizontally across many different niches.

You can use ChatGPT to list all niches related to professions, dog breeds, cat breeds, hobbies, etc., in just a few hours.

Save them and categorize them into your Google Sheets, and you can reuse this file to create endless products in the future.

This process only needs to be done once, so there’s no need to hire anyone for it. If you want a more structured way to pick niches, I cover it in my guide to POD niche research.

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Finding Quotes

Now, here’s one part where you can really use a hand.

Sure, there are tons of places where you can get hilarious and captivating quotes. But would you rather spend that time doing more important tasks? It just doesn’t go well with me.

You can hire someone to get it done for you in no time and at a very cheap rate. There are several platforms where you can find people who offer such services.

Onlinejobs.ph is an excellent place to hire someone to help you find amazing quotes in no time and at a low cost.

With around $0.1 to $0.2 per quote, you can get as much as you like, depending on your negotiation skills. At this rate, you can get up to 100 quotes for each product with just $10 to $20.

You would make much more than this once your products hit the market.

But the good news is…we can do this at a much cheaper price nowadays.

Thanks to AI, you can use ChatGPT to find tons of quotes in seconds.

For example, you can tell ChatGPT, “Give me 100 funny quotes about engineers,” and then select the quotes you like.

But wait, don’t do it yourself.

Finding quotes is an ongoing process that you need to do every day if you want to create new products daily.

Instead of doing it yourself, hire and teach someone to do it for you.

By teaching these people to use ChatGPT, you can pay the same price to get more results. For example, instead of paying $10 to get 100 quotes, you can pay the same amount and get 1,000 quotes.

Since people will take the same amount of time to do the work but provide you with more results, they are willing to do it.

You can get as many quotes as you like within a short period.

Pro Tip: Use AI (ChatGPT) combined with virtual assistants to get 10x more quotes for the same price. Instead of paying $10 for 100 quotes, pay the same amount for 1,000 quotes by teaching your VA to use ChatGPT.

At this pace, you can get more products out for listing than you ever did when you handle sourcing for quotes on your own. Cool, right?

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Creating Product Designs

A similar approach can also be taken when creating your product designs.

Sure, some of you are talented and have a good mastery of some design software.

However, you must factor in the time and stress that comes with designing about 10,000 products every month. You might spend more time creating the designs than actually making sales.

Don’t do that!

This is what I do. I hire a designer from onlinejobs.ph to get it done for me cheaply. I also give my graphic designer access to Canva so he can create many beautiful designs quickly.

Resist the urge to find the quotes or create designs by yourself. It’s time-consuming! Moreover, it’s a very dull, yet simple task that can easily be delegated.

Most people I know have stopped doing this alone because it’s tedious and distracting.

These days AI can also generate the designs themselves; I compare the options in my post on AI design generation for POD.

This business model requires consistency, so hiring some people or using automation tools to work on this while you focus on more productive areas of the business is better.

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Product Uploading Process

Of the process involved in the product listing, this is arguably the most time-consuming and delicate part.

If you’re uploading your product to marketplaces such as Amazon and Etsy, you need to dot your I’s and cross your T’s.

Ensure that you have a good product title, a convincing product description, and the proper use of product tags.

It’s a very important part of the whole process because the level of traffic that your products attract is mainly dependent on the product title, description, bullet points and keywords.

This is the time-consuming aspect, especially if you’re working with many products. So, you should hire and teach someone to use ChatGPT to prepare this for you.

Once the product listing is ready, it’s time to upload the products to the marketplace.

I once hired a person to create 150 products a day for me. She had to work on Amazon for many hours, but she eventually completed the task within time.

Fortunately, nowadays, you can automate the entire process of product uploading using software. I compare the main approaches in my roundup of POD bulk upload automation tools.

I built PODtomatic for exactly this, because I was paying VAs $750-1,000 a month to upload about 50 products a day. It designs products like mugs, ornaments, bracelets and keychains with AI, writes the titles, bullet points, descriptions and keywords, and uploads up to 200 new products a day (you set the daily limit) to your own Amazon store, Walmart or Shopify. For Amazon you need a Professional Seller account and a GTIN exemption; it is not for Amazon Merch on Demand.

Consistency is a very important part of the print-on-demand business, and this is the part where software beats people: it uploads every day, whether or not you feel like working.

Cost Comparison: My VAs cost $750-1,000/month for about 50 uploads a day. Software that uploads up to 200 products a day costs $97-150/month.

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Fulfillment Process

One of the coolest things about this POD business is dropshipping.

You don’t have to manage inventory or stock products on a dusty shelf. Once an order is placed for one of your products, you can contact your print-on-demand supplier.

The supplier will be in charge of all the printing, packaging, and delivery processes. All you have to do is send in the design.

This step can be automated too. In my setup, every new order is sent automatically to the suppliers CustomCat and Laser Chili, who print and ship it. If you’d rather use your own supplier, you can switch automated ordering off and fulfill those orders yourself.

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Cost Breakdown

Now, with all that said, you must already be calculating how much you might have to part with every month to implement this plan.

An automation subscription for a single Amazon store runs about $97 a month ($497 if you pay for the year). If you want Amazon, Walmart and Shopify together, it’s $150 a month or $750 a year.

Then you’ve got the Amazon Professional Seller fee at $39.99 a month.

If my math is still good, that’s about $137-190 in total to run an automated POD business for a month. Does that seem pretty high? It’s very low compared to testing products with paid traffic, and much less than the VAs I used to pay.

Monthly Investment Breakdown: Upload software ($97-150) + Amazon Professional fee ($39.99) = roughly $137-190 per month, before product and ad costs.

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Expected Return

When it comes to making sales, several factors can influence the performance of your products in the market.

The type of product you offer is one factor, and the season or time of year is another crucial consideration.

For example, coffee mugs generally sell well during the winter period and in Q4. Tumblers and wine glasses are best sold in the summer, while face masks have seen increased demand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Therefore, sales expectations for different products will vary across months and seasons.

Additionally, some products perform exceptionally well during special holidays like Christmas and Halloween or niche-based celebrations such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Green Monday.

For instance, if your products are seasonal, like Christmas-themed items, you can expect to make between 100 to 300 sales per month.

An average profit of around $8 per sale could potentially yield $800 to $2400 per month.

Since these products are sold repeatedly, you only need to invest once and can continue selling them for years.

Realistic Expectations: Seasonal products can generate 100-300 sales per month with $8 average profit = $800-$2,400/month. Products sell repeatedly for years after a single upload.

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Conclusion

The easiest way to grow your business is to automate your process.

Yeah, it might sting your pocket a little, but it would only take a while before your profit begins to cover for the cost of running an automated process.

When it comes to internet marketing, there is no single trick to getting things done.

To get more of your winning products out there, you can also use paid traffic to boost sales. However, this would require a lot of time, effort, and money.

If you have enough of all of these, you can get it done. But if you have a tight budget, you should start small and scale up with time.

Slow and steady, they say, wins the race.

I don’t know if that’s true, but it works when it comes to building a successful POD business. So, take your time to create good products.

Start with good market research. Do your homework! Conduct good keyword research. Find niches with little competition and create products targeting that audience.

Avoid taking on the heavy tasks of getting quotes and creating product designs. You can hire experts to do them for you at a very low cost.

Once those pieces are in place, you can automate almost all of the daily work. When you’re ready to grow the catalog, read how I scale a POD business from 100 to 10,000 products, and if you want to test the upload side first, you can try PODtomatic for 7 days for $7.

If you want to make many sales from POD business fast, now is the time!

We can easily make sales from POD in Q4. Start getting your house in order before different special holidays and celebrations begin to set in so that you have enough to sell.

Happy Automation! 😎