Auction Professor: Print on Demand Can Provide Steady Income

The Auction Professor explains what drove him to explore Print on Demand as an option to generate online sales and how the strategy has the potential to provide a steady income stream for sellers.

For most resellers that I know, sourcing is usually their favorite part of this business. It is the thrill of the hunt, and the chance of finding some incredible item that gets one’s blood flowing, so to speak. Sourcing is also one of the most time-consuming parts of reselling, as well. It is right up there with imaging and listing your items.

Sourcing is also a necessity for most resellers in this business, but not for everyone. There are many options available to the reselling world that, believe it or not, do not require any form of traditional sourcing.

Over the years, I have sold many different types of items. Some have sold very well, while others were a complete waste of my time. The items, though, that have always made me the most money are those that are called replenishable items, which are items I can continually buy to resell over and over again.

When talking about those sorts of items, the first thing that usually comes to mind are wholesale purchases. Wholesale items can easily be replenishable, but you would still have to rely on a source for procuring them.

One of my first wholesale deals was for a religious CD from a local company. In that case, I was able to buy pretty much as many as I wished at a wholesale price, and (luckily) I was able to find a market for them.

I had great results from those CDs, along with many other wholesale items. However, what usually happens is that over time my source runs out, or simply stops selling the items. After the third or fourth time of having a wholesale deal dry up on me, I figured I would look into other options where that would not happen.

I tried a few private branded items. Private branding, though, has some major drawbacks, such as having to purchase the items ahead of time, usually before you would know how well those items would sell.

This then led me to check out Print on Demand (or POD for short) options for my business to replace the wholesale items that I lost. POD has offered me the best of both worlds. It has given me the ability to have little to no investment in some of the items I sell.

POD offers a reseller the ability to list items that they do not physically have, with no need to buy them in the first place. A POD item is not even produced until it has sold. It is one of the cheapest investable types of items a person could sell.

I have sold shirts, posters, coffee mugs, postcards, and other printable items through POD for many years. Each item does not make me a fortune, but it is steady and long-term revenue that you can build upon.

Sure, one POD item may only make me $150 a month, but that is every month of the year. It all adds up, and I do not know anyone who would not want to make an extra $1,800 a year on an item they did not have to buy.

The more POD items I have up, the more revenue I will usually have from them. When you have 20 or 30 POD items listed at the same time, you could easily sell ten or twenty times that amount.

You do not have to be an artist either to create a design for a POD item, such as shirts, mugs, or many other items. Some sellers (including myself) sell shirts and mugs with funny tag lines or quotes on them. Those sorts of items take very little time or effort to create.

Many resellers use a large amount of public domain images for POD items, which I have had great success doing, as well. I do create my own designs and artwork from scratch, as well, and those are always the most rewarding for me.

POD has expanded over the years and now offers far more types of items you can sell. There are also dozens of great POD companies that you can use to produce your items, including some straight through the platforms you are probably already selling on. POD offers very little risk, and lots of rewards, and may be a profitable option for your reselling business. You will not know, though, unless you give it a try.

Don Heiden

Don Heiden is a 30-year veteran of online reselling going back to the days of Yahoo Auctions. He runs The Auction Professor YouTube channel posting videos and content about various reselling platforms and topics, and he is a member of the eBay, Amazon, Hip, and other affiliate programs where he may earn a commission when linking to products on those sites. He can also be found on most social networks under the same name, including Instagram. He is also a published professional artist which includes works produced for The Walt Disney Company. He holds an Associate Degree in Database Design, Construction, and Network Administration. He also holds a Bachelor Degree and Master Degree of Research & Communications from The University of Toledo.