eCommerce 1.2

So another passive or semi-passive income stream which can also compliment and expand my product line is having printed mugs. So I can’t print mugs, I don’t have the machinery and I don’t want to stock and hold a large amount of mugs (or other products), I don’t have the space or the money to do that for a start. So I’ve included a PoD plug-in, this is where you create a listing that once purchased and only then sends a job to the PoD site to produce, pack and ship the order to the customer. So same as any traditional PoD product you design it, setup any images, text, styles, colours and similar options. You then list the same product on your ETSY store through the plug-in integration, some of these are easier and better integrated than others but you should only have to create the listing once and al the details should be shared between ETSY and the PoD site

So I did this, initially for a couple of styles of mug, one was bought instantly by a friend as I’d also advertised it on my Instagram feed – so again showing the power of social media for free advertising. For transparency Ive not sold any others but there is a reason for this, and this is an important teaching moment. I made no money on this sale, in fact I lost approx 68p (UK). There is fierce competition in mugs. There are now customised mugs for any occasion, fan, dad, mum best sister in the world etc and this has driven prices down. So compete with this I found a what I thought cheap mug PoD site, I added about 40% as a profit margin to not price myself out of the market but this wasn’t enough

One of the oddities of using the PoD site I used (not sure if this is typical or not of PoD sites) and ETSY itself is that ETSY added VAT (UK tax), the PoD site added VAT, ETSY added tax to P&P (even though the PoD site did the P&P and not ETSY) the PoD site of course added P&P and tax. By the time all these fees had been deducted and with the ETSY listing and sales fees taken I was minus 68p! Due to this I immediately suspended the mug listings with an intention to review and see if it was actually worth progressing with the PoD integration or not

So, although I like the idea, I could add my images to several compatible products that I personally cannot manufacture or provide such as the mugs, but also doormats, placemats, tea towels, maybe create key fobs, note pads etc, there are many suitable products I could put my image on. There are of course many that aren’t suitable so I wouldn’t really consider bumper stickers, shower curtains or kids clothing, and here is something to bear in mind, as a PoD creator it can be tempting to splash your design across every product in the poD sites catalogue, and although its something you may want to experiment with, you really need to be choosy

To splash your design across several unsuitable products, either because the product is unsuitable of the image format only makes for a bad customer impression. It cheapens your design, it can confuse the customer who may be looking for a specific product only to be swamped with other unsuitable product choices. It can also lead to what they call ‘analysis paralysis’ where if a customer is given too much choice they end up making none at all. They simply go around in circles, get confused with al the options and I the end leave the sire without actually clicking on the BUY button