Key Takeaways
- Print-on-demand (POD) lets you sell custom products — shirts, mugs, totes — that are printed only after a customer orders, so you hold no inventory.
- It's booming: the POD market is projected to grow from about $13 billion in 2025 to over $118 billion by 2035, and it's a favorite low-risk model for small businesses.
- The five steps: pick a niche, create designs, choose production, connect a store, and market.
- You can outsource to a POD service (hands-off, thin margins) or print in-house for far higher profit per sale.
- Startup cost is low — often under a few hundred dollars — because you only pay for products as they sell.
Print-on-demand is one of the easiest and lowest-risk ways to start selling physical products online. You design something, list it, and a product is printed and shipped only when someone buys — no upfront stock, no leftover inventory, no warehouse. This guide walks through what POD is, why it's so popular with small businesses right now, and exactly how to start a print-on-demand business step by step — from finding a niche to what it really costs.
What is print-on-demand?
Print-on-demand is a business model where custom-designed products are manufactured individually, on demand, after a sale — not stocked in advance. You upload your artwork to a product (a t-shirt, hoodie, mug, poster, or tote), a customer orders it, and only then is that single item printed and shipped, either by a third-party POD service or by you.
Because nothing is produced until it's sold, POD removes the biggest risks of traditional retail: buying inventory upfront and getting stuck with unsold stock. That makes it a natural fit for designers, creators, and small businesses testing product ideas. It's closely related to DTF and DTG printing (the methods used to print the apparel) and to starting a clothing brand.
Why is print-on-demand so popular?
POD has exploded in the last few years, and the numbers back it up. If you're a small business deciding whether it's worth it, here's the case:
- The market is growing fast. One industry analysis values the global print-on-demand market at about $13 billion in 2025, projected to reach over $118 billion by 2035 — a roughly 25% annual growth rate (Precedence Research).
- Custom apparel keeps climbing. The custom t-shirt printing market alone is forecast to grow from about $7 billion in 2025 to $20 billion by 2035, roughly 11% a year (Precedence Research).
- Shopping is online. E-commerce now makes up over 20% of global retail sales and is still rising (eMarketer, via Shopify) — the channel POD sells through.
- Entrepreneurship is booming. Americans filed a record ~5.5 million new business applications in 2023 and about 5.2 million in 2024 (U.S. Census Bureau), and low-risk online models like POD are a big part of that wave.
- Almost no risk to start. With no inventory to buy and products paid for only when they sell, you can launch a POD store for very little and test ideas without gambling on stock.
In short: a large, fast-growing market, an online-first shopper base, and a near-zero-inventory model make POD one of the most accessible businesses a small team — or a single person — can start today.
How do you start a print-on-demand business?
To start a print-on-demand business, choose a focused niche, create designs for your products, decide how they'll be produced (a POD service or in-house printing), connect your designs to an online store or marketplace, then market to drive sales. Start lean, test which designs sell, and scale the winners.
Step 1: Pick a niche
A niche is the specific audience and theme your store speaks to. It's the single most important decision in POD, because generic designs get lost among millions of others. A focused niche makes your designs resonate, your marketing far cheaper (you know exactly who you're talking to), and your store feel like it was made for its buyer. “Funny t-shirts” is not a niche; “funny t-shirts for pediatric nurses” is.
Popular print-on-demand niche categories
Most winning POD niches fall into a handful of categories. Use these as starting points, then get specific within them:
- Hobbies & interests — gaming, fishing, hiking, gardening, yoga, running, coffee, camping, crafting, book lovers.
- Pets — dog and cat lovers, and specific breeds (corgis, dachshunds, huskies); “dog mom” and “cat dad” themes sell well.
- Professions & jobs — nurses, teachers, engineers, truckers, hairstylists, chefs — people love apparel that reps their work.
- Family & life stages — new parents, weddings, graduations, retirement, family reunions.
- Identity, pride & place — heritage, causes and communities, and hometown or regional pride.
- Humor & sayings — sarcastic quotes, inside jokes, and relatable one-liners for a specific group.
- Seasonal & events — holidays, festivals, and annual events people buy merch around.
Example: drilling into a hobby niche
Say you pick a hobby like gardening. You can go narrower still — “houseplant lovers,” “vegetable gardeners,” or “succulent obsessed” — and match products to the audience: t-shirts and hoodies with plant puns, tote bags for the farmers' market, mugs, and aprons. The tighter the niche, the easier it is to design something that audience instantly wants to buy.
How to validate your niche
Before committing, check that the niche has real, paying demand:
- Search interest — look at what people search and how much (a free tool like Google Trends shows direction).
- Existing sales — browse marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon; if products are selling and reviewed, there's a market.
- Passion — passionate communities (hobbies, pets, professions) buy merch to show identity.
- Room to stand out — enough demand, but a specific enough angle that you're not competing with everyone.
Need product ideas to get started? Browse Atomm's free print project ideas for ready-made designs you can make and sell.
Step 2: Create your designs
In print-on-demand, your designs are the product. The blank shirt is the same one your competitors use; what people actually buy is the idea on it. Good news: you don't need to be a professional illustrator — some of the best-selling POD designs are simple text.
Types of designs that sell
- Text & typography — a clever phrase or quote for your niche; the easiest to make and often the best sellers.
- Simple graphics & icons — clean, bold illustrations that read well on a shirt.
- Niche in-jokes — references only your audience gets, which makes them feel seen.
- Patterns & all-over prints — for products like leggings, mugs, and totes.
How to create your designs
- Do it yourself with free or low-cost tools like Canva, or vector software; even text-based designs work. For apparel specifically, see our guide on how to design a shirt.
- Use AI to generate artwork or ideas, then refine it.
- Hire a designer on Fiverr or 99designs if you want polished, original art.
Design specs & a licensing warning
Export print-ready files: high resolution (aim for 300 DPI at print size) and, for apparel, a transparent PNG. Keep artwork inside the product's print area. Most importantly, use only artwork you own or are licensed to use — selling designs with copyrighted characters, logos, or trademarks (even “fan art”) can get your store shut down. Create original designs instead.
Step 3: Choose your production
This decision defines your margins. You have two paths: outsource to a POD service, or print your products in-house.
Option A: Use a print-on-demand service
A POD service integrates with your store, then prints and ships each order automatically under your brand. It's the classic hands-off route — zero equipment, nothing paid until a sale. Popular services include Printify, Printful, Gelato, Gooten, and SPOD. The trade-off is thin margins and less control over quality and shipping speed, since a third party makes everything.
Option B: Print in-house for higher margins
Once orders are steady, printing yourself keeps the margin a POD service would take, and you control quality and turnaround. For apparel, an in-house DTF or DTG setup prints full-color custom garments to order. xTool makes desktop machines built for exactly this:
xTool Apparel Printer
Best for apparel
The Apparel Printer is a fully automated DTF system: it prints your design, applies and cures the adhesive powder, and produces a ready-to-press transfer with almost no manual steps.
Because it bonds to cotton, blends, and dark garments in full color, it's built for anyone selling custom shirts at real volume without outsourcing.
xTool Apparel Printer: the hands-off pick for scaling a custom-apparel line.
xTool O1 Omni
Most versatile starter
With UV, DTG, and DTF in one compact machine, the O1 Omni lets you offer a whole catalog — custom shirts, printed mugs and phone cases, engraved-look signs, and more — without buying separate equipment.
That flexibility makes it a smart first machine: you can test which products actually sell before you specialize, then reinvest profits into scaling the winners.
xTool O1 Omni: the most flexible single machine for testing a product line.
Many sellers start outsourced to validate designs, then bring printing in-house to scale profit. You'll also want a heat press to cure DTF transfers.
Step 4: Connect a store
Now you need somewhere for customers to actually buy. There are three broad options, and many sellers combine them.
Sell on an online marketplace
Marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon Merch on Demand, and eBay bring built-in traffic — millions of shoppers already searching. That's the big advantage for a new store. The downsides: listing and transaction fees, more competition, and less control over branding and customer data. Great for getting your first sales quickly. If Etsy is your pick, see our full guide to starting an Etsy business.
Build your own online store
Your own store on Shopify, WooCommerce, or Wix gives you full control of your brand, pricing, and customer relationship, and better margins. Most POD services plug directly into these platforms, so orders flow to production automatically. The trade-off is that you have to drive your own traffic — there's no built-in audience. For the full playbook on going independent, see how to start an online business and start an e-commerce business.
Sell on social media and locally
You can also sell where your audience already hangs out: Instagram and TikTok shops, Facebook Marketplace, and directly from short-form video. And don't overlook in-person sales — local craft fairs, markets, and pop-up events are a great way to sell POD products face-to-face, test designs, and build a local following. Many small businesses mix a marketplace or own store with local markets.
Step 5: Market and scale
Print-on-demand lives or dies on marketing — because the product and price aren't your advantage, your niche and promotion are.
- Short-form video & social — TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Pinterest are where niche products spread.
- Influencers & communities — seed products to creators or groups in your niche.
- Search (SEO) — optimize marketplace listings and store pages for what buyers search.
- Paid ads — start small (a few dollars a day) to test which designs convert before scaling spend.
- Email — collect subscribers and bring buyers back for new drops.
Then iterate: test many designs cheaply, drop the duds, and pour effort into the winners. As volume grows, in-house printing lets you protect margins and reinvest.
How much does it cost to start print-on-demand?
One of POD's biggest draws is how little it takes to start — often under a few hundred dollars, because you don't buy inventory. Here's where the money actually goes, and how it differs between outsourcing and printing in-house:
- Store — selling on a marketplace is nearly free to open (you pay small listing and transaction fees per sale); your own online store runs about $29–39/month on a platform like Shopify. Selling locally instead means market or booth fees, a display, and packaging.
- Domain name — roughly $10–15/year if you run your own store.
- Designs — $0 with free tools if you DIY, or $5–$100+ per design to hire a freelancer.
- Production — with a POD service you pay the product's base cost only when it sells (no upfront spend); printing in-house means buying a machine upfront but a much lower cost per item after that.
- Tools & apps — design software and POD integration apps, many with free tiers.
- Labor — your own time to start; you might hire help for fulfillment or design as you grow.
- Marketing & samples — an optional ad budget (start small), plus a few sample products to check quality before you sell them.
| Cost | Outsourced POD | In-house printing |
|---|---|---|
| Online store | $0–39/mo (marketplace fees or a store plan) | $0–39/mo (same) |
| Domain name | ~$10–15/year | ~$10–15/year |
| Designs | $0 (DIY) to $100+ per design (freelancer) | Same |
| Equipment | $0 — no machine needed | $500–5,000+ for a printer (one-time) |
| Product cost | Per item, paid only when it sells | Lower per item (blanks + ink), paid upfront |
| Marketing | Flexible — from $0 (organic) to an ad budget | Same |
| Samples | Order a few to check quality | Make your own |
The common path: start outsourced and lean to prove which designs sell, then invest in in-house printing once orders are steady, since owning production is the biggest lever on your profit. For the bigger picture, see our guide to starting a business.
Turn your designs into income on Atomm
Tip: once you're making your own designs, you can sell, share, and earn from them on Atomm — not just from the finished products. Two easy ways:
Pre-sell an idea with Atomm Crowdfunding
Atomm Crowdfunding lets you launch a project to pre-sell a product idea and sell the design files and commercial licenses — so you validate demand and get paid before you mass-produce. Real makers have done exactly this: the Clock Craft set reached 299% of its goal and the Titanic laser-cut model funded at 111%, with creators keeping up to a 90% revenue share on design and license sales.
Win prizes in Atomm Contests
Enter Atomm's creative contests to showcase your projects and win xTool machines, cash, and prizes — a low-risk way to get your work in front of a large maker audience.
The bottom line
In short: print-on-demand is a low-risk, fast-growing way to start selling custom products online. Nail a focused niche, create designs people in that niche want, choose the production route that fits your stage, and market where your audience lives — and once sales are steady, bringing printing in-house is how you turn a store into a real, profitable business.
Frequently asked questions
What is print-on-demand, in simple terms?
Print-on-demand is a model where custom products — like shirts, mugs, and totes — are printed only after a customer orders them. You upload a design, and nothing is made until it sells, so you carry no inventory and have no leftover stock. It's a low-risk way to sell physical products online.
How much money do I need to start print-on-demand?
You can start for very little — often under a few hundred dollars — because you don't buy inventory upfront. The main costs are a store (a marketplace is nearly free; your own store is about $29–39/month), optional design help, and a small marketing budget. Products are paid for only as they sell.
Is print-on-demand profitable?
It can be, but margins with outsourced services are thin, so profit depends on a focused niche, strong designs, and efficient marketing. Many sellers increase profitability significantly by bringing printing in-house once orders are steady, since they keep the margin a POD supplier would otherwise take.
Do I need my own equipment for print-on-demand?
No — with an outsourced POD service, the supplier prints and ships everything, so you need no equipment to start. Buying your own printer is optional and pays off later: it costs more upfront but gives you higher margins, faster shipping, and full quality control once you have consistent orders.
What sells best in print-on-demand?
Apparel leads — especially t-shirts and hoodies — along with mugs, tote bags, posters, phone cases, and stickers. The best sellers pair a passionate niche with a design that audience wants to wear or display, so your niche and design matter more than the specific product.
