Do you want to start a side business where you can create your own shirt or maybe a hoodie or sneakers and hat and sell it online to the world? It might be easier than you might think with a WordPress website and print on demand (POD) business model.
The print on demand business model allows you to work with a third-party supplier of white-label products and customize them with unique custom designs and graphics. The best part– you get each product on an order basis and don’t pay for it until the sale happens, and the supplier takes care of everything, from printing to shipping and delivery. This means you don’t even have to worry about maintaining an inventory or worrying about a large amount of upfront investment.
And then, you can even add an online booking system to WordPress to boost your orders or business partnerships’ requests!
Read this article to understand how to get started and create a print on demand website with WordPress and start making a side income without putting much effort.
Why You Should Create a Website with WordPress
W3Tech data shows that WordPress powers 43.2% of all websites around the world today. The reason why such a huge number of people rely on WordPress is that it offers great options for customizability and extendability. Additionally, being an open-source platform, it is completely free to use.
For eCommerce, a custom WordPress website offers a wide array of integrations, plugins, and themes to modify the storefront, and it is quite easy to use as well. You don’t have to be a coding or technical expert to get started on it, as you would with a SAP composable storefront for example.
We know that you want the best for your future business, which is why we think it’s important that we put both advantages and disadvantages of using WordPress. Let’s jump on to the platform’s pros and cons.
How to Take Business Appointments on WordPress
Additionally, incorporating an online booking system into your WordPress website can significantly enhance your orders and attract more business partnerships. One excellent option to consider is Calendesk. By integrating Calendesk’s powerful booking system, you can streamline appointment scheduling, provide a seamless user experience for your customers, and manage bookings more efficiently. This not only saves time for both you and your clients but also enables you to focus on producing high-quality print-on-demand products, ultimately driving more revenue and fostering long-lasting relationships with your business partners.
Read more here.
Pros and Cons of WordPress
Whether or not WordPress is suitable for your online shop depends on the specifics of your business and the products you intend to sell. If you weigh the benefits and drawbacks, you’ll have a better grasp of reality.
Pros:
- You can customize your website with over 8,000 themes it makes available to its users.
- WordPress is extremely SEO friendly and will help you rank on top of google’s search engine result pages (SERPs).
- WordPress has several plugins that are specifically for eCommerce.
- Using WordPress ensures top-notch security for your website as long as you make sure it’s updated.
- Its free WooCommerce plugins make it quick and easy to set up a functional online storefront.
Cons:
- WordPress can provide all features for eCommerce but isn’t specifically built for it. Therefore, you need to have clarity on what features you want to include.
- Sometimes using multiple plugins can work against you as not all plugins are compatible with each other.
- Even though it’s a free platform, you’ll have to pay for fees that come with hosting, using premium templates and plugins, and charges for processing payments.
Create Your Print on Demand Website
By now, you should be able to decide if you want to build an eCommerce store with WordPress or not. If you’re still with us, keep reading as we’ll go over the steps to create your very own POD store with WordPress.
Try Out WooCommerce
To facilitate online sales, WordPress sites may make use of the free WooCommerce plugin. With 5,106,506 active users, it is by far the most popular WordPress plugin for e-commerce operations. Anybody can add full-fledged e-commerce functionality, including product pages, order management, and payment gateway integration, to their site with a few clicks.
To add and use the WooCommerce plugin on your new WordPress website, simply follow the steps below:
Step 1: Go to the admin page of WordPress and find Plugins on the left sidebar.
Step 2: Click on Add New and search WooCommerce.
Step 3: When you find the WooCommerce plugin install and activate it.
Connect Your Store to Printify
In order to run a POD store with WordPress, you’ll have to connect your store to a reliable print on demand service provider. Working with Printify ensures that you have a huge catalog with over 800 different kinds of high-quality products. You can get your designs on almost anything, be it print tote bags, baby blankets, custom mugs, phone cases, t-shirts, hoodies, and much more.
Integrating Printify on your WordPress store is super easy and convenient with WooCommerce. Simply follow the steps below to connect your store to Printify:
Step 1: Go to Printify.com and sign up to create an account and make a profile by filling information under “My account.”
Step 2: Now go to WooCommerce on the WordPress admin panel and navigate to settings. Open the Advanced tab, Legacy API, and Enable the legacy REST API.
Step 3: Look for Settings and Permalinks on the sidebar, as we need to modify the permalink structure. Choose anything other than the default Plain format and Save Changes.
Step 4: Go to Manage My Stores on your Printify account, select Add new store, and choose Connect. Add your WooCommerce store’s URL, making sure the format is as it appears in WordPress Settings.
Viola! Your WordPress WooCommerce and Printify are now connected!
Pick a Theme
Once you’ve finished taking the steps above, your shop will be ready, but you’ll have to customize your storefront. Your website’s individual pages will all follow a standard style that you get to choose based on the theme you select.
You can change the store’s layout and design beyond the default theme—but doing so often requires knowledge of programming and coding languages. It is also important to choose the right theme for your store because:
- Not all themes are optimized for eCommerce stores.
- The theme you select should not only be eye-pleasing but should also be feature-rich and quick to load.
WordPress users may choose from thousands of pre-made themes, and countless more can be found in the themes directory or created by third-party designers. Although the majority of these themes will enhance your WooCommerce store’s aesthetic attractiveness, you shouldn’t ignore the negative consequences that poor coding, slow page loads, and incompatibility with popular plugins may have on your site’s search engine results.
The Avalon Block WordPress Theme for WooCommerce, developed by Anariel Design, is an excellent tool for creating high-quality online clothes and fashion boutiques. You don’t need any coding skills to build a storefront with an amazing layout with this highly adaptable and user-friendly theme.
You can directly purchase the theme from Anariel design and request a theme demo setup. The team will set it up for you, making your WordPress site look like the theme’s demo. With this, you have a simple and quick foundation upon which to build your own unique design.
Set Up Everything for Launch
Once you’ve picked a theme, your store is ready. You can use Printify to create various items with customized designs and publish them on your website directly. You can do this in the following manner:
Step 1: Go to Printify
Step 2: Browse the catalog and choose what you want to customize
Step 3: Select Start Designing and put your designs on a white-label product on the mockup generator.
Step 4: Check the preview of the product before finalizing and saving it.
Step 5: Publish the products on your WooCommerce store.
Once it is published, you can edit the name and description and assign them to categories and tags. Make sure to follow and understand best practices for SEO and the affects of web design, then you’re ready for a launch!
What Else Do You Need to Know About WordPress
There’s no doubt that WordPress provides one of the best content management systems (CMS) for website builders, which is why it is so widely used. Yet, you shouldn’t expect to dominate Google’s search results just because you’re using WordPress. You still need to use standard SEO procedures and offer your customers something of genuine value.
Here’s a list of a few things you need to know about WordPress that will help you rank high on search engines:
- To allow you time to prepare your site for public viewing, temporarily, WordPress provides a function to conceal it from search engine crawlers. You should uncheck it when you’re ready for the launch.
- Search engine optimization should extend to URL structures as well. Use URLs that are helpful with search engines by being descriptive of the page’s content and simple to understand.
- WordPress offers a wide variety of SEO plugins that help make optimization easy for beginners. Make sure to choose the one that provides all kinds of SEO needs.
- Be sure to use XML sitemaps so that search engines may easily identify your pages and begin ranking them.
- By connecting your WordPress site to Google Search Console, you can see how your pages perform in search results and identify areas for improvement.
Conclusion
Starting a print on demand business is a great option for someone looking to earn money on the side. It’s the best low-cost, low-effort business idea and makes a great choice for budding entrepreneurs. There is also a lot of scope in the business as you scale with time when you have a strong marketing strategy and desire to grow. Who knows, it might change from a side gig to a full-time business. We hope this article will push you to launch your WordPress-based online business. By incorporating Printify’s premium services, Anariel’s premium Avalon theme, and WooCommerce’s rich features, selling custom products online is simplified.
