Print on demand

The claim

“Turn $0 into $1,000 in 30 days with my Print on Demand guide (Worth $500 but free today!)”

@JafarNajafov, 29 January 2024, 23,794 views¹

This page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted. Print on demand means you upload a design, and a print provider prints one item for each order.

The sums

Printify, a print provider, publishes an example of a t-shirt sold on Etsy. The buyer pays $21.70 with shipping, Etsy takes $2.51, Printify takes $13.82, and $5.37 is left before adverts and refunds⁸. One seller’s best month, in the peak season, left about $18 an order, a rough figure and the top of the range⁴³⁴⁴.

At $5.37 an order, $1,000 a month needs about 186 orders; at about $18, about 56 (our sums)⁸⁴³⁴⁴. So “$1,000 in 30 days” from nothing means about 186 orders in the first month⁸. Each order takes roughly 35 to 70 shop visits (our sum)¹⁶⁴³⁴⁴.

What happens to most people who try

We found no study or platform figure for what share of print-on-demand sellers earn anything. We think only a minority make real money. That is our inference from the averages below, not a measured share.

On Redbubble, a site that prints and sells your designs for you, 542,000 selling artists shared net earnings of A$30.2 million (Australian dollars) in the year to June 2025, about A$56 each (our division)¹⁸. Which figures are Redbubble’s is our reading of the report’s layout, and artists who sold nothing are not counted¹⁸.

Etsy does not separate print-on-demand shops. Across all its sellers, 2025 sales divided evenly come to about $156 a month each before any costs (our division)⁴. A shirt shop making $1,000 a month in profit needs roughly 25 times that in sales (our rough sum)⁴⁸.

Printify writes that its sellers “earn between $0 and $3,000 per month during their first 18 months”, with no sample given¹⁰.

Sellers’ posts on Reddit are self-reported and unchecked. A long-standing Redbubble seller with over 1,400 designs reported 146 items sold in 12 months and $221 received⁵². One using AI designs on Etsy reported $400 to $600 a month after all costs; that shop is paused⁵⁴.

The upside

Some shops do pay well. They are not the typical ones.

• Emily Odio-Sutton. Her Etsy shop, started in December 2022, “brought in $220,300 last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It”³⁹. That year is 2023, and the outlet checked revenue³⁹. Profit of 30% is her own estimate, about $66,000 (our sum)³⁹.
• Cassiy Johnson. Her shop, opened in May 2020, took “more than $766,400 in lifetime revenue, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It”⁴¹. She estimates about a third was profit⁴¹. She closed the shop in September 2023 and told CNBC she had already started a new one⁴².

Neither CNBC shop is named, so nobody else can check the figures⁴⁰. Both sellers also earn from coaching or a video channel about the method⁴⁰⁴².

Every success at these levels that we could date began between 2020 and 2022^39414346. We found none from a shop opened in 2024 or later.

A realistic good result is smaller (our estimate): nothing to about $100 a month in the first six months, and roughly $2,000 to $4,500 a month of profit after two to three years if a niche (a narrow group of buyers, such as one job or hobby) works^10444548.

What it takes to compete

The shops that succeed have:

• More left per order. Some charge more: gifts such as mugs and candles for specific jobs and hobbies, with orders averaging about $40 in price⁴⁰⁴⁴. Others keep $8 to $10 a t-shirt⁴¹⁴⁶.
• Hundreds of listings (product pages), most discarded. One CNBC-profiled seller retired 1,500 designs “because they never sold”³⁹.
• Buyers from Etsy’s own search. Where the sources say, sales came mainly from there⁴⁵⁴⁶⁴⁸.
• Time without income, though how long varies. About ten months before monthly profit reached about $5,000 for the first seller above, nearly two years in a Printify-published case⁴⁰⁴⁹.

The cash at risk is small: under $40 to start by one seller’s account, and about $300 a year in fees to keep 500 listings live (our sum)²³⁹. The main cost is time: five to ten hours a week or more for a year or longer⁵¹.

To tell early (our judgement): a first sale within about 60 days of listing regularly is the printer’s own yardstick⁹. Check that $8 to $10 or more is left per sale⁴⁶⁵⁸, and that some design sells more than once⁵³⁵⁴.

Who else makes money from it

Etsy is paid on every listing and every sale, whatever the seller’s margin²⁴. The printers earn the production price on every order¹¹¹².

Printify pays people who refer new sellers 5% of those sellers’ sales for 12 months⁶⁴. So a free guide can pay its author through the sign-up link alone. We did not open the links in the tweets and do not know whether any is a referral link. For the account quoted above we found a personal website and no print-on-demand guide⁷³.

We found no regulator or court action about print on demand itself.