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How to Add & Sell Print-On-Demand in WooCommerce

Last updated: September 01, 2024

Written and researched by experts at AvadaLearn more about our methodology

CEO Avada Commerce

Nowadays, the designed products with eye-catching, outstanding patterns to express buyers’ personality has been more and more popular. As a result, the print-on-demand business is a booming model for several retailers, especially for young owners.

Suppose you want to use print-on-demand as a new online business idea and operate it to sell printed products, but you do not know where to start. Don’t worry, in this article, we suggest a detailed tutorial on How to add and sell print-on-demand in WooCommerce as a helpful consideration for your store. After reading our post, you can definitely plan out clearly and practically for a successful print-on-demand business, considering what you need to do, what you should prepare.

Without further ado, let’s start now!

Why choose print-on-demand in WooCommerce

Print-on-demand is the way you provide a variety of products with designs on them, but they are solely printed and delivered to customers whenever they order.

With the advantage of a print-on-demand store, it is now a potential choice for a small or medium-sized business owner. Besides, here are some other reasons to tell you why you should operate print-on-demand in WooCommerce:

Seamless integration
Grow with your business
Ease of use
Strong cybersecurity
No transaction fees
Interesting features (email marketing, SEO platform, built-in analytics, 100% customization)
Free, open-source platform

How to add and sell print-on-demand in WooCommerce

Step 1: Preparation

Decide what to sell and who to buy

Once you want to run your own business, you must set a solid market as well as the need and demand for your product idea. First, let’s start by defining your target audience. The easiest to determine is selecting the customers that match a goal or vision of your store.

Secondly, you should consider what your audience is interested in. What problems they are facing during purchasing online and whether your products can solve their problems on a basic need (physiology, safety, love, self-esteem, etc.) or not. It is important to decide the first stage of running a store successfully.

Step 1: Preparation

To make sure the launch day occurs smoothly and effectively, pre-selling your product with a discount is a good method to test. It somehow increases the user experience with positive responses from them.

As for which kind of products you may sell online, we have some options for you to look over:

Handcrafted products
Manufactured products
Digital products
Dropshipping products

Gather the artwork of your products

In the process of designing - no matter who does the artwork, the priority always lies in the customers’ requirements. Thus, you must follow their required order and monitor your partner’s design, meeting the quality and other attributes (size, color, patterns).

As mentioned before, of course, the high quality is why customers re-purchase and recommend other visitors coming to your store and buying your products. However, in every design, make sure that your artwork complies with all copyrights and trademarks.

Plan for opening a print-on-demand store

Now is the time for planning out the complete print-on-demand store.

Once you choose the WooCommerce platform to run your own online business, you have several opportunities to integrate your store with your desired partner - manage inventory, order history, assuring that the required orders are printed at the highest quality level and shipped automatically.

Indeed, WooCommerce provides all the needed features for a beautiful, customizable print-on-demand shop that works and cooperates with your fulfillment companionship.

Create a store bank account

Step 1: Preparation

The bank account is a must for anyone, apparently for retailers as well. Here is advice for creating a separate business account, but not personal accounts:

Professionalism. Your business partner and clients can check your company revenue, not your personal account
Protection. Separating accounts protects your personal information from business liability
Simplicity. Combined accounts get accounting as well as taxes much more complex to manage, especially when the business account is modified frequently according to the orders
Other benefits. A business account lets you set up a credit card, build a credit history for your company, and apply for loans and lines of credit conveniently

Decide payment method

Eventually, you have to decide your pricing strategy. You should ask yourself a list of questions such as How much do you want to charge for products? How do you structure payments?

We suggest you some options of payment methods that you can consider:

One-time payments: charge for your products in full at the time
Subscriptions: allow customers to use recurring revenue by charging on a monthly or yearly basis
Payment plans: allow customers to pay their orders over time

Step 2: Install WordPress or WooCommerce account

If you have not had a WordPress or WooCommerce account, the very first step is always creating a store account. In order to install it, head to the “Plugins” section of your WordPress dashboard, search for a WooCommerce keyword and click on “Install”. Done! You have added WooCommerce to your WordPress account seamlessly.

Then, you need to purchase the domain name as well as hosting to meet your demand.

Choose a theme and payment gateway

During the process of customizing your website, the default theme is used in your store, but you can purchase other outstanding themes if you do not want a simple scheme. There are thousands of options for you to choose, so it is up to your decision.

In terms of a payment gateway, it takes responsibility for credit card payments and transfers the money to your bank account. WooCommerce integrates with more than a dozen payment gateways, so the setup process is quick and seamless without any difficulty. When choosing one, ask these questions:

Step 2: Install WordPress or WooCommerce account

Are fees per payment or per month?
How easy do they make the checkout process?
Do they keep customers on your site or redirect to their platform?
Do they accept international currencies?
Do they allow for recurring payments?

Step 3: Integrate WooCommerce with print-on-demand plugin

In this tutorial, we will give you the integration with Printiful as a typical model. Of course, other plugins will require different demands from you to activate or install; however, the steps to configure WooCommerce are the same. They apply to all the plugins, including print-on-demand plugins as well.

Remember that you have updated the latest WooCommerce version in order to have the best experience.

Firstly, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Legacy API. Remember to save the changes.