Is Print-on-Demand Profitable? Key Insights for Entrepreneurs

Looking to start your own business and want to know if print-on-demand is profitable? You’ve come to the right place. This guide will equip you with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to launch your print-on-demand business today.

In this article, we’ll answer some key questions about the print-on-demand model, cover crucial steps for your business to make money, and look at 4 real-life examples of profitable print-on-demand businesses.

Let’s get started!

Is print-on-demand profitable? 

Yes, print-on-demand is profitable and will continue to be in 2025—especially for those with strong niches, standout designs, and effective marketing strategies.

The print-on-demand market is projected to reach $39.4 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 28.8% over the coming years. Profit margins typically range from 20% to 40%, depending on the niche and product type, with highly targeted niches often seeing even greater margins. 

Though competitive, the industry offers solid potential for those just starting out. The average POD business success rate is 24%—meaning almost 1 in 4 stores is thriving. A focus on unique designs, quality fulfillment, and customer satisfaction can make all the difference in building a profitable store.

Is the print-on-demand market saturated? 

No, the print-on-demand market is not fully saturated yet, even with rising competition. The demand for personalized and unique products continues to grow, driven by advancements in ecommerce tech and consumer preferences. In fact, the personalized gifts market is projected to expand from almost $52 billion in 2024 to over $138 billion by 2030.

POD market growth is further fueled by tendencies like increased online shopping and the popularity of mobile commerce. Just how many people are buying online? The global ecommerce market size was estimated at almost $26 trillion in 2023 and is expected to balloon by 18.9% through 2030. Those are some impressive numbers—and they leave a lot of room for new businesses to enter the POD sector.

But remember: as more sellers enter the space, standing out requires a strategic focus on niche markets, high-quality designs, and a distinctive brand identity. Competition may intensify, especially for common products, making it crucial to develop unique offerings that resonate with targeted audiences. Adding new designs and products is a great way to combat this. As it happens, the most successful POD stores add an average of 7 new products to their store monthly.

With the right strategies and a strong focus on differentiation, there’s plenty of opportunity for new businesses to thrive in the growing print-on-demand market.

Is print-on-demand good for passive income?

Print-on-demand can be a lucrative source of passive income, but it’s not entirely hands-off. This model allows you to sell custom products without managing inventory or dealing with fulfillment, as your POD provider handles the production and shipping. This significantly reduces operational complexities compared to traditional ecommerce models (i.e., buying products in bulk and shipping them out yourself).

That said, building a successful POD business will require time and effort in the beginning. You’ll need to create compelling designs, choose a reliable POD partner, set up an online store, and implement marketing strategies to attract customers. But once these systems are in place, you’re primed for success.

Steady revenue largely comes from automating sales and marketing as much as possible. How? By using tools like social media advertising, email campaigns, and SEO to consistently bring in customers. For example, email marketing alone can deliver an average return on investment (ROI) of 36:1, making it a powerful tool to generate sales once your store is set up. More on these tactics later.

Ultimately, POD can be a great source of passive income, but it requires strategic effort to reach that point.

Valuable read: 11 Proven Ways to Get Sales with Print-on-Demand

How to make your print-on-demand business profitable in 2025

Making your print-on-demand business ideas profitable will require a blend of creativity, market insight, and strategic finesse. Let’s cover some key steps to make your print-on-demand business profitable.

1. Choose a reputable print-on-demand supplier 

Since your chosen print-on-demand partner owns the fulfillment process and controls the product and print quality, they directly impact your reputation.

When researching print-on-demand suppliers, consider their reshipment rates, reviews, and product variety. These are critical indicators of their reliability and service quality. 

Printful’s reshipment rate is only 0.24%, thanks to a vigorous 3-step quality check.

Another important factor is whether the print provider owns the production process. Some companies, like Printful, are fully responsible for product selection, inventory management, and fulfillment services. Others only act as middlemen and can’t guarantee consistent product quality, making brand building harder.

Last but not least, make sure to partner with a POD provider that offers excellent customer service—it can significantly impact your business reputation, customer satisfaction, and profitability. A responsive, helpful support team ensures smooth problem resolution and builds trust with your customers.

2. Pick the right pricing strategy

Choosing the right pricing strategy for your print-on-demand dropshipping store involves setting prices that cover your costs and generate a healthy profit margin. To ensure profitability, calculate your total costs (including production, shipping costs, and any platform fees) and add a markup to determine your selling price. A well-thought-out pricing strategy balances affordability for your customers with sufficient margins for your business, ensuring sustainability and growth.

Here’s a simple formula for pricing your on-demand products.

Source: Printful

To get lower product prices, you can get a Printful Membership. Try it for FREE for 14 days, and if you like it, buy it for $24.99/month. If your sales exceed $12K over 12 months, you get it for free.

Source: Printful

Visit our pricing guide to learn more about Printful’s product pricing, what’s included in it, and your potential profit.

3. Focus on a target audience

Focusing on a single target audience allows you to tailor your designs and marketing efforts to the specific needs, preferences, and behaviors of a particular group, increasing the likelihood that your products resonate with your target market. To focus on a niche market, conduct research to identify demographics, interests, and trends within your niche. Use this information to create designs that appeal to them and choose marketing channels where your audience is most active. This targeted approach can significantly improve your store’s relevance, attractiveness, and, ultimately, profitability.

Valuable read: 32 Useful Market Research Tools for Startups and Established Businesses

To deepen your connection with your customer base, actively engage with your audience through social media, surveys, and direct feedback. This interaction allows you to understand their changing preferences and needs. Building a community around your brand refines your offering, cultivates loyalty, and encourages repeat purchases. 

By continuously adapting your product lines and marketing efforts based on real-time insights and trends, your online business remains relevant, attractive, and primed for growth.

4. Create unique designs

Unusual, creative designs grab people’s attention, make your print-on-demand store stand out, and boost the perceived value of your products, allowing for premium pricing. 

POD business owners can find inspiration for unique designs anywhere:

• Trending topics and social media: Stay updated on current trends, memes, and popular culture by following relevant hashtags and influencers on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

• Customer feedback and requests: Engage with your audience through surveys, social media interactions, and customer feedback to understand their preferences and unmet needs.

• Niche markets and forums: Dive into forums related to your market on platforms like Reddit or niche-specific online communities to discover what enthusiasts are talking about.

• Art and design websites: Visit websites like Behance, Dribbble, and Pinterest to spark new ideas.

• Historical and cultural themes: Explore different cultures, historical periods, and art movements for themes and motifs that can be reimagined in a contemporary context.

• Books, magazines, and publications: Look at literature, fashion magazines, and design publications for inspiration and insights into various styles and trends.

• Collaborations: Partner with artists, designers, or other brands to blend different styles and perspectives into your product range.

You can also draw inspiration for your custom designs from Printful’s blog.

Source: Printful

The on-demand model is getting more and more popular by the day. And with the growing popularity, the need for stand-out designs increases, too. So, take the time to develop original ideas—it’ll help you stand out in a ​​saturated market.

5. Choose products with a high profit margin

High-margin products help offset marketing and operational costs while maximizing revenue. To justify a higher price point for your collection, you must consider how you position and describe your products. Plus, images are super important.

How much buyers are willing to pay for your products depends on their perceived value (e.g., their uniqueness), quality, trendiness, and scarcity.

Valuable read: 11 High Profit Margin Dropshipping Products + Examples

To get higher profit margins, you can choose premium products from Printful’s product catalog.

Source: Printful’s catalog

And you can turn regular products like custom t-shirts or custom hoodies into premium pieces by: 

•  Using premium-feel fulfillment techniques (e.g., unlimited color embroidery)

• Crafting a one-of-a-kind design your customers can’t get elsewhere

• Choosing eco-friendly or recycled materials

For design inspiration:

• 37 Hoodie Design Ideas to Get You Inspired

• 56 T-Shirt Design Ideas That Are Seriously Next-Level

Selling high profit margin products is one of the simplest ways to keep your on-demand store profitable.

6. Experiment with different marketing tactics

There is no one-size-fits-all marketing strategy because the success of each tactic will fully depend on your audience and products. The best approach is experimenting with different marketing tactics to discover what works for your own store. Mix and match the following tactics to build your marketing strategy.

Valuable read: How to Develop an Effective Marketing Strategy

Social media advertising is a valuable tool to incorporate into your strategy because social commerce revenue is expected to double in the next 5 years. Use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for highly targeted campaigns to showcase your print-on-demand products directly to potential customers.

Email marketing remains a solid tool for engaging existing customers with personalized offers and updates, encouraging repeat business. And as we discussed earlier, it has the highest return on investment (ROI) of all the tactics—the average ROI for $1 spent on email marketing is $36. 

SEO optimization for your online store ensures visibility in search engine results, driving organic traffic. Plus, it’s free, which means you can increase your store’s visibility and attract more customers without adding to your marketing expenses. SEO helps build a long-term foundation for your online presence, making it an essential and cost-effective strategy to generate sales.

4 profitable print-on-demand store examples

Now that we know POD is profitable, let’s look at some real-life examples of successful on-demand businesses.

1. FIERCE 

Fierce Pulse is a highly profitable business that uses the print-on-demand model to sell bright, eye-catching leggings, tops, swimwear, and more. 

Source: Fierce Pulse

Their focus is on quality, community, and innovative designs. 

We’re going for quality and doing what our competitors haven’t done before. We’re just going the extra mile.

Nenad, CEO and co-founder of FIERCEPULSE

Because they’re a community-focused print-on-demand business, they emphasize customer reviews on their website and social media. 

Source: Fierce Pulse

This strategy builds trust with potential customers and showcases real-life satisfaction and engagement with their products. Highlighting positive feedback and stories from the community helps reinforce the brand’s commitment to quality and customer service, making it more likely that visitors will convert into loyal customers. By placing customer experiences at the forefront, they build reputation and appeal in a genuine and impactful way.

Read more: Building and growing a FIERCE brand with Printful

2. Dogecore

Dogecore is a print-on-demand business that specializes in selling meme merchandise.

Source: Dogecore

Dogecore was built on a nearly decade-old meme page on Facebook. And social media is one of their main traffic and revenue drivers to this day. 

The owners of Dogecore found the print-on-demand business model attractive because it required close to zero starting capital and was a very low-risk business model.

Print-on-demand (POD) is great for low-capital, high-risk sales. I could run a very successful t-shirt company, but I’d always entertain the idea of using POD services to try out new designs. It reduces the scary thought of having 400 t-shirts piling up in your garage that you can’t sell.

Dominic, Dogecore co-founder

Another highly successful marketing tactic for the brand is email. Dogecore has an astounding 42% email open rate. Their success highlights how humor, connecting with your audience, and being authentic can lead to remarkable results and customer loyalty.

Read more: Dogecore: Success through Humor and Authenticity

3. Match Kicks

Match Kicks is an online store where customers can find apparel and accessories that perfectly match their sneakers. 

Source: Match Kicks

Match Kicks didn’t start as a print-on-demand business. When they first launched, the owners thought it would be cheaper and better to print everything in-house. But keeping up with inventory, managing employees, and dealing with operational hiccups like broken printers was challenging. After deciding to switch to print-on-demand fulfillment services, Jose and Kody, Match Kicks’ founders, went through 3 or 4 printing services before eventually landing on Printful.

There are some things we might be able to do in-house, but in the end, we’re never going to match the type of service that [Printful] can bring to the table.

Jose and Kody, founders of Match Kicks

Read more: Why This 7-Figure Ecommerce Shark Partnered with Printful

4. Itsjusta6

Itsjusta6 is an automotive-focused brand that creates videos all about racing, building, and breaking cars. They have a massive audience of 1.2M YouTube subscribers, 250K Facebook followers, and 350M Instagram followers.

Source: Itsjusta6

For the itsjusta6 creators, building a clothing brand was as integral to their business as growing their channel on YouTube. While having boxes of t-shirts in their college bedroom was fine initially, it was hard to keep up with the demand once the brand really started growing. That’s when the itsjusta6 brand became a print-on-demand business. 

I wanted something that easily integrated with Shopify. And after going through 6 or 7 different options, Printful was the Goldilocks fit—it met all of my requirements. The user interface was friendly, which is a big deal. It may not seem like a big deal, but having a good, easy-to-navigate user interface is incredibly important for internal operations. So honestly, just from my own research, and after getting hands-on with the software and trying it out, Printful stood out as by far just the best option.

Nic, one of the itsjusta6 co-founders

By partnering with Printful, the business has the ability to experiment fearlessly without risking losing money. Plus, it allows for total flexibility; itsjusta6 can launch products in minutes and adapt to fluctuating customer demand.

Read more: How itsjusta6 Scaled While Staying Flexible with Printful

Your path to profitability

POD is a highly profitable option for those interested in creating a business with low risk and minimal investment. Thanks to a growing market, rising demand for custom products, and providers like Printful that handle fulfillment for you, POD makes it easy to enter the world of ecommerce.

But with the market becoming increasingly print-on-demand saturated, success hinges on more than just a great product. It takes know-how, creativity, and drive to stand out in a competitive market. The key to thriving is understanding your niche, crafting eye-catching designs, and executing an effective marketing strategy.

So, what’s holding you back? The tools, knowledge, and resources are at your fingertips—it’s all about how determined you are to turn your vision into a thriving print-on-demand business.

Read next: Is Etsy Print-on-Demand Profitable in 2024?