When you sell print on demand products online, one of the most important parts of your listings besides your title and keyword tags is your mockup photos. There is the primary mockup image that shows in search results, which is the most critical, plus additional mockup images that help your potential customers visualize how your product will look once they receive it. These images need to look realistic and professional in order increase your chances of making a sale. But print on demand platforms are not famous for providing amazing default mockups, so what do you do? In this episode I’m going to talk about several free and paid options for stepping up your mockup game. 

First of all, who am I and why should you listen to me? If you haven’t watched any of the POD Insights YouTube videos I probably should introduce myself for new listeners. I haven’t been great about that on the podcast so let’s do that quickly. My name is Jeff, and I started selling print on demand on Etsy in 2020. Since then I’ve made over 5,300 sales and over $116k in total revenue. I’m not the biggest or most experienced seller out there, but I’ve learned a lot since my shop opened and I like to share the things that have helped me the most. 

Don’t Get Mocked

I think it would be best for us to start with what not to do when it comes to your product mockups before we dive into what your best options are. I’ve got five things for you to avoid doing and the good news is, most of them are pretty easy. 

1. Don’t underestimate the importance of mockups. If you’re thinking “of course I know mockups are important because that’s the only visual a customer has when they buy something online”, that’s good. That is the right mindset to have. Even though this might seem obvious, I see lots of Etsy sellers with print on demand product listings who don’t put any effort into their mockups and it’s negatively impacting their sales opportunities. 
2. Don’t use the default mockups provided by your print on demand platform as the only mockups in your listings. It’s fine to use the mockups provided by Printify, Printful, or other platforms to show different color or size options depending on the product. But make sure you have at least 3-4 high quality, realistic mockups as the first ones in the listing and especially the primary thumbnail. Consider this – all of the most popular print on demand platforms offer a free account. This means anyone interested in trying out print on demand has the opportunity to do so. On one hand, this is a big part of the reason why it’s a great opportunity. On the other hand, it means thousands of sellers are going to create accounts and use these platforms. So if we all just use the default mockups that they provide, all our mockup images will look the same. You want to differentiate yourself in the search results and whenever possible, have your products look more realistic than the default mockups. 
3. Don’t have only one or two images in your listing. Etsy allows you up to ten images per listing. If you sell on other marketplaces or your own site you may be able to include more or less. Your goal should always be to use all the available image slots available. For some products it may not be 100% necessary, for example if you’re selling a tote bag that only comes in one color and one size, then having ten mockups of it might seem like overkill. You still shouldn’t have only one or two though. You want to present your product to the customer in a few different contexts to help them visualize it. So using the tote bag example, ideally you would have a minimum of one flat mockup where the design is large and very clear, another showing the bag in a realistic environment like hanging on a hook or on a chair, one where a person is holding or using the bag, and perhaps one more in a different context than the others like outdoors. I’ll talk more later about how to fill a couple extra image spots when you don’t feel like you have enough. 
4. Don’t use mockup images that are not an accurate reflection of your product. This one applies once you start using external mockup sources such as Placeit or mockups that you buy and edit yourself. These sources can provide some very high quality professional looking mockups, but you should always try to to use ones that are a fair representation of your product. For example, if you are selling a t-shirt that is only available in unisex sizes, don’t use a mockup of a tight-fitting women’s cut t-shirt in your listing because that’s not how your product will fit in real life and it could create a false expectation for the customer. I’ve actually seen negative reviews left on other sellers’ listings saying things like “does’t look at all like the photos”. This is easily avoidable by using appropriate mockups. 
5. The last don’t is less about the actual mockup and more about how you display it. If the mockup you’re using as the primary thumbnail in your Etsy listing is not already zoomed-in to really show the design clearly, use the adjustment feature that Etsy provides to zoom in on the design. This won’t affect the actual mockup image, only the way it shows in search results. When your listing is displayed next to dozens of others in search results, you need customers to have a clear view of the design. The fact that it’s on a t-shirt is secondary, because they likely searched for “t-shirt” and what they’re really looking for is a design they like. Help them see that you have a great design by making it the biggest part of the image they see. 

Ok so that’s my list of what not to do. I’m sure I’ll reference some other things to avoid later but these are the big ones.

Why Not Defaults

Are the default mockup images provided by print on demand platforms really that bad? That does depend, to some degree, on which platform you’re using. But for the most part, yes they’re terrible. No offense to the platforms, not all of the mockups are that bad, but some of them really just look fake. There’s no other word to better describe it, if I was the customer looking at some of these photos when shopping the first thing that pops into my head is “that looks fake or cheap”. This is mostly because a lot of platforms provide mockups on a transparent or plain white background without any context or depth. This depends on the product a bit – Printify and Printful both have some usable mockups for mugs and some other products. But as far as the standard mockups they offer on traditional products like t-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, and other apparel, usually they are on a white background and they just give off that “I’m trying to sell you something online” vibe. At best, this doesn’t help you make sales. At worst, it actually discourages them. 

Customers want to visualize your product in real life, either wearing an apparel item or seeing the mug on their table or holding the phone case in their hand. If they can’t do that, they may or may not purchase your item. If you can help them do this, you increase the likelihood of a sale. Showing them your product in more realistic context with high quality images is the way you can do this. If you haven’t arrived at this conclusion or realization yet, this means you’re going to have to edit the mockups on every listing that you upload to Etsy, and this takes time and effort. I currently have over 350 listings in my Etsy shop, and I’ve edited the mockups for every one of them. I don’t publish a new item without changing to mockups to ones that I am happy with. I believe this is likely the reason that many sellers don’t have better mockups. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s a ton of work though, because in reality for me, changing the mockups for each listing that I upload might add 5 minutes to the process, maybe 10 if it’s a product that is harder to find a good mockup for. Of course that time adds up over hundreds of mockups, but I believe it’s worth the investment of time to have better mockups that are going to help you make sales. 

Can you use default mockups for anything? Of course. When it comes to apparel, you can certainly use the default color variation mockups to show the design on different colors. As I mentioned earlier, some default photos for other products may be usable because they are set in context, such as mugs or posters, etc. For t-shirts, I usually offer 4-5 different color options so that ends up being 4-5 of my mockup photos. That leaves another 3-4 for for better looking mockups with context. Did I forget to count one in there somewhere? Actually no, because you need to save one photo spot for something else! 

Size Charts

On Etsy at least, there is no great place to put apparel sizing information in the product description area. The description field is free-form text but you cannot add tables or anything beyond some simple bullet points, so it’s not a great place to try to put information about sizes or measurements. Because of this, the best place for you to put sizing information is in one of your images. You definitely should include a size chart, because your customers can’t try these items on of course, so they need to be able to figure out what size to buy. This is especially important if you don’t accept returns or exchanges – you want that size chart to be obvious and right in front of the customer so you can point them back to it if they buy the wrong size and are not happy that they can’t exchange it. I also put a statement in my description directing them to please review the size chart carefully since we don’t do exchanges. 

As long as your size chart is clear and easy to read, how fancy you get with it is up to you. You can even buy size charts as digital download files from other Etsy sellers for anywhere from $1 to $5 each and some of them look very nice. But if you want to simply take a screenshot of the size chart from your print on demand platform’s product description and upload that, that is also fine. If you want to make one that looks a little nicer but would rather not pay for one, you can make a nice one using Canva. I have a video on the YouTube channel about this so check that out if you’re interested. I’ll embed the video in the transcript of this episode on the website, podinsights.net as well. 

Better Mockups for Free

So let’s talk about how to improve your mockups without going for a paid option. Especially when your shop is new and you haven’t built up regular revenue levels yet, you don’t want to add expenses that aren’t totally necessary. When it comes to better mockups, I believe they’re totally necessary, but paying for them is not. I’ve had a paid Placeit account for over a year and I love it, but honestly I could probably be getting by with their free account. That’s right, Placeit has a free account that gives you access to free mockups! This is my #1 suggestion when it comes to improving your mockups. They have a great selection of completely free mockups for products like t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, and mugs. They have a smaller selection of mockups for additional items like tote bags and phone cases, but that is where it starts to get limited. If you are creating a lot of those additional products in your shop and you want a wider variety of mockups, the paid account is the only way to get that. But if your shop is going to be mostly the “core” items, at least at first, the free account is a perfect option. All you have to do after creating a free account is select one of the free mockup templates, upload your design file, adjust the size and placement, and then download it. It only takes a few minutes to have professional looking mockups. 

What do you do if you have a lot of those product types that aren’t available in a free account? You can still improve them yourself. The easiest thing you can do is take advantage of your editing software and add a background to default mockups. For example, if you are creating a lot of tote bags, you can download the default mockup images and open them in your editing software. Use the magic want or selection tool to select the white background and delete it. Then add a layer behind it, and import a background image. Free image sites like Pixabay or Pexels provide a huge library of commercial-use images that make great backgrounds like wood or simple textures. Add one of those as the background layer and then save the mockup as a new JPG file. If you have a flat mockup of a product like a phone case, try getting a background image of a desk or table and place it behind the phone case to create the appearance of it sitting on the desk. These types of quick edits will make your mockups stand out from other sellers who only use the default images. 

Products with Limited Mockups

What do you do if your product only comes with a couple default mockups and it’s also a product that is hard to find a free mockup template for? I mentioned this in my “don’t do” section earlier and said what you don’t want to do is just use those two images and nothing else. So how do you expand that to at least 4-5 images?

The secret is to bring some of your description up into the mockup images. Once you’ve added a background to the default mockups, use your editing software or Canva to add text into some additional images. You can even make your product image smaller to make space for text and just copy that file a couple times. Then add some text with details about the size, materials, or other information that you might normally put in the description. After making a couple of those, you should be up to 4-5 images. If you run out of ideas there, that’s fine. It’s still much better than only having two images in your listing. 

Paid Mockup Options

If you are comfortable paying for more professional mockups, you have a lot of options. I mentioned Placeit already and I definitely recommend you check out what the paid account provides. You get access to a massive catalog of mockups for many products, mockup videos, and lots of other resources. They offer both monthly and annual subscriptions and their base pricing for a monthly subscription is $14.95. But they regularly have offers with reduced pricing as low as $7.47 per month so you can definitely get a free account and then watch for deals. The same applies to the annual subscription. I currently pay $89 per year for the unlimited subscription is is $7.42 per month and that was a sale price that I locked into. The annual cost is worth it if you can take advantage of all the resources that come with it. I’ve used the logo creator, social media templates, even some of the YouTube content tools for the YouTube channel. If you won’t use a lot of the additional resources, it might be more worth it to check out some other options that would be lower cost but if you think you’ll use it enough to justify about $8 per month, I recommend signing up for a free Placeit account and then watching for a discount on the monthly or annual subscription to get the best deal. 

There are many other options though. One option is to get your mockup templates from other Etsy sellers. If you search for “Bella Canvas 3001 mockup” on Etsy you’ll get a ton of results of nice looking mockup templates at a range of price points. Some are bundled mockups offering every color option of the product for one price, and others are individual mockups ranging from $2 to 6 each. Many of them are JPG or PNG files. Some are nicer than others, and I have seen some that I wouldn’t personally use, but there definitely are some very nice looking choices. You could easily build yourself a catalog of some different color options in the core products that you sell for under $50 one time and then use them forever. The only catch with these is that you have to use your editing software to add your design, and unless you have intermediate to advanced photoshop skills, it will just be a flat layer of your design sitting on top of the mockup image layer. There absolutely are methods in photoshop to make your design appear more like it’s actually on the product, but unless you already have the knowledge of how to do that quickly, it can add more time to learn how to do that and become efficient with it. I personally tried doing it a couple times and went right back to Placeit. But that’s not to say these are a bad choice – some of the mockups available don’t require you to go that extra step to make them look good enough to use. 

There are also similar downloadable mockup files on sites like Creative Market and Creative Fabrica. You can purchase them individually or download them with a subscription to the site. These sites tend to offer more of the files that are editable PSDs with layers already there, so you might find more that you can add your design to and then have more of that look like it’s on the product without doing all of the work creating the layers yourself. I actually got a couple mockup PSD files from one of these sites for some garden flags that I sell. I had the hardest time finding a decent mockup for them and the default ones that Gooten provides are just not good. But then I found one on Creative Market for about $4 and it was a PSD file where all I had to do was insert my design into one of the layers and it placed it on a nice image of an AOP garden flag in an outdoor scene. This was worth it to me because I want to offer more garden flags in my shop and there was no other way I could find of getting a decent mockup. If you’re considering paying for a recurring subscription to one of these sites vs. buying individual files, just make sure you are going to take advantage of all the resources that a subscription provides, otherwise it might be a better option to pay for a couple individual items.

There are also other paid mockup services out there. Smartmockups is another site like Placeit that offers a free account as well as a paid “all access” plan. The paid plan is about $100 per year if paid annually and I don’t think they run sales as often as Placeit. I’ve used a couple mockups from their site but I prefer Placeit’s user interface for uploading and adjusting the design, and I think they have a better catalog of templates, at least for now. But you can always try it out for free to see if you like the options they have and go from there. 

Conclusion

Which option is best for you? If you haven’t started working on improving your mockups yet, I’d suggest trying the free options first to see what works for you and only go the route of paid options if you see that you need something the paid options offer, such as additional product types or more variety and styles. But no matter what, if you put some effort into improving your mockups, you will stand out on Etsy in a good way, with realistic looking product images that will help your chances of making a sale instead of hurting them. 

That’s all for this episode, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform to be notified of future episodes and check out podinsights.net for links to a lot of great print on demand resources, and check out the YouTube channel for great tutorials and tips. I appreciate all of you and hope the print on demand opportunity opens new doors for you in 2022. 

Thanks for reading.