In this episode, we’ve got the March print on demand update, including print provider news from Printful, Printify and Gelato. We’ve also got an Etsy update on listing workflows and maybe the biggest and best seller enhancement in recent memory. So stick around and let’s get into the March 2023 Print on Demand update.

I’ve got some maybe big news for Etsy this month. Well, okay, so one piece of definite news that really is happening, and one maybe big piece of news if it’s coming true and if it is exactly what it sounds like. First up, we have some updates coming to the Etsy listing workflow. In an article published on March 16, which I will, of course, link to in the blog post for this episode, Etsy describes an updated listing workflow that will feature different tabs so that you can edit your listings by section and navigate to different areas a little bit more quickly instead of scrolling. Etsy says this change to the listing workflow will be rolling out to all sellers over the next few weeks, and I actually just got this enabled in my shop so I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to test it out yet. But I did take a look at it, and I have to say there’s actually a couple of things I think might slow you down a little bit in the listing process. There are a few things that are nicer, a little bit smoother, but there are a couple sections to your listings that you now have to click on to get a pop up window to make edits. For example, there’s a new section – I think it’s called the Core Attributes, where you can indicate things like what type of product it is, whether you made it yourself or whether someone else made it, who the production partner is. That information is now something you have to click on and it pops a window up, and then you make all of the selections for that. So that, in my opinion, is actually a little bit slower than just having it all displayed on the page. So I’m a little bit disappointed to see that. A couple of things you’re going to have to pop open a window to edit for each of your listings now instead of it just being right there in front of you. But it looks to me like the intent was to reduce the amount of scrolling from top to bottom that you have to do. So in that regard, I think they succeeded. It’s just sometimes having to pop open a pop up window a bunch of times doesn’t necessarily mean it’s faster.

I’ll definitely be making at least a few updated videos showing that workflow because now as soon as everybody gets this workflow for listings, every video that I’ve made over the last couple of years on the YouTube channel showing the workflow for listings will now be outdated. So the jury is still out on whether it is an overall good or bad change, but from what I’ve seen so far, it seems pretty good. But in a couple of spots you’re going to have to slow down and open a pop up window to enter some information, whereas before it was kind of all just there and you could just kind of scroll through it. But of course I will share any major information that I have after getting a chance to use it in next month’s update.

There’s actually bigger news that was hinted at in the very same article at the bottom. If you scroll down, they also included a few bullet points on some additional enhancements they’re working on for Etsy sellers. Specifically, there’s a little section at the bottom that says “over the next few weeks we’ll be rolling out the following features” and the first bullet point says “domestic and global pricing for your listings”. Now, if that really means that we’ll soon be able to set different pricing by country or region, that will be a huge improvement for print on demand sellers, because print on demand makes it very easy for us to sell in multiple countries. But one of the biggest problems we’ve had with doing that is just that you can’t set different prices by country. So if there are significant cost differences for a print provider, let’s say in Canada compared to the United States right now, the only way for you to sort of make up that pricing difference that you’re going to pay for whichever one is more expensive is to build some of that cost into your shipping profile. Basically today, if I’m offering a t-shirt listing for sale and my shipping profile says that I ship to the United States or Canada, I’m going to use a print provider in Canada for any orders that come from Canada. But the fulfillment cost for the orders in Canada is going to be different. And in my case, using Printify, it’s more expensive. Almost every single product is more expensive to have it fulfilled in Canada, however, that’s going to provide the fastest deliver every time for the customer, so that’s what I use. That means that I have to add to my shipping price for Canada to sort of account for that price difference. And that kind of hurts my ability to make some sales in Canada, I think, because my shipping price for a customer in Canada, even though it’s going to be fulfilled in Canada, my shipping price probably looks a little ridiculous. So I probably have quite a few abandoned carts happening for shoppers in Canada on my t-shirt listings because it looks like, holy cow, that’s an expensive shipping charge. In reality, all I’m doing is trying to cover the fulfillment cost difference. And really, it’s not that shipping is more expensive, even though it might be a little bit more expensive. But if Etsy is about to enable a feature that would let us change our prices based on the country, that would just make it so much better. Let’s say I want my price in the US to be $22.99 with free shipping for t-shirts, I can do that, and then if I can set a different product price for Canada, I could charge $24.99 and do like $4 shipping or something like that. That will cover the cost difference, and I have it covered between my product price and my shipping price instead of having to put that whole cost difference into the shipping price. So that would just be much, much better.

Now, what this won’t do – I’m already too excited about this – but before I get super excited about it, what this change won’t do is it won’t change the country of origin on your shipping profiles. I don’t have an estimated timing or any more details because all I’ve ever seen is it mentioned in this one bullet point. But assuming it’s going to happen exactly the way I assume it’s going to happen, it won’t fix the issue of international shipping with only one option for the country of origin. That customer in Canada is going to see my t-shirt as a product that’s going to ship from the US, even though it’s going to ship from Canada because I am going to change the print provider. But my shipping profile for all of my t-shirts has the US as the country of origin because that’s where I make most of my sales. So being able to charge a different price in Canada is not going to fix that, and it may not give a giant boost to my sales in Canada. If you really want to do that, if you want a listing that looks like it’s coming from Canada to give yourself that opportunity to make more sales in other countries, then unfortunately you have to create a separate listing and have a separate shipping profile just for that country. And that way it’ll actually look like it’s a domestic order for all customers no matter what country they’re in. That’s pretty time consuming, but that is an option you have if you want to accurately reflect where your orders are going to ship from in each country you sell in. Well, I’ve gotten way off track on this topic here, but I just wanted to share that I’m super excited to see that that enhancement looks like it’s coming. I will absolutely post about it in the community tab on the YouTube channel as soon as I hear anything else, and I’ll be talking about it in upcoming episodes of the podcast as well, assuming it actually happens.

Moving on to print provider news for this month. I’ve got some updates, relatively small updates from four different print providers this month. Let’s start with Printify. There is another update in the Design Editor View that you may not have noticed because you have to do a couple of things in order to actually see it or use it. When you’re in these Design Editor View, you can now select multiple graphic elements or multiple layers in your design and you can save them as a template. So then you can quickly apply that same layout, those same layers to additional products or additional print areas just by selecting that template. Basically all you have to do is select each, select all the layers, whatever you want to be saved as a template. So basically just hold down the Shift key and keep selecting your graphics or the control, and then use the little three dot menu in the hovering menu option that shows up there. There’s a little three dot menu where you can save that arrangement, all those layers as a template. And there’s also a new template tab on the right side of the Design Editor screen where all of your normal options are for your layers and adding designs and things like that. Once you save something as a template, all you have to do is go to that templates tab and select the template you want to add and it will add all of the same graphic elements with the spacing and sizing intact, exactly the way you saved it. So if you want to make sure that the sizing and spacing stays intact, stays exactly the same, say, on the front and the back of a shirt. You can arrange it exactly the way you want on the front, save it as a template, then just go apply that template to the back. And you don’t have to do any of that manual sizing or placement. Same thing would be helpful. If you make a design on a t shirt and you want to also offer it on a sweatshirt, get it the way you want on the t shirt or whichever product you make first, save it as a template, and then you can add it to the second product. And all of that sizing spacing is there, and you don’t have to keep redoing it. So I think that’s a nice feature that they added. Printify has really been adding to their design editor view features lately the last six months or so. And this is another nice little time saver if you create a lot of designs that have multiple layers in Printify.

All right, moving on to Printful news for this month, I have a semi announcement, I guess you could call it. There’s a new print method being offered by Printful, however, it’s not really being offered yet. So I received an email from Printful recently announcing they now have the capability for DTF or direct to film printing. It’s not actually available on any products yet, so that’s why it’s not really an announcement. I guess they’re just letting us know, basically that now we can order samples of DTF, but only for inside label printing. So if you want to get a sample of DTF printing for an interior label, like the label inside the neck of a shirt, you can get a sample of that now. But right now, you cannot select DTF as the print method for any actual products yet. They do have a page on their website that provides some more information, so I’ll put a link to that in the blog post for this episode. You can also sign up for email updates if you want to be notified when DTF printing is available on some products for your store.

The main benefit of DTF is that it works better on garments that really don’t have any cotton in the blend. So, like your sportswear, your polyester moisture wick garments, DTG just does not work well for it. It comes out pretty awful if you try to print DTG on a 100% polyester shirt, whereas DTF is just a different process that adheres better. And because it’s a film, it’s sort of like preprinted on the film. So we’re not trying to get the ink to adhere to the garment. It’s really the film that we’re making adhere to the garment through a heat transfer, so it just works better for those type of garments. It also is more flexible in the placement because you can place the film, or you could adhere the film to almost any location on a garment. Whereas DTG printers are made for specific print areas like front, back sleeve, that kind of thing. And the page on Printful site does a good job of explaining the differences between direct to film and direct to garment. So if you’re interested even in just checking that out, hit up that link that I’ll put in the blog post.

Next up, we have an update from Gelato. I recently received an email from them as well. I’m getting a lot of emails from print providers lately, and this one was an announcement that Gelato now offers custom branded packaging, inserts and labels for a few products, and they’ll be expanding availability to additional products in the future. But before you get too excited, this feature is only available for Gelato Plus and Gelato Plus Gold subscribers. It is not available if you have the free account. Now, that’s a bit of a bummer and a little confusing to me, honestly, because they charge for these custom labels and inserts. So I’m not sure why you have to have a paid subscription just to have access to it, because they’re going to charge you for it anyway. At first, custom labels and inserts will be available on posters, framed posters, and ready to hang posters, only in the US, UK, Germany and Sweden. Basically it’s because that’s where their print providers are that have this capability, but they’re looking to expand both locations and products in the future. The labels are a fully customizable branded sticker that gets placed near the shipping label on the outside of packaging, and the insert is exactly what it sounds like. It’s basically just a flat card that gets placed inside the package. Now, the cool thing with the inserts is that of course they’re fully customizable, just like the label. So you can use it to include things like coupon codes for customers or statements requesting product reviews, or just to share a special message with your color scheme and your shop logo. So it’s a nice option to have, especially if you’re really building a brand around your shop. If you’re building an image for your brand, it’s nice to have the ability to customize these things. Now, the pricing if you have Gelato Plus is $0.70 per order for having either one, so each one separately costs you order. If you have Gelato Plus Gold, the price is discounted 30% to $0.49. Again, that’s for each thing independently, so you’ll pay for both separately if you want both. I’m hoping in the future that they consider opening up that option to the free account because just because you don’t have enough sales to justify getting a paid subscription doesn’t mean you don’t want this option. But for now, it’s only available to Gelato Plus and Gelato Plus Gold subscribers. And if you want to check it out, I will of course include a link to a page with more info in the blog post.

The last print provider update I have for this month is unfortunately a price increase, and it’s from Gooten. This time. I received a notification there’s going to be a price increase effective April 11, 2023. When I took a quick look at the list of products, it’s a pretty long list, so there’s a decent number of products impacted here. I’m not going to go through everything right now, but I will link to the available resources in the blog post. So be sure to check that out if you use Gooten for any of your fulfillment.

We have one question that we’re going to answer from the YouTube channel this month, and this question this month is about Etsy shop policies and then kind of enforcing those policies or not enforcing them, depending on the situation. Usually I get questions about returns or exchanges, but this question specifically is about order cancellation, which is actually a separate part of your overall shop policies – it’s a separate thing from returns and exchanges. So the question basically was just about how to list your cancellation policy in your shop, what’s recommended, and then how do you communicate or enforce the policy with customers? Now, the short version of my answer is my philosophy on the cancellation policy really is no different than my philosophy on the returns and exchanges policy. I believe it’s better to have a stricter policy and then try to accommodate customers whenever you can, rather than have a policy that allows certain things or accepts cancellations, and then find yourself in scenarios where potentially you can’t even honor your policy because that the latter situation could get you in trouble with Etsy support and you just don’t want to run into those issues.

For print on demand selling, I do recommend setting your official Etsy store policy to not accept cancellations. And that’s because with most print on demand platforms, there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to cancel an order after it has been submitted to production. Now, sometimes you might still be able to cancel an order, but that varies widely from one print on demand platform to another. And if you use Printify, it even varies from one print provider to another. There are some print providers where if the order actually hasn’t been printed yet, you can still cancel it even if it’s already in production. But then there are other print providers where once it’s submitted, it’s done. The only thing you can do do is maybe request an update to the shipping address, but you cannot cancel it. And if your shop is set up anything like mine, I actually have, let’s see, I use Printful for a few products, I use Printify for most of my products, I use Gooten for a couple of products, and occasionally I use gelato for a manual order. So because I use all those different print providers for different products, it’s better off just to have one consistent policy. I don’t take any cancellations after an order is placed because I really don’t know from one order to the next whether I’ll be able to cancel an order, especially if it’s already in production. So I recommend having a policy of no cancellations, because there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to cancel an order and get your money back. However, that does not mean that you shouldn’t try to accommodate customer requests. So in some cases, as I mentioned, you will be able to cancel an order even after it was submitted to production, depending on what platform you’re using or what print provider you’re using.

It’s always worth checking to see if you can cancel the order before you respond to a customer, so that’s exactly what I do when I get a request. If I get an order and it’s the next day or something, I’ve already submitted the order to production, I get a message from them saying, hey, I just sorry, I changed my mind. I want to cancel this order. The first thing I do is go to my print provider, my platform, and see if it’s possible to cancel. I don’t say anything to the customer until I check first, because if the answer is I can cancel the order and get my money back, then I can just respond and say, okay, thanks, no problem. And then I cancel the order and I give them their refund. In my opinion, it’s not worth saying anything to the customer until you know whether you can cancel the order or not. However, in that scenario, if I can’t cancel the order, then my official shop policy of not taking cancellations is going to align with the answer that I have to give. I have no choice but to say, hey, sorry, I can’t cancel your order because my policy is no cancellations, and your order has already started being produced, so sorry, but I can’t cancel it. And if that’s the answer I have to give, then my official shop policy better be in alignment with what I’m saying. If my official shop policy is I take order cancellations, then the customer is likely to figure that out. And if they open a case with Etsy Support, Etsy Support is going to side with the customer because my official policy is that I accept cancellations. But if my official policy is that I don’t accept cancellations, then even if the customer gets upset and goes to Etsy Support, then Etsy is less likely to sort of force me to cancel the order for the customer, because my policy clearly states that I don’t do that.

However, you can be a little bit more specific about your cancellation policy if you want to. For example, if you use Printify, you can set your order fulfillment to automatically submit your orders 24 hours after they come in. So if you do that, then you could set your cancellation policy to you accept order cancellations for 24 hours after the order is placed, but not after that. 1.1s And that might look like a more flexible policy to the customer. And if that’s what you want to do, you certainly can. There are just a couple of things to keep in mind with that. So that, of course, that’s going to delay sending your orders to production for 24 hours. It gives the customer some flexibility to cancel. But the only catch there really is that you need to be pretty quick to respond to two requests to cancel if there’s only a little bit of time left in that window. For example, if you get that message from the customer asking for cancellation at 23 hours, that’s still within the time frame that your official policy says you accept cancels. But if you don’t see that message come through within an hour, that order is going to production and it could be too late for you to cancel the order and you’ll still have to cancel it and give the customer their refund because it was within your policy. But again, if you’re comfortable with that setup of allowing 24 hours because you can as far as holding orders and still having them go automatically to production, you certainly can make that your policy. You can also make that your policy if you have your order fulfillment set to manual and you manually go in and review all of your orders before submitting them. You can set a more specific time frame for accepting cancellations using that order submission method as well. But my opinion is still it’s best to just not accept cancellations as your official policy and then just try to do what you can when you do occasionally get a request to cancel an order, only sort of throw the book at the customer if you really have to. Because in that scenario, if you ever do run into an upset customer because you can’t cancel an order for them, at the very least, your shop policy will back you up.

We have just a couple niche and design ideas to talk about for late March and April. And as I said in the February update, before you know it, it’s going to be Mother’s Day in the US. The shopping season for Mother’s Day in the US. Begins in April for mom themed designs and has a little bit of a longer shopping season than you might expect. So now, late March and early April is the time to make sure if you’re going to add any new mom themed designs, get those listings published, or maybe take a look at your expired listings and see if there’s any mom themed designs that you want to renew back into your shop before Mother’s Day this year. And if you have any mom designs that feature the year in them and you haven’t updated them to 2023 yet, now is also the time to go and update those designs and then publish them on new listings. Don’t forget to cross niche your mom designs. I think I mentioned this last month, but if I didn’t, in case I didn’t always look for ideas that combine things are niches that have to do with mom, dad, brother, sister, cousin, uncle. There’s a lot of cross niching opportunities. I’ll stick with the mom theme here. So think about things like professions or professions that their children might have. Mom of a software engineer, mom of a musician, those types of really specific niches that are combining two different niches as well. As I mentioned, professions and mom theme design. So mom and teacher, mom and nurse, mom and doctor, mom and dentist. Any combination of mom with a profession is a cross niching opportunity, and some of them are relatively low competition that could be good opportunities.

Other sources of design inspiration for selling in April would be Easter, which I think is on the earlier side in April this year. So maybe getting a little bit late for those. But we also have some other holidays in the US. We have National Sibling Day. We have Earth Day later in the month. World Book Day. I think National Pet Day is in there somewhere. All of those things have print on demand design potential. And one of the great things about some of those is that you might get a little bit of a peak around National Pet Day or World Book Day or Sibling Day. You might get a little peak of sales around those holidays. But those are also types of designs that have the potential to sell at any time of year. Of course, not if you put the actual name of the holiday in the design. I just mean if you have your pet themed designs could sell at any time of year and then maybe get a little bump around National Pet Day, especially if you do a little bit of social media promotion of those designs around the timing of the holiday. And again, there are still some lower competition niches out there, some phrases that have lower competition around all of those. So get as specific as you can and just stay away from your general search terms as your main phrases in your titles and tags and you can probably find some opportunity.

And don’t forget that Father’s Day comes pretty soon after Mother’s Day in the US and there’s probably a decent number of designs that you can tweak that you’re creating for Mother’s Day that you could just turn into a Father’s Day design. Of course, that may not work for all design themes, but just keep that in mind because chances are you could turn some of those into Father’s Day listings as well. For example, the cross niche opportunity with Pet Moms. So like Cat Mom, Dog Mom, there is an opportunity there to just change the phrasing and the design to Cat Dad, Dog dad. And now you’ve got a Father’s Day design.

All right, that’ll wrap us up for the March 2023 Print on Demand update. I hope you found some helpful information in this monthly update. Don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, and always head over to Podinsights.net to check out links to all the resources I mentioned in this episode. There is a link, of course, to the blog post for this episode in this episode description. And of course, visit me on YouTube on the Pod Insights Channel for video guides, selling tips and product reviews, and all the videos that I now have to remake because of that new listing process. Also, a quick reminder if you want to submit a question to be included in an upcoming episode, use the Contact Me form on the bottom of the homepage at podinsights.net or post a question to any video on the YouTube channel. Thank you so much to all listeners and subscribers. I really appreciate your support.

Thanks for listening.