What's up guys? In today's TDSM podcast interview, we can welcome back Stephen Chin. He is the CEO and founder of Hello Custom. He has been on my channel before. He is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to anything print on demand, personalized products.
products. And today we're going to be talking about all of the latest, the greatest updates in terms of what's happening in the print on demand space and really how to position yourself to catch the wave instead of chase the wave in terms of all of the new upcoming changes that are about to. hit the industry. So with that being said, let's get into this interview. You're definitely going to want to stay to the end because not only are we just talking about all of these new updates, these new changes, how to get in front of the wave, we're also giving you technical strategies and tips in order to be successful.
All right, so let's get into today's episode. All right, and welcome, Steven, back to the TDSM podcast today. Thank you for having me.
Super excited for our call today. Steven, you're one of my favorite people. You just give so much to the community.
You are doing so much to the community. And today, we're really going to dive in. We're going to talk about all of the new updates in the print-on-demand world.
As we know, I don't do print-on-demand, but I can talk about it, kind of. But Steven, if there's anyone that is the master of print-on-demand. print products, all the things this is the guy. So we're just gonna pick your brain on what is the latest, the greatest, the updates, all the things going on with print on demand.
And if you don't know, Steven, actually, let's get a little background on you. Who are you? What has brought you to the Etsy space? And what are you doing now?
Yeah, that's a great question. I'd love to introduce myself. So essentially, my origin was I started on Etsy back in 2020, from 2020 to 2023. We grew our print shops on prep products on Etsy, where we grew that to over $3 million revenue, 220,000 products sold.
A lot of trials and tribulations and strategies learned and developed in those three years that I love to now teach and give away for free, both on YouTube and on podcasts like this. And from that, one of the biggest pain points that we had that was our number one strategy to grow our business was personalization. So I think the number one reason why we were able to grow so quickly was offering personalized products on Etsy, which is a marketplace where personalization thrives.
The pain point was is hundreds of thousands of times we manually had to go into Canva and manually personalize the graphic before so to get over to production. And we kind of scratched our own itch where what we're doing now is we have a software called Hello Custom that essentially automates the entire process that would have personalized product just sold on Etsy. Hello Custom will automate the personalization and if integrated with Printify will automate the fulfillment too. So that's kind of what I'm doing today. And I'm super excited for this conversation is because Printify just launched their Amazon integration and Hello Custom we're one week behind we are also launching our Amazon integration to Hello Custom.
Awesome. So what do you think is this move here? We obviously know on Etsy, the higher end, the higher tier sellers are all doing personalization. You're saying that the trajectory of all this is now potentially opening up a second sales channel on the Amazon platform. Is that what you're saying?
It's potentially a good- play for a lot of these Etsy sellers? Yes, exactly. So essentially, I've been asking Printify for an Amazon integration for over three years.
So for them to finally have an Amazon integration, I couldn't be more than excited. And I do personally believe that Amazon is going to be the next big boom as a marketplace for print on demand. So print on demand isn't anything new, but I think the opportunity of where the sales are happening is always kind of jumping across different marketplaces.
We all saw the big boom on Etsy back in 2020. That is when I launched, I rode that boom to multiple seven. figures right now Etsy is getting a little crowded you know with the 10 million people launching their Etsy print on demand businesses or I think we're ready for the next market shift nothing against Etsy whatsoever I still truly believe that Etsy is like the go-to marketplace for print on demand for first-time entrepreneurs as it is just like so easy to get started but I do think Amazon is going to be like the best complimentary marketplace to potentially sell on both marketplaces where I think in terms of even opportunity like there are there's more opportunity right now on Amazon even compared over to Etsy What does it look like for someone to start a print on demand shop on Amazon? What does that look like for, what are those steps?
I mean, high level, I guess. Yeah, that's a great question. So essentially, you know, Amazon is a third party marketplace and Etsy is a third party marketplace.
So kind of the strategies that you do to get started and to sell and find success with Etsy print on demand, that's going to parallel over perfectly for Amazon print on demand, which if any of you like watching any of my tutorials on how to do Etsy print on demand, like how I do my market research, my product research, my... listing SEO, my launch strategy, those were all actually Amazon strategies first, but for when I was like working on Amazon that I brought those over to Etsy when we launched an Etsy back in 2020. And now those are my Etsy strategy. So it's really cool. And I'm going to bring those back over to Amazon because they work on Amazon as well.
So anyone who is currently an Etsy seller or an Etsy premium and seller adopting Amazon will be super easy where essentially the workflow will be the exact same where you created a seller account, just like how you have a seller account on, on Etsy in creating the seller account. I'll kind of touch on the, the. the cost and the fees really quick, because that's a common question, is in terms of Etsy, Etsy has a cost of like a one-time $15 fee plus 6.5% transaction. We are paying 6.5% to leverage their brand, leverage their audience. Again, we are paying that post-purchase.
It is like a win-win opportunity. We pay a little bit more on Amazon, but Amazon is a bigger marketplace. I think it's hundreds of times bigger than Etsy and you're leveraging their audience, their brand, their marketplace. So again, you're paying for what you receive. where when creating your seller account on Etsy, they have two different plans, where one is the individual plan and one is a professional plan.
The individual plan is free plus 99 cents per product sold, but that plan does not allow you to connect third-party apps. So you would not be able to connect your Printify account, not connect your HoloCustom account. You also are unable to set shipping rates or leverage their Amazon custom platform, which we can talk about later.
So essentially to do Amazon print on demand through Printify, you have to use a professional plan. which is it's $39.99 per month. So a subscription.
And it is, I think that the average referral fee will be about 15%. So more expensive than Etsy, but what you're paying for what you get. Again, I'm so okay with paying 15% post-purchase to leverage their millions of customers, leverage Amazon as the brand. We're getting that conversion rate on a marketplace is higher than probably a Shopify website because they trust Amazon.
They trust Etsy. versus trying to drive traffic from Facebook over to a Shopify to only have to pay 15% to acquire that customer. It's almost unheard of, right?
So just get that by default. I think there's no problem with paying that fee, at least in my eyes. So you're talking about the Printify fee is $39 a month. And then basically Printify is going to act as the same way that it acts with Etsy, which basically you can create the listing in Printify and Printify is going to...
push it to Amazon for you correct exactly so the $39.99 is is an Amazon fee so that's like the Amazon seller central account the workflow is gonna be the exact same in regards to you create the products on printify and then you can publish them over to Etsy or you can now publish it over to Amazon the one big difference between like that workflow is typically the workflow right now for Etsy is you create the product on printify you publish it over to Etsy where that is one product on printify If that product was, let's say, a t-shirt that had 10 colors and 6 sizes, that'd be one product with 60 variations to one product on Etsy. The way that Amazon works is a little bit different, where they create listings for every single variation. So you'd create one product with 60 variations on Printify, publish it over to Amazon, and you'll see 60 products appear in your inventory tab. So that's not a glitch. That's just how Amazon works, where essentially they call those child listings, where they're kind of in a container.
So they'll get grouped into one parent listing. So 60 line items, it'll collapse into one, you know, drop down container, which they call the parent listing, where essentially, again, the workflow for Etsy is you publish a product, you optimize the listing on Etsy, where you would want to do the inverse with the Amazon integration is you'd want to have the optimized title, optimized description, optimized bullet points on the Printify listing, because it's just one thing. then publish it that way you don't have to go into 60 different listings and then change the title the bullet points the descriptions that is already optimized when you push it over so that's just one thing to take note of and then the workflow will be a little bit different but again once you get the once you get the strategy it'll just become common practice okay so when you publish it from printify you're saying that it's going to create 60 different listings because of the color options or because of the like it's gonna be one color with all of its sizes but 60 different parents and then the child's are the sizes? Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, so essentially each variation, so each, the example was, you know, a t-shirt where there's different sizes and colors, each size color combination, each product will be its own listing. And the reason why Amazon does that is that way each variation can rank different for different search terms. That if someone is specifically searching for a large red mom shirt, instead of just like a, like your one thumbnail image, that's maybe just like, you know, light color standard size. it would actually be your large red product that we get ranked.
So it's more relevant for that search term. So it allows them to rank more, I think, dynamically and a little bit more accurately for them to then come into the product. And once they are on the product, they're still able to choose the other sizes and the other variation.
Okay, that makes sense. Okay, sorry. And then I had some experience with Amazon. This is just a question for me.
So I was trying to do private label, like SBA. Obviously, this is a little bit, I guess this is considered FBM because, right? you don't have to get a uh do you know what i'm saying the trademark yeah it's exactly upc code so once you essentially want to push those products over to amazon when you are creating the listing there's there's two things you have to do specifically for the amazon integration is uh amazon requires you to be brand approved for any brand that you sell underneath that way we're not just selling nike or we're not selling you know like knockoffs so essentially because we are doing print on demand we are technically selling non-branded products because we don't put our brand or seller's name on the product or the packaging, they're non branded. So you will just click a box that says this is a non branded product.
And then it will say the brand is generic. And then the next one is what does this product have a GTI in like a global trade item number, or a UPC code. And again, we don't put UPC codes on our products, because they're print on demand, you'll click the box that says this product does not have a GTI in and then you'll become GTI and exempt.
So you say no brand, no UPC code, and then you can continue on with creating the products. Okay, and then I know in the private label space or when I was in that venture, right, I ran into a lot of issues with like Amazon. you know, so miscategorizing it and suppressing my listings. I'm assuming with print on demand products, because it's probably going to be pretty common. I mean, I would think it, you probably do.
You feel like they run into less of those issues where it's getting like miscategorized and stuff. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. So essentially that there are hiccups with, with on the Amazon side, which is just Amazon being Amazon where, you know, when you, when you create a product on Etsy, you make a change, you hit publish it's live. within seconds you go to amazon you make a change there's a pop-up that says changes will be reflected within 30 minutes or sometimes it's like if approved will be live within 24 hours so it's just there's a lot more i think going on in the background on amazon so things like that can happen but again you can always kill it open up a case and get it fixed but again i think the big pro with cod on amazon at least compared to fba is so fba is fulfilled by amazon where the business model there is you buy a product from china like like this mug it's one product i'm putting my brand on i'm buying 10 000 units i'm putting that into an amazon warehouse that way when it sells amazon can deliver it prime in two days you're kind of putting all your eggs into one product and hoping that that one product does really well versus you know print on demand there's no inventory there's no overhead you can launch a thousand listings and essentially like you're just by the sheer volume of a wider net across amazon's bigger marketplace you can have more potentials for smaller wins that will add up to one big win Interesting.
And did Printify, when they launched this integration, is it like all these Etsy sellers are just going to have the option to one-click upload everything? Yeah. So essentially the way that that will work is you were able to go into your Etsy store and you can click copy to and copy it to your Amazon store. With that, though, I was having a conversation with Ryan Hogan the other day and he was saying that what he recommends, because he's been using Printful for a while.
And Printful has had an Amazon integration for up to two years now where you don't want to do more than. two products at a time. Because if you have two t-shirts, they each have 60 variations. That's 120 listings that it's creating at one time.
And it can really like throttle Amazon. And then you can get, I think, suppressed on just the bandwidth. So just by doing just like two at a time and then just refresh Amazon like every 30 minutes. And once they fully build it out and it collapses into one parent kind of like option, then you know to move on to the next one.
So it'll become a slower transition. But I do think in terms of people who are currently selling on Etsy, that that is the lowest hanging fruit to find success on Amazon is again, Etsy is a third party marketplace. Amazon is a third party marketplace products that sell well on Etsy should in theory sell well on Amazon as well.
So by taking your top sellers from Etsy and just copying those over to Amazon, those are your, I think your quick wins. Oh, that's really, really valuable. So major key there. All right. With Amazon, everything is always a delay.
So it's not like Etsy is like fast. You make a change, you see it. So What he's saying is start with, I wouldn't even, just to play it safe, start with your one bestseller and watch it collapse.
Watch Amazon do its thing. Give it its time. Give Amazon time to do its thing. Don't just like assume that it's always broken. Just like everything is like a little bit of a delay, I would say, with Amazon.
But yeah, that's really, really cool advice. Start with your bestsellers. In terms of personalization, how do you offer personalization on? on Amazon? Is it like when you're setting up the listing, it's like an option or something?
So that's a great question. So I'll kind of start with like how competition works between Etsy and Amazon and then kind of where then personalization kind of ties into that. So if you are currently selling on Etsy, you kind of fall within one or two buckets, you're either handmade or you're print on demand. But because printify has such good lead times and prices, whether you are print on demand or handmade, you're really competitive with the competition who is maybe doing it themselves. So it's almost like a level playing field on Etsy with the competition.
On Amazon, it's a little bit different where there's a bunch of different types of sellers on Amazon. So you have FBA. So those are people who have products that are in an Amazon warehouse that will get delivered prime in two days. You have a merch, which again, Amazon has their own print on demand company, which is not what we're referring to, where essentially Amazon merch is, you can sell print on demand products on Amazon that has again, prime two days delivered.
So FBA is prime two days delivered. Merch is prime two days delivered. if you guys are selling the exact same product with the same design same quality listing same quality design but then yours is fbm fulfilled by printify let's say two days production and standard four days shipping gets to you next week it's really hard to compete on amazon when someone is on amazon they expect two day prime delivery not gets to you next week so it's almost it's almost impossible it's really hard it's an uphill battle to compete on amazon if you don't give yourself a competitive edge and I truly believe that the competitive edge is to offer personalization.
That's something that FBA is unable to do and Merch is unable to do. Those two products do not qualify for Amazon has a program called Amazon Custom, where you can sell personalized products on Amazon. And if your product is personalized, and the customer wants a custom product they understand that it's not an amazon warehouse somewhere you're going to get arrive in two days that you are making that product custom for them and that is why they're willing to buy your product over the competition even side by side with a prime product that is by offering personalization the the way that that works is this is why i'm also super excited for amazon is it's way more robust than at sea in terms of personalization like at sea if you saw a personalized product they just give you a text box so independent of the product independent of the personalization, independent of how many personalizations you want to add, they just give the shopper a text box to just type in the instructions of what they want. In regards to how HoloCustom works, we use AI to read that and then try to personalize the graphic for you. But due to just the limitation of a text box, we have limitations on what we can personalize.
We're limited to just names, dates, addresses, and phone numbers with no image uploads, because there's no way for them to upload an image onto the listing. On Amazon, they have Amazon Custom. It's a whole program where you can add up to like 15 different personalization types to one product. You can say, hey, change the font, change the color to these. You can do image uploads.
So essentially the sky's the limit. And the way that we designed Hello Custom to integrate with Amazon is we would take those input fields, you would tie that to the template, and then we would then personalize the graphic for you. So there's no limitations with text, with color, with font, with personalization types, image uploads. We can do all of that.
with our Amazon integration. And this is also really big because the Amazon customer is so wildly, not only is there just more market share, because I mean, when you look at search volume on Etsy, you're like, oh my gosh, 20,000 a month search volume is a lot. For Amazon, 20,000 search volume is like the lower end of the bucket.
Like you're talking hundreds of thousands of searches per month for a given product is like good in that world. So one, way more market share, but this also leaves room for, because of this personalization component that not a lot of people are going to be offering, that is a huge price justification. So I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I might be talking out of my booty here because I don't do it, but I would imagine if you have a crazy bestselling listing on Etsy, you could probably even explore with even a greater price justification, especially if you're offering this personalization that I say that right yeah like a price justification because you offer personalization in a space where hardly anyone is offering it you know what I mean so does all the images for Amazon for this for this category because I know on Amazon it usually they will they favor the white background image but some categories do let you stage it not on a white background image does do you know does it need to be on a white background for yeah so that's actually a good question that is also one more difference between Etsy and Amazon on etsy your thumbnail image you can put like lay downs models you know backgrounds on on amazon they want the white background and if you don't have a white background on your main image they can suppress you from search so you want to make sure that when you copy those products from etsy over to amazon that your that your main image these have that white background but all of your other images can be the exact same so you can have backgrounds and colors and things like that for like your how to order images your sizing charts your social proofs if you have a leather guarantee all those can be the exact same the only difference will be the the main image in terms of the market size that you're talking about, 100% Amazon is hundreds of times bigger.
When I do my keyword research for Etsy, it's like, is it relevant? And has it at least 1,000? That's good. On Amazon, if it has at least 1,000, it's the very bottom of the bucket in terms of search volume because it should be tens of times bigger than that.
But I also think that there are gaps in the market, too. So I want to talk about that kind of opportunity to where, like what I mentioned, there's FBA, there is merch, and then there's us with print on demand. Dot.
Amazon merch only has 13 products print if I has over 900 products So granted not all 900 are gonna be successful in Amazon not nine all 900 be profitable in Amazon But there sure are products that print if I has that that Amazon merch does not have that will just be gaps in the market On Amazon so to give you just a quick example is if you go to Etsy and you search Christmas ornaments And then you go over to Amazon and you search Christmas ornaments Etsy actually had better products better designs better listings than amazon because there has been a viable fulfillment opportunity for etsy if you go over to amazon it's a lot of like the plastic 12-pack you know bulbs but there isn't like an actual good i think personalized ceramic ornament on amazon but we know going into q4 those products explode on on etsy there's huge demand people are selling tens of thousands of units as they launch those products onto amazon there's virtually no competition or direct print on demand competition and you can launch those products it's almost a gap in the market so products like ornaments Mugs, candles, products that do amazing during Q4 you can't get with merch. It just takes one of those competitors and it takes them off the board. So then it's just you versus FBA, where again, I think customization would be the one thing for you to overtake the FBA. That's amazing. And I mean, I never saw like crazy success with Amazon, but I mean, my boyfriend does Amazon and it's like, you know, if you get on page one, position one for mom mug, right?
Like you're not just selling like a couple hundred units a month, you're selling thousands. of units a month. And yeah, it's like maybe margins are a little bit less, but it's a numbers game.
And if you can crack the code then and added personalization, I don't know, that's just extremely wild. But this has been super, super valuable. And you said you're giving some timelines on all this. So when is this all coming to fruition?
Like finally, how far away? Yeah, so Printify just launched their integration. So that's the beautiful thing about this is like this is ground zero day one of this new opportunity to do.
print on demand on amazon and not have to be forced to try to apply for merch so this is like brand new in terms of holo customs integration we are one week out from the time of recording this so like the first or the second of september our integration will go live and in part of that integration going live we also do have a lifetime deal with hello custom that i'm sure hannah will have in the description below to where hello custom is normally 29.99 per month or like 360 dollars per year you can get lifetime access to other custom for one payment of 67 bucks. So you can purchase it now you can have lifetime access and use it for, you know, if or when you launch your Amazon integration, and or Etsy. So essentially, you take advantage of that.
And Amazon integration will work for the lifetime as well. Awesome. Thank you, Stephen. Yeah, we're gonna make sure that that link for that lifetime offer is going to be below this video in the description. And yeah, I mean, I think this is I mean, for anyone doing pod at the highest level, like or any level, honestly, or maybe you're getting into pod for the first time.
This is kind of a no brainer and a good opportunity, especially if you're getting in for the first time to maybe even consider, I don't know, maybe we just go Amazon first and, you know, watch all Steven's videos in terms of design and all his amazing tips and strategy and apply those same strategy to Amazon products. But this has been super helpful and you know, obviously you're the authority figure when it comes to this stuff. So I'm super happy that I was able to have you on today again.
I mean, I'm sure I'll have you on. many more times here coming up. But yeah, just thank you so much. And make sure you guys go check out Steven's channels. Hello custom.
Obviously, he has amazing content. His videos are like Netflix style tutorial based videos. And yeah, hello custom is just really changing the game for the pod sellers out there, saving them a lot of time, a lot of money.
And now, I mean, again, this is just like a no brainer. And so you definitely are going to want to capitalize on that lifetime offer because I don't think he's gonna have it. forever.
Yeah. Thank you so much, Steven. And hopefully we'll have you on here again soon.
Thank you so much for having me talk soon. All right. Bye-bye guys.