How to sell your pattern designs online through Spoonflower

hello and welcome to my channel. in this tutorial, you will learn about selling your patent designs online using spoonflower, which is the leading print on demand website based in us [Music]. so go to the spoonflower website and after that, log into your account. once you have logged in, just go to design and sell and upload your design. so now the upload window has opened and at one go you can select eight design files. the minimum dpi criteria is 150. i would say that you go for 300 dpi, as it will generate a good quality image. second is you have to confirm the copyright for your design. by copyright, it means that you have made the design yourself and it's not copied from somewhere else. now choose your file. it should be in a jpeg or png format, and one thing which you have to keep in mind here is your file should be in a rgb format, because spoon flower only supports rgb. it does not print files in cmyk color mode in a very good quality. so once we have confirmed the copyright, just click on upload your files. now we can see our file has uploaded. so now we have the option of uploading our design in four types like basic repeat, half drop, mirror, repeat. so i'm going with the basic repeat here, and we also have an option of changing our scale at this point of time, if we have uploaded a file in higher size- like you know, 300 api- then we have the option of either making it smaller or bigger. so it's very important that you select your size in at least 300 dpi. so now what next we will be doing is we will be seeing this design on different mockups, so click on view all products. so now we get a window where all the mob cups are here, wheat, wallpaper, the bedding, the kitchen linen- everything is here and we can see how it is looking on different types of products, either in a small scale or bigger scale. and if we don't like the design, we can anytime go back and change our scale to either smaller or bigger by re-uploading it, the design, or either making the changes in spoon flower itself. we can also open a partikular product to see it in more detail. like this, through blanket will be opening, so it will give you a closer look of the product and you can, you know, analyze your design in a more efficient way that what changes are there, whether the design is working well on this product or not. okay, so i think it's looking quite good. i'll just go back and you know, uh, yeah, so one thing is there which i would like to mention now. suppose you are not liking the scale, okay, and you want to change it. so just go here and click on smaller, so it will reduce the scale of your design. similarly, you can also increase the scale of your design by clicking on bigger. just make sure that you have a bigger dpi file, like 300 or more, because if you already have a small dpi file and you want to make it bigger, so it is, you know, eventually going to pixelate and the quality is going to be degraded. so make sure that you stik with at least 300 minimum dpi. so once you are happy with your scale, just lock it and then we have to move ahead for the other details. next is marketing and selling. so here we have to, you know, uh feed the data regarding uh name of the collection, uh, which collection the design falls into, what will be its name, what are the, what are the description which needs to be written here, and tags. so just quickly, we will go through it and fill in the details. now let's tok about tax. what tax we can include for this design like this is a floral print, it's a minimalistik design, simple design and the colors which are used as crown page etc. so you can just go ahead and include these tags. you have the options of other things also here, and next is a thumbnail. there are three options: fat quarter, swatch and crop. so i go for swatch option because fabric samples come in swatch size, that is, eight by different inches and, quite used to it, you can select others also as you wish. so select swatch and click on the two check boxes that are displayed here. so this is just a disclaimer that you are making your design public. and the second option is whether you want to sell it or not. so it's currently disabled because, uh, for selling on spoon flower we need to proof our design first. by proofing the design, it means that we have to purchase a sample fabric sample first and check whether the color, quality, scale and everything else is looking good for the design. so once we have proved the design, then only we can sell our designs on spoonflower. so that is why this little checkbox is disabled here. so this is pretty much. we have uploaded our design and we can just post it and it will be displayed in our design gallery to view in the public uh domain also. uh, you can anytime just go back to your design, like this, and you can, you know, update your design or edit some little details. if you want to uh, update it later, like you want to pop in some additional details or change some tags or anything like that, you can do it and then again you can post it. so this is the process of uploading your design file on spoon flower and making it available for sale. [Music] you.

Designers: Are You Using These 5 Branding Tips for Your Business? | Spoonflower

like spoon flour, was another big win for me, because I was actually able to get my own name, because the name Nadya Hassan is unusual here but it's so common in like Eastern Europe and the Middle East. each one of us seemed like we won like one social media war, so I got my domain, Nabi MSM. calm, and it's not even the same person that, like Gotham Allah P, each one's like a different Nadia Hassan and it is so funny. I am Nadia Hassan and I may say this, pattern designer with a background in graphic design. I have been designing functions. I graduated for college in 2008 and started out with a career in love designing, but really love pattern that just could not stop making them to the point where that be like that's what I became my main source of income. that turned into my career, and now graphic design and it's more traditional sentences kind of the background patterns are forefront. I think the easiest way to stand out it's just simply do what is you, and it's cliche and it's easier said than done, but it is really so important to do what feels right for you. the balance is always gonna be between looking at what you think is done well by someone else and then going back and saying like, well, what's my version of that? I have to work. can you portfolio? that is the kind of work you want to do and I know like when you're just starting out it can be a little tricky cuz really don't have a lot of work. you know, and I think there's a sentence- you don't want to show everything you've ever done because you want to prove that you have done some work, you have some experience. but I good portfolio really needs to have only work that you love in it, and that might mean having a personal project. do it on your own. you know, put in the time, put in the effort and put that in your writing is very important, but it's also kind of like the tip of the iceberg for your branding. to me, anything you need to have like the base of the icebergs got to be in place. for me, the the biggest things that I'm glad that I did were just to always be making something prioritizing. if something is important to you, like that will reflect in the choice that you make. so it doesn't matter what you should think to work on how you're doing, what medium you are doing it, just as long as you are putting in that time. this was the thing that I've told myself as important and I felt like, okay, if this is really important to you, you need to be putting your time and effort in that direction. otherwise you're just always gonna dream and wish and hold, but those things don't make you closer to your goal. it had its moments of frustration. it had its moments. it's like they were times when I was kind of burned out. I didn't, didn't work for you know a few months I maybe I didn't make anything, but I think that's perfectly okay to like. you cannot always be producing. I know times that I wasn't making. you know like I was taking in inspiration and also just resting. resting is important. find some kind of routine or some kind of consistent. they could make time for it, just like you would with anything else, whether it's exercise, whether it's like spending time with friends, like anything that's important to you've got a schedule it in and you've got a kind of like stik to it. done is always better than perfect, because it's easy to refine something, it's easy to edit something. it's hard, you know, to to bring an integration from nothing, even if you hate it or even if you feel like, oh, this is not where I want it to end. it doesn't have to do, but like, at least you have the thing to build on. that's just really important to pat yourself on the back for getting something done, having something out there and then knowing that you can always come back and read the revisited thinks that being more prolific than necessarily like raw talent, it's kind of what got me where I am, like I just kept making. okay, just I think if you put me in like an empty white room, you know I would find some way to make like there would be a pattern by the end of it. it's just I can't help myself and I think whatever that is for you, just keep playing and keep having fun and it will reveal itself. [Music]- you [Music].

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Etsy Print on Demand Business vs Cafepress vs Zazzle or Spoonflower

hey everybody, kim here with littlebiz resources and today let's tok etsy print on demand business versus cafe press, zazzle or spoonflower. and this is part of the how to start a business with no money with print on demand series, all right, so first let's tok about marketplace definitions and these are all marketplaces. okay, so etsy is a handcrafted vintage supply marketplace. those are the kinds of shops that are on it. all sellers are third party, so they're not etsy selling it. it's going to be sellers like me or you on etsy, and sellers are responsible for the products, refunds, customer service, etc. right, etsy is just kind of like a i don't know babysitter for all of that. when you're on etsy, these are both your customers and etsy customers for now. and i say that because if you sell on amazon by now you know that your customers on amazon are not your customers. those are amazon customers. right, you may be a third party selling on their platform, but they have pretty much controlled all of the customers and they even tell you these are our customers. we're letting you be on our marketplace. etsy's not that advanced yet, thankfully, and we still get customer information and we can still invite customers to sign up to our um email, marketing, everything else. so it's a little bit different on etsy than it is on amazon, and that's what makes it kind of unique. now, cafe press, zazzle or spoonflower are all marketplaces as well. they do gifts, home decor, burst, personalized items, etc. now, these types of marketplaces, actually it's their products, right. so, um, let's take cafe press for an example and we'll take a look at these. but cafe press, let's say that you're gonna get a mug off of there. that's their mug. they're either contracted with some other party or whatever third party or whatever to provide it, but they are the it's. it's their customers, right, that's. everything is theirs. you just load your design into the products and permit them into the marketplace. so you kind of load them up and you get to optimize it and everything else, but you are not responsible for the products. if somebody buys the product, you're not. you're not worried about making sure that your, your seller, your provider, your print on demand center sends it out, right, because it's not yours. you're not working with them, it's their products. they're the ones handling it. so you just do the design, right, you're just doing the design. that's all you're doing, and you do not worry about refunds, shipping issues etc. you just collect commissions, so we'll call these commission marketplaces- versus etsy, which is more of a true marketplace. so let's take a look at all of these and i want to remind you, these are all marketplaces, so they all have a built-in audience. right, people are going on to etsy, they're going on the cafe press, they're going onto zazzle, they're going on to spoonflower and they're typing in what they're looking for. right, they're looking at the shirts, they're looking at whatever. spoonflower is one that does fabric as well, so people are looking for fabric on there. and these are all ones that give you an opportunity to get your products and designs in front of people. it just varies on if it's your products or their products, and then, of course, your customers are their customers. so let's go ahead and take a look at these marketplaces real quick. okay, this first one is etsy, and more than likely you've been on it. you know somebody who's been on it. um, you've at least heard of it, because etsy is pretty big still, or now, i should say. and this is, you know, you can see already- wedding gifts, wedding decor, bridesmaid gifts, personalized gifts, jewelry on sale, you know. so you've got all these different elements that you can go. people can shop through. now, typically, what they're going to do is they're going to either come in- like halloween is coming up, so they could come in here and hit halloween. they could go to different categories and kind of narrow it down. but a lot of people will come in here and they'll type something in right, and right now they say popular, right now you can see what's on here. so people are actually looking for a crystal advent calendar. so let's say they type that, or they put that in, they select it, whatever, and they come in here and they'll see different crystal advent calendars and then they can scroll through. now, the first row in etsy is always ads, just as an fyi, in case you don't like to jump into the ads. scroll past the first row, then, and you can come and you can see that there's a lot of different. this is weird. i've never seen these before, so i don't know what they are. but okay, it's interesting, right? so here's one: um advent calendar fillers and then let's just go ahead and click into it. um, make your own calendar, and you can see here that this is sold by manifest and magic. now they have their own shop, right, with all of their own items on it. these etsy has nothing to do with these, okay, so this is theirs and they're selling it. so now let's say that we wanted to do, and let's get out of this real quick and let's go into something more. print on demanding will go into um, leggings, right, in fact, let's do um, yeah, let's go into leggings and see if we can get an idea for narrowing it down. so a lot of these are gonna be etsy doesn't necessarily go by most popular. their algorithm is kind of strange. so we could say: they've got christmas pattern leggings here, so let's narrow that down to christmas leggings, right, since christmas will be up coming soon, soon enough, and it looks like they've got lots of different kinds in here, lots of different prices. so those are the ads again. so let's jump down here. and the 32.99- that's probably pretty close price to where we would be at in the first place. now, of course, if we're going to be selling on etsy, then we're using a print on demand company and for us- which we'll tok about this a little bit more in a minute- we'll be using printful and printful's our preferred print on demand company because they have all over prints and they have really good quality. you know, we've been testing them for a couple years. we like it. that's the one we recommend. if you want to use a different one, you are welcome to. but our entire series of videos will focus on: if you want to build your own shop and be and sell an etsy, then use printful. if you want to, if you don't want to worry about this, use marketplaces, which we'll tok about in a minute. all right. so let's come on, let's go actually let's go into this one right here. i'm surprised that they're allowed to do this. i highly doubt this is- i highly doubt this is um licensed. so stay away from for when we'll tok about designs. but i i do recommend that you do not use licensed designs, because you can get your shop shut down and you can end up having to pay fines and everything else. so it looks like this: this may or may be something they maybe. they have the fabric and they make them, i don't know. but at 35.99 that's probably pretty close, maybe even a little bit under where we need to be at, and you'll see that we have to price them pretty high for print on demand. and why? that's because we have to make up the um, we have to pay them right, and when we get into printful we'll tok more about this, but we have to pay them. so for the product, we have to make sure shift beating is covered- we can pass it on to the customer, whatever- and of course, we need to make a profit and make sure all of our fees are covered right- our fees. etsy has fees and so because of that, that makes it so that it's a little bit pricey to sell your own products period to make a profit, but especially on platforms that charge fees. now, etsy has lower fees than, say, amazon. but let's go to cafe press and take a look now. the difference again is that, etsy, these would be your own products, right, cafe press, these are cafe press products, and so same thing. you can see it's very similar. it's another marketplace, just like that, one where you can come in. it's like it's more like a mall than a marketplace, right, an online mall where

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07 Spoonflower and its challenges

[Music]. so hi everyone and welcome to my channel again. so last week I left you that I was really sad because they couldn't find a way to finish a work. a commission- and I wish to tell you that I finish edited. the company was happy of the design, and so now I'm I'm feeling free to to start to work to some personal projects and so I found time to do work on some patterns for challenges, for some flower, and also I tried to work with acrylic paintings and I hope to finish it. it's just a little illustration, just for myself, like an exercise to to understand better what can I do with, with the traditional paintings. and today I wish to speak to you, to start to speak to you about my experience on both sides. and I speak to you about spoon flour because it was the first print-on-demand site where I started uploading my designs some years ago. these both sites are not all the same. it's important when you start uploading designs to understand that as best as you can: how, what kind of customers are looking for production on that kind of the pod site, what they are looking for and also what's the best way to to be seen to be found on the both side. so it's something that you have to learn: visiting, decide, looking for groups for challenges that can be in the pot site, you know, and AH, spoon flower. I really find useful to enter those challenges because they they do challenges every week. you have winners every week, so it's lovely because you can win spoon dollars good to be spent in fabrics or wallpaper or gift wrap, so it's good. and another good thing is that if you enter the challenge and you are in the first 50 entries, your design will be put good to to be sold. you know, because I'm spoon flour, you can't just upload the design and have it good to be sold, but you have to prove it first time. so entering the challenges can help you because you have not to spend money to prove the design, of course. another thing I can recommend you, if you wish to sell on support flour easy to, to purchase a yard of fabric with a collection with many designs in the fabric. in this way it's cheaper to prove them, of course. and so what else? so on school flour, the, the challenges give you more visibility. if someone is going to vote and see is your design, maybe we'll go also on your shop to see your other designs, you know, and so this is a good thing. another thing is that if you get likes- not not the boats, but the likes- if you get lights on your design, your design will be more visible. you know, and are useful, like are usable, and also the comments left below your design, and also if someone uploads projects made with your design, this is also good to get more visibility. so about challenges, I find them really useful, also because they help me to be constant in my work. sometimes I'm I have no inspiration, but I just give a look to the challenges. I say, okay, let's try this, this team, let's try to do this pattern. so it helps me to be confident and it helped me a lot also to understand better surface design, because when I started uploading designs I I was just a children illustrator and I had no experience about surface design and so looking at the other entries, I could understand what was wrong in mine designs, because in a pattern it's a really important the harmony in the interpreting, you know. so you have not just to look at your tile, at your pattern. you have to give a look to the harmony of the design when it's repeating, you know, and it's really important to give a look to the, say, the empty spaces. you know, because you have shapes in the, in the design you you make, like the Foxes here, for example, but it's really important to give a look to, to the empty spaces. I don't remember how you say this being in English. yeah, in the brown background must have a good harmonies shape too, and all the details must be in a good distance, one you can't have here, all the foxes, for example, and the little details too must be in harmony, you know. so this is something that I learned entering the challenges and they're looking to other designs, the other designers, and also how to to create a good color palette, what work had good and what didn't work. another thing I wish to say you is that not always the winner designs are the best selling. I, I was lucky, I won some challenges, I was also the top term sometimes, but I can say you that not all my wiener designs sold so good, so well, and some of my designs that didn't that were not the winner, they sold better. this is because one thing is a good pattern, good for the customer, for the project, you know, and one other thing is the designer: eye catching with bold colors, with so many details that you enter in the challenge, because very often a customers need a pattern with not so many colors- and I love to do the night with o housands, of course you know. but for home decor sometimes you need designs with not so many colors. you know more, not from designs, and times you need fabric with little details. did see details, but in a challenge I you get more votes if you make a design with many different details. so I think I wish to recommend you, if you enters challenge, ok, choose an eye-catching design, so both colors are good in challenges. but maybe you can later make some versions of your design with less colors, with a different palette, not so so bold, and when you enter the challenge it's good to have the details that can be seen. so, not too small. don't choose that a to small side. but later, when the contest challenge is closed, I usually recite my designs and make them smaller, because very often customers ask me to to have the design smaller because for their projects they need them smaller. of course, but during the challenge - in the general- people have needed to see your design. they needed to see the textures, the details, and so this is what I recommend during the channel the challenge: a bigger size, not too big, because you it's good to see the repeating, but bigger, of course. what is so about from flower? please try to understand what people do with your design, what kind of projects, and so you'll be able to to create patterns useful for many projects. a good thing is to create the designs in many directions, like this: foxes, okay. this way you can use the fabric in many ways and and so in your shop you need you need also geometrical designs, simple designs of it's not so many details, because that can sell very well. so this is all for today about spoon flour and the thing is to next weeka and I speak to you about red bubble and society6 and ugly. okay, bye. [Music].

How I Made 70K+ Selling Printable Wall Art on Etsy - Passive Income Tutorial 2021

all right. so 72 732 uh and 30 cents so in the span of um 2020. hey guys. so today i want to tell you how i made over 70k passive income selling on etsy, and i want to share with you this story because i think it's super cool and i think you can find some areas where you can relate to. and, besides the story, i'm going to share with you which niche i went into, how i approached it as a brand new shop, also, my top essential skills. that, i think, is one of the most important things that you can do. you know, prepping yourself before you starting a shop to make it truly successful. so the story i'm about to share with you correlates to how i was able to make my shop successful and become a full-time etsy seller. so make sure to stay to the end of the video. so before we get started, please subscribe. i make videos once a week and it covers everything from etsy selling to print on demand, but overall it's about e-commerce and mainly selling on etsy. all right, so everything started five years ago. at that time, i was already a certified electrician, working a nine-to-five job. i was making pretty good money and i was slowly moving up. but like to be honest, i wasn't fully into it and the reason why i got into that is because my mom- she- was a single parent and it was a way for me to help support her. i wasn't fully sure exactly what i wanted to do after high school, even though i was doing really well, but my passion wasn't for it and i found myself doing painting and doing graphic design throughout my apprentikeship and it was just a side thing that i always did. that was it was a hobby for me, but for me at that time i didn't feel like art or just anything else was possible other than just a normal nine-to-five job, and at that point i was already doing really well in my electoral career. as i was mid-20s, i had my own place. you know, i had bills to pay. the thought of going back and doing art or graphic design was just really hard to do because the ways i would be paid as a graphic designer pretty much be like minimum wage starting, and it's really hard to start from paying super high and to just go all the way down and start from the bottom again, and i'm sure a lot of you guys kind of understand how that feels and when you're trapped in a career path, right. but at some point, you know, i finally had enough and i took the leap of faith and i quit my nine to five and applied for a graphic design school and, like i was super appreciated on my mom for supporting me through this. like it's okay, son, i got this. you know you go pursue what you need to do. so to this day, i'm still very grateful for for everything she's done for me so fast forward. during my schooling, one of the other students was telling me about people selling on etsy, selling printable wall art, and at that point i would generally understand what it meant. i was like, wait, someone would just go on etsy and then just buy a file and then they would print it themselves. and at that time i didn't really fully understand it, but the idea of it really intrigued me. so later that night i went back home, did all this research like whoa this is. you know, it's crazy. i can actually see the numbers of all the different shops, really see all the sales they're making. you can track them. you can just refresh your page and every time you get a sale you can, you can see them right. when i saw that it really clicked like whoa, like kind of gain that financial freedom, create that passive income as well. so the next day went back to my other classmates, i was like yo, this is crazy, you know, we gotta, we gotta pursue this right. and a lot of them thought it was cool, but their, their mindset was like: oh it's, you know, it's been done. people doing already it's not a new idea, so they're already too late to try. so by that time i was so intrigued by like i couldn't even focus on schooling anymore. right, my mind was just off to this new idea and but everyone else was still focused on school and obviously my grades started to drop a little bit, even though i was one of the top students in class and my teachers were like: hey, brandon, like why is your work slipping right? what are you doing? you know we can tell you're not really paying attention in class anymore, because during class i was just researching everything about sc. you know i would still do my work, but at night i would. i started creating some prints, i started creating my etsy shop and my goal was to, because i had like one month left before my program ended and i was like: okay, my goal is to get one cell, one legit sale from etsy, and that would just give me like confidence. but hey, you know what i can do this. and by the end, in the last two days before i graduate, i swear to you like i got my, my first sale and like i couldn't explain how, how happy i felt, um, the joy that was just like in me, like i was like this can't be real. you know, this has to be someone i knew, like i told him, i told people about it, you know. but i realized, you know, he was home from like somewhere, somewhere city in the states, and i was like this is a real sale, though i couldn't describe how great it felt and i was, okay, cool, like now i can really see the potential, even though, you know, i told some people that, hey, i want sale. i don't know how much did you make? and i was like, oh, you know, seven dollars, 7.99, you know, minus some of the etsy fees. oh, that's not that much right? oh, you can't make a living out of that. you know you may want to sell in like a month, you know. so there's going to be people like that that will tell you you can't do it and how you know you're making so little per se or or so inconsistent, you know how can you actually make a living out of it. but for me, i just always thought back to the other people that are doing it and i can see that they are making this full-time job. so that was always in my head and it motivated me that i can do it as well as long as i put in the work. so after graduation i had to actually find a job because i only had that one sale. i can't really make a living out of it, right? so i did end up working at a print shop. they created custom shop signs for like commercial buildings and stuff with neon lights or leds. i would supposed to create these, these signs for them, but eventually they had me installing the science because they found that i was electrician, right. so then i was like hey, like i'm getting paid like minimum wage to actually do electrical work when in my old, previous electrical work i was paying at least four times as much for this. so you know that was that's a whole lot of story and it was really terrible because it just wasn't fair to me for what i was actually doing for them and that motivated me to keep doing this etsy thing. so a day i was helping them out, but at night i was working every night, trying to keep creating new listings, keep making more designs and eventually hoping that it can create more of an income than my actual day job. so i continue to work there for next couple months, each day, each week. you know, i would slowly see one or two more sales each week in my etsy shop. you know i would see more traffic. i would. i would see more growth in general. until one day, on my phone, i was like whoa, like today, i'm actually making more money than i did during my day job. but that was when it really clicked. i was like whoa, this is all remote work that i'm doing on my etsy shop. right, i can be anywhere, because i was doing a lot of it even at my normal day job. i got to stop working this job. i quit. so i ended up quitting. i realized that, yeah, this is remote work. i can actually travel if i wanted to. i mean, this was, you know, back in 2017, 2018. so i was able to to travel and then i ended up traveling for a year and a half. i was traveling and i was working on my etsy shop. you know, i was in bali, thailand, vietnam, other places in southeast asia, and then went to south america- uh, you know, went to colombia and bolivia and and just yet, full year and a half. i'll try to share some pictures somewhere here. but it was, it was truly amazing and i was ver.

Do NOT Sell These Print On Demand Designs & Products... (MISTAKES Beginners Make)

hey, there it's me, Syria, from home. so, Ted, one of the largest YouTube channels dedicated to giving you actionable advice on how to build a real money-making business, and today I'm going to be warning you about five different print-on-demand items and designs that you should not sell. now, some of these items have the potential to lose you money because they've also terribly, and so if you try to sell them, especially if you try to sell them using paid advertising, you risk making a big loss. and other items are ones that you should avoid because they could potentially result in angry customers, merchants and even lawsuits. now, yes, all of this sounds scary, but don't worry. if you follow the simple advice that I'm going to give you in this video, you shouldn't have any issues, and actually some of these tips apply - dropshipping - so if that's how you primarily source your items, or if you've got a flex store and you're both drop shipping and you're doing print on demand, you're gonna find some great drop shipping tips in here as well. alright, so Before we jump into what these five products and designs are, I wanted to make this video a little bit more interesting, so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna show you the first product. and when I do that, you're gonna have five seconds to figure out why you should avoid it, and if you get it right, you get two points. yay, all right. so here's the first product here, this mug created with the print oil demand service print. if a what is wrong with the schmuck. you have 5 seconds go time is up, alright. so the reason why you should avoid this design and product, because the phrase lets get ready to rhumble is trademarked by Michael buffer, and this trademark has made buffer an insane amount of money thanks to its use in movies. it's needed him over 400 million dollars. crazy, right, and just a warning: buffer has been known to protect his trademark aggressively, and so if you use it on a product, that is illegal and you do so at your own peril. but trademarks are actually quite interesting, something I get asked a lot from people as this: I know that using copyrighted characters like, say, Darth Vader from Star Wars, is a no-no. but what about famous phrases? Darth Vader said like: I am your father? the answer: well, sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. you see, trademark is very different from copyright. a copyright is a legal protection on an original piece of artwork. so if you draw a picture or you write a movie script, those are copyrighted. copyrights are instantly created when you make your piece of art, you don't have to do anything. but trademarks are different. a trademark is a legal protection over something that identifies a brand or company. the most classic identifier for a brand or company is their logo, and so the Star Wars logo is protected by a trade back. and the interesting thing about copyrights is that they are mostly universal. most countries will recognize a copyright by default, but trademarks are not universal. you have to file for your trademark in each country that you want to protect them. so if your drop shipping, you'll see Chinese suppliers, sometimes using famous names. sometimes they're breaking the rules, but sometimes they're not- is no trademark to protect them has been filed in China. but if it's filed in another country you're selling to, like the USA, it would still be illegal to dropship and sell it there, even if it was legal to buy and sell it in China. but that's not all that Star Wars have trademarked. they were also filed to protect the names of famous characters like Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo and, course, Darth Vader. now they could have also chosen to trademark small iconic lines from the movies, because, while the entire script as a whole is copyrighted, small individual lines in the movie- like I am your father- need to be protected with a trademark, otherwise they come under free speech. as far as I'm aware, though, there is no active trademark for that phrase or any other lines from the movies, which is why a lot of print on demand merchandise exists for it. so, yes, if you want to piggyback off of famous IPs like movies and video games, using well-known catchphrases from them is a great way to be able to do that. just make sure that those phrases don't contain a trademark with thinit's. so if the characters said just like Luke Skywalker, you couldn't use that phrase on a mic, because, even though the phrase itself is not protected with the trademark, the name Luke Skywalker is. and I also recommend that, before you use any phrase in any print-on-demand merchandise, that you double check to see if it is straight-backed, because sometimes phrases that you wouldn't have expected have trademarks filed for them. for example, did you know that Paris Hilton trademarked the phrase that's hot? she even sued home a clover trademark infringement with this card that they made. Hallmark tried- unsuccessfully- to argue it was legally free speech and they ended up settling out of court. so did you get it right? if you did, you win ten points. if you didn't get a right, though, that's okay, because we've got more opportunities to win more points and the next product is worth another ten points. so here is a t-shirt that would be a mistake to design and sell. why do you think that is all right? five seconds go, all right time is up. the reason why it would be a mistake to sell and design this t-shirt: it is extremely, extremely unoriginal, which is a death blow for print-on-demand products. you can't walk two minutes around Manhattan without seeing someone somewhere selling one of these t-shirts. it's one of the most iconic t-shirts of all time and you think that that would be a good thing, right? well, it really really isn't. you see, print-on-demand has some distinct advantages and disadvantages compared to its close cousin, drop shipping, and if you don't know a drop shipping is, it is a business model that is very closely aligned with print on demand, and we actually got free ebook which teaches that the six tips at six-figure drop shippers follow to make over $10,000 a month. and if you'd like to get that ebook for yourself, you can find a free download link in the video description below. so one of the disadvantages that print-on-demand has compared to drop shipping is the profit margins. with drop shipping, manufacturers are creating products at mass scale, and so thus they're able to lower the price of the product when they're selling it to you. but the print on demand, though, manufacturing costs are higher than usual, since you're making just one at a time. so if you want to print a shirt from print fi, it's going to cost you seven dollars and 73 cents to five dollars and 95 cents a shirt the people are mass producing- I hat in YC shirts at much lower manufacturing costs so you can buy it super cheaply all over the internet. so selling a super popular t-shirt that everyone already knows through common knowledge that they can get it cheaper elsewhere is a really, really bad idea, unless you have a special unique spin that you're putting on it. so yes, print on demand has its downsides, but it also has its upsides, and one of those is that it lets you target niches then no one else has targeted before. take the shirt that I've shown before on this channel, which is a pug coffee shirt. that is, funnily enough, aimed at people that love both your pokes and coffee, because with a shirt like this. here you're targeting a passionate niche that doesn't have many options. it means, in that you can charge a higher price to make up for the higher manufacturing costs, so you can easily charge $14.95 or $19.95, or potentially even more, while still keeping your conversions high. so did you get it right? if so, you can add 10 points to your total. if you didn't get a right, though, that's okay, because we've got another chance to win more points, and this time it's a pretty easy one to be able to guess, so we've already got five points up for grabs this time. all right, here is a t-shirt that would be very, very bad to sell. why should you n?