Many print-on-demand store owners are losing money due to common, often overlooked mistakes that hinder profitability and growth, despite feeling like correct business decisions.
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Your print on demand store is bleeding
money. And the worst part is you're the
one causing it. Because whether you
realize it or not, you're already making
at least one stupidly expensive mistake.
Now, I just reviewed 50 stores for my
community and every single one of them
was leaking money in the exact same ways
that I did before ever scaling past
seven figures. And here's the trap.
These mistakes feel like the right move.
They make you believe that you're
setting yourself up for success when in
reality, they're the reason most sellers
quit before they ever see traction.
That's why in this video, I'm going to
break down the five stupidly expensive
mistakes that I've made on my own brand
and that I've seen time and time again
for those 50 stores that I reviewed in
my community. So, if you're somebody
who's interested in doing over $6,200 a
day in Shopify sales, this video is for
you. And if you're a complete beginner,
you're going to be able to avoid these
expensive mistakes and be able to keep
more profit in your pocket by avoiding
them altogether. So, let's get into it
and fix these mistakes on your store.
Let's get right into mistake number one,
which is selling unproven products
instead of what you know works. Here's
something that'll blow your mind.
According to Shopify's own research,
stores that focus on one to three core
products in their first year have a 2.3x
higher profit margin than stores that
launch with 20 plus products. Why?
Because it allows us to focus on product
lines that allow for better inventory
management, clearer brand messaging, and
stronger customer trust. When you spread
yourself thin across multiple products,
you end up diluting everything. I
learned this the hard way with my first
brand that I ever ran because it
completely tanked. Now, to kick things
off, I picked no niche, which was Strike
One. And then I started with t-shirts,
which was a great start, but I wasn't
getting sales. And instead of asking
myself, why wasn't I getting sales on my
t-shirts? I panicked. And I didn't dig
into my designs. I didn't analyze my
niche. I just thought, I need more
products. If people aren't buying my
design on a t-shirt, maybe they'll buy
it on a mug or they'll buy it on a Yeti
cup. I just thought, I need more
products. So, I took my bad designs and
I plastered them on everything. Mugs,
hoodies, phone cases, tote bags, you
name it, I slapped my terrible designs
on it. I convinced myself that if I just
add enough products, one of them would
connect with somebody. But here's the
thing, my husband Chris was selling
t-shirts. hundreds of thousands of them
every single day. I knew that t-shirts
sold. I had proof right in front of me.
But instead of sticking with the proven
product and fixing the actual problem in
my business, my designs, and my niche, I
just kept throwing money at ads for
products that had zero data on it. Now,
this mistake ended up costing me about
$2,500. I lost $1,500 on the store in
total. And even though I was making some
sales, I was pumping way more money into
ads thinking that would solve the
problem. It didn't because I was making
panic decisions instead of strategic
ones. Now, once I finally focused,
picked one product type, fixed my
designs, dialed in my niche, that is
when sales started coming in. That's
when I could actually scale. But here's
what's wild. Even when you pick the
right product, most people tank their
budget on this next mistake. Want to
know the fastest way to waste $500 and
actually make your store worse? Research
from Little Data shows that a 1-
secondond delay in page load time can
reduce conversions by 7%. Heavy, bloated
themes with unnecessary features are one
of the biggest culprits of slow site
speed. Most premium themes, they're
overloaded with features that you'll
never use. Now, don't get me wrong, they
look really impressive in the demo, but
they absolutely murder your conversion
rate, and I fell for it. Hook, line, and
sinker. Now, when I was starting out, I
thought I had to buy one of those fancy
marketplace themes, you know, the ones
that are $500, $250, beautiful demos,
all the bells and whistles. I genuinely
believed that if I invested in a high
quality theme, more people would buy for
me. So, I bought one, and that was $500
gone. Then I uploaded it into the theme
editor and realized it's stripped down
to the bare bones. It basically feels
like the free Shopify theme. I had this
idea that these magical features like
they advertised in the demo would
automatically be in the theme that I
purchased. But that wasn't it at all. I
still had to do a ton of work. I still
needed apps. And the kicker, it slowed
down my site so much that it actually
hurt my conversions. and I wasted $500
on something that made my store worse.
So, here's what I do now. I stick with
the free Shopify themes. You're going to
customize it anyways. You're going to
need apps anyways. So, save the $500 and
put it towards your marketing or design
tools that you actually need to move the
needle. Now, my site loads faster, my
conversions are higher, and I keep $500
in my pocket. Don't get me wrong,
Shopify themes are a ton of work and
it's one of the reasons why most people
don't want to start on Shopify because
the amount of work that goes into
building the theme. Now, there's no need
to spend $100, $250, $500, $1,000 on a
theme. It's absolutely not necessary,
and I want you to keep that money in
your pocket. But if you're somebody
who's sitting there and you're like,
"Well, even if I do a free theme, it's a
ton of work that I have to put into
making this theme ready to take sales."
I have a solution for you. Build my
pud.ai is going to take you through the
steps of actually creating your Shopify
store for you. It's going to set up an
account. It's going to connect a
Printify account for you. It's even
going to upload 20 designs into your
store based off of the niche that you
select in the store builder. And the
best part is it's completely free. So,
you get to keep all the money in your
pocket. And the best part is it's built
on one of Shopify's free themes. So,
it's not going to be bogged down. It's
not going to be super slow. It's going
to be one that you can rely on. It's
going to take out 95% of the setup time
because you're not going to need to
tweak and fix all these little things.
You're essentially going to need to add
your logo, make any kind of brand
changes that you want like color and
typography. And other than that, the
store is completely ready to go. So, if
you're interested in bypassing spending
money on expensive themes and bogging
down your store and spending time
setting up a Shopify theme, click the
link in the description below and get
started with buildmyod.ai
today. This alone will cut out weeks of
work and you're going to save money. But
even when we are using a free theme,
most people still kill their conversions
because of this next mistake. Mistake
number three is that you're not
optimizing your store for mobile. Now,
here's a stat that should honestly make
you check your phone right now. Mobile
devices account for 77% of all
e-commerce traffic globally. But here's
the killer part. Mobile conversion rates
are typically two to three times lower
than desktop. Not because people don't
want to buy on mobile, but because
stores aren't optimized for mobile
shopping experiences. Now, if you're
somebody who's running Facebook and
Instagram ads like myself, the majority
of our traffic is coming through mobile
because people will click one of our ads
when they're in the Facebook or
Instagram app and then try shopping on
their phone. So, if our store isn't
built for that, we're making it really
hard for them to actually buy. Now, I
made this mistake for months without
even realizing it. When you're in the
Shopify theme editor, it defaults you to
the desktop view. So, I tweaked
everything. I made it look perfect. I
checked the images. I adjusted the
layout. And then I clicked publish. And
I started running ads. And I was getting
traffic, but nobody was converting. So,
I dug into the analytics. And people
were landing on my product pages, but
people weren't adding to cart. They
weren't checking out. So, I finally
pulled out my phone and I looked at my
site and it was a disaster. My add to
cart button was buried three scrolls
down. My images were getting cut off
because they weren't optimized for
looking on your phone. It was an
absolute mess. One of the biggest
mistakes that I see is that the add
toart button gets pushed way down on the
product page and it needs to be as close
to where someone's thumb naturally sits
on their phone as possible. They
shouldn't have to scroll three different
times to finally find it. We want to
make it as easy as possible for someone
to check out. So once I optimized for
mobile and I moved that button up, fixed
the layout, made everything thumb
friendly, my conversion rate jumped,
same traffic, just way more sales. Now,
even if you nail all of this, though,
the next mistake could destroy your
long-term profitability. And that is
mistake number four, which is chasing
seasonal trends instead of building
evergreen stores. Here's something that
most people don't tell you. A study by
the Harvard Business Review found that
businesses built on evergreen products
have 4x higher customer lifetime value
than those built on seasonal trends.
Why? Because evergreen products allow
you to build a consistent customer base,
refine our marketing, and create
predictable revenue streams. Now,
seasonal trends were riding a rocket
ship up and then crashing. And I lived
this nightmare on my second store. Now,
my first store completely flopped, but I
was able to take everything that I had
learned there and put it into my next
store. And then I found a design and it
was very seasonal. This was during
summer of 2020 in the middle of COVID
during isolation. And this design that
was about like summer travel with COVID
and being isolated from everybody blew
up. It connected with people emotionally
of where they were at in 2020. And I
went from doing about $200 a day in
sales to over $25,000 a day in sales. I
thought I had figured print on demand
out. I thought I had cracked the code.
But then summer ended and my sales went
back to almost zero. I didn't have a
business anymore. It was gone. I
couldn't turn the design back on the
next summer because COVID wasn't the
same summer of 2021. And the moment had
passed. I had to start a third store
completely from scratch. And all the
momentum that I had built up was gone.
After that summer, I didn't make sales
for another probably six months. If I
had just picked a niche that was
evergreen from the beginning, I would
have had a stable growing income instead
of this roller coaster that nearly broke
me. Now, here's what I learned.
Seasonality can boost an evergreen
brand. But you can't build on
seasonality alone. When you build with
evergreen designs, your sales are going
to naturally grow slowly and steadily,
and our audience is going to compound
over time. Our work ends up stacking on
itself. And that's what I do now. My
current brand is built on an evergreen
niche. The sales are more consistent.
The growth is more predictable. And I'm
not starting over every few months. But
here's the most expensive mistake of
all, and it's the one that you can't see
until it's too late. Now, mistake number
five is not building and using your
email list from day one. Here's a stat
that honestly should terrify you. Email
marketing has an average return on
investment of $36 for every $1 spent. A 36,000%
36,000%
return. And according to Omnisend, email
drives 29% of all e-commerce sales,
making it the second highest converting
channel. translation. If you're not
building your email list from day one,
you are literally leaving 30% of your
potential revenue on the table every
single month. And I learned this lesson
the most expensive way possible. I was
collecting emails. I offered discounts
in exchange for signups, but I let those
emails just sit there. My first two
stores, those lists honestly went down
the drain. I didn't send any campaigns.
I didn't nurture those customers. I
didn't even understand how valuable they
were. I was so focused on chasing new
customers through Facebook ads that I
completely ignored the people who had
already raised their hand and said,
"Hey, I'm interested." Now, fast forward
to now. I've spent the last year
building my email list strategically and
actually using it the way that it should
be used, and it has honestly changed
everything. My email used to make up
roughly 10% of my monthly revenue, but
now it's almost 30% of every single
month. This is huge growth. I can send
an email out to a couple thousand people
and make 1,500, 2,000, heck, even $5,000
in revenue from one email. And here's
the best part. It's almost purely profit
because I'm not paying for Facebook ads
to acquire these customers. I'm just
paying for the cost of producing and
shipping them the product. This is why
the Facebook ads are too expensive
argument falls apart. Yes, ads cost
money to get somebody in the door for
the first time, but once they're on our
email list, I can market to them time
and time again for pretty much free.
This is especially huge right now in Q4
because ads are the most expensive
during the holidays because we're
competing with every brand for
attention. But if you have an email
list, you can scale while you're paying
a little bit more for the ads. It's not
going to affect our profitability as
much. Here's what you need to do. You
need to start collecting emails now.
Then we want to create a plan to stay in
conversation with those customers. You
want to send them value, send them
offers, and stay top of mind. An email
list is the difference between starting
over every month and building a real
sustainable business. Look, I made all
five of these stupidly expensive
mistakes over the years. They cost me
more money than I even want to do the
math on. Two failed stores, two years of
my life spinning my wheels. But once I
fixed them, that's when I went from
struggling to hitting six figures
consistently every month. You don't need
more traffic. You don't need a magic
product. You just need to stop bleeding
money on mistakes that you can't even
see. Now, if we fix these five mistakes,
I promise you, you will be running a
completely different business. Go build
something that actually works. And if
you're interested in grabbing that
completely free store builder that will
build your Shopify theme for you, just
click the link in the description below,
head over to buildmyput.ai, and get
started today. Other than that guys,
thanks for watching and if you enjoyed
this video, please like and subscribe to
my channel. It would absolutely mean the
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