The Best PODs

POD stands for "Print On-Demand".
The name implies exactly what the service offers: It prints your order when it gets ordered, thus eliminating any stock of any specific design.

This service can be used for many products, not bound to just clothing, but for many other items as well, such as mugs, posters, books (entirely different type of POD for books though), stamps, business cards, and much more.

Long story short, Print On Demand services help people like you and I make a few extra bucks a month, by letting our creative juices flow and putting up "designs" that we then can put onto any product that the POD service provides. (In this case, clothing.)

The POD service takes care of all the orders, money issues, shipping & returns, and production of the product. Sounds great, right? It comes with a price, literally: They take a cut of the profit that we make, and the designer gets a very small % (usually about 10%) of the profit.

Don't get discouraged though, because a lot of people can make a good side-income off of this! Some even quit their day jobs because of it, but I doubt that's your goal.
The average income varies from person to person, and is based solely on how hard you work.

If this sounds interesting to you, then by all means, keep reading, pick your favorite, and get started!

I've put a lot of effort into this Lens; it would be totally awesome if you could check out my 1080p gaming walkthroughs company (if you're into that sort of thing) at www.CleverNoob.com

Or, you could always check out my own Zazzle store at http://www.zazzle.com/chestarmor

Thanks for reading!

Statistically, CafePress has been the "leading" Print on Demand service for over 10 years. They've been on the top until June and July 2009, where Zazzle finally topped them by a decent margin.
But with all that success, has come a very large community, and that means a lot more competition, and a lot less time for each product during creation, leading to more screw-ups.

CafePress actually tries to glorify this over-abundance of members on their site:
"* The CafePress.com web site averages 11 million (11,000,000) unique visits per month
* Approximately 2000 new, independent shops join the CafePress.com network each day
* Roughly 45,000 new, unique products are added each day
* Our users have created a catalog of over 150 million unique products
* Community of [over] 6.5 million users. (6,500,000 people you're competing with.)"

These may sound like good features, but think about how it affects you, as a shop keeper.


CafePress has a wide variety of "Features", but some of them come at a price.
Anyone can open an account with CafePress, but you will be confined to using the "Basic Shop", where you will only be able to add just 1 of each Product Type.
For example, if you have two designs, and you want both of them to be on black T-Shirts, you'll only be able to put one of them on a black shirt.

To remedy this problem, CafePress has what it likes to call "Premium Shops", at the cost of around $6.95 a month. With this, comes unlimited usage of product types, better customization options (custom templates enabled), and that's about the highlight of it.
Also, be wary, because this shop will automatically renew your subscription for you, something that can become very irritating if you decide to quit and forget to remove your credit card information.

So essentially, you're paying $7.00 a month for a service that everybody else offers for free. HOWEVER, there is one specific aspect of CafePress that sets it apart from it's competitors:
The ability to physically take your store, and place it onto an external website of your own. Not Facebook, not Myspace, but your own. But, that means buying your own domain, which costs $7.00 a year from GoDaddy, and buying your own hosting, which costs another $7.00 a month from GoDaddy, and then you have to buy the software that lets you transfer your store: "cpshop". And take note, cpshop is not endorsed by CafePress.


The physical quality of CafePress is no better or worse than other POD services, they use the same types and amount of printing services as most of the other POD services use, which you can read about, here:
https://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/index.aspx?page=processes.aspx

However, due to the fact that they get over 11,000,000 visits each month, that is a LOT of prints.
Let's do some math:
Let's assume only 5% of those 11 million visitors makes a purchase. That's 550,000 purchases EACH MONTH...that's a lot!
(And remember, that's only with a mere 5% purchase rate; sometimes one visitor purchases more than one item, especially the greeting cards.)

My point is, very simply, that your personal sales (if you can get any) are more prone to being one of the "screw-ups", because of the amount of images they print every month.
Now I'm sure that CafePress' printing crew doesn't screw up constantly, but think about when ink is running low VS the amount of products that are being printed daily.

While, as a shop keeper, this doesn't matter to you directly, it will affect your reputation. People who buy T-Shirts online from places like this generally don't realize that there is a company doing it for them, and if they buy a shirt from you that has been screwed up, then they might not buy from you again.

The good news is they offer a 30-day money back guarantee, but that won't exactly save your reputation. Not only that, but when they return an item, it comes out of YOUR paycheck; you lose the money you made on the sale.


CafePress has approximately 150 different types of products offered.
38 short sleeve styles
17 long sleeve styles
2 outerwears
14 kid's clothing
5 hats & caps
2 bags
8 "fun stuff" (teddy bears, bbq outfit, flip mino camera, yard sign, license plate)
3 pet items (2 bowls, dog clothing)
10 home & office (clocks)
5 mugs
15 buttons & magnets
2 "intimate apparel"
16 cards, prints, and calendars
10 stickers
1 book design
2 music cd designs (1 for data cds, 1 for music cds)

Now, this looks like a lot to the naked eye. But upon further examination of the products, most of the 38 "styles" of short-sleeved shirts are repeated more than once, just in a different gender. EX: "Male's Ringer Tee" and "Female's Ringer T". There really aren't any interesting or unique designs, such as fades, stripes, or anything of that nature.

As for presentation, CafePress is seriously lacking:


Notice anything missing from that example? A model, perhaps?

That's right, CafePress doesn't even have any models to help showcase their designs and products. Who in their right mind would buy something when they can't even see how it will actually look?


CafePress' system isn't very hard, however, it can be extremely challenging to figure out for newcomers. And this is a very big problem, because you should be spending your time on new designs or on advertising, NOT on figuring out the basic system.

CafePress uses "sections", which can be both good and bad. They do have an option for you to automatically set profit margin for every product in each section, however, when you're adding a T-Shirt and, say, a Clock, to the same section, then you'll have to go in and manually set the price so that the automatic profit margin doesn't screw it up.

On the flip-side, CafePress' system can be very helpful for users who want more control over what products are offered, and what aren't. You can select certain colors to be disabled, and have to manually add each and every product type. It's very time consuming, but again, can be helpful if that's how you want to run things.


You USED to be able to make the same amount of profit at CafePress as you could with other POD services. However, in early 2009, CafePress made an announcement that changed their service in a very negative way.

In lamen's terms, CafePress increased their pricing for each product, which means less of a cut for the shop keepers. They've lost a lot of faithful followers because of this change, leading up to the June and July 2009 statistics, where Zazzle beat CafePress.

Because of this change, shop keepers have had to lower their profit margin on each product, in order to balance out the increase in default pricing.
CafePress put on a big speech about how it was to "better their service", but in the end, all it did was increase their own profit, and take away from the hard working shop keepers.

"Most of the top shopkeepers were affected by more than $5 per shirt...and some up to a couple thousand dollars per month."
- TShirtFun


Before we finish, I'd like to comment on CafePress' community forums.
With such a large group of people using CafePress, it's no surprise that the forums are quite large as well, and that's not good when you're trying to get advice or find out a problem.
The forums are very large and bulky, often times making it hard to figure out where to even post your topic.

The community isn't very nice either, and can become quite rude and nasty for no apparent reason. While this is normal for a forum, it shouldn't be happening on a "professional" forum.
Of course, you CAN find a lot of useful information here, and there are far more nice people than there are negative.

But to have your topic on the second page immediately after posting it, because there are so many other people posting, is very frustrating. Especially when you've got a genuine problem.


CafePress is a very capable Print On Demand service, that is, if you know what you're doing when you start. Otherwise, it can cost you a lot of money and time, and cause you a lot of stress and frustration.

My advice: Avoid this company unless you're coming in with an already-established audience. But even then, the risk of switching isn't even really worth it. CafePress is past it's prime, in my opinion.

I give this POD service a generous 3 out of 5 stars.


These comments are based solely on my personal experiences with CafePress, and are not being influenced by any outside source.

Zazzle is a very interesting company which has been lurking in the shadow of CafePress, for quite some time.
However, a very large percentage of CafePress users are switching over to Zazzle lately, thanks to the price increase that I spoke of earlier.

Zazzle is quite possibly the best Print On Demand service in the running at this time, and is beginning to steal the thunder from CafePress quite swiftly.
Why? Because they base their service around the needs of their customers and shop keepers, rather than themselves.


Zazzle has a very wide variety of different features available.

To start, they allow you to setup a shop, completely free, and it has all the features that the CafePress' "premium" shop has, and more:
You get the ability to fully customize your page any way you would want to, unlimited uses on a broad number of products, a bunch of neat tools to help you promote your shop, and an "associate" account that allows you to make extra money by linking other peoples' designs, thus earning a referral rate.

Because of the fact that Zazzle allows it's users to have all of those things for free, many people actually have multiple shops open. Zazzle actually encourages this, by the way, so don't feel like you're doing anything wrong if you choose to do this.
I, personally, just want to keep all of my designs under one name, I find it easier to advertise that way, but the fact is that the option is still there for you to make different themed stores if you'd like to.


The physical quality of the products at Zazzle are the same at any other POD service, however the "screw-up rate" is less than that of CafePress', since not as many people use Zazzle. It's definitely the second-in-rank, closing in on the #1 spot. For right now, though, Zazzle is a tad bit more reliable with having your prints come out correctly. (But not by a lot)

Zazzle also offers the same 30-day money back guarantee that CafePress offers, and yes, you also lose the money here that you earned when you sold the product, if somebody returns something.


Zazzle over-exaggerates the total amount of styles they have available, saying they have "100+ womens styles, 100+ men's styles", when in actuality, that's only because they are counting in the different colors available for each style.

Despite that fact, Zazzle does still have a higher amount of styles available than CafePress does. In fact, the numbers are so much higher, that I don't even want to count the exact number, but instead will just list the types available:
Men's Short-sleeve (Different Patterns included)
Men's Long-sleeve / Sweaters / Hoodies
Women's Short-sleeve (Different Patterns included)
Women's Long-sleeve / Sweaters / Hoodies
Kid's Short-sleeve
Kid's Long-sleeve
Dog shirts
Skateboard Printing
Postage Stamps
Coffee Mugs / Stein / Glass Mug / Traveler's Mug
"Keds" Shoes (Women and Kids only, no mens)
Business Cards
Greeting Cards
Stickers / Magnets / Buttons
Posters
Ties
Calendars
Keychains
Bumper Stickers
Postcards
Mousepads
Hats
Bags
Aprons
Photo Sculptures (Yup, photo sculptures.)

To see all of the designs for yourself, visit:
http://www.zazzle.com/create

Now, if you go to that link and attempt to create any shirt item, you'll notice something I spoke of earlier: The designs have models!
Not only do they have physical models to wear the shirt type, but they've somehow figured out a way to make your design look as though it is conforming to the ripples in the shirt.
Go have some fun in the link above, and look at all the different model types, and how the design moves with the different positions, it really gives it an "authentic" look, and makes me much more enthusiastic about buying the design.

Furthermore, when you hover over the image (not in the one I provided, but if you click on the image, it will take you to the product's page where this happens), the image will actually zoom-in on the area you're hovering over, and provide a High-Definition close-up to the right.
This is just another great feature about Zazzle's presentation.

Finally, they give you the option of changing not only your model, but your shirt style. This REALLY helps cut back on clutter in the shop.
What I mean is, you only need to have one product in your store, to showcase the entire stock of men's styles for a specific deisgn.

On the product page, it says "Select a different style shirt" off to the right. What this does, is lets the person viewing the page, look at ALL of the different styles available for purchase, instead of having to surf through pages upon pages of styles.
This saves the customer a lot of time, but more importantly, the shop keeper a lot of time, because they won't have to add a million styles of the same design to their store, just to showcase all the styles available.
Not only that, but it looks a lot better than having 100+ styles of the same design taking up space on your product pages.
In other words, Zazzle has better organization for all of their styles available.

I absolutely love the products available at Zazzle, and am amazed by their method of Presentation.
The only things I wish Zazzle had, are clocks, and Men's Keds shoes, but I'm sure they're getting on that.


The Zazzle interface is extremely user-friendly. I didn't have any problems figuring out how everything worked, and love how neat and organized everything is.
It's easy to navigate, and best of all, Zazzle even offers it's Shop Keepers free articles/instructions, to help educate them to use the tools available to them, to the best of their ability.


Zazzle's profit margin is essentially the same as it is anywhere else.
The system Zazzle has, is a minimum of 10% profit for the storekeeper on each and every item, and it is also the default % as well.

For example: A shirt is sold for $20.00, the default profit is 10%, so the shop keeper would make $2.00 on that sale.

The shop keeper has the option to increase the percentage to whatever amount they want. I like to keep my percentages at about 15%, but a lot of "pro sellers" on Zazzle say that they have their markups as much as 25-40%, and have no problems with making sales.

Your profits will be much easier to obtain as well, considering the fact that you don't have to pay any monthly fees, making your monthly goal much easier to reach.

Speaking of monthly goals, Zazzle has a default setting of payment by check, monthly, (but don't forget to enter in your Payee information!), at a default price of $25.00.
This means that you won't be getting a check until your total profits reach $25.00.
Of course, there are options to make it a larger minimum.

Also, take note, that this is only $25.00 CLEARED, meaning the payments have to be accepted first.
Special thanks to Ricaso Graphics for pointing that out.

As far as sales go, you might actually see more visitors and sales on Zazzle than you will on Cafepress, because there is less competition, and the default product prices are set just right.
When I switched from Cafepress to Zazzle, I had actually sold 3 different shirts within 3 days, whereas I was unable to sell anything on Cafepress over the course of 2 months.

All-in-all, you'll have a better chance making money on Zazzle than you will on most other POD sites...but don't expect Zazzle to do the work for you.
Just remember that success is directly proportionate to effort.


Since I talked about the community at CafePress, I suppose I'll talk about Zazzle's.
The community at Zazzle is extremely helpful, as well as useful.
If you've ever been to a forum in the last 10 years, then you've probably come across the typical elitist jerk, or rather, "troll", but at Zazzle, you won't really find that.
Since I've gotten here, I've seen nothing but positive comments, a helpful community, and plenty of opportunities to help advertise my shop.
It's a very tight group of people who love to help each other, and you can actually make even more money by helping other people and promoting their products through referrals, so the forum is an absolute goldmine for advertising opportunities.

The Zazzle community is a great place to showcase your items, get a few people to post up your products on their squidoo lenses/blogspots/etc, and to generally feel like you're apart of something big.


Zazzle is most definitely the best choice right now for anybody looking to get started in the Print On Demand business. They care about their customers and their shop keepers.
Not only that, but you have a much better chance of getting your items showcased on the main page, or in the categories Zazzle has listed.

When I joined Zazzle, I made $9.90 from sales in the first week alone and that's without doing any advertising whatsoever, other than bein

Printfection is a POD service which always gets overlooked, but has a lot of potential.
When it comes to POD services, people always think of either CafePress or Zazzle, because they're generally the first ones anybody know about.

The reason for this is due to the fact that when people first get interested in the Print On Demand business, they start typing in very generic words into Google to see what turns up, and of course, either CafePress or Zazzle show up instantly. The Print On Demand business looks like it's a very small community at first glance, however after delving a little deeper, it's obvious how deep the "rabbit hole" goes, with over 10 different companies doing these "POD" services.

While I still believe Zazzle is the best company, I still recommend that you read this article to help understand what company is best for you.


I hate to say it, but one of Printfection's biggest flaws is in their features. They still offer most of the same options as everybody else, but they don't complete customization.

You have the option to customize your selected theme with CSS, but you can't use XHTML. This can cause quite a big problem if you're looking to add that extra bit of customization which will blow your viewers away.


I won't lie, the quality of prints from Printfection are certainly worth the price. (But we'll deal with that section in a bit.)

Now, I've seen products printed from CafePress and Zazzle, however, Printfection is the only POD service that I've actually bought anything from so far, so I can provide you with photographic evidence of the quality.
Take note, the only reason I've bought anything from Printfection VS Zazzle is because Printfection had a $2 White T-Shirt sale going on, so I decided to purchase 3 of them with my own designs, putting my website and slogan on the back.


The above is a shirt I ordered from Printfection. I spent over 5 hours making this design, and it involves many different colors. I was extremely happy with the quality of the print.
I was expecting it to be "sticky", but the design is actually embedded into the shirt; much like the "screen printing" method.

This is a close-up of the image, you can clearly make out even the slightest change in color. (Look at the candy, or the teardrop on the dead pinata)
Take note, the white "cuts" in the "dead" pinata were intended.

In terms of quality, Printfection does a superb job, especially for lighter-colored shirts. (Darker colored shirts are harder to print, and have the "sticky" feeling, but I have seen very good examples of how Printfection does on dark colors, and I must say, I'm impressed.)

The worst I could find in their quality was in the two newest shirts I purchased from their $2 deal, some of the black ink spotted around nearby yellow ink, and some paint was flecked, like it missed the fabric during the printing process. However, I'm still happy with the prints, because they both still came out great.
(I'd show pictures, but my camera is dead right now and I've got no batteries)


Another problem with Printfection is in the area of Products & Presentation.
To start, they only offer 32 different products (209 colors total), which you can view here.
The product styles for T-Shirts/Apparel are very generic, and the "exta" products they offer are only as follows:
Mousepad
Small Cutting Board
Large Cutting Board
Cork Bottom Coaster
BBQ Apron
Jumbo Tote Bag

Ontop of the shabby product list, Printfection hasn't done a very good job at showcasing their products either.
In fact, I'd go as far as saying that their presentation is even worse than CafePress'.

Their product presentation is awful, both in the literal sense and in the metaphorical sense. (They don't even showcase or feature any designs on their main homepage.)


The size of the product is absolutely way too small and if you attempt to "view a larger image", all they do is show you the actual design image, not a close-up of the shirt.
Speaking of the design, it doesn't even look like it's supposed to be on the product at all.


I have to say, Printfection's system needs to be improved upon.
Their shopkeepers' management area and tools look like they're just an FTP (file transfer protocol) program, without the option to drag-and-drop.
My point being, that the system is very bland and involves a folder system to get from point A to point B, as oppose to a image or button system.

What I really mean to say is that their system is...quite ugly, and because of that, it's a lot harder to use.

As far as adding products to your store goes, they make the process much harder than it has to be. The category system is completely awkward to use and doesn't make a whole lot of sense.


I hate to keep bashing on poor Printfection, but now we're at the category of their biggest problem.

The pricing system for Printfection's products are absolutely in need of revamping.
Some products are priced fine, actually better than some competitors, but then another product will be so insanely priced, that you'll feel bad about putting it up to begin with.

The white and light-colored shirts are priced accurately, but everything else, even other light-colored products, are seriously having problems.

The main reason I didn't want to use Printfection after I stopped using Cafepress, is because of the fact that I actually felt like I'd be ripping people off, and I didn't want that.

It's going to be hard to make money with Printfection, that's pretty much what it comes down to. And if you do, then it's because your customers don't realize how much they're getting ripped off.

As I said before, Printfection has a really good deal where you can buy a White T-Shirt for $2 (shipping not included), if you're a "first-time" buyer, but that's the ONLY reason I used their system instead of Zazzle.
I used Printfection's $2 deal as a way to test out some of my most complex designs, and to make sure they look good when printed.


Let me start off by saying that it took me a good ten minutes of hard searching, just to find the link to Printfection's community forums.
When I got there, I wasn't exactly impressed. I can't comment on the community, since I haven't been apart of it, but I can tell you that it doesn't look very active. Only 1 member was signed in at the time of my viewing, with 10 guests.

Not to mention, you actually have to re-register just to post on the forums, because the account isn't linked with the system's database.


I came in to this review on Printfection, hoping to end up giving it a better rating than Cafepress, but I have to say, after seriously examining their service for this review, I can't help but give it the accurate rating it deserves; 2 out of 5 stars.


On the flip-side, though, I think any wise shop keeper should keep their eye on this company. It has a lot of potential, and in the next year or two, it very well may be the next "big thing". But right now, it's taking a back seat and should learn from it's mistakes.

I hate to say it, but any serious shop keeper should really avoid this company; At least until they work out the kinks and improve upon their system and appearance.

Again, this review was not influenced by any outside sources or any third-parties, and has been based entirely upon my own experiences.

NOTE: These are just "little" reviews on these services, rather than huge in-depth reviews. I have little hands-on experience with these companies, so am basing this section on observation.

You've probably come across them before in your travels.
Are they any good? Are they better than the other options?
Decide for yourself.


Think of Spreadshirt as the "CafePress of mini-POD services". I say this, because they tend to dominate the "mini-realm" of t-shirts.

The main problem I had with Spreadshirt when I went to try them out originally, was that they look like a typical, online-JCPenny or something of the sort, plus an option to sell your own shirts.
I find that to be a huge turn-off, which looks unprofessional.

They showcase designs on the main page, which is great, but there aren't any categories, and the chance of your design showing up is pretty slim.

Their pricing is actually pretty good, and I'm assuming their quality is just as good as any other POD service (otherwise they wouldn't really be in business), however, they do a poor job on showcasing the designs.

They have models wearing the shirts, WITHOUT the design, and granted, their model positioning is much better than CafePress', but the actual product showcasing and creation is made much more difficult because there is no model wearing the shirt when you design it.
The actual product you're working on doesn't even look real itself, which is another negative; and the product is extremely small.

Now, Spreadshirt does offer a very wide selection of products to choose from, however, it's done in an extremely unorganized way. All of the products are just kind-of jammed together on one sheet.
Granted, there is a category drop-down menu, but it's pretty hard to notice right away.

I am impressed by some of their styles, however, like the "Unisex Tie Dye Shirt" and the "Women's IVEE Ella Top", both look pretty cool.

Spreadshirt has a "cute" (dare I use the word and not sound effeminate) system for shop keepers, but it lacks professionalism, and that was my main problem with them.

So Spreadshirt does have good pricing, and has a wide variety of shirt styles to choose from, but they have much less exposure than CafePress, Zazzle, and Printfection, which can hurt your sales, and their showcasing system is pretty low-quality.

I would rate Spreadshirt at 2 and 1/2 out of 5 stars. (Sorry, too lazy to put on the graphic)


At first glance, Redbubble seems like a total flop. But after further investigation of it, it looks like a really well grouped community which can help you gather feedback on your designs, the administration is a smaller group focused on their shop keepers, and looks like a fun environment to be in.

There are even contests once in awhile to help you earn some extra cash (if you win).

The best way for me to describe Redbubble is to word it like this:
Take DeviantArt.com , and add a POD service.

Most of the designs I see there are extremely impressive, and original. It is what it says it is, art.

You won't find a "Soccer Mom" shirt here, something I'm glad about.

The main problem I have with them, is that they don't focus on T-Shirts primarily. They also offer "Art" (like I said, DeviantArt), as well as "Writing" areas.
I don't think the Writing section of the website has anything for sale (it might).

I don't have a problem with "Art" and "Writing", in fact, I like doing both of those things as well; The problem lies within the fact that they're numbing-out their POD service, and dumbing it down; it kills the customers off!

But again, like I said, this isn't a "mom and pop" kind of place, it's more of a local coffee-shop where people are sitting around playing the bongos wearing berets. While interesting, it just isn't worth wasting your time on because there isn't enough of an audience...unless that is your target audience.

The pricing is a little steep, around $20 for even a white shirt, but I suppose it's because they are spending a ton of money on ink because of the style of designs they're always printing.

I suggest putting up SOME of your designs there, and perhaps they will sell once in awhile, just to earn some extra profit. But I wouldn't bother putting up any text-based designs, or anything to piss off the community.
It actually has to be art to be accepted there.

On the flip-side, if all of your designs are based around art and design, and you have a very creative branch, then this might be a safe-haven for you. The community looks very active and positive, and they look like they're very interested in supporting their peers. (Financially and Enthusiastically)

But like I said, I wouldn't make this my primary POD service, perhaps just a side one, that I never speak of, and never advertise for, and maybe you'll end up making a buck or two.

Overall, I give Redbubble a 3 out of 5 stars, mainly for it's tight community and quality standards, however, it would be more if they would expand upon their T-Shirts aspect of it.