Ryan Hogue is a web developer and e-commerce entrepreneur who started his online print-on-demand business as a side hustle in 2016. Now he makes $14 000 a month in passive income. Print-on-demand is a printing technology and business model in which a company produces a printed
product only after a client or customer has made and paid for an order.
This business model allows a company to receive cash first and then work on printing the products which could be books, clothing apparel, or other printable materials.
In this article, Ryan shares how he was able to build this business 6 years ago and how he grew it to the level where it makes him $14 000 per month passively.
Background Story
In 2014, Ryan was earning $85 000 a year as a full-time web developer. While he made enough to cover his living expenses, Ryan felt like I was putting too much of his time into the job. Ryan says that he felt like there were more opportunities to make money online that would guarantee him more freedom of time.
"I knew that there were opportunities to make passive income in e-commerce. So in 2016, after experimenting with "drop shipping," I came across a Reddit post that inspired me to start a print-on-demand side hustle.
Print-on-demand allows me to sell T-shirts while outsourcing the printing, packaging, and shipping to a third-party vendor. By 2020, I made enough money to quit my job and focus on taking my side hustle full-time."
Today, at 33 years old, Ryan makes an average of $14 600 a month in passive income from his print-on-demand business.
"The best part is that I work on it just one hour a day." Ryan says
Getting Started without a Design Background
Ryan says that his first T-shirt design was a poorly-drawn Loch Ness monster. He started out using Adobe Photoshop, but he found it too difficult to navigate without any formal training.
Now he uses All Sunsets, Creative Fabrica and Vexels to create the designs. These sites are great for print-on-demand sellers who don’t have a lot of graphic design experience because you can download commercial-use illustrations, instead of making them on your own.
Membership prices for All Sunsets start at $59 a year, Creative Fabrica at $4 a month, and Vexels at $22 a month.
To come up with designs, Ryan searches for keywords that are popular among customers using the DS Amazon Quick View and PrettyMerch Chrome extensions. Sometimes he makes shirts inspired by pop culture moments and upcoming events.
Making Passive Income with Print-on-Demand
About 50% of Ryan’s passive income comes from Amazon Merch on Demand, where he sells most of his items. Ryan says that he likes this platform because you don’t have to pay money upfront for inventory.
The process is simple:
- Create a T-shirt design and save it as a PNG file (a high-quality graphic file format).
- Upload your artwork onto Amazon Merch on Demand.
- Choose the product type and add a description.
- Amazon then creates a 3D rendering of what the shirt would look like in real life.
- Amazon creates a product listing on Amazon.com, making the design available to buy.
- Each time a customer makes a purchase, Amazon handles production, shipping, and customer service.
Amazon Merch sellers earn a royalty fee between 13% and 37%, depending on the product type and listing price. Amazon has predetermined listing prices that sellers can choose from.
Ryan says that his best-selling product is a standard T-shirt. He charges $19.99 per T-shirt and makes a 26% royalty fee per sale, equaling $5.23 in profit. Amazon keeps the rest.
"In addition to T-shirts, I sell my designs on hoodies, sweatshirts, mugs, hats, and other accessories like stickers and phone cases. I always list my products to make at least a $5 profit per sale, but I sell larger items like sweatshirts at a $10 profit.", Ryan adds
Another platform Ryan uses is Printful, which is similar to Amazon Merch on Demand and is an inexpensive way to get my products in front of more people. It prints, packages and ships designs that he lists on eBay and Etsy. It costs $0 to list a design on eBay and $0.20 to list a design on Etsy.
Working Hours
Ryan says that he spends most of his working hours creating designs, listing products, and learning more about tools that will help him automate the business further.
Ryan also started a YouTube channel and created online courses to share his knowledge:
"I want people to know that they don’t need a degree in graphic design to succeed in the print-on-demand business. They just need a little bit of creativity and a lot of drive."
Conclusion
Many entrepreneurs have taken on the print-on-demand e-commerce model and have made passive income online just like Ryan. You don't need to be very good at graphics designing to make it in this space. All you need is the ability to pre-determine trends and the ability to systematize the process through the use of online tools and software.
Ryan Hogue is a former web developer and adjunct professor who quit both jobs to run his e-commerce business. You can learn more from him on his website or his YouTube channel whereby he teaches people how to earn passive income using the “Ryan’s Method.”
