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- [00:00]
A
Do you want to know what a $3 million print on demand seller says is selling right now? What she's seeing right now for trending designs and also the nitty gritty of how she has scaled her business from Etsy to Shopify. We're going to get into all that today with Christina from See youe Online. Let's go. Welcome to the Crickets to Cha Chings podcast. I'm Julie Berninger from Gold City Ventures and I'm here with Christina. Thanks for coming on.
- [00:23]
B
Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
- [00:24]
A
So Christina is a powerhouse seller who sold $3 million worth of print on demand. That is insane. We're so excited to have you here today. A bunch of trends with us. Let's kick it off. What do you have to show us?
- [00:35]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So I am constantly going through trends on Etsy, both for my students and mostly because, yeah, I'm designing on Etsy and Shopify. And I have noticed this year especially I think more so than when I like first started print on Demand, like trends are just massive. Like before I was like, you could design for every anything and things would sell. But now there's like so many just like trends and evolutions of trends. And these are a few that I think right now is just the beginning of June. And these are the ones that I'm just seeing blow up their either new trends or you might notice that they're kind of like plays on existing trends from the last little bit. And the first like massive trend that I have seen on the most products, usually when I see a trend it's on like one product. But this one is everywhere and that is stripes and specifically blue stripes. So this one, it's usually accompanied by bows. And if you've been following trends for a little bit and I've been talking about it for the last probably year because this trend's just like evolved so much and it's kind of like the coquette trend. I always, I think I say it right now, but like the girly, the blue kind of bows on everything. Well, this striped new trend is very, I feel like it's a kind of an evolution. And if you just look up mugs right now, if you look up wall art, if you look up woven blankets or T shirts, you're going to see so many different kind of stripe designs and a kind of a mix of personalized and non personalized. So I can share my screen and show you guys a few examples of the ones that are doing really well right now. And just to prove that this isn't just like a one product thing that's doing really well. Like this one. Again, it is kind of everywhere. So usually what I'm looking for when I'm looking for trends is things that have the bestseller tag on Etsy. And I do that usually by using Everbee. And if you guys have ever be, what you can do is you are able to filter by listings that were created in the last like month or two month and then you can sort them by number of monthly sales and you'll start to see things that are doing really well. We can see this one here is a bestseller. This is a woven blanket with blue stripes that just says the Williams, where people are able to put their family name and it says like est, whatever the date is here. And this one was listed two months ago. It's in 20 carts. And again it has a bestseller tag. But a lot of things can't even pick up the amount of monthly sales it's getting because it's selling so much this month that it actually doesn't have data to really report. But again, the best thing is to look for the best sellers that were listed in the last month or two. Julie, have you seen this one around?
- [03:31]
A
Well, I'm looking at it right now and for those listening, we're seeing vertical blue stripes and they almost look faded. And then there's the Williams established 2026. So I'm guessing this is a wedding gift probably for a couple. And I haven't seen the stripes as much because I'm more in the digital product space. But this, to me it looks almost like a preppy kind of coastal vibe. Are you, are you seeing that in the stripe space? Like is it usually not a bright blue, like a royal blue? It's kind of like a faded like vintagey blue or it's a coastal blue. What, what kind of blue stripes are we talking about for people that are.
- [04:04]
B
I would say that, yeah, the kind of the, the coastally blue. It also kind of changes between product to product when you see this kind of as a bestseller. But let me just, I'll show you this one. So this one's slightly different when it comes to mugs. So this one's very similar except it has kind of the blues kind of vary in color. It looks a little bit like a watercolor stripe design. And if you go to mugs, they kind of more follow. Yeah, kind of this example here and we see the bows a lot more.
- [04:33]
A
Wow, this is adorable, by the way. So for people that are just listening, it's a baby announcement. Auntie Emily mug with the vertical stripes again. And by the way, I totally was thinking horizontal stripes before you. You showed this. So I'm glad that we're, we're talking about this. The stripes are vertical, so that's, that's kind of like the way that the customer wants to see it. But it also provides the, the coquette bow, like you were saying. And it's just so, so cute. I'm like, sad. I had my three kids. I'm done with these baby announcements. But I would say this is really cute. Like, I, I get why people like this.
- [05:06]
B
Yeah. And it's something. It's like stripes. How was this not a trend before? Everyone knows stripes. Stripes has been on everything. But yeah, it's just this very specific style of stripes. This one here, still the stripes. This one's like a matching mama goose and a little goose one. So it has an image inside of the stripes versus that you might have seen on the blanket. And the mug, this guy was just a little area. This one has a little bit more design area in the center. But, but these majorly vary. Sometimes there's icons on top of the stripes or sometimes it's kind of blocked out. Like this one. And since you just mentioned be a mom, like, this one is so cute.
- [05:43]
A
Yeah. I mean, I feel like a broken record, but it's adorable as well. Like, it's, it's, it is really cute. And then I love the mama goose. My three year old actually likes to call herself a silly goose all the time. So. And she loves matching outfits with, like the siblings and matching with me if I have anything like that. So I can see if someone's like, oh, they already have the baby one. Maybe I can make one for like, older kids. I'm not sure. Have you seen that trend take off as much?
- [06:06]
B
So this one's actually hard because this one, I'm sure it's already on that. It is everywhere. If you look up, teachers, if you look up, girl, mom, if you look up. I didn't look up specifically like the toddler matching shirts because usually I'm doing women's shirts. But yeah, it is in every niche right now. And yeah, changes up the style a little bit, but it is pretty consistent with these washed out blue stripes. But if it's not on that niche yet, like, that is usually my sign to hop onto something. I think the best thing ever is when you can find a trend and find that niche that it hasn't been applied to yet. And that's Pretty much what I do for all of my designs and how try to get those best sellers.
- [06:46]
A
So I, I think that's a good tidbit. I'm just curious for your background in terms of what you're selling on print on demand and it sounds like you're focused mostly on women's shirts. Like what, what kind of product mix do you find that's selling for you this year?
- [06:58]
B
Yeah, so for me in my niche I've actually always mostly cuz it's what I like to buy have sold sweatshirts actually. So my bread and butter for like most of my time selling on Etsy was selling the Gildan 18,000 sweatshirts and then recently, well I've always sold T shirts but just seeing lately probably in the last like two years how much comfort colors as a brand has just exploded on Etsy. Like people know the brand name. Like I had no clue what comfort colors is. And then if you list anything you'll get people messaging like is this comfort colors? Can I get this on comfort colors? So now I'm also especially because it's kind of summertime right now, people aren't really in their T shirt or sweatshirt buying era. I'm listing more on the T shirts but that's kind of my bread and butters very much like the apparel sweatshirt T shirt.
- [07:46]
A
And this might be a dumb question, but your customers like the fact that they're asking for comfort color shows that they're a little more educated, I would say than the shoppers that I kind of like remember or have interacted with. So where are they getting that? Are you saying that's the customer that's asking are they getting it from like social media or they just know from like purchasing like where are they getting that idea of that's what they want to buy?
- [08:10]
B
I feel like it's a mix of like either there were previous shoppers on Etsy so they've bought T shirts before so they know it. Like people who sell comfort colors, like they highlight it like it's in the product name, it's in your description and I find it's because one either they've shopped on Etsy before and for me I had actually like never heard of the brand before doing print on demand. But I've had students mention talk to me saying in their real world they know that they would ask for a comfort color shirt. I guess it's in certain circles where people kind of just know. So if anyone in the is listening and you want to drop a comment below, how do you know, the Comfort colors brand. Because I'd actually be super interested too. Because if I didn't do it, no Print on Demand, I would have absolutely zero clue.
- [08:55]
A
Yeah, it is funny. A couple episodes ago we were talking about this digital banner for birthday parties and they're like brown paper banners, but people are making them on Canva and then someone can print them out. And the first people doing the tutorials on TikTok chose Walgreens, even though you can print them out in other places. So everyone is thinking Walgreens and now all of the Etsy listings literally say Walgreens on them. Or it's like in the description or whatever. And it's. People are asking like, well, what about Walgreens? Is it. But it makes the. I think it might help the customer who is seeing it on social media say, oh, this is like what I'm looking for. Some. It's interesting you're saying that people are advertising comfort colors too. Like, are they putting it actually in like the titles and on the, on the actual images of listings?
- [09:38]
B
Yeah. And like their first main title, which is also crazy. It's usually like Silly Goose Mama comfort color shirt. Like, wow, high up there. It's not like a last thought title. So yeah, it's definitely like value added. It's almost like, almost as of this year, like when I first started, I didn't sell comfort colors, but now it's kind of like you need to because people will complain, especially on Etsy. I find on Shopify, not as much depends on your niche as well. But yeah, it's just crazy.
- [10:08]
A
So this is like a, a T shirt thing. Is it also for sweatshirts too?
- [10:12]
B
Not as much. There is the comfort colors. Sweatshirts that are available, they are more expensive, they do sell well. But I like my theory is because less people sell them on Etsy, people aren't as familiar to buy the comfort colors. Sweatshirts, like, still still seems like the Gildan 18,000 is kind of the standard. And then there are a few people who do offer the comfort colors, but it is very expensive kind of to do with print on demand. So I've done like one or two listings with the comfort colors one. But yeah, you have to know that you're just reaching a higher spending buyer for that.
- [10:50]
A
Right. Because you can't make the margins work with how much the sweatshirt costs. Is that what you mean?
- [10:54]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [10:56]
A
Good to know. Good to know. And I've known since dabbling in Print on Demand the last year or so that a lot of the sellers who do like a higher volume, they have Printify Premium or they're like paying extra. Are you also doing that too?
- [11:08]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Because if you Printify Premium, I think it's gone up since the last time I looked at it. So my number might be wrong here, but I still have my mind kind of locked in. I think it was like 29. It might be 39 now for Printify Premium and it saves you up to 20% on everything that you buy. So if you do the math on that, it's usually like make five orders plus a month. Like you are saving money. Like the amount saved is worth upgrading. So it's like kind of like a no question ask type of thing. Like I save way more than $39 by using the Printify Premium and that makes sense.
- [11:45]
A
Cool. Well, I took us off track a little bit on the trends, but I think sometimes it's helpful to know what you actually see moving for product. And helpful tip on comfort colors. We'll all look into that. Thank you.
- [11:56]
B
Yeah, absolutely. These are T shirt trends as well because that's like a definite trend there. And the next one that I have for you is actually club, if I can give some examples. Cat dad Club, Soccer Mom Club, Tired Mom Club. And it has a specific design style for it. I might need your help describing it, but it's kind of this retro. It's usually a two color tone type of design. And for those watching video, here is the Cat Mom Club. So typically in these ones that you see right now, they're usually blue and orange and yeah, it just says Cat mom club or whatever, blank, blank club in kind of this like retro Y font and then usually kind of like sketchy, like not sketchy but sketched looking designs on it. So we have this one here, bestseller listed within the last month. And if you just look up club shirt right now, these are everywhere. Usually specifically for shirts, more so than sweatshirts and more so than other products. But these are doing really well. I'm not sure. Yeah. If you can help me describe this one. Did I get the description for this one right? For those who have art.
- [13:07]
A
Well, I don't know if I should say this because I'm going to take people like off but when I look at this, it almost looks like one of my kids books. Like Cat in the hat vibe looking at this like it looks like designed like a kid's book. Right? Like this sketch a sketchbook looking cat. And then even the way that the cat like font is, it's like somebody drew it and Colored it in, like, they drew block letters and colored it in.
- [13:32]
B
Yeah, exactly. Here, and I'll show you this one so you can see, like, just like how similar this is on other ones doing here. So this one's a bit of an older one. It's very similar. It's a Cat dad club with a slightly different icon, but exactly what you said. Because they kind of look doodled. Like someone drew this on a piece of paper and then gave it two tones. But yeah, I like that. Storybook.
- [13:52]
A
Ish. Retro or like notes you would pass in high school to somebody. Kind of like something like that.
- [13:58]
B
And that's actually like, changed too, because it's funny you say that. This one I thought was more like a retro one, but this trend is actually changing a little bit more to look even more sketched. So lately what I'm noticing is that there is a lot more and more. The new and newer ones are looking more and more and more hand drawn. There's kind of a version of this. So the one that I have open right now is a Tired Mom's Coffee Club with what looks like a pen drawing of a coffee cup and like a coffee maker. And if you look up, like Tired Moms Club right now, it looks like this, but it looks like someone had kind of drawn it out with pen. So they're getting more and more. Less, I guess, edited looking and more exactly. Like you kind of said, someone sketched this out.
- [14:44]
A
Wow. And I. I'm surprised about the orange and the blue. That's kind of like a. Because I would never imagine that color scheme. Like, to me, like, not to say those colors don't match, but it's not like the color palette that I would necessarily pick or, like, think. Right. Like, most people would probably do, like, different shades of blue or something that green and blue or whatever. But no, this is like that bright orange. Orange, Orange, red, orange with. Yeah.
- [15:07]
B
Someone said what was the worst color for print on Demand? Like, just in my head, that I would not do is orange, and that's this. So now that I've seen this trend, I've created designs like this. But would have I have ever picked that color without it being a trend? Probably not.
- [15:22]
A
Yeah. Now this. This last mock up that you showed, it looks, I don't want to say like, better, but it looks more realistic. Like at the bottom, kind of where the shirt is folding, you get the shirt, the design is kind of like crumpling a little bit there. Whereas the other two, particularly the first one that you showed with the mom and the baby, it kind of looks like somebody just took like a flat image and just like shoved the design right on it. I'm curious in the age of AI and like, what you're seeing because the first one was a bestseller, despite the fact that it was like not a great mockup or realistic mockup. What are you kind of seeing in this space in terms of mockups?
- [15:58]
B
So it's kind of a mix of both. A lot of you, especially right now, the ones I'm showing you actually are typically like a model wearing these mock ups. But if you actually look at what's typically trending right now on mock ups, it's usually flat images like a folded T shirt or a folded sweatshirt so that people don't have to add those curves. But for me, whenever I do create a model mockup, and I've done this before, AI and I've done YouTube videos on it as well, but I'll use photopea.com, which is like a free version of Photoshop, and I'll just warp the design a little bit. And you can also add like the shadows that match, kind of the dip of the kind of T shirt or sweatshirt. And especially for me, running like social media for my Shopify brand, like, I want that to look as realistic as possible, so I won't do it for every mock up because it would take all of my time. I typically stick to mostly like flat mock ups that don't have curves, so I don't have to worry about that. But if I want that mock up and I want it to look realistic and I really like a design, I will spend the extra time and worry about maybe like the first mockup that I pick, worrying about kind of how the front looks. But I would say that's actually pretty rare in print on demand for people to do. I think typically people keep it simpler and just try to find the mock ups that don't have like the twists and turns to it.
- [17:17]
A
And so when you're saying like you sold 3 million, are you, you're doing it like with the folded thing or like, did you used to use a lot of models? Or like this year, Because I'm bringing this up because there's been a lot of hysteria in the groups over that new New York law or bill that passed where if anyone doesn't know about this, basically New York passed a bill where if you're using AI models in ads, you need to disclose that. And I bet they're doing it because they don't want influencers Selling like face products and it's like a face, a fake person. Like I don't think they're worried about Etsy sellers and their mock ups right now. Right. But we all are just kind of watching and interpreting it. And I think most people are waiting to see what Etsy says before they go and update like a hundred million listings. That's, that's the approach that we typically take. Although we're not lawyers, let's say that. But yeah, I'm just curious, like, you know, if you're like, hey, they don't, the models actually like don't even add value. It's like, oh, let's forget about it then. Let's just show, you know. I'm assuming you mean like the first image is not a person. It's like a folded sweatshirt or T shirt that's laying down and you find that actually outsells or is that like, you know, has not been your experience? I'm just curious.
- [18:27]
B
No, yeah, I think the folded shirts do so well. Like if you look up a comfort color shirt right now, there is one specific folded mock up that like Maybe more than 75%, 80, 90% use the same folded mock up and get bestsellers. And like I even tested, I had model mockups. I duplicated my listings and tests with this new like folder folded mockup that was doing really well and that still killed it. I run Facebook ads for Shopify with folded mockups. But even before like Etsy didn't allow AI'd photos as your main like Etsy listing photo. So I never had that to begin with. If I did have like model photos, there were ones that I bought on Etsy that were advertised as real kind of photo shoots. There's a Facebook group for like all these mockup creators who actually take their photos and don't use AI. So I'll usually go in and support those ones. Then I don't have to worry about it. And I can still like put my like photo on a mockup without AI. So the photo is a lot more legit, the person's not fake. But if you really, really want to be safe using a folded mockup right now more than ever is completely fine.
- [19:31]
A
Yeah. And you're talking about the thumbnail, the folded. But then the models you would kind of use for some of the other images.
- [19:37]
B
Yeah, yeah. So you can use them for like social media or you can use them like as secondary photos or something. But like even if you wanted to spend some time just looking through like T shirts on Etsy and Going through them. A lot of them just use the mock ups or like the folded mock ups or like a flat life photo is also coming in really popular now. So it's just like laid out on a floor so you don't have to worry about the mockup or the person using it. And typically those ones don't have folds in the design like either. So creating the mock up is also just a whole lot easier.
- [20:10]
A
Yep, that makes sense. Now I'm just curious while we're talking about the listings, I went in this week and now you can add two videos. So there's a lot of conversation about that. Not everyone has this yet. I heard it's not everyone wide. It's maybe they're rolling it out kind of in waves. So there's that. And then recently they went from somewhat recently 10 to 20 photos and it's kind of, it can be overwhelming. Like people could think oh, do I have to do that many? I'm curious in your experience as someone that's sold a lot of volume like and kind of make it more recently, are you maximizing? Are you doing like truly 20 images? Are you closer to 10 or are you like I call it, I do three and call it a day and it's fine. Like I'm just curious your thoughts and if you plan to do the second video.
- [20:54]
B
Yeah, so I am a minimalist when it comes to that. Like I make sure I have one mock up per color I offer. So I don't even offer that many colors. I don't like to give people decision fatigue when it comes to ordering print on demand. I see some people offer like 40 different colors and that's just really overwhelming when you have four shades of green. I offer usually five of the best selling colors for each. Either a sweatshirt or a T shirt. And you can find that information from Printify as well. They share what the top selling colors are. So I kind of just list those. I make sure I have one mock up for each. I have usually a quality guarantee photo card and just an information photo card. So typically I'm like at like six, seven or eight photos. And then when it comes to videos, what my videos are, it is just a quick slideshow of those mockups. So if you're on Canva, all you have to do is select all your things, save them as 0.5 seconds and save it as an MP3 or MP4 and then upload that. I don't like to quickly flip away to an irrelevant video. If you have ever tried to make AI videos Before as well, like it's going to eat away at all of your money. And if it turns out and it looks like I'm a big believer in if, if it doesn't look accurate and something in your photos makes someone go like, hmm, this makes me feel a little bit sketchy. Like your video looks too AI or doesn't really fit. Right. Like I feel like it could just be a big flag for someone not to purchase from you. So maybe not overdoing it and giving those people but making sure they have all the information to make the purchase to begin with.
- [22:25]
A
Got it. That makes tons of sense. Now I think there are some people listening like, well, where do I find in Printify what the colors are? Is that like something that they're, they have like a blog post that you can link to or they, they navigate like I link to it in the description of this YouTube video. Or is it like for each style of product then they'll tell you for the product?
- [22:44]
B
Yeah, I think it's in Printify Insights, which I know a while ago, which I haven't checked. I had Printify Premium you get access to after you make a certain amount of sales. I think they might have opened that up but I haven't had a non paid account in a while to check that. Um, but I can make another YouTube video on that as well for people who are interested in that. But yeah, typically like the best selling. If you don't have it, one thing to do is just go through Etsy and see what other people are listing.
- [23:12]
A
Yeah.
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B
But for comfort colors it's typically ivory pepper. I usually use bay, but yeah, there's like a handful of ones that are kind of up there.
- [23:20]
A
Got it. Thank you. Yeah. Because I have people listening, they're like, oh, now I want to know what are the colors. But I, I'm not shocked about ivory. Like, like always top seller.
- [23:29]
B
Yes.
- [23:30]
A
Is there a pink one? A pink or yellow one?
- [23:32]
B
There's. Yeah, there's butter which I can see doing really well. I think that one's dependent on the design. I don't always list butter. I have like my few ivory, pepper, espresso, moss and bay are the ones I'll typically list with. And then butter I'll throw in depending on the design. Champ chambray, chambray, butterfly, I'll throw in depending on the design. But I don't go too crazy. Those are typically the ones that you'll see listed.
- [24:01]
A
How can I forget espresso? I feel like as a millennial, when I first saw that it didn't make sense to me. I was like, people want to wear like brown. What? Because also for my kids there's always like, you know, pick your favorite color day or something or, and then, or like color day and then they'll put brown on the school list. And I'm like, really? Like, you think like a six year old girl has like a whole bunch of brown stuff that I can just like pull up. But now espresso is, it's hot. It's where it's at.
- [24:26]
B
So my wardrobe, I'm wearing a brown shirt right now. I have like a problem where everything I buy is brown and my like whole wardrobe was like, I need to buy color. A color would be nice.
- [24:38]
A
Yes. I cannot say the same. But also with the kids, I have not purchased new clothes in a while, so I'm anticipating a glow up this summer and maybe like in the next few videos you guys will see my outfits and be like, wow, like she's really gone through a transformation. Um, but I would say right now everything I have is like, it, you could spill baby food on it or like someone spit up on it or something. Like it is. There's no sense of buying new clothes. I don't know what size I am. There's just like a whole thing. But this summer blow up, I can see it. So, okay, so we've, we've done a bunch of trends. I, I want to make sure before we end the episode that we talk to you about your Shopify experience, because I feel like that's something unique. And a lot of us in the Etsy space, we've, we see the opportunity with running like meta ads, but we think it's a bad idea to run meta ads directly to Etsy because you could be like sending your customer to a bunch of other people. But obviously Shopify, you're sending your customer right down the bowling alley of only
- [25:35]
B
you, you, you, you.
- [25:36]
A
And then they make the purchase and it's kind of done. But it's a lot of work to set up a Shopify brand. So I'm just curious, like, I'd love to hear how you got into that and maybe like how profitable it is compared to your Etsy stuff. Because I bet we have people listening who are like, well, I want to hear like, is this worth my time? Like if you're, if it's only like 10% of your sales and 90% are Etsy, maybe they're like, oh, I'm not interested. I'm gonna stick with what I'm doing. But you know, if you're like, oh, actually, like, it's like 80% of my sales right now or whatever, then maybe we would have some people that are kind of curious. So anything you want to share with us I think would help us understand the opportunity.
- [26:08]
B
Yeah, so I kind of got started. I had this big, I don't know if you remember a while ago, like maybe two years ago, there was the big, big thing where Etsy was taking down stores that used mockups. People's stores were being suspended all over my YouTube with people being like, etsy's done. This is the end. And I was like, my one. My store hasn't been hit. But maybe it did spark a little bit of this mania of like, okay, maybe I should have a backup. So I started on Shopify and I will be honest with people, Shopify is a lot more work. Like Etsy is how I feel is like my passive. And people are going to be mad when I say passive. But I do have a VA who runs my Etsy now, so it's pretty passive for me. It just feels like my little silent moneymaker on the side. And when I list listings, they go both on Shopify and on Etsy. So it's not just for one platform anymore versus Shopify. I am constantly writing emails, emailing my email list, monitoring my ads, creating new ads. But it's free, fun. There's a lot more data to look at. So it depends kind of where you lean. I am at a point where I'm probably making double on Shopify in profit that I am on Etsy. But if you compare the dollar per hour though, I've also had my Etsy store live for a long time. So it's also had the data kind of built up behind it. So when people think they can easily move over to Shopify, I don't think it's like the easiest jump over. It's not the same rules, but if you already have the designs there, you already know what niche you kind of want to go into. You kind of have a head start. Like usually the best sellers for me on Etsy were my best sellers on Shopify. So I already knew which ones to run ad money towards. So it's kind of a little bit of a crazy answer, but I love having just if anything happens to my Etsy store, I have Shopify. I'm not going to. It's not going to be the end of the world, which I think is a lot of people's concern sometimes when it comes to Etsy, it is More work. But it can be really fun. I have a lot of fun on Shopify. There is something always new to do. Something new you can try. If you just like designing and listing and you don't care about data and you don't want to run email, maybe just stick to Etsy. But I know a lot of people are interested, especially when they come to think of like, hey, I've got my brand on Etsy now how do I say scale this up? And I think that would be like kind of the logical next step if you're in for the next little round of your e commerce life, I guess. Yes.
- [28:37]
A
And I, I find that stuff fun, which is why, you know, Gold City ventures and the YouTube channel and an email list, like those are things that I like to do. But I, I can totally see depending on where someone is in their life and their interest level, they might be like, I'm not up for learning the tech behind email lists or meta targeting or whatever, but if they are, I have a question for you. I was in meta the other day and there's two competing things. One, they want you to use what is the advantage plus audience, which is I'm going to, they're going to use whatever they know magic behind the scenes and they're going to find who's interested in this and they really are like, just let it rip, let it rip. Like, don't even pick anything. Don't pick men versus women, just boom, let it go. Or they're like, oh, there are all these interest based targeting, like people whose birthday is in April or like friends of people that are mothers or like there's just like very like unique things. I'm curious what you're seeing in like 2026 if you're running these Shopify ads. Like, do you have any targeting tips? Are you on the team let it rip or are you like using some of those nifty audiences?
- [29:37]
B
I'm team test both. So I have like, and right now it's funny because I'm running two Shopify brands right now. One was started this year and then I have my longer running one and for both of them I tested like audience plus, no targeting. Just like I said letter rip. And then I've done like a broad targeting one where I was just interest targeting. So many people on YouTube said go broad, don't do any interest targeting. But for my brands at least, and for what I was doing, it actually started where the broad worked better. But over time, weirdly like the interest started doing a lot better. So I, I think this one can be really dependent on what you sell, what your creatives are. Like, how big is your market, Are they super niche where it's like only right handed people are going to want this. But I definitely think I run two different ad sets. So have a campaign and two different ad sets. Test the same ads in a non targeted and then a targeted and then it's just a whole lot easier to not have to wonder which one was right for your brand. You'll get the answers after a while.
- [30:42]
A
And I'm just curious, you know, in terms of the creative, a lot of us, we are like, okay, now do I have to go make all these like new videos or can I just literally like run my main thumbnail? Like do you have any tips on, on that? Like what type of creative people need to, to shoot in order to test this out?
- [31:00]
B
Yeah. So for print on demand, I just run my main thumbnail. Like I will create a new list or a new ad for every single like kind of new product I put up and then I'll start to see which one is doing well. And if I see one design that's doing better than the others, then I'll go in and I'll start like maybe trying a few different mockups with it. I'll try a model mockup. I'll try a flat mockup. One of my best sellers kind of turned out that way where I tested it and it did really well. And then I created like five new model mockups and then one of those did really, really well. So it's kind of test, see what does well and then see if you can make it even better by like throwing in some more ver, like variations of it.
- [31:38]
A
I, I kind of love that and I think it's such good advice. Right. Because we all want to listen to a million podcasts and watch YouTube videos about finding the secret sauce. But at the end of the day it's like you literally the, the quickest way to learn is just to put some money behind it and try it. Although it can be a little scary, right? Putting some money behind it.
- [31:54]
B
Absolutely. And their business is not your business. Yours can be very different.
- [31:57]
A
Yep. I totally like love the idea of doing this. And this, this sounds super fun. So if somebody was curious about this, do you post about the Shopify stuff on your YouTube channel?
- [32:08]
B
Yes. So this year I've started. Last year I had a few videos, but this year in 2026, I'm doing a lot more Shopify content. I just finished working on my ultimate checklist for Shopify. I've had my Etsy one live for a while, which people have really loved, and asked for the Shopify version, which is now live as of this week. So, yeah, if people want to learn more about Shopify or Etsy, it is on my YouTube channel at C U Online.
- [32:32]
A
Awesome. Well, Christina, thank you so much. I love how we started with some fun trends that people can explore, but then also we talked about some of the the questions that all of us sort of have on the deep dive of Print on Demand, both on Etsy and Shopify. So this was super, super informative. It's so fun. Thank you. I'm so glad we got to meet through this. And thanks for coming.
- [32:53]
B
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.