How to Find a Good Niche for Print on Demand in 2024

The popularity of “print on demand” (POD) as a business model is exploding – and it’s easy to see why.

Print on demand gives entrepreneurs a low-risk way to start selling custom products online, without asking them to handle the complexities of creating and shipping products themselves.

However, while launching a print on demand business is often easier than creating a “traditional” ecommerce company, there are still steps you’ll need to take to ensure your venture is a success.

One of the biggest challenges I see new business owners facing in this space, involves finding the right niche.

I know a lot of entrepreneurs see choosing a specific niche for their business as counterproductive to growth, as a “niche focus” narrows your target audience.

However, the right niche can be the key to giving you an edge over the competition, reducing your marketing costs, and improving your relationships with future customers.

Here’s how you can choose a profitable niche for your new POD brand.

Finding a Niche for POD: Key Takeaways

• As the print on demand landscape grows increasingly competitive, choosing a lucrative niche is becoming crucial to ensuring your business can thrive and grow.
• There are various strategies you can use to identify a niche for your company. Most of which include conducting market research, and examining emerging trends.
• Validating your niche is essential before you start building your POD company. It’s important to check that you can actually earn a profit selling your chosen products.
• Digital tools can help you with analyzing and discovering niches. Consider using solutions like Google Trends, or SEO research software like Ahrefs and SEMRush.
• For smaller businesses, it often makes sense to start with a relatively narrow niche, before expanding into other markets and opportunities.
• Choose the right print on demand company. There are plenty of POD suppliers out there, such as Printful or Printify wich are the most popular.

What is a Niche? The Basics for POD Companies

A niche is a specific “segment” of the market you’ll target with your print on demand products and branding. Your niche can be relatively broad like “all pet owners”, or highly targeted, such as “pet owners with exotic cats”.

In the print-on-demand landscape, a niche helps you to identify what kind of customers you’re going to be creating products for, and what their goals and preferences are.

For instance, you might decide to create clothing for eco-conscious customers who are concerned about sustainability. Alternatively, you might create custom home décor for young homeowners purchasing their first house.

There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to selecting the right POD niches, as opportunities in the industry are constantly evolving. As market trends and consumers change, new niche opportunities emerge alongside them.

For instance, rising interest in health and wellness has led to an influx of companies creating customized home workout equipment for fitness fans.

The key to success in the business world, is choosing a niche that’s highly profitable, and not overly competitive.

The more competition you need to fight against for your target audience, the more you’ll spend on marketing and sales strategies.

Why Choosing the Right Niche Matters

As I mentioned above, when most entrepreneurs decide to launch their own business, they’ll want to capture the attention of as many customers as possible.

You might assume that you’ll earn more customers as a clothing company if you sell products designed to appeal to people from every age group, gender, and background.

However, the reality is that the broader your “target audience” is, the harder it will be to capture the attention of buyers and earn their loyalty.

Customers already have countless vendors to choose from when purchasing generic products. The best way to set your company apart, is to focus on the distinct needs and preferences of a particular group.

Choosing the right niche for your print on demand company will help identify you as the “ideal option” for the customers you target.

This is particularly important as competition in the POD market continues to grow.

By 2031, experts predict the POD space will be worth around $45.6 billion, leading to a lot of companies selling similar products online.

With a carefully defined niche you can:

• Reduce customer acquisition costs: Choosing a specific niche for your POD company ensures you can create highly targeted and tailored marketing campaigns. Instead of casting a wide net with broad and expensive marketing strategies, you can unlock better results, creating campaigns that directly appeal to a specific audience.
• Improve customer relationships: Focusing on a specific niche means learning as much as you can about the specific pain points and goals of a certain audience. The more information you gather, the more you’ll be able to create highly unique solutions for your customers, improving your chances of long-term loyalty.
• Increase revenue: If the POD products you create are less “general” and more focused than other alternatives, you can potentially charge more for them. A niche differentiates you from other competing companies in your market, and opens the door for higher profit margins.

Identifying your Niche: How to Search for POD Niches

The good news for new vendors in the POD landscape is there are plenty of “niche opportunities” out there. The biggest challenge is figuring out which market you should be focusing on.

There are three steps I recommend taking when you’re narrowing down your options:

Step 1: Start with your Passions and Interests

Choosing your POD niches based on what you learn about market trends and potential profit margins can sometimes be a good strategy.

However, the chances are you’ll achieve much better results if you start with what you know. Growing a thriving print on demand business requires substantial investment in product development, brand development, and marketing strategies.

All of these things are easier if you already have a deep knowledge of your chosen market. If you’re passionate about a specific industry or sector, then the chances are you’re already aware of the market trends in that space, and how they’re affecting consumers.

You’ll be able to design products that address the pain points you already understand (or have dealt with yourself).

Plus, you’ll be able to position yourself as a thought leader when creating marketing content, as you’ll be able to share your own authentic opinions and insights with customers.

Look at things like:

• Your hobbies: What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working? Are you a huge fan of technology and gaming? Do you love learning about fashion and following the latest clothing trends? Are you obsessed with sustainability, and reducing your carbon footprint.
• Work experience: What kind of jobs have you worked in before? Which industries do you know a lot about? For instance, if you’ve worked as a vet or a pet shop owner before, you might do well focusing on the pets and animal products space in print on demand.
• Your education: Have you taken any courses or earned certifications in a specific space? Maybe you’re incredible well-informed about the health and fitness landscape, or have a lot of contacts in this sector. If you already have a strong education in a space, you’ll find it easier to create marketing content that appeals to your customers.

Step 2: Evaluating Market Demand and Profit Potential

Once you’ve identified some POD niches aligned with your interests and passions, the next stage is determining which niche options have the best potential to generate profit.

While it’s difficult to predict how trends and buying behaviors will evolve over time, there are some tools you can use to help you evaluate market demand.

For instance, Google Trends can show you how searches for a specific topic have increased or declined over time.

For instance, you might notice that searches for “Zumba” in the fitness landscape have declined over the last year, but searches for “Pilates” have increased.

SEO tools can also give you a deeper insight into market trends. Google’s Keyword planner, or tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush can show you how many people are searching for a term online. If search volumes are high, this indicates a clear market demand.

Social listening tools are another resource I recommend using to assess the current state of the market in your chosen niche.

You can use these tools to track what customers are saying about a product or service. They can also give you insights into opportunities to differentiate yourself from the competition, by highlighting what customers say when they review another product.

Other great resources to use for market research include:

• Social media: Check out what customers are saying about certain products on social media channels like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram. Track what kind of products influencers in your industry review, and which features they draw attention to.
• Marketplaces: Marketplaces like Amazon can offer a fantastic insight into trending products. You can use tools like Amazon’s “Best Sellers” and “Trending” lists to see which items are particularly popular in your chosen landscape.
• Market reports: Market reports published by companies like Fortune Insights and Gartner can highlight upcoming trends, with valuable statistics. They can give you an overview of changing market behaviors and preferences in the POD space.

Step 3: Examining the Competition

Finally, before you commit to a specific niche, one of the most important things you can do is learn as much as you can about your competition.

Even if you choose a highly specific niche, such as “Eco-conscious mothers buying maternity clothes”, there are likely to be similar companies in your space offering similar solutions.

Evaluating your direct and indirect competitors serves various purposes, it can:

• Help you evaluate niche profitability: Checking out the competition and how they price their print on demand products should give you an insight into the potential profit margins you can achieve in a certain space. You can compare the prices companies charge with the average product design and development costs charged by print on demand vendors.
• Show you if the marketplace is too cluttered: If you discover there are a lot of competitors in your chosen niche, this could indicate the market is already oversaturated. This might mean you need to consider narrowing your niche further, or exploring a new product category, if you think there might not be space for you in your chosen market.
• Introduce differentiation strategies: Examining your competitors carefully and looking at the benefits and “unique selling points” they offer your customers can be an excellent way to find valuable points of differentiation. For instance, you might be able to draw customers away from a competitor by using more sustainable materials, or offering faster shipping.

Notably, if you search for products offering similar solutions in your market and don’t find any companies, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve chosen an excellent niche.

Too little competition indicates there may not be a big enough customer base for you to target.

Creating a Successful Print on Demand Business

Your research into market trends, and opportunities, and the information you gather through “competition analysis” should give you the insights you need to select a profitable niche.

However, once you’ve chosen your niche, don’t assume the hard work is over.

You still need to build a memorable brand, capture the attention of customers with the right marketing strategies, and design incredible products.

Building Your Brand Around Your Niche

Over the years, I’ve seen countless companies struggle to survive in the print on demand space, simply because they don’t invest enough time in developing a brand.

Your brand isn’t just the logo you place on your products, packaging materials and website. It’s everything that differentiates your company from the competition, from your marketing messages, to your customer service strategy.

A strong brand identity is how you forge an emotional connection with your audience, earning their loyalty, and even turning them into advocates for your company.

Consistent branding can also pave the way for higher profits, with 68% of companies saying a “consistent” brand strategy has helped them to increase their revenue.

Based on the information you’ve gathered about your target audience, competitors, and wider market, develop your:

• Brand image: Work with a designer or use free graphic design tools to create a memorable logo that conveys the essence, vision, and values of your brand. Decide on a set of brand colors you’ll use in your marketing and packaging materials, and create a set of guidelines for your assets, covering things like typography choices, photography strategies and more.
• Tone of voice: Look at how customers talk about products in your niche, and how they communicate with each other. Your aim should be to develop a tone of voice for your marketing materials that resonates with your target audience.
• Customer service strategy: Identify how you’ll interact with your customers, and ensure they get an excellent experience when buying from your company. How will you respond to complaints and customer requests? How will you delight your audience by ensuring you create high-quality products, and deliver them as quickly as possible?

With all of this information in place, you can start building marketing campaigns that appeal to your specific niche.

You might create a website where you share blogs and thought leadership content based on keywords and phrases you know your customers are searching for.

You could also create social media marketing strategies, connecting with consumers across channels like Pinterst, Instagram, and Facebook Ads.

These strategies could include sharing product pictures and videos, posting testimonials from other customers, or even working with influencers.

Designing Products that Resonate with your Niche

One of the best things about the print on demand business model, is that you can side-step some of the most complicated stages of product development.

You don’t need to source materials and print products yourself, as your vendor will handle all of that for you.

However, that doesn’t mean you don’t need a product design strategy. When it comes to developing incredible, profitable products, there are a few tips I recommend to POD brands:

Research your POD partner:

One of the first things you’ll need to do when building a print on demand company, is choose the right partner. There are plenty of POD companies out there, such as Printful or Printify.

However, the quality of their products, the variety they offer, and even the customization options available vary drastically.

Learn as much as you can about your partner’s production process, the materials they use, their standards for quality checks, and even their approach to sustainability.

Tailor your products to your target audience:

This might sound like an obvious step, but there are plenty of POD companies who do the work of choosing a niche, only to create generic products that could appeal to anyone.

When designing your products, ask yourself what your ideal customers are looking for.

For instance, if you’re targeting the “eco-conscious” consumer niche, you should be creating products with non-toxic inks and sustainable materials.

If you’re focusing on the health and fitness niche, look at how you can design your products to help customers achieve their wellness goals.

Leverage Customer feedback and insights

One good thing about print on demand is you can experiment with offering your customers a range of products, without having to commit to purchasing large volumes of inventory.

Offering a range of products on your website will help you to gather insights into customer preferences, by monitoring how many customers purchase a specific solution.

You can use this information, as well as feedback from customers in the form of reviews, social media mentions, and even complaints to make better decisions about how to design products in the future.

What are the Best Print On Demand Niches?

As I mentioned previously, the best print on demand niches are constantly changing, as customer preferences and buying behaviors evolve.

In 2024, I’ve noticed a few POD niches that seem particularly profitable for growing companies, such as:

Pet Owners

People happily spend increasing amounts of money on their furry friends every year. In fact, studies show that over 71% of buyers spend more on their pets than they do on themselves.

If you’re looking for a narrower niche focus, consider specializing in products for specific breeds, or explore the opportunities in custom pet subscription boxes.

Fitness and Wellness

The fitness and wellness landscape has seen a huge increase in demand in recent years, ever since the pandemic. While the landscape is relatively broad, there are plenty of sub-categories you can focus on to reduce your competition.

For instance, you might look at mental health and wellness, creating products for the meditation sector, or you could produce products for yoga or CrossFit fans.

Sustainability

Sustainability is one of the biggest market trends in the POD landscape. As consumers become more aware of their impact on the environment, many are prioritizing buying eco-friendly solutions.

One report even found 81% of people prefer to buy from sustainable brands. Work with a POD vendor that specializes in sustainable materials, and eco-friendly packaging options.

Hobbies and Crafts

Hobbies, crafts, and DIY have all become increasingly popular in recent years. During the pandemic, consumers rediscovered their love for “creating” things, leading to an influx of buyers purchasing knitting kits, painting equipment, and more.

You could even create special accessories for crafters, like tote bags where customers can store their knitting equipment.

Pop Culture and Fandoms

There’s a “fandom” for almost everything in today’s world. Focusing your print on demand business on a specific “pop culture” sensation is a great way to capture the attention of an enthusiastic and committed audience.

You could create products that resonate with the lovers of certain books, movies, television shows, or even video games.

Seasonal or Holiday Products

While you might assume that selling seasonal products would only earn you a profit a couple of times a year, there are more national and international holidays than you might realize.

You could create special products for the festive Christmas or Hannukah season, or design products related to lesser-known days, like “National pet lover’s day”.

Personal Development

Just as consumers have started investing more heavily in their health and wellbeing in recent years, they’re also focusing more on personal development.

Consumers are increasingly looking for products that can help to drive them towards their goals, such as calendars, notebooks, and planners, and even books on motivation and self-improvement.

Travel and Adventure

Though the travel landscape experienced a slight slump during the pandemic, demand for adventure is now higher than ever.

People from every country are rediscovering their love of exploration, presenting an excellent opportunity for print on demand companies.

You can create everything from custom luggage, to hiking and camping gear with the right POD vendor.

Food and Beverage Enthusiasts

Food isn’t just a necessity for some people, it’s also a passion. If you can find the right print on demand vendor, you can make a fortune selling everything from custom coffee blends (packaged in your own branded bags), to food supplements and drinks.

You could even sell cooking and baking equipment, such as whisks and cutlery sets.

Technology and Gadgets

Finally, technology remains one of the fastest-growing industries in the world today. There are plenty of ways for companies to get started in this POD niche too.

You can create cases for smartphones, sleeves and covers for laptops, or custom keyboards and mice. You could even design custom headsets, or sell personalized charging stations for devices.

Finding your Print on Demand Niche

As the print on demand landscape continues to evolve and expand, it’s more important than ever for new vendors to ensure they’re focusing on the right niche.

Carefully evaluating market trends, competitors, and evolving opportunities in your space will help you choose a niche that strengthens your chances of success in the POD landscape.

Remember, as your business grows, you can always branch out and expand your niche, exploring new related opportunities to capture a wider market share.

FAQs

How to know if a niche is too saturated?

The best way to determine whether a niche is overly saturated is with comprehensive market research.

You can use SEO tools like SEMRush to see whether competition for certain terms, such as “sustainable pet products” is extremely high.

You can also look for examples of competing companies who have branched into new areas, because they’re struggling to make a profit with certain products.

Can any interest be turned into a profitable niche?

Not necessarily. Choosing a niche that aligns with your passions and hobby is a great way to improve your chances of building a successful company.

However, if your interests are extremely specific, you might find there’s not enough of an audience for the products you want to sell.

Alternatively, if your interests are broad, you might find there’s too much competition in your market.

What are the most common mistakes when choosing a POD niche?

Some of the most common mistakes POD companies make when choosing a niche include:

• Not aligning their niche to their passions
• Choosing a niche that’s too broad, or too narrow
• Failing to validate a niche’s profitability with market research
• Not tailoring products to their target audience
• Picking a niche that’s oversaturated or too competitive