How to Set Up a Print-on-Demand Store and Start Selling Fast

Print-on-demand (POD) lets you sell custom products, i.e., T-shirts, mugs, phone cases, business cards, and more, without holding any inventory. Products are printed and shipped only when a customer places an order. No stock, no waste, no upfront cost.

This doc walks you through everything you need to get your POD store up and running.

What You Need to Get Started

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A WordPress site with WooCommerce installed.
Smart Product Designer – lets customers design their own products directly on your store.
A print supplier or in-house printer to fulfill orders.

Step 1: Choose Your Products

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Decide which products you want to sell. Good starting points for POD stores include:

Apparel: T-shirts, hoodies, caps
Drinkware: mugs, bottles
Stationery: business cards, notebooks, posters
Accessories: phone cases, tote bags, keyrings

Start with two or three products. You can always expand once your store is running.

Step 2: Add Products to Your Store

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Go to Admin → Products → Add New.
Enter the product name, description, and price.
Upload a product image.
Set the product type, use Simple Product for a single item or Variable Product if the product comes in different sizes or colors.
Publish the product.

Selling variable products? See How to Sell Variable Products with Custom Design Options for step-by-step instructions.

Step 3: Set Up the Product Designer

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Smart Product Designer allows customers to personalize products before they buy, adding text, photos, cliparts, shapes, and QR codes directly on your product page.

Navigate to WordPress Admin → Products → Smart Product Designer.
Go to the Design Templates tab and click Add New Design Template.
Give the template a name (e.g. T-shirt Design, Mug Design).
Click Add Side, give it a name (e.g. Front, Back), and upload a mockup image for that side.
Repeat to add more sides if needed (e.g. Sleeve).
Under the Fonts tab, select or upload the fonts available to customers.
Under the Shapes and Clip Arts tabs, add shapes and clipart for customers to use. Set an additional fee for each if needed using the Additional Fee field.
Save the template.

Full setup guide: See How to Let Customers Design Their Own Products on Your Store for a detailed walkthrough.

Step 4: Set Your Pricing

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Price your products to cover the cost of printing and still make a profit. A simple formula:

Selling Price = Print Cost + Packaging & Shipping + Your Margin

Smart Product Designer also supports per-element pricing — you can charge extra when customers add cliparts, upload photos, or add a back print. This is set up in the design template under the Additional Fee field.

Step 5: Link the Design Template to Your Product

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Go to Admin → Products and open the product.
Scroll to the Product Data panel and click the Product Designer tab.
In the Choose product designer template dropdown, select the template you created.
Click Update.

Customers can now personalize this product directly on your store.

Step 6: Test the Customer Experience

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Before going live, place a test order yourself:

Visit your product page as a customer.
Click the Design button and try adding text, an image, and a clipart.
Add to cart and complete checkout.
Check that the order appears correctly in WooCommerce → Orders.
Click Print Design to confirm the PDF downloads correctly.

Step 7: Fulfill Orders

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When a customer places an order:

Go to WooCommerce → Orders and open the order.
Click Print Design next to the product to download the print-ready PDF.
Send the PDF to your print supplier or print it in-house.
Pack and ship the order.

That’s it. No manual file chasing, every order comes with a production-ready file.

What Customers See

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They click the Design button on the product page.
The designer opens with all the tools you enabled, i.e. text, image upload, cliparts, shapes, QR codes.
If the product has multiple sides, they switch between them using side tabs (e.g. Front / Back).
They click Add to Cart and check out normally.
The cart and order confirmation show a thumbnail of their design.
After purchase, they can view all past designs in My Account → Orders, which is useful for reorders.