Print on Demand Mockups – Options for All Sellers

Hey everybody in this video we are going to talk all about mock-ups we’ll talk about a strategy for mock-ups for your Etsy print on demand shop as well as all the different sources of product mock-ups that I use for my Etsy print on demand business all right so I get questions about

Mock-ups all the time in the comments on other YouTube videos on the Pod insights channel so I thought it’d be good idea just to make a video kind of all about the mock-up strategy that I use for my shop and I want to start things off by talking about your mock-up strategy

There’s something that you should think about just like a lot of other things with your print on demand business before you go too far down One path because if you change your mind at some point you may need to redo a lot of the work you already did but thankfully this

Shouldn’t be a really hard decision because it’s really just going to be about what is the strategy of your print on demand shop what we need to do is really just consider is your shop strategy focused around building a brand like a consistent brand image that brings people to your shop home page

Coming back to your business or are you primarily a business that gets found through search meaning you’ll sell any type of design you don’t really make a lot of repeat sales or at least the core of your sales are not coming from people going to your shop page and browsing

Everything it’s really that you’re trying to sell through search results if you didn’t notice in the background I brought up an example here I have no affiliation with this shop it’s just one that I came across that I thought was a good example of more of a focused brand

Image so this shop has a consistent look to all of their mock-ups they’re using a lot of the same mock-up for their different T-shirt design products and they have a few other products mixed in here some sweatshirts and and what I’m seeing is maybe like three or four

Different primary mock-ups that they are using over and over again and as long as those primary mock-ups are good quality mock-ups then it is perfectly fine to use them over and over again you don’t have to have every single listing have the exact same primary thumbnail but

It’s okay to you know pick a core set of like three or four different ones to use for t-shirts and just use those for all your listings now this shop doesn’t only make design in one particular Niche but if you did that would be yet even another reason to have a consistent look

And feel to your mock-ups whereas if you’re doing more of a general print on demand store like I do where you get most of your views clicks and sales through search results and not really so much about the you know the shopping from the home page and repeat sales then

It doesn’t matter quite so much that all of your mock-ups look consistent have the same look and feel people are generally not shopping as much from your home page they’re finding your designs specific niches through search results so consider those things what’s your shop strategy and are you trying to

Build that consistent look and feel to the brand of your shop so if that’s going to be your strategy let’s talk about the options you have and how to make some mock-ups for your products and then we’ll talk about doing it for a more General Store second one of the

Most common ways to make consistent mock-ups where you have that sort of like core set of three or four for each type of product you sell and then just reuse them over and over is actually to get mock-up images from other Etsy sellers that sell digital downloads I

Just searched for Bella canvas 3001 mock-up you would want to search for whatever type of product you’re going to sell because you want the mock-up to be an accurate representation of the product itself as well as the design so if you’re selling Bella canvas 3001 then search for that if you’re selling Gildan

Soft style search for that if you’re selling Comfort colors search for that you will find a very wide range of different mock-ups here the thing is just look for a style that feels like it fits the brand image you’re trying to build so for example if this first one

Here from this shop I’m familiar with this shop I’ve bought a couple of their mock-ups before myself if this is something that it looks like the look and feel is going to fit your brand maybe go to that shop page and see what all of their different collections are

See if they offer any of these bundles and check out the pricing on those sometimes you can get a pretty good deal on like all of the color variations for a particular product but let’s say you found you know three or four of the Bella canvas 3001 that you thought like

These are going to be my core three or four at 250 a piece it’s not crazy expensive especially if you’re going to reuse it over and over again for a long time and Etsy is certainly not the only place to get these if you have a subscription to a site like creative

Fabrica you can also find some mock-ups like this there so for example on Creative fabric I search for the same thing Bella canvas 3001 and there are some mock-ups here so if you already have a subscription to a service like creative Fabrica this can be another place where you might find

Some mock-ups that could be a good fit and then you don’t have to pay anything more than you already do for the subscription by the way any resources I mentioned in this video there will be a link in the description all right but whether you pay for some individual

Mock-ups like this from another Etsy seller who makes them or whether you get them from a resource like creative Fabrica regardless what you’re going to get is either a PNG or a JPEG file and then it’s up to you to actually create the mock-ups from that and there are a

Ton of different ways that you can do it really it just depends on what software you normally use for your designing if you use Photoshop then you can certainly use Photoshop to make your mock-ups if you use canva you can use canva whatever software you use you can use it for the

Mock-ups too but for example if you use canva to make your designs all you have to do is create a new design I would recommend making your mock-ups at least 2 000 by 2000 pixels when you create create a a new mock-up or if you save

Sort of like a project file as a template to create your mock-ups I’d recommend doing at least 2 000 by 2000 because Etsy likes the images to be at least that size then all you have to do is upload the file that you purchased for your mock-ups as well as the design

File if you don’t already have that in canva or whichever software you’re using all right so here’s an image that we got to use as one of our core mockups I would recommend getting at least black white and maybe one of the gray tones whatever you know you’re going to be

Selling consistently on most of your listings so this is my option for a black T-shirt I’m just going to fill up the space of the canvas here and if you get a mock-up that is more horizontal more of a landscape aspect ratio you can always resize your canvas as long as

It’s a minimum of 2000 by 2000 then it will look nice on Etsy it doesn’t have to be perfectly Square by the way if you’re using Photoshop to do this process right here I do have a separate video all about a script that you can use where each of your color options

Options is a separate layer in Photoshop and all you have to do is put your design file as the top layer and then the script will automatically export each layer as its own separate mock-up on different color options if that’s something you’re interested in checking

Out I’ll put a link to that video in the description and in the corner alright so all we need to do now is grab one of our t-shirt designs that we need to make a mock-up for all right so here’s a design that is a holiday Christmas theme here

And let’s just place this on the shirt now there’s really only one important thing that you do here try to make the sizing and placement of the design as close as possible to the way the product is going to look now that doesn’t mean you need to have a sample all you need

To do is go to your print on demand platform and look at the previews or the mock-ups that they provide you I’m not planning on using these in my listing because they have a plain white background but I can use these as a reference for the sizing and the

Placement use things like the neckline of the shirt and look down straight down and see does your design extend outside of the neckline on either side or is it going completely within the center where is it in reference to the armpits of the shirt in terms of the height things like

That and how far away is it from the bottom of the neckline use those reference points as a guide and then come back to your mock-up and size it appropriately the main thing is you’re just trying to avoid setting the wrong expectations so for example if I did

This this would not be an accurate representation of the way this product’s actually going to come out that wouldn’t be great so do your best to size it appropriately so it looks as close as possible to that mock-up preview that you get from your print on demand platform now another thing you certainly

Can do and you can go much farther than this if you’re using software like Photoshop if you’re using Photoshop and you’re sort of a whiz at Photoshop and you do this all the time you can really make this image look like it is a part of that shirt by blending layers and

Doing all kinds of crazy stuff not really necessary for print on demand thumbnails but one thing I do recommend doing is reducing the the transparency or the opacity a little bit so come up if you’re using canva to this transparency slider bring it down to anywhere from like 90 to 91 percent I

Wouldn’t go lower than 90. I’m not really doing this to make it look like it’s blending with the shirt so much as I’m just trying to actually dull the colors a little bit because remember these mock-ups everything that’s going on right now is happening in the RGB color space when these designs get

Printed they’re going to get converted to CMYK that usually comes out looking a little more dull than it does on the computer screen so reducing that transparency a little bit just helps to give it a little bit more of a reasonable expectation for the the contrast and the poppiness and the

Richness of the color and there we go there’s our mock-up on our black T-shirt of course if you wanted to make additional mock-ups for different color options you can do that as I referenced earlier there is a quicker way to do it with Photoshop but of course I would

Recommend as I mentioned having a couple of additional ones so maybe one where somebody’s wearing the product one tip for getting your mock-ups if you’re going to use uh ones where somebody’s wearing them let me go back to this shop that sells mock-ups to show you an

Example here here here’s one I wouldn’t recommend buying this one while it looks really nice there are just too many wrinkles in this shirt the flat area is virtually non-existent and that makes your mock-up look less realistic now it’s okay like I just mentioned if if your mock-up isn’t like super super

Realistic but this just makes it look obviously not realistic so I would avoid buying ones that look like this go for ones that have more of a nice flat area to the front of the T-shirt or the back if your design is on the back but that

Doesn’t mean you have to avoid mock-ups of a person wearing the product for example here’s one from a different shop called Moody MOX to me this one has enough of a flat area for you to place your design without it looking totally ridiculous and unrealistic so you don’t

Have to make it your primary thumbnail if you don’t want to it’s really just up to you which one do you think looks better and showcases the design better the the one without a person wearing it or the one with but I do think having at

Least one of each in the listing in general is a good idea just look for ones that don’t have a lot of wrinkle or areas that are not flat because that’ll make the mock-up look a lot less natural with the design all right so that’s an example of a mock-up strategy if your

Shop is really trying to build a consistent look and feel to the brand a brand image that you want people to come back and see again the same thing would apply if you also sell sweatshirts and hoodies really same process just different products go for a core set of

Three or four mock-ups that you make for every one of your designs and you’ll have some nice consistency as well as just a little bit of variety now let’s talk about some sources for mock-ups to use if you’re doing more of a general strategy where you don’t necessarily

Care about them all looking consistent and the same because you’re mainly getting found through search results there are a lot more sources out there for mock-ups that have a huge variety that you can take advantage of if that’s your strategy then after that we’ll also talk about mugs because mugs are another

Very popular item and thankfully mock-ups are pretty darn easy with mugs but first let’s talk about t-shirt and apparel mock-ups for a general store placeit is one of my favorite places to get mock-ups for my AI Etsy shop because they make it super easy they make placement of the design in their images

Really easy and they will look really really realistic with the way that they insert the image into the product and they’ve got a ton of different product offerings from t-shirts to tote bags sweatshirts hoodies mugs they’ve they’ve got most of the types of products that you’re going to look to sell in a

Print-on-demand shop they do have a free account however the selection of mock-ups that you can pick from with the free account is limited and I think it rotates once a month so they change them up what’s available to you so you can still get a variety of mock-ups with the

Free account but if you want access to everything as well as their other features they have other tools as well besides mock-ups you will have to get one of the paid accounts they do have a sale a couple times a year you can always sign up for the free account and

Wait till you get you know notification that they’re having one of their sales if you want to go for the paid subscription one thing I should point out about tools like this is you do have to kind of avoid the analysis paralysis effect here because with so many choices

You can accidentally wait like an hour trying to find just the right mock-up for each listing that you create so the best thing I think to do is to use the filters on the side or search for something a little bit more specific than just looking at the general t-shirt

Category or the general sweatshirt category because you’ll accidentally be like scrolling for a long time just like you’re on Instagram or something the process of making your mock-ups on place it is super easy all you have to do is click on the left option over here to

Upload your design from your computer or you can just make keep making mock-ups with ones that you’ve recently uploaded because it keeps them in your account then you’ll always have an option to change the product color over here so if you need black you can change it to

Black you also can do a custom color and then when you do the resize option here you can move around and resize the design you can see a live mock-up of it which is behind my head so you know where it’s going and then when you click

On crop it will adjust your mock-up then you can just download each one but it actually makes them look I think a lot more realistic than the method we just used which again not the end of to the world if it’s not the most realistic but

One of the reasons why I like place it is it looks super realistic now you can take a similar strategy with placeit as what we talked about earlier where maybe you find like three or four and they’re just your favorite ones that you want to keep using over and over again however I

Don’t know if it’s worth paying for an annual subscription to place it just to use the same three or four mock-ups every time so keep that in mind you can do that but the reason why I think it’s worth it is because of the big variety

And you can pretty much find any mock-up to fit any scenario for any type of design for example there are Halloween themed mock-ups to go with your Halloween designs they’re Christmas themed mock-ups to go with your Christmas designs all of those types of differentiators that you want to have

They’ve got it here and place it all right so let’s place it the next option that I have for you to keep in mind is vexels if you’re already a vexil subscriber hopefully you already know about their mock-up generator tool if you’re not a vexel subscriber and you

Want to check it out of course there is also a link in the description to that now vexels is a paid Graphics service I’ve talked about vexels in many of my other videos I’m not going to talk about their Graphics in this video because I’ve done that in other videos I’ll link

To a couple in the description and in the corner if you want to see more about all of the features that vexels has but I use their mock-up generator tool as well as placeit sometimes they just have one that place it doesn’t have Sometimes using their tools a little faster but

Because I already pay for vexels and use it for their Graphics I just also use the mock-up generator tool as well they don’t have quite as big of a catalog of mock-ups as placeit does but you can see they have a lot for t-shirts they have 613 different ones for t-shirts 300 for

Hoodies they do have some for sweatshirts throw pillows tank tops they even have some leggings and socks and baby onesies it’s just not quite as massive of a catalog as placeit they have a huge selection of t-shirt mock-ups as I mentioned and some have this like plain background that you can

Actually change the color of if you want a solid color background and some also are like live Real Environment mock-ups so they have more of a realistic context around them the process though is as far as making them is very similar to a place that you just upload the file you

Want it’ll place it right on the shirt you have a slider to resize it you can just grab it and move it around to anywhere that you need it of course you can also change the color of the shirt to any color that you need as far as you

Can use a hex code or you can use the selection here to just take the color that you want and then you you can download this in multiple different sizes you have a large original and then I wouldn’t recommend going smaller than the Large Size because you’ll you’ll

Have a dimension smaller than 2 000 pixels so larger original size should be fine there but vexels is another great option to make some really quick mock-ups especially if you’re already a subscriber and you’re just not taking advantage of this this is a really easy

Tool to use as well all right now let’s talk about mug mock-ups mugs are thankfully one of the easier products to make mock-ups for and printify if you’re using printify as well as some other print automated platforms actually already have some usable mock-ups with

Them now it’s not a bad thing to use the plain white mock-up ones especially if you offer different sizes just to include one of each size or something but I would definitely recommend using mostly context mock-ups for mugs because they’re just a lot more realistic looking now there are some that I

Wouldn’t recommend using at least not all the time this one’s a little bit more of a holiday feel to it printify has this one by the way this is an 11 ounce white mug from District photo the mock-ups vary slightly I think there’s a couple different ones with the other

Print providers but most of them are consistent this is a Halloween one obviously I wouldn’t use this if this wasn’t a Halloween design but the mock-ups like this one here that shows both sides of the mug in the same mock-up this is actually a perfectly usable one that I usually do publish

Here’s another context one that I think is perfectly usable here’s a good one of somebody actually holding the mug which doesn’t have a background but it’s very easy to add a background to this as well as it is for the solid white regular background ones we could download these

Couple and then use canvar Photoshop or anything to add our own background and actually get a really nice looking usable mock-up use the button in the bottom left corner of the screen here to download at least one of the angles of the plain white background as well as

The person holding the mug so we’ll grab those two then we’ll go over to canva this one starts again by creating a new design and doing a custom size and again for these I just do 2000 by 2000 pixels so it’s always in my most recent sizes

The first thing we’re going to do is add a background that we want to use for the plain white mug so I’m going to go to photos here and I’m going to search for table I’m looking for one that is a little more indoors now I don’t know if

This one’s going to be perfect but it’s not always perfect on the first try but we’re going to try this one so I’m going to fill out my background now we just need to upload the image of the mug that we downloaded so upload those two to our

Account and this one is going to be for the plain white background of just the mug so we’ve got our mug now we’re going to use the option to remove the background now of course if you don’t have canva Pro then you won’t have the background remover so if you don’t have

Canva Pro then I would use something like photopia or something like that which is free software to remove the background chances are if you pay for any graphic software whatever the program is it probably has a background remover included in it just take advantage of whatever software you have

Photoshop definitely can do this in one or two clicks pretty much anything these days is going to have a background remover especially if you’ve paid for it alright so there we go here’s just the mug and yeah this is what I was afraid of see how the angle of the table is not

Quite perfect I could use this might be okay but I also don’t like the background there’s not enough contrast there for me so I’m going to get rid of this one and try again now this one’s a little better as far as the angle of the

Table or the counter because you can see it’s a little bit more angled up I still don’t love how much contrast is is well not there because the background is very light colored you can also make the mug significantly larger here in your mock-up and make the background

Significantly larger as well so that you’re getting more of a zoomed in look at the design and you can always do a little bit of a zoom in on your primary thumbnail on Etsy but you do want the mug to be really prominent in there because you want the design to be really

Clear so the goal really is just search through canvas available photos and find one that has a table or a countertop that matches the angle and then once you find a background that works really well for these mock-ups again just save a project file as your mug mock-up

Template and that way you create a copy each time you don’t have to search for this and you just upload your new mug design for each mock-up that you make and the benefit of already being in canva or whatever design software you use is if you want to you can also add

Text so if you want to you know drop some text on here that says like available in 11 ounce and 15 ounce sizes you can certainly do stuff like that as well because you’re already here now the one with the person holding the mug is a little bit different all we really need

For that one is something with kind of a blurred background that looks like maybe an interior or something like that this one actually might be a good example see how this already has a nice blurry background even a background like this perfectly fine to use you can also use

An outdoor blurry background pretty much anything so we’ll add that image here and we will get rid of the background for this one too and then of course we want to make this big enough that it’s actually touching the edge so it doesn’t look like a floating hand and there we

Go so now you have another perfectly usable mock-up and this one I actually I think looks even more realistic than the first one that I made a second ago so this is a good example of how easy it is to to take advantage of one of the

Mock-ups they provide just make it look a lot more realistic all right so that’s a wrap for this video that is how it would go about considering your strategy for mock-ups whether you have a brand image that you’re trying to cultivate or whether you have a more General shop

Like me where you just kind of make any design you think will sell and you you kind of have more variety to your mock-ups I hope you found this information helpful let me know in the comments if it was let me know if you have any questions about mock-ups do me

A favor and hit the like button if you did find it helpful don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t subscribed thank you so much for your support I really do appreciate it thanks everybody see you next time thank you foreign