Scammers & Greedy Gurus (Print on Demand Podcast)

Let’s talk scammers and greedy gurus yes hopefully this will be a nice juicy one filled with lots of horrible gossip about all the other YouTubers out there that are talking about print on demand and actually no that’s not gonna happen I’m not going to badmouth people by name

In this audio only podcast but it is an opportunity for me to connect with you directly in kind of an unscripted way this is an audio only podcast so if you’re driving around town if you’re operating heavy machinery or if you’re just you know sitting at home

Blindfolded you know this is a great opportunity for you to listen about print on demand hopefully you’re actually working on print on demand I’ve heard a lot of people saying that they like to upload designs which can be horribly boring so hopefully this will help pass the time my name is then water

Cooler the channel is Zen water cooler and in this episode I’m going to be talking about scammers and greedy gurus something happened the other day and I said actually it’s been happening for a while where I’ve got this guilty dirty little habit where I like to go onto

Social media things like Reddit or sometimes Facebook and I’ll read negative posts that people are posting where they’ve purchased something from a YouTuber specifically in the print on demand genre so it could be something like they’ve purchased a book or maybe somebody’s bought a course that’s a big

One because that’s a high ticket expensive item they’ve bought a print-on-demand course and they’re really disappointed the information in the course does not meet their expectations could be that video series that they’re watching but the bottom line is they’re not only not making money they’re also actually out of

Pocket sometimes money that they can’t really afford and so in this video I’m going to pull back the veil as a fellow YouTuber as a person that does YouTube videos about print on demand and I’m going to show you or at least to tell you exactly how I make money and how

These other YouTubers make money and that way you can make an informed decision if you want to purchase something or not because look not everything is a scam there’s lots of value being provided out there in the YouTube world in the world of print on demand or if you’re selling digital

Designs that kind of thing but I don’t want you to have a negative experience so I want to be very clear I’m not going to be mentioning people by name but if you do go on to Reddit and you just type in like terrible print-on-demand experiences or if you type in a specific

YouTuber often there’ll be negative comments about them and so look I don’t have an opinion on them per personally I’m not going to say that but I will just talk in general here so there are basically different ways that YouTubers make money there’s really four main ways

That YouTubers make money so I’m going to talk about myself for example in this group as well so the first way that YouTubers make money is with views so the more views a video gets when there’s a little ad at the start of the video well YouTube will

Take a portion of that ad revenue and me as a content creator I also get ad Revenue so if you watch a print-on-demand video on my Channel or on anybody’s Channel somebody’s making money now it could be a penny or it could be a couple you know

A couple cents but those views add up over time so there’s incentive for YouTubers to make videos that you’re going to watch either repeatedly or a lot of people are going to watch them or you’re going to watch a longer video so YouTube values eyeballs on their videos

So the reason I mention this is because you want to watch out if you’re going to see clickbaity titles things that are like make 700 a day using one design on print on demand you barely move your thumb on an iPhone and all of a sudden

You’re making 700 a day well yeah I mean it’s a wonderful idea but you could also you just find a treasure chest in your backyard too I mean it’s about as likely right so you just want to ask yourself when you’re seeing these titles is this channel stacked full of these

Kind of click-baity titles and if the answer is yes then you may want to revisit your commitment to that channel because they may be just making videos to just try to get you to watch them and it’s not truly trying to provide value for you I’ll use this this literally

This one that you’re watching or listening to right now this these don’t get a lot of views like a lot of eyeballs on them because they’re Audio Only I’m guessing or because they’re really long or because maybe I’m boring I don’t know I like to think I’m

Hilarious at least my cats think so so it’s one of those things where I know that this isn’t going to make a lot of money for me but to me I wanted to provide some value and long term it’s smart for me to do that because I’d rather have a

Small but loyal following rather than sell out and have just a couple videos with a million billion views and I’m just saying anything and everything to try to get people’s attention so I’m never going to make a claim that you can make 700 a day even ten dollars a day I

Don’t know you very well I mean you know we’ve barely met and so to me you might not be Adept at doing print on demand there are no easy paths to success in life in general and print on demand is no different so I want to be very clear

About that now this is not a popular message a lot of people may be turning off and throwing your computer out the window at this point but I’d rather just be honest with you even if it means that ultimately people may not watch my videos long term I’d rather be honest

And have some Integrity the second way that YouTubers make money is through sponsored videos so this means when your channel when your YouTube channel reaches say a thousand subscribers 10 000 subscribers 50 000 subscribers or even a hundred thousand subscribers companies will start emailing the content creators unsolicited they will

Just you’ll just get random emails in your in email box and it will say hey I’m with such and such company we’d like to pay you money to do a video so the reason I mention this is that sometimes viewers YouTube viewers don’t know this and so they’re watching a

Quote-unquote honest review of a product and they’re thinking that the YouTuber is being sincere in how wonderful the product is not knowing that they’ve received payment from that company to do that video so I mentioned that not to say that that’s a complete lie because look I’ve done similar videos I’ve actually

Enjoyed the product so I’ve made a commitment to you and I’ve said this to the company I’ve said look if I don’t like the product I’m going to say so in the video Even though you’re paying me money are you okay with that because if the answer is no

Then I’m not going to do the video I’m not taking the money I don’t need the money that bad and so I just want to point that out that if you’re watching a video and everything is wonderful all the time the entire channel is just non-stop everything is wonderful it

Could be and I say could it’s not necessarily but it could be a warning sign that this person’s just being paid money to use the product now I want to point out for myself that I only ever show things in my videos that I’m actually using in my real life

So if you see me on a website showing off some free thing that I’m really excited about I’m actually using it I’m actually making print-on-demand designs I’m actually selling print on demand designs so that to me is a very simple criteria that I use in order to become

An ambassador for any type of product that I’m you know talking about or any sort of service that I’m talking about I’m using it in my personal life so again I don’t want to come across as humble braggy here I’m not it’s not about me but I turned down

Probably 50 to 60 sponsorship opportunities a year because I just have no interest in trying something new at this point in my career I just don’t have the bandwidth I’ve got a life I like to watch football I like to go for a walk I’ve Got Friends

I just don’t want to spend hours and hours learning how to use a new product even if it means they’re going to pay me money to do so that might change someday maybe I retire and this is my full-time gig but right now I like where I’m at so

I point that out because if you see a larger especially a larger YouTube channel where everything is wonderful all the time it’s like hmm you may just want to double check that and you can double check it by going on to the internet and just simply Googling that

Person’s name and then the word scam or that person’s name and then some you know negative connotation and the internet’s filled with criticisms of people who are disappointed about pretty much everybody so I’m not saying that they’re right and the YouTuber’s wrong I’m not saying the people who are

Complaining are wrong I’m just saying it’s more information think about it before you just automatically purchase something because you have to ask yourself if this person’s making YouTube videos all day long like one video a day every day all year it’s like well when are they actually working on print on

Demand like kind of makes you wonder right like I mean even if you know I’ll just give you a quick example I’m not going to mention the person’s name but they brag that they work one hour a day and yet they have a video up literally

Every second day and it’s like uh how are you working one hour a day on print on demand when you’ve got a YouTube channel and I’m guessing you have like you’re a business like that’s how you make your money so it’s like you just have to ask those questions

The other way that people on YouTube make money is through affiliate marketing this is a little bit different than sponsored videos affiliate marketing means that the YouTuber provides a link in the video description and then if you click the link and you purchase something then the YouTuber makes a small Commission

And so I want to point out this is very much a click and pay model rather than based on necessarily just views so the idea here is that you would like say a subscription service or a piece of software something like that and then

You click on it you buy it and then the YouTuber makes a tiny commission so is this awful I don’t think so I actually really like this model but again I want to point out I’m only ever giving out affiliate links for my channel on things

That I’m actually using myself so I I don’t ever try to promote anything just to promote it because I I want to be an expert and B I want to have some integrity and that means that anything that I promote is something that I’m actually proud to be an ambassador on

Now the fourth way that YouTubers make money is through direct sales and direct sales are things like selling a book selling a course uh some sort of digital or physical product that sits in tandem with the YouTube channel I have to admit this is my personal

Opinion only I don’t like the idea of courses paying for courses to me this is a scam because I’m going to tell you exactly what it takes to be successfully successful in print on demand I’ll tell you right now there’s basically three things that you need to be successful in print on demand

Now you might be wondering why am I telling you this it’s because it’s just knowledge anybody who’s been around to print on demand world knows that this is true the hard part is not knowing the information the hard part is doing what I’m about to say it’s kind of like I

Could tell you how to be a World level soccer player but you got to still go out and do it and it’s like really hard right like I’m not a World level soccer player so I understand what it takes but I’m not going to get there because I’m

Not that talented so the nice thing about print on demand is there’s a lot of things you can control it’s not necessarily about Talent it’s about hard work so there’s really three metrics of success if you want to be successful in print on demand success metric number one is you want to

Make a lot of designs it’s a quantity metric the more designs you make the better your chances of making a sale on any one platform so I recommend making variants of designs I recommend scaling up so what that means is you’d have a design with black text a design with

White text a design with pot pink text then you’d have a picture then you put a picture with the background on it and you put a picture with a circle behind it you move the picture slightly and you add some text to it you’re able to make

Say 10 or 20 variants off of one base image and that way you’ve got instead of just 60 designs you’ve got 600 designs or 1200 designs and so that’s a very easy way you can scale up so quantity is a big deal in the print on demand world

The second way that you can be successful in print on demand is to make great designs so this is a quality metric so what you want to do here is become good at things like Photoshop Affinity photo inkscape Affinity designer or you may want to use hacks things like creative Fabrica for

Example or vexels or Kittle for example these are solutions so you can spend a bit of money and you can get professional level assets that’ll help you make great designs that will sell again it’s totally optional you don’t have to do it this way you could become really good at Photoshop one person

Could become really good at Photoshop another person could become really good at Affinity designer that’s fine but you’d want to do something I get questions from people that say look I don’t have a lot of time to learn how to use a software program and I don’t have

A computer I just have a phone and I don’t have any money it’s like how can I make 700 a day and it’s like well you can’t like you like it’d be like saying you want to become a world-class chef but you don’t own a kitchen and you have

No money for food and you have no pots or pans it’s like well I mean you’re not going to become a five-star Chef cooking a potato in your backyard right like that’s not the way things work you need to have either time expertise or money or some combination of those three

Things so quality is the second success metric now the third success metric is probably the hardest one and it’s niche marketing it’s making designs that people actually want and I’ve spent years and years becoming a niche marketing expert and I think this is the biggest difference between just kind of

Fooling around and making designs because they’re fun or actually making sales out of the three I think this is the most important thing Niche marketing is making designs that people want now look there’s Niche marketing tools out there and I use these tools and this is how I

Can sell over a thousand dollars a month in print on demand so I’m not saying that these are bad products I’m not saying these are good products I’m saying you can buy the product but you have to learn how to use the product you have to invest some time in it I’ve seen

People complain that they’ve bought Niche marketing software or they’ve bought a subscription to a niche marketing website and they’re like this is garbage there’s no good niches and it’s like there’s tons of great niches I make sales all the time in New niches but it’s a skill

You have to learn how to use it it’s like I could go buy a guitar tomorrow and say well the guitar is broken it doesn’t work very well well no it’s because I don’t know how to play guitar like I need to spend some time learning

How to play guitar so that’s really it that’s the secret to print on demand you want to make a lot of designs quantity you want to make great designs quality and you want to make designs that people actually want which is Niche marketing the end you can turn off this podcast

You can throw your computer in the lake and then you can start making well maybe don’t do that because you got to make print-on-demand designs but you don’t need to watch 4 000 hours of YouTube videos every year you’re not going to learn any more than this now there’s details

About those three things I’ve got hours and hours and hours of footage about making lots of designs and I’ve got tons of videos about how to make high quality designs and I’ve got lots of videos on Niche marketing there’s many different paths to success but make no mistake it

Is only those three things so I do share people’s frustration when they purchase a course for 1800 US dollars for print on demand and then they realize it’s just those three things and it’s like well I’m sorry like I don’t know what to tell you except maybe what

I’m telling you in this podcast I don’t recommend you buy a course because at the end of the day you’re not really going to learn eighteen hundred US dollars worth of information I would rather you buy say a ten dollar book or a fifteen dollar book if you really want to buy something

And then that way maybe you learn through the book because that’s a low risk investment right a 15 book I mean like we’ve all bought a book where we want and not their best work I mean you know whatever you donate it to the library you throw it in the garbage you

Light it on fire whatever you want to do but at the end of the day you’re maybe out 10 15 I would hate to see you purchase money on a course and be devastated because you’ve taken out a loan to buy a course because you think

This is going to make you money you have to ask yourself a question if somebody’s selling a course for eighteen hundred dollars is that their business or is print on demand their business and there’s a big difference there right because in my world I do have a YouTube channel I have two

YouTube channels I’ve got Zen water cooler which is this one and I’ve also got a sister Channel called crafty stacks to me print on demand has always been a fun hobby that makes me some pretty good income It’s Made Me way more income than I was ever expecting and

Since I’m not a world-class genius my attitude is anybody can do it if they get enough skills under their belt and they take enough time and they fail forward enough and that’s a big thing I want to point out is I’ve made lots of mistakes so it’s not the end of the

World if you make a mistake but I didn’t buy a huge course there is no secret formula that’s hidden in the pages of a book or hidden in the you know the confines of a course including my own book hey if you go on Amazon right now and you type in Zen water

Cooler print on demand Secrets my book’s gonna pop up I’ll tell you right now it’s the three things I just talked about so yes the book is hopefully entertaining and it’s hopefully a companion piece but I make no claims that I’m going to give you some extra

Secret information that no one else in the world knows now look the print on demand Secrets title is because it’s the details about those three things that I think is worthwhile and look I’m not going to give out every piece of information I’ve ever accumulated in my

Life because a lot of it is unique to my circumstances but I will say people have different learning styles so if you want to purchase a book amazing and it doesn’t have to be my book by the way it could be any book but any topic there’s lots of YouTube videos but

There’s also lots of books out there so I want to share with you three warning signs that if you’re seeing these things you may want to ask the questions is this legitimate or not and I want to be very clear the answer might be yes it is

Legitimate the answer might be no it’s a little bit slimy so the first warning sign is does the video make an outrageous claim with absolutely no proof when you watch the video is there any proof at all I’ll give you an example if somebody says they’re going

To make seven hundred dollars a day and they’re like every day 700 a day in print on demand are they showing you some sort of proof like I would hope so right one of my best months in print on demand was 8 000 US Dollars well if I’m going to make

That claim in a video I sure as hell had better back that up with some sort of a screenshot or something right now look this is an audio only podcast but if you watch one of my videos I I claim I can make it over a thousand dollars a month in print

On demand and I would hope I’ve got some legitimacy built up over my channel over time through the quality of my tutorials and then I’ll also show once in a while I’ll show some sales because I know that that’s important for some people I’m certainly not going to make the claim

That anybody can easily make 700 in a month or 700 in a year because I don’t know your work ethic I don’t know your talent I don’t know your general intelligence again I’m not trying to be insulting in any way I’m just saying I don’t know that information there’s

People out there that make more money than me in print on demand hey that’s awesome because maybe they’re smarter than I am maybe they’ve done a better job of research or they’ve just got more talent and then that’s fine too the second warning sign is you want to

Ask yourself is the YouTuber selling you something that you’ve never heard of before and I’ll use a course as an example and if the answer is yes then ask yourself why is it sitting behind a paywall like are they giving you something and then they’re saying take

My course like is the video a tiny little crumb and the rest of it is a course now look I’m not saying courses are bad I’m just saying if you don’t want to pay for a course you don’t have to there’s lots of other videos out

There that you can watch and there’s not that much in terms of super secret information out there there’s many different applications many different programs many different techniques but really it’s quantity quality and Niche marketing so I would recommend that if you like the YouTuber and you want to support

Them and buy their book that’s not a great reason to buy the book you should be buying the book because you value the book it helps you I see this a lot on YouTube not just print on demand but other anybody who’s trying to sell anything on YouTube they’ll say

Things like please buy my course and support my Channel please buy my book and support my channel it’s like no you’re not here to support my channel I’m here to support you you’re the client I want you to succeed in print on demand so if you buy my book it’s

Because you’re going to get value out of it if you spend 10 or 15 on any book it’s not to support them it’s to support you so that’s my little rant for the day is it really bothers me when I see YouTubers claiming that this is somehow

Helping them it’s like well yeah it is but that’s not why you should be buying a book the third warning sign is are they consistently and constantly providing affiliate links or sponsored content only in other words is every video just Huck string and asking you to buy this

And buy that if the answer is yes then you need to ask yourself is this the type of content that you want to watch now look I offer affiliate links and I and I have sponsored content once in a while but I’m trying to give out lots of

Free content because look not everybody needs to buy something if you want to invest your time instead of investing your money that’s great I think your time is valuable too as money is valuable so you want to just ask yourself that now I’m not saying if they’re constantly providing affiliate

Links or sponsored content that they’re a bunch of bumps I’m not saying they’re slimy sleazy gurus who are you know fake gurus who are trying to scam you I’m not saying that you just want to ask the question you’re like hmm if every link is an affiliate link and if every time

They open their mouth they’re trying to sell you something it just makes you wonder are they doing the YouTube channel for you or are they doing the YouTube channel for them I personally like watching YouTube channels where I feel important as the viewer and that’s always been my intention on this channel you’re

Important that’s why I don’t show my face by the way people wonder all the time how can you not show your face because the channel is not about me the channel is about you and I don’t really like talking about myself because it’s not about me you’re the focus of the channel

So although it’s YouTube meaning it’s my channel you in my mind is about you the viewer about you the listener about you the client okay so I hope you found that helpful I’m going to stop rambling here and I would encourage you if you are interested Shameless plug alert if you

Are interested in buying my book it is on Amazon it’s called print on demand secret Zen water cooler I want to point out as secretive as some of the stuff is in the book it’s techniques about doing print on demand it’s not anybody just snap one photograph of one

Picture of a fire hydrant the next thing you know you’re making five thousand dollars a month that’s not the way the world works so just remember I do believe in you it takes time it takes effort dedication commitment and it takes a high degree of skill to be able

To make a lot of designs of high quality in niches that people actually want that’s the secret and if you do those things enough time you will get sales I hope you found this helpful here’s another video where you can supercharge your print-on-demand journey I really appreciate your time and I’d love to

Hear from you if you’ve got a question or a comment please do throw it down in the comment section below I love reading your comments thank you so much