What Really Happens to $100 in Print on Demand?

If you scroll through YouTube or TikTok, you will see the same screenshots again and again:

$10,000 months with print on demand
“Passive income” from t-shirts while you sleep
Shopify dashboards with steep green lines

What you almost never see is the simple question:

When a customer spends $100 on a print on demand product, who actually gets that money?

This article follows one $100 order through the print on demand value chain. You will see how much goes to platforms, how much goes to manufacturers and logistics, and how much is realistically left for the average seller.

The point is not to scare you away from print on demand. The point is to show the map so you can decide whether you want to play this game at all, and if yes, how.

1. The print on demand value chain in one picture

When a buyer purchases a hoodie or mug from a print on demand store, the money does not jump directly from buyer to seller. It passes through a stack of companies that each take a cut.

A simplified version looks like this:

Customer → Marketplace or online store → Payment processor → Print on demand platform → Blank product manufacturer + logistics → Ad platforms (sometimes) → Seller profit (maybe)

Let’s define the main players.

Customer

The person paying the final retail price. In this example we will use a round number: $100.

Marketplace or online store

Where the purchase happens.

Marketplaces: Etsy, Redbubble, Amazon Merch on Demand
Your own store: Shopify, WooCommerce and similar

On marketplaces, fees are baked into the platform. On your own store, you pay monthly subscriptions and app fees instead.

For a comparison and more details see Shopify vs Etsy and Shopify vs WooCommerce.

Payment processor

The company that actually charges the card or PayPal account.

On marketplaces this is usually integrated (for example Etsy Payments).
On standalone stores it is often Stripe, PayPal or a local provider.

They typically take around 3 percent plus a small fixed fee per transaction.

Print on demand platform

This is where your product is printed and shipped.

Example: Printful, Printify, Gelato, Awkward Styles and many others.
They charge you a base price for the blank product, printing and fulfilment.

You can compare these providers directly in our vendor pages and comparison guides:

Blank product manufacturer and logistics

Behind the big platforms are the companies that actually make and move physical goods.

Apparel manufacturers: Bella+Canvas, Gildan and similar
Printing partners and fulfilment centers
Carriers: national postal services, UPS, DHL, FedEx and others

They do not show up in your Shopify app list, but a significant part of every order ends up here.

Ad platforms

Not every seller uses paid ads, but many do once they try to scale.

Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram)
TikTok Ads
Google Ads and Shopping

For some sellers this is the single biggest cost after fulfilment.

Seller

You, the store owner.

What is left after everyone else takes their slice is your gross profit. From that you still need to pay for:

Your time
Designers or design tools
Subscriptions for apps and research tools
Refunds and customer support

Only then do you see your real net profit.

Now let’s follow one example from end to end.

2. Following $100 through a typical POD sale

We will use a simple, but realistic scenario:

Product: hoodie with a custom design
Retail price: $100 (easy number for percentages)
Channel: Etsy
Fulfilment: Print on demand platform integrated with Etsy
Traffic: mix of organic Etsy search and a small amount of paid advertising

This is not a worst case or best case. It is a reasonable middle of the road scenario based on typical fee structures.

Step 1: Customer pays $100

The buyer finds your Etsy listing and completes checkout. $100 is charged to their card.

Step 2: Marketplace and payment fees

Etsy takes several different fees:

Transaction fee on the item price and shipping
Payment processing fee
Possibly an offsite ads fee if Etsy drove the sale with its own ads

On average, Etsy’s total take rate across all sales is a bit above 16 percent of gross merchandise volume.

For our example order we will assume:

Around $16 goes to Etsy and its payment processing

This leaves around $84 for you before production and advertising costs.

Step 3: Production and shipping

Next, you pay your print on demand fulfiller.

For a decent quality hoodie printed on demand, including printing and shipping, a realistic total cost can easily land in the $60 to $70 range at retail prices around $100.

We will assume:

$65 goes to the POD platform and its fulfilment chain (blank hoodie, printing, labour, warehouse, packaging, shipping)

You now have:

$84 after marketplace and payment
Minus $65 fulfilment
Equals $19 gross margin before ads, tools, your time and refunds

Step 4: Ads and tools (if any)

Many sellers run at least some paid ads or on platform promotion.

We will use a modest example:

$10 in ad spend or on platform promotion attributed to this order
$3 in design tools, apps and other overhead allocated per order

That reduces your margin to:

$19 gross margin
Minus $10 ads
Minus $3 apps and tools
Equals $6 before your time and risk

Step 5: Your actual profit

Out of the $100 that started with the buyer, you are realistically left with something in the single digit dollars per sale, unless you have unusually strong pricing and very low ad spend.

And this does not include:

Time spent on research, listing, customer support
Products that never sell
Refunds and returns

This is the part most screenshots do not show.

3. Who actually makes money in this system

Looking at the example above, we can group the winners and losers.

Platforms and infrastructure

Marketplaces, POD platforms, payment processors and ad networks win on volume.

Marketplaces collect their percentage on every sale, whether you personally profit or not.
POD platforms and manufacturers earn on each blank and print.
Carriers are paid on every parcel that moves.
Ad platforms charge for every click and impression, even if no one buys.

Their business models are built on large numbers of sellers and buyers. They do not carry your individual risk. They earn as long as the system keeps moving.

A small minority of sellers

Some sellers make real money with print on demand, but they typically have at least one strong edge:

A pre existing audience (for example a YouTube channel or podcast)
Very narrow and well researched niches with many listings
High average order values (bundles, personalization, premium products)
Above average skill in ad creatives, pricing and operations

Even for them, print on demand is often a demanding, data heavy business, not passive income.

The long tail of sellers

Most shops never reach meaningful volume.

They sell a few items, then stall.
Margins are tiny once all costs are accounted for.
The owner slowly stops posting, updating and answering messages.

Their time and money still flow through the system. It just does not stay with them.

4. What this means if you are thinking about starting POD

Seeing this breakdown, a few uncomfortable truths become clear.

4.1. If your plan is “open a store and post products on social”, expect almost nothing

For a completely new store with no existing audience:

SEO for the store itself is very slow. Competing with big brands and marketplaces for search traffic can take 12 to 18 months or longer.
Auto posting catalogue images to Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest, even with automation tools like Print2Social, rarely builds a real audience.
TikTok may give you views, but product only content tends to be ignored.

Here is a quick real world test that shows what “almost nothing” looks like in practice.

Mini case study: two weeks of automated posting still meant near zero traffic

To sanity check this, I ran a simple experiment across three brand new POD shops. The setup was basic on purpose: consistent posting to Facebook and Instagram, generated and scheduled via Print2Social, with no influencer account, no existing followers, and no paid amplification.

What happened over roughly two weeks:

Profile level metrics stayed tiny. One account showed 40 views, 18 reach, 9 visits, 0 link clicks, 1 content interaction, and 1 follow.
Another showed 86 views, 18 reach, 10 visits, 0 link clicks, and 0 content interactions.
A third showed 15 views, 11 reach, 5 visits, 0 link clicks, and 0 content interactions.

On the website side, Google Analytics told the same story. In one case, the store had 9 active users total, with only 2 sessions attributed to Organic Social, and an average engagement time of 14 seconds. Another store had zero tracked visitors in the same period.

The takeaway is not “never post”. It is that automation solves consistency and labor. It does not solve demand, audience, or distribution. If you already have a reason people should follow you, or you are running paid campaigns where you can measure ROI, automation helps. If you are starting from zero, the default outcome is still close to nothing.

This does not mean you cannot ever make a sale. It means the default outcome is very low, and you should plan for that up front.

4.2. You probably should not start POD if

You need quick, reliable income.
You are not willing to treat this as a real project with consistent work over many months.
You are not interested in data, testing and iteration.
You dislike the idea of operating with thin margins and uncertain results.

4.3. Print on demand can still make sense if

You already have an audience and want to add merch as a side product.
You have a clear, narrow niche you understand deeply and can design for.
You are prepared to publish a large number of listings and treat it like inventory.
You run a brand or business where custom products support something else (for example events, clubs, B2B clients).

Even in those cases, print on demand is usually one part of a broader business, not the core profit engine.

5. The POD “games” that still have a shot

Instead of thinking about “POD” as one generic opportunity, it is more useful to think in terms of specific games you can choose to play.

Game 1: Marketplace grind in narrow niches

You focus on one marketplace, for example Etsy or Amazon Merch on Demand, and one or a few product types.

The work looks like this:

Deep niche research with tools (for example EverBee, eRank and similar options in the tools directory)
Hundreds of listings over time in related themes
Ongoing testing of titles, tags, thumbnails and pricing
Careful use of ads or on platform promotion

This can work, but it is a grind and tends to reward operators who are patient and systematic.

Useful starting points on PrintOnDemandBusiness.com:

Game 2: Audience first, merch second

You build an audience around a topic that people care about for its own sake:

A YouTube channel, TikTok account or podcast
A newsletter or blog with a clear niche identity

Only after people follow you and trust you do you add merch.

In this game, print on demand is a convenience layer:

It lets you ship products without managing your own warehouse.
It is not how you get attention. Attention comes from your content.

Useful starting points on PrintOnDemandBusiness.com:

Game 3: B2B, events and communities

Instead of selling one hoodie at a time to strangers, you sell batches or ongoing products to organizations:

Schools and clubs
Companies and teams
Conferences and events
Nonprofits and communities

In this game, your edge is sales and relationships. Print on demand is just your backend.

You might still use providers like Printful, Printify, Gelato or specialist suppliers in our directory, but your work day looks very different from a typical Etsy seller.

Game 4: High ticket and specialized products

In some categories the average order is naturally higher:

Large wall art
High quality cut and sew apparel
Bundled gift sets
Niche technical products or protective gear

Higher prices give you more room for margin, but they also raise expectations around quality and service.

We have a comprehensive article on high-ticket products that you might find helpful if you're considering this option.

6. What this means for PrintOnDemandBusiness.com and how we try to help

POD is a real industry. Global numbers are large and still growing. But the money flows in a way that is very different from how most tutorials describe it.

PrintOnDemandBusiness.com sits outside that transaction flow. We aim to be a control tower for your decisions:

Mapping the providers and platforms in our vendor directory
Comparing key players with honest pros and cons (for example Printful vs Printify vs Gelato)
Listing tools that can help with research, design and operations in one place
Publishing case studies that show what successful brands actually did
Writing guides that show the real trade offs in starting and running a POD business

If you decide not to start a POD business after seeing how the $100 breaks down, that is a valid and often wise outcome.

If you still want to play one of the games above, PrintOnDemandBusiness.com can help you:

Choose the right fulfilment partners
Match suppliers to your sales channels (for example Etsy, Shopify, Amazon)
Discover tools that support your specific workflow

The goal is simple:

Fewer illusions
Better decisions
A clearer view of where your time and money actually go

So the next time you see a dashboard screenshot, you can ask yourself the real question:

Out of every $100, how much stayed with the seller, and how much went to the system around them?

What Really Happens to $100 in Print on Demand?