Personalization is everywhere online these days. It seems like the more we use technology to connect with one another, the more specific it gets. While it’s certainly possible to build an online business selling non-personalized products, adding personalization can make your printables and POD products feel special and more valuable than they would be otherwise.
The trick is knowing how and when to add personalization—and when AI tools can help. Not every printable or POD product lends itself to customization. We’ve created this guide to help you identify printable products to personalize and figure out the mechanics of offering personalization to your customers.
How Does Printable Personalization Work?
Printable personalization offers your customers the chance to take something that’s already special and unique (your printable product!) and tailor it to a specific person. Personalization may include a variety of attributes, including:
- A person’s name
- A birthday
- An astrological sign
- An interest
- A style (for a POD t-shirt, for example)
Personalization for printable products can be done in two basic ways. The first is to ask the customer to fill out a form or select customizable options from a menu. Then, you would do the personalization yourself before delivering the product to the customer. The second option is to deliver the printable in a format that allows customers to personalize it themselves. The latter is common with things like printable invitations.
POD personalization requires customers to choose customizable options from a menu. That’s because their order will be sent to a POD service and the personalized design will be printed on a physical product.
How Can AI Help with Personalization?
You already know that generative AI can be used to create memorable images for printable and POD products. Here are some ideas to use AI to create personalized products for your customers.
Use AI to Create a Unique Visual Style
One of the most important and impactful things you can do with AI is to fine-tune your prompts until you create a unique visual style to use on your products. Once you have your prompts refined, you can apply them to any image you desire, whether you’re starting with a photograph or adding your style prompt to a verbal prompt.
For example, you might do any of these things to create a unique style.
- Combine the style of two famous artists
- Choose the style of an art movement to apply to your images
- Choose a unique color palette
- Specify a font to be used
Some AI tools, particularly paid ones, may allow you to save unlimited designs and prompts. Once you’ve done that, you can allow customers to choose images to be created in your style.
Choose Design Themes
Once you’ve created a unique visual style for your AI-generated images, the next idea is to come up with some design themes and categories that could be personalized. A lot of personalized images focus on adding names or special dates to products—and you can certainly do that with AI. But there are tons of other potential ideas out there. Here are a few.
- Astrological signs
- Seasons
- Cities
- Sports or sports teams
- Hobbies
For example, you could post a sample wall art print of a city in your unique style. Then, offer a drop-down list of other cities or allow shoppers to enter a city that’s not on the list. AI can find an image of the city and generate a new image in your style!
Find Product Ideas
One of the things we love about AI is that we can use it to streamline and simplify product research. You can use Etsy or Google as research tools, but with millions of products to scan, it can become overwhelming. With AI, you can give it some parameters and let it do the research for you.
For example, you might ask it to find some products in niches that aren’t already saturated. You might discover a burgeoning market for personalized gardening tools or retirement planning journals and tap into a whole new audience!
Create Templates
Templates are great because you can either sell them as templates or use them to create products. With AI tools such as DALLE-2 or Canva (which now has AI built in), it’s easy to start with a template and edit it to make it your own or create a new template from scratch, if you prefer.
Templates make product creation easy. If you want to use templates to create products, here are a few ideas.
- Journal or planner pages
- Printable worksheets and workbooks
- Invitations
- Greeting cards
- T-shirt designs
The templates you create can leave a space for personalization, including names, dates, places, or anything else you want to include.
Of course, you can also sell single or bundled templates as digital products. A lot of people buy digital templates to use in scrapbooking and other projects. AI can help you create both product templates and templates to sell.
Print on Demand Products
We’ve focused on printable products so far, but you can also use AI tools to create images to put on print on demand (POD) products. POD products include things that can’t be printed at home. That means you’ll need to partner with a POD provider if you want to sell POD products in your shop.
Here are some of the POD products that you may want to consider.
- Apparel (hats, t-shirts, pants, socks, hoodies, etc.)
- Tech accessories (smartphone cases, tablet cases, laptop cases, etc.)
- Accessories (tote bags, jewelry, etc.)
- Home décor items (pillows, sheets, wall art, shower curtains, etc.)
POD suppliers have a huge array of products available. Some to check out include Printify, Printful, Redbubble, and Society6. You’ll want to make sure that you choose a POD provider that has the products you want with good reviews both for product quality and shipping. There are many providers whose services can be integrated seamlessly with your Etsy or Shopify shop.
Add Personalization to Your Printable and POD Products
Personalization is a trend that we expect will continue growing, particularly in the world of printable and POD products. Using AI can help you streamline the process of creating printable products and give your customers the option to buy something truly unique.
Want some help creating personalized POD products? Check out Easy Personalized POD for guidance, ideas, and over-the-shoulder videos to show you how it’s done!
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