Every few years a new strategy to making money online emerges and in 2021, that strategy is becoming a profitable mugprenuer. If you are just hearing about this term, don’t worry because I will be explaining what it is, how it works, what your odds of success are in this business and more.
Typically my blog focuses on make money online methods revolving around affiliate marketing, but when I recently heard about becoming a mugprenuer, it intrigued me and though I think affiliate marketing is still a better option, I will show you everything I’ve learned about this business in this post.
There are a lot of new expensive programs coming out which are teaching this approach to online business and frankly, much of what they charge you for, you really don’t need to spend that type of money on, so read this post carefully and decide for yourself if becoming a mugprenuer is for you.
What is a mugprenuer?
It’s a person who sells custom mugs (coffee and tea cups) online. These cups are usually filled with funny messages that make people smile and laugh and that’s really what makes people want to buy them vs blank mugs.
How does a mugprenuer make money online?
There are several options available and from what I’ve researched, the 2 best methods are selling them on:
- As an Amazon seller.
- As an Etsy seller.
These 2 places offer mugprenuers the opportunity to sell their custom mugs to an existing niche audience (mug buyers) without having to spend money on websites or traffic. People just literally search up custom mugs on these places and if they see yours, like it and buy it you make money.
And the beauty is that in this realm, you don’t need to have a warehouse full of mugs to sell. In fact, you don’t need to own any inventory.
Here’s how making money as a mugprenuer works in detail:
1) You sign up with sites that own mugs (Teespring.com for example) and open up a store there. Here are some mug examples on Teespring.com.
2) You then open up a store on Amazon and Etsy and sell these mugs there.
3) You will have to learn how to customize mugs and can honestly see existing best selling mugs on Amazon and Etsy for ideas on what’s already selling.
4) There is some learning curve involved, but once you are able to design custom mugs, then you can post the images on your Amazon and Etsy store.
5) You can charge whatever you feel is fair for the mugs and every time someone on Amazon or Etsy places an order for one or more, you give places like Teespring.com the order and have it shipped out to the buyer.
The numbers: How much can you make as a mugprenuer?
We’re going to be discussing “Best case scenarios” here and the truth is, there are people making a small or even large income selling custom mugs as mugprenuers, but let’s use a simple example:
1) You create a custom mug on Teespring.com.
2) You set up an Amazon and Etsy store and list these custom mugs there for $10 each.
3) You get 500 orders for them in a month. This would give you a revenue of $5,000.
4) However, once the orders are placed, you actually need to tell Teespring.com to make them and ship them, and that can cost you $5 for each mug. But you do get to keep $5 off each mug sold.
5) You end up making a healthy $2,500 a month being a mugprenuer.
The pros of being a mugprenuer:
- No inventory needed.
- You can make custom mugs online without paying a cent.
- You don’t even need to make an eCommerce site selling mugs.
- Amazon and Etsy do the marketing for you with the mugs.
- There is hardly any money investment necessary in being a mugprenuer.
- Even if you don’t make enough mug sales, you lose $0 because you don’t need to spend money on inventory.
- Overall, being a mugprenuer has very little risk involved (but time and learning the business is required).
- You can create as many custom mugs as you want with this business and only make money when they sell.
- You lose $0 if they don’t sell because you never spent anything to make them unless someone bought it.
The cons of being a mugprenuer:
- A lot of people are becoming mugprenuers (competition is rising).
- A lot of duplicate custom mugs are around and people are copying one another.
- This business is easier than most, but it’s far from a guaranteed income.
- You will likely encounter situations where you put up a lot of mugs, but make few or no sales.
- There is a possibility Amazon or Etsy may not allow people who use third party sites to sell stuff to set up stores on their websites. They’ve done this before with people who did drop shipping.
What I personally thing of being a mugprenuer:
It absolutely works and the first program I heard about this business model from was Printable Profits and at first (then another one by Rachel Rofe later on called Low Hanging System), and at first I was truly impressed, but then I later learned that this wasn’t a new idea and that’s how I heard about the mugprenuer business as a whole.
Overall, compared to many other online businesses, this one has one of the least risks and is certainly worth trying if you enjoy being a creative individual who doesn’t mind making custom mugs online with cute or funny messages.
Be careful with any program teaching being a mugprenuer:
I want to shed some light in what I said earlier about new programs coming out recently that are jumping on this mugprenuer bandwagon. Some of them are charging over $1,000 and promoting other things to you in these programs to become a mugprenuer.
I personally do not believe you will ever need to spend so much money to learn such an inexpensive business, but there are clever marketers out there that will make you think that they way they do mugprenuership is the best way to go. In fact, if you head over to Google or YouTube, you’ll find plenty of promotions for high ticket programs teaching this. I would honestly hold out on spending this money.
Just be careful and keep in mind that these marketers are likely making most of their money with their programs vs making money with mugs.
If they were making so much money as a mugprenuer, why would they feel it was necessary to make a program teaching it to possibly give themselves more competition?
Why I believe affiliate marketing might better to focus on vs mugprenuership:
Affiliate marketing though different from being a mugprenuer has some similar aspects and here are some:
- Affiliate marketing can be done inexpensively, like through blogging which is a great start.
- Both businesses have competition, but affiliate marketing has more ways to conquer it (see my post on affiliate marketing saturation).
- You can promote almost any product as an affiliate and not have to own it. You just get an affiliate link and get people to buy from it (intelligently and without being sleazy of course).
The advantages affiliate marketing has over being a mugprenuer:
- You can promote more than just mugs as an affiliate.
- You can make an affiliate business in anything you are passionate about (huge advantage).
- You can have your own website and sell affiliate products there.
- Way more channels are available to promote on (YouTube affiliate marketing, as well as blogging affiliate marketing).
- No shipping or ordering necessary. Once people buy through your affiliate link, you get the sale and the product is shipped to the customer without you having to oversee anything.
There are more advantages in my opinion but these should give you a good idea of the business and while there are expensive programs that teach both being a mugprenuer and affiliate marketer, the latter has more options and with far less expenses to learn.
I recommend Wealthy Affiliate for learning affiliate marketing the best way and it’s the top program I used to get my affiliate business going well to this day.