The Online Photo Printing industry has benefited from greater internet accessibility over the five years to 2021. With a variety of services provided such as photo gifts, wall decor, invitations, blankets,... photo printing opens up many opportunities for businesses.

Face the lucrative industry, whether you wondering when is the best time to start? The answer is now. To start a photo printing business you must do many steps and ensure it can operate smoothly before start sell the first product. 

Nothing is easy, starting a photo printing business too. You will face some challenges but it also has some advantages obviously. Maybe you will need a web to print software that can help you in your work. Access Everything You Need To Know About Web To Print Solution you can get more information about web to print software’ benefits. 

Below we will describe challenges and advantages of starting a photo printing business and why is web to print software important to an online photo printing business.

1, Advantages and challenges of starting a photo printing business

Advantages

Easy to start: With some step, you can start your business easily.

Refer to How to start a printing business online to know about it.

Low cost: you just invest to have a website: hire a professional firm or do it yourself. Therefore, if you start a print on demand photo printing business, you won’t invest more money.

See more What Are The Startup Costs For Printing Business

Start your business from home:  you can start a photo printing business without a brick and mortar shop. All of the steps can be processed online. 

Income is unlimited: printing is one of the potential industries, it’s expected to develop in the future, and it leads to your income will be unlimited. It depends on your effort. If your reach more customers, you can get more money.

Challenges

Low margins: The lucrative industry lead to many competitions in this, so providers try to reduce the expense to offer the customer low cost, so it can take them to increase the competitive advantage. But it’s equivalent to the margin will decrease.

Ensure quality of the image:  evidently, customers also want their images to display in the product clearly but the images they upload aren’t always of the quality to meet demand. Then you must check carefully and maybe ask them for images with high quality.

Nich market - find not easy: the first step in all guidelines on how to start a business is to find a niche. Obviously, a good niche will give you many advantages, but finding it isn’t easy. 

Maybe you want to explore: How to find a good niche in printing business

It’s hard to stand out from the crowd: Depending on your ultimate goal, you may find it difficult for your service to stand out among the millions and millions of others that are out there. 

Challenges always stay in all active but on starting a photo printing business web to print software can help you to enhance your power to overcome them. And now we will give you the reason why is web to print software important to an online photo printing business.

2. Why is web to print software important to an online photo printing business?

It’s always a good idea to adopt market trends to be consistent & relevant in the market. And customized products are making the headlines in the market currently.

A web to print software can meet all demands of the photo printing business. Its basic feature is allowing customers to design and places an order easily. Not only that, web to print allows the customer to send print files to the print location over the internet. The new experience of shopping, they don’t need to go to the physical store to buy merchandise, they just stay at home and do anything through web to print.

No headache when managing the order, products, or shipments,...  because web to print software allows you to do it easily and clearly. On the other hand, you can upload templates, design, and sell your product on it. 

No matter what type of photo printing you sell, a web to print software that integrates with your e-store and lets customers upload their own photos and designs can make your online store stand out.

See more Everything You Need To Know About Web To Print Solution

3. Tips for starting a photo printing business

Choose the best web to print software

When starting a photo printing business you will meet some challenges but good web to print software will help you resolve these problems. 

At CMSMART, we provide all services related to web to print development, from developing your website from scratch, integrating web to print features, developing a tailored online product design tool to fit with your business needs, etc... 

As a software provider, we think that having a business partner who delivers web to print software tailored to your needs and can handle everything from online photo printing would be helpful. We also focus mainly on three aspects: conversion, efficiency, and flexibility. 

No two businesses are the same. That’s why one web to print software can never fulfill all expectations unless it has hassle-free customization. Flexibility is one of the stand-out points of our NBdesigner web to print software. 

Do market research

The first thing you must know before selling something is your customer, you must know what are they and what they want, Then to do it well, market research will help you understand your customer better. You can use some free tool to do it such as google keyword, trend hunter,...

Increase the presence on the internet

In the digital era, everything can be looked for on the internet, and users tend to search for information before deciding to buy, then you should do some activities to increase your presence in digital media, through it you can interact with your customer and sell your product.

Define your USP

In the book named “Different or die”, Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin said why your business must have a unique selling point USP). A good USP can determine the survival of the business. That’s why you should define your USP.

4. Services That Photo Printing Businesses Provide

Let’s take a look at specialists in the kind of photo printing services that we describe below. Whatever services you intend to develop, we could provide you with the right tools to make your ideas come to reality. 

Photo Gifts

In 2019, the worldwide personalized gifts market was valued at about 23.5 billion U.S. dollars. By 2026, the market size is projected to grow to an estimated 34.3 billion U.S. dollars. expanding at a CAGR of 9.5% during the forecast period 2020-2026. Dataitelo 

Obviously, personalized gift is a lucrative industry, start a photo printing business is the best choice. Many products you can sell from basic photo products like mugs, mini photo books, magnets, and phone cases to more complex products like puzzles, photo frames, or even birthday balloons. 

Therefore, this kind of service is one of the most popular among photo printing businesses. As a web to print software solution provider we have cooperated with many clients who finally decided to use our NBdesigner web to print software for their photo gift stores. 

phone case editor

(sourced: https://thecustomfactory.com/)

From basic photo products like mugs, mini photo books, magnets, phone cases to more complex products like puzzles, photo frames, or even birthday balloons... all could be handled with only one web to print software. 

(sourced: giftskiosk.co.uk)

With our photo printing tool, the admin could easily create products with multiple attributes and create templates for users to upload their images on the defined position. 

photo frame editor

(sourced: giftskiosk.co.uk)

You could also set up the warning pop-up to remind users to upload their images to process the next steps. 

The product creating process is super easy and does not take much time. 

 puzzle editor

(sourced: giftskiosk.co.uk)

Wall decor products and framings

If you intend to build a wall decor photo printing business, there are a lot of striking options that you can integrate into your photo printing business. From aluminum to canvas products, the choices just get better. Consider offering acrylic, photo blocks, aluminum wall mounts, and chroma luxe panels.

Here are some projects of wall decor services that CMSMART has done so far. 

 wall decor editor

(sourced: pixspider.com)

We customized the editor page to make it super simple for shoppers. They just need to choose the product that they want to purchase, then upload the photos as the quantity they have chosen, and then make payment to complete the order. 

 metal art editor

(sourced: thunderingwhisper.com)

On another project, our client sells photo printing on different materials such as metal, acrylic, wood, etc...Users choose the product material and style that they want, upload the photos, rotate or scale the photo to be fitted with the product dimension and then make payment. 

It also shows a pop-up warning about the product quality once the resolution of the uploaded photos is too low. 

Invitation and Greeting Card

It’s more than an announcement - a beautiful, high-quality, personalized wedding invitation is a keepsake that will remind your guests of your special day for years to come. Everything about your wedding should reflect your love story, including your wedding invitation. That’s why brides and grooms want to design their own wedding invitations these days. 

It’s the same for greeting cards. More and more people want to design their own cards and use their family or friends’ photos to show their love and sincerity. That’s why personalized invitations and cards become very popular among photo printing businesses.

Let’s see what our web to print software could do with this kind of product.  

invitation editor

(sourced: hitchbook.com)

The admin could set up templates for the invitation, let users choose the printing material, envelope, quantity...and then edit the templates to match their desire. They could edit text, upload images into photo holders,...

invitation editor

(sourced: charmingprint.com)

Or you could let users choose between only uploading an image for the design template they have chosen or designing their own invitation/card from scratch. For users, who want to get an invitation/card with the same premade design, they only need to upload their image and make payment. But for users who want to create their own design, can click on the design button. A blank page design will be opened and they could freely show off their creativity. 

invitation editor

(sourced: 4over4.com)

Blankets & Apparel

Other photo printing products that are quite popular among photo printing businesses is table cloth, blanket, etc...Many people now want to decorate the house in the concept that they like and reflect their personality. 

blanket editor

(sourced: new.panel-it.eu)

You could create product templates for users to choose and edit or also upload their own photos. 

table cloth editor

(sourced: new.panel-it.eu)

Users can upload images from their phones, computers, or even social media accounts and have them print out in crisp, rich colors. 

Above are only several photo printing services that we have chances to get involved in. There are many more other services that photo printing businesses are providing on the market. Online photo printing services make it easy for anyone to order any type of printed product from the convenience of their phone or laptop.

Aside from convenience, online printing services can turn anyone into a professional artist. Many photo printing product providers offer premade templates with artistic combinations of text, images, and layout. 

Understanding that, we bring together everything that’s required to sell, produce and deliver customized print products globally and on-demand in our web to print software solutions. It powers photo print production for creators, entrepreneurs, and enterprises who sell their products online. 

Conclusion 

Some proof we give can demonstrate the potential of the photo printing industry. However, no bed of roses in starting a printing business, you may face many challenges. One of the tips we want to give you is to choose the best web to print software, it will give you many benefits.

If you want to start an online photo printing business or already run a printing company and want to diversify your assortment with personalized photo printing products, contact us. We will discuss the possibilities and prospects of cooperation and advise you on the best solution.