How to Win at (and Embrace Losing in) Print-On-Demand

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Can You Make Evergreen Content on POD Inspired by Current Events or Trends? You Bet!

As common SEO and marketing convention shows, evergreen content on print-on-demand sites is king, compared to seasonal items and those explicitly based on current events. But what if a current event ACTUALLY inspires one to create evergreen items on a POD site?

Some of the items I sell on various Zazzle stores are based on then-current events. One collection series is Lead a Child Outside or to a Bookshelf. Ironically, the inspiration stemmed from articles of youths calling 911 for a bizarre reason on January 19, 2025: TikTok had a brief outage amid the Supreme Court's decision to ban the app that previous night.

They initially decided to uphold the ban due to privacy concerns, as TikTok was owned by Chinese media conglomerate ByteDance. Faced with the inevitable ennui that would result from the ban of the app, kids and teens in chiefly Oregon, Ohio, Minnesota, California, and Alabama took to EMT numbers to voice their distress over it.

The article sparked a memory of me calling 911 out of curiosity when I was 5 or 6, in the mid-90s, and my DM telling me off on it. I was too naive - naturally - to fully comprehend that calling it outside of emergencies would hinder first responders from responding to actual emergencies. My kindergarten teacher replied when I told her all about it the next day at school:

"NO 911."

Another takeaway point I obtained from reading those articles on TikTok-bereft youths calling 911 was knowing that making a POD design that would've simply told people to go outdoors or read more books was too trite. So, I decided to create a design that acknowledged FULLY the struggles of parents who are getting their kids to do either or (optimally) both by simply rewording the old horse-to-water axiom.

The articles of youths phoning 911 over the American TikTok outage gave birth to the Lead a Child Outside or to a Bookshelf stationery and lifestyle item collections.

Hence my highly useful tips - leave out the direct references to the current events or trends. Keep on using relevant - and evergreen - tags for your products, both long and short. Just as with the Lead a Child Outside or to a Bookshelf series, I also put my tips in good use in the Full Contretemps stationery and lifestyle item collections.

Scroll to 38:43 for the inspo behind the Zazzle merch lines.

The Full Contretemps line stemmed from spates of social media videos of dancers attempting the medium allegro enchainement from the Berlin State Ballet's 2021 company class, streamed on that World Ballet Day, in summer 2023. Tomas Karlborg, who was then its ballet master, affectionately called it the "Pas de Balanchine variation," due to the fact that the combo ends in a grande pas de chat.

Some ballet teachers, when teaching the combo for whichever social media platform, fail to correctly label the steps in between the first 2 temps leves en avant: the full contretemps. It was that ballet term of which the design indirectly alludes to the then-viral medium allegro enchainement.

"What we recommend is that 80% of your products should be evergreen and 20% seasonal," mother-daughter creator team Jen and Elke Clarke informed, "We recommend this because it has worked for us. With 14 years of experience on Zazzle, we have seen consistent and predictable income by maintaining a product inventory of 80% evergreen products." "If you set yourself up with 80% evergreen products and they start to sell consistently, you will feel more secure and confident because you will be able to predict how much money you’ll make over time as well. This is when you can feel that your Zazzle business is truly a business and not a hobby."

Be them in forms of enduring, perennial lessons learned from current events like reducing screen time for kids or dance steps from a trending ballet enchainement, evergreen content can be profitable by-products if done with SEO in mind.

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My Words on Evergreen Niches

I have been VERY familiar with evergreen niches as a web content writer when I started my Zazzle Creator career in 2009 and restarted it in 2021. It's built with evergreen content such as health, beauty, and business. But on Zazzle (and other print-on-demand sites) itself? Not so much.

Me working at a restaurant and traveling around the world between 2013 and 2020 placed my Zazzle selling pursuits in the back burner. Not to mention me having to delete product after product because Disney just set up camp, thus me deleting Flexible Disney on October 2021 and starting anew.

With me having taken tons of photos in my time away from it - and eventually moving with my DM in her native Cagayan Valley in northeastern Philippines in 2024 - I decided to use some of the best of them and artistically alter them to create products out of them, hence me returning back.

This is my Muted Alexandrite social media business card I intentionally laminated (and handwritten my Pinterest account page on), photographed on location on the Abuan RIver in Ilagan, Isabela, northeastern Philippines. Taken 3/13/2024. 

Business is one of my niches I based products on. My other interests include travel, music, and dance. But the question would always burn in the back of my head (and I bet some of you are feeling it): which niches are good to base my products on?

As a web content writer, I'd categorize my niches in the following order, largest to smallest: evergreen; seasonal (holidays and graduations); and ephemeral (such as elections). Evergreen niches tend to earn more and perpetually earn more at least every week of the year and, of course, EVERY. FLUTING. YEAR.

"Evergreen topics like business, health, parenting, etc. will always attract interest," read an article on blog platform Simplified, "As a result, content centered around these popular evergreen topics will remain relevant, driving traffic to your website for years to come." 

On the Zazzle side, however - according to Lyfepyle - the top-selling niches are Weddings, Birthdays, Monogram, Holidays, Small Business (as I mentioned), Babies, Vintage, Travel, Elections, Photo Collage, Human Rights, Vegan, and Trending Media. 

Narrowed down to evergreen ones, they're Weddings (not just summer ones); Birthdays (It's an evergreen niche because every single DARN day, someone somewhere has a birthday.); Monogram; Small Business (as I mentioned); Babies (At least a human is born every single day, hence it also being evergreen to begin with.); Vintage; Travel; Photo Collage; Human Rights; and Vegan.

For me, a good mix of high selling AND unique niches (seasonal AND evergreen) in separate stores and collections is profitable. Why? Oftentimes, the high-selling ones are WAAAAAAAAAAY too vague.

Music is one of the evergreen but vague niches to base products on. Sure, there are items on Zazzle geared towards school band kids and organists, BUT other types of musicians are well under the radar.

Take ballet pianists, for instance. Many dance-themed gifts are geared towards dancers themselves, kin of dancers, and dance teachers. But the people who tickle the 88 acoustic or digital keys at the corner or over videoconferencing (Thanks, COVID-19 pandemic as well as programs such as Zarely's Worldwide Ballet Class having taught on the latter means in 2020!) deserve as much respect as them.

At the time I restarted my Zazzle career, THERE WEREN'T ANY GIFTS OR GEAR FOR BALLET PIANISTS!

Lemme repeat that: THERE USED TO BE NEITHER ANY GIFTS NOR GEAR FOR BALLET PIANISTS! Thankfully, I filled in the gap with business cards like this one.

Hence me creating gifts and gear for ballet pianists, and I created a dedicated category under my store, TFB LOVES Accompanimental Musicians, which is geared towards musicians, especially pit orchestra players; lounge and the aforementioned ballet pianists; cruise ship musicians; praise band members; and yes, CHURCH ORGANISTS.

Basing a store on each broad niche prevents you from putting all your eggs in one basket. If you're into group travel and want to sell products to people going on destination family reunions, college bowl trips with high school marching bands, or Caribbean cruises with your local dance studio's competitive teams, dedicate a store JUST for that. Create sub-niches for each category and categorize such products.

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Evergreen, Everyday Items (or Why Evergreen Content is Most Profitable)

"WOW! So you sell evergreen, everyday items as a Zazzle marketer? Like, isn't it only for birthdays, special occasions, vacations, and holidays?"

If you're catching yourself asking those questions, ask any vet content marketer, blogger, or designer-distributor who makes monthly profits multiple times larger than what the average middle-classperson makes a year why evergreen content is the most profitable of ALL.

So what is evergreen content, I hear you ask. Here's what the vets say:

"Evergreen content is search-optimized content that is continually relevant and stays 'fresh' for readers over a long period of time,  as the name implies," an article on Digital Marketing Institute reads, "You may think that all online content is sustainable; after all, a blog post doesn’t just disappear after you publish it. But evergreen content is different. It continues to be relevant long past its publication date, with search traffic growing over time."

Items for small businesses that are year-round, like this witty rubber stamp for local music stores, are constantly-profitable items.

Coming from someone who has written internet content since graduating high school in 2008 (starting with sites like Triond, Associated Content, and HubPages) evergreen content is independent of holidays, current events, and trending topics of the day.

It's content that is relevant and REMAINS RELEVANT for you and your subsequent future generations, just like time-honored-and-treasured heirlooms. Of course and obviously, presidential elections and the latest trending memes are just ephemeral topics to sell, though you will experience high sales.

And as one 1936 Professor Grampy cartoon attests, Christmas comes but once a year. Sales of your year-independent items (or items in which you insert your own year) that greet buyers, "Maligayang Pasko," will dwindle after New Year's, not to pick up slightly in July (if there's a "Christmas in July" sale) and gain momentum in about September. (Thank you, Christmas creep and Ber-months in the Philippines!) We call this seasonal content.

Evergreen content has EVERYTHING to do with you as a Zazzle designer and distributor yourself. Yes, seasonal items [including the ones that sing "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" or say "HAGS (Have a Great Summer)"] sell BIG before and during their respective times of the year, but items based on evergreen content that CAN BE used every week and/or day continue to sell each month.

"The most basic definition of evergreen products are products that have strong and predictable sales records throughout a year," Tony Do, of SellGo, defines, "This means the products are always in demand and usually remain unaffected despite external factors or societal changes. To understand evergreen products, it is important to understand why people buy these products in the first place."

"Simply put, evergreen products are products that fulfill our basic needs and everyday lives. Consumers are always looking for products that meet the needs of 3 key aspects of their lives: health, lifestyle, and relationships. Whether it be fitness gear or cookbooks, shoppers are looking for these types of products year-round. By following evergreen products, sellers may find a whole forest of profitable, in-demand products."

The more evergreen content you generate, the more sustainable your profits will be. It won’t even matter if you are facing constant or sporadic internet disruptions or have very busy days that seemingly don’t pertain to your businesses. It won’t even matter if you’re eschewing Wi-Fi packages on cruises, either.

Evergreen products will ALWAYS be hardy against those situations!

Some of my favorite evergreen niches to categorize and sell on POD sites are music, health, everyday transportation, education, and financial freedom.

People will ALWAYS look for items that make them stick to their health-based goals; drop themselves out of the rat race; tell the world that they bear crosses of bringing children to errands, school, and appointments; or make it know that they allow them and their children's children to read books of their own choosing as opposed to those according to whichever color, number, or numerical level schools dictate them to read within.

Over at the True Freedom Believers On the Move Sari-Sari, for instance, the items under the "Baon Again?" collection are initially intended for kids going on vacations. But they DOUBLE as school apparel and items too, thus me describing them as such. After all, Oxford Languages defines this Filipino term as "money, food, or other provisions taken to school, work, or on a journey."

Sure, you can sell summertime pool parties, "generic Halloween costumes," and Christmas ornaments all the live long day. But if you wanna get the POD cheddar coming to you month after month, consider giving creating evergreen content-based products a spin!