Mike Edwards Blog

As the price of modern technology continues to fall starting a home based internet business  has never been easier. With low start up prices, low overheads and the ease of working in your own time, the home based business has really gathered steam in the last few years. Sublimation printing is a great example of starting small business from home.

Using the power of ebay the seller has the  advantage of not having to carry large stocks of products, but instead can make the orders after they have been actually sold. This technique is great for any new business which has to keep a tight budget in the first few critical months.

Using ebay to start your new business gives you an instant advertisement to millions of possible customers, which would take you months if not years to achieve  with traditional methods. A sublimation business can be a part-time venture for an additional source of income or it can be a full-time career where you’re in charge of your own work. Either way the great advantage of working from home is you can choose the hours you work.

Also using the personalisation method of selling on ebay the seller has the unique benefits of making a one off item and being able to charge more than the standard price, just by adding a name or small message. This can be highly profitable especially if you can market different special occasions throughout the year, ie Birthdays, Christmas, Mothers Day etc. 

Are you hoping to embark on an ebay based type business that you can start from home? Nicely you will probably be in view of the usual; dropshiping, affiliate marketing, selling information ebooks, or differing other online effort from home business. Perhaps your already owning businesses of this type which maintain so far making little or no income for you.
Most of the above types are great types of home businesses that with determination will work, only if you are able to drive ample directed movement to your website - but this is where most people fail.
Website conversion stats are from the visit to sale quite low, customarily 2 percent or a lot less, even as low as a fourth of a percent in some cases - this means you call for to drive a lot of glacial shipping to a web position to create a becoming level of sales.
When I talk to relatives who have internet businesses which aren’t bringing in them any income, I typically find the why is that they’re just not acquiring adequate traffic. Quite regularly I’ve talked to people who were bringing a couple of hundred visits per month & thought this would be sufficient to make a couple of sales, but it actually Is not. On average, from every 100 visitor you’re perhaps going to have 1 or 2 sales, so unless you are able to forge all the money you need from these small sales per month, with most online businesses you’re succeeding to miss a lot more shipping than this!
Dye sublimation is a system that is used to produce high quality photo quality printed philanthropy in small to usual volume.
What you may find is that the minute you start telling some of your friends and family that you’re going to be starting a business, which means you can print just about anything onto mugs, mousemats, Tshirts, canvas, and so on - the orders start to come in!
Before you start to set up a site and begin to market your products, almost everybody finds that they will have some orders coming from friends and family - which in turn begins to grow your business from their word of mouth. This is the most powerful advertising media on you can have. Therefore, if you just tell all your friends & family what you’re doing, ask them to spread the word, this is a business that will take off a LOT quicker than most home based businesses.

On Reflection it’s not such a great idea too rely on your friends and family as your only source of leads - but it may allow you to easily get started without having huge amounts of site traffic to begin with. Getting off the ground by far is the most difficult thing you will have to do.

Printing technology is changing all the time, we are seeing extremely higher quality prints being obtainable with the better ink, higher print capabilities and improvements on heat presses, but the basics on sublimation printing stays the same. You will need a Computer, with as much memory as possible as this will give you plenty of space on your hard drive for all your images. The better the pc system your able to acquire the better it will be for you. Also some of the software you will require to uise will be either Photoshop or Corel Draw. There are many other software packages you can use like Macromedia Freehand and Illustrator etc. A good quality printer is also an essential item of equipment to have. Not all printing systems will work with dye sublimation, so please check carefully that your buying a suitable one. Epson sell a lot of high quality printers that are perfect for use with Sublimaton Printing. The next most important piece of equipment that you must buy is a Heat Press. There are many heat presses to choose from, all depending on your printing requirements. There are specialty presses, which are soley desinged to be used in printing Mugs, Tiles, Hats, Caps and Ceramic plates. These heat presses need to be selected carefully. There are some heat presses which are designed to be of multi use, so you need to decide on your budget and long term requirements before you buy.Always try and plan for the future and think about what product you could print on to. Go to www.printednovelties.com and check out the different products that are available. Last but certainly not least is the actual Dye. You will need sublimation ink and sublimation paper, for your printer. Sublimation ink differs greatly from the standard printer ink we use everyday so be sure to check that your buying the correct ink. There are also continuous ink supplies which can be incorporated with you printer system, please consider these systems although the initial price is much higher, these continuous systems will save you a fortune in ink costs in the long run. A final thing you should carefully consider is the actual paper you use for printing on to. Standard printer paper is not advised as it does not give a high quality print. Many people start of trying to save money by using standard paper, but i can assure you that the long term quality is no where near the same.You can buy a special sublimation paper for printing which is more expensive but highly recommended.

Sublimation printing can be used on a huge variety of products as long as the surface is suitable for sublimation inks. Either hard or soft items are suitable in sublimation.

Hard items that can be printed onto include coated plaques, mugs, placemats, coasters, tiles, signs, metal and keyrings.
Some Soft products are polyester fabrics, polo shirts, umbrellas,bar mats, t-shirts, canvas prints, cushions, car sun screens and even doormats! To see a wide range of products that can be used visit www.printednovelties.com. A sublimation print on a suitable polyester fabric is permanent, feels like part of the fabric with no ‘hand’ and will not crack, peel or fade.
In fact With dye sublimation you can get print images onto any product which has a polyester content or surface, can withstand high temperature over 180 C and is white or light in colour.