How to start a sticker business

Stickers have a life of their own. Some people think of them as nothing more than children’s toys. Other people use them to express their individuality. Some stickers can be practical, like nametags, and some even show up on street signs as representations of counterculture.

Whatever it is you’re hoping to accomplish with your sticker business, it, too, will take on a life of its own. Once a sticker leaves your hands and arrives in the hands of your customers, it will begin a new journey.

That journey might take it to the bottom of a junk drawer where it sits for the next eight years. But it could also wind up in a scrapbook full of happy childhood memories. Or it might end up plastered to the side of a cooler that a family takes out on fishing trips every weekend during the hot summer months.

You never know where your stickers are going to wind up. All you can do is create them and send them on their way.

But to spark the hundreds of stories your stickers will tell, you’ll need a business that sells them. And here’s where you’ll learn to do that.

Planning your sticker business

Before you can get started, you should know that this article is meant for people intending to create an automated sticker business as well as people planning on printing their own stickers. Whichever path you decide to take, you’ll need to do some planning.

If you want to create a fully automated sticker business, that will require much less planning than printing the stickers yourself.

An automated sticker business relies on internet-based tools and print-on-demand services to allow you to set up a business that will make money while you sleep. On the other hand, a more traditional sticker business will require you to buy special printing equipment and have a dedicated place to actually run your business.

You’ll have to carefully think through these foundational issues. So how do you get started? Here are a few key steps you need to take.

Start brainstorming

Regardless of your path, the planning process is the same. The first step is to get all the thoughts you have about your business written down so you won’t lose them. You could jot them down on a huge stack of 3 x 5 cards with a separate idea on each card. Or you could use a Google spreadsheet where you can add each idea as a line item and then add details in each column.

Whatever technique you like to use, it’s important not to get too hung up on the method. Just focus on getting those ideas written down somewhere safe while your brain is spitting them out.

How you brainstorm is completely up to you, but one of the most effective techniques is mind mapping. You can do it on a piece of paper or a whiteboard or by using mind mapping software.

Whimsical is an excellent choice for mind mapping. It offers a full suite of planning tools including flowcharting, wireframing, and, of course, mind maps.

Develop a professional business plan

Getting all those thoughts out of your head and somewhere safe was only the first step. There are two things you can now do with your freshly brainstormed notes. You can organize them and turn them into a living document that will grow with your business. And you can use them to develop your business plan.

A business plan is going to be a more formalized version of the notes you’ve created. If you ever hope to get funding, a business plan is essential. That’s because a business plan will show potential investors what they can expect your business to achieve based on formalized estimates and clearly laid out documentation.

There are a ton of different resources out there that can help you write a business plan. The Small Business Administration has a great guide that walks you through the process step by step.

Get advice and mentorship

This is probably the best time in all of human history to start a business. You have more access to information and services than anyone could have ever imagined just 30 years ago.

That being said, starting a business is still a risky venture. So it’s a good idea to take advantage of every resource that was available to previous generations as well as the new resources at your fingertips. One of the best resources you can tap into is the assistance from a great advisor or mentor. 

Finding an advisor or mentor may seem like a challenging prospect. Fortunately, the SBA has you covered here as well. They have a program called SCORE that will help connect you to a network of retired business owners who volunteer their time and expertise to assist people like you. Working with them is one of the best ways to make sure you get off on the right foot.

Creating a web and social media presence

We’re not going to get into marketing just yet, but these days, creating a social media presence is kind of the same thing as naming your business. So, this is as good a time as any to name your business and create your social media accounts.

Domain names

Even if you have a real-world shop, you’ll probably do most of your business online. For that reason, it’s a good idea to find your domain name before you name your business. Picking a domain first is also smart because it’ll be much harder to find a domain that matches your business name than it is to name your business after your website.

Finding the perfect domain name can be a real headache, but here are a few tips to steer you in the right direction:

1. Keep it short and sweet. Most people find websites via a search on Google or through another website’s link. But once a person has followed that link, they’ll often need to type the address in by hand if they want to visit the site again. Make it easy for them to do that with your domain name.
2. Avoid tricky words and long names. Imagine a website called toforate.com. On the one hand, that would be a really easy domain name to remember and type in. But can you imagine trying to tell somebody about it? “Like the numbers 2-4-8?” “No, they’re words.” “Oh! Was that spelled two, to, or too?” To avoid that, make sure your domain name is easy to say, spell, and share.
3. Dot-coms are best, but there are alternatives. The dot-com will be forever lodged in our minds as the go-to domain extension. But there actually are alternatives out there. For example, you could call your business sillystickers.store, .bingo, or .love.
4. Get creative. People have claimed pretty much all the websites with one or two words as their name for the last 20 years or so. You can still get them, but it’ll cost you. For now, think about sites like Spotify and Airbnb. They came up with nonsense names that followed all the other suggestions in this list, and it worked out well for them.

The best place to get a domain name is from Google Domains. They have the best prices available, a simple interface, and no ads or upsells.

Social media names

Now that you’ve named your website, it’s time to think about your social media names. Fortunately, coming up with social media names is much easier than dealing with domains. You can get kind of cute with them and add a short two- or three-letter word to keep them unique.

People don’t expect perfect social media names. And you can always change them later.

Business name

Last but not least, it’s time to come up with your business name. You can name your business whatever you want, of course. If it strays too far from your domain name, though, then it might create confusion when people try to find your website.

Registering your business name as a corporation is usually pretty straightforward, but there are a lot of corporations out there, and one of them might have already taken your first pick. If yours isn’t available, you might even want to go back to the drawing board because there could be another business that already has your exact name. But in case it’s just something that’s similar, come up with a couple of alternative business names just in case.

Funding your venture

As we discussed earlier, this article is for different kinds of sticker businesses. If your business is going to be strictly digital, you probably won’t even need much money to get started. You can get away with a few hundred dollars for ads and web hosting and pay for everything else once you start earning.

If you actually want to print your own stickers, that could require a small business loan. Fortunately, stickers don’t take up a lot of space. You could probably run your entire business out of your spare room or garage. All you need is a printer, and you’ll be off to the races.

But look, don’t read this information and think you’re all set on financial advice. You need direction from a real, honest-to-goodness professional financial advisor. Always consult with an accountant, mentor, or banker before doing anything financially drastic.

With that out of the way, here are five pointers to consider before asking anyone for money:

1. Know your numbers. At this point, you shouldn’t need to do any extra work to know your numbers. Everything you need to know should already be in your business plan. You don’t have to memorize the whole thing, but you should at least have a solid understanding of the numbers that you put into it.
2. Be realistic about your goals. It’s a fine thing to dream big. And someday you may have 20 full-time employees working for you, 10 sticker printing machines, and millions of sales every week. But that won’t happen overnight. Think about what you need just to get started. How much money do you need to start working, printing, and selling tomorrow?
3. Be prepared to answer tough questions. Everybody has to work hard for their money. Investors and bankers are no different. Before they even give you a penny, they’ll want to make sure you know your own business and their money will be safe with you. Arm yourself with knowledge ahead of time.
4. Be patient. If this is your first business, then you obviously don’t have a lot of experience. And that’s okay. We all have to start somewhere. But getting that first loan can be tough without experience. Don’t give up; just keep trying.
5. Have a backup plan. But what if you just can’t secure funds at all? If you remember the beginning of this section, we mentioned you can create a digital business for next to nothing. Even if you want to print your own stickers eventually, you can start off by following the digital route until you have a small budget. There may even be other ways to earn money to finance your business.

Financing sources

If you absolutely, positively must have at least a little money to get started, you have some options.

Here are five potential sources:

1. Bootstrapping and savings: Like we discussed in the previous section, there are multiple ways to start small and gather funding from the profits of a shoestring startup. But even if you want to do everything by hand, you can get a decent, entry-level printer for under $3,000. Set it up in your closet, get shipping supplies, and away you go. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune to get started.
2. Friends and family: If you ever ask around for how to finance your business, a lot of professionals will actually tell you to take this route. If you have supportive friends or family with a few extra bucks to invest in your dream, you may want to ask them nicely for a leg up. They might even want to work with you and make your job easier.
3. Grants: There are a lot of grants available to help people in difficult situations. Many of them are for people like farmers, indigenous peoples, and charities. But there are grants specifically available for people creating small businesses. Look around, but be wary of anybody asking for money — grant information is always available for free.
4. Bank loans: This, of course, is the old standby. Go talk to a stuffy old banker and see if you can get a microloan. Just make sure you have your business plan in hand.
5. Crowdfunding: If you’re doing something really fun and innovative, you might just be able to get people excited enough to invest in your business through sites like Kickstarter. Or, if you have a lot of friends or a social media following, you could use something like GoFundMe.

Taking care of legal matters

A lot of people don’t think of online businesses as “real” businesses. You don’t have a store, you never meet your customers, and everything happens through websites. But as long as someone is exchanging goods and services for money, it’s a real business.

And once money gets involved, things get serious. That’s why it’s a good idea to start thinking about legal matters and taxes before you’ve even made your first dollar.

Just like with the financial advice, don’t take anything you read here as professional legal advice. Talk to certified professionals to make sure you have all your ducks in a row.

Here are eight pointers:

1. Incorporation: If you’re running a web business, it may be tempting to just do everything under your own name using your personal checking account. But that can get you into trouble. While there’s not much that can go wrong with a sticker busines, if something does, it can cripple you financially. That’s why corporations were created. They protect your personal assets from the liabilities of your business. You can create a corporation online in very little time — but talk to one of your mentors first.
2. Federal ID: Your EIN number is like a social security card for your business. You’ll need it to open a business checking account, pay taxes, and work with other businesses.
3. Local licenses and permits: If you’re running a local business, your local government will want to know about it. Every city has vendor permit requirements. You may need to make your county and state aware of your business as well. The laws around having an online business are often vague, so do your homework before getting started.
4. Intellectual property: Don’t let someone else steal your business. Trademark your name, copyright your designs, and protect all of your intellectual property.
5. Taxes: When you think about your company’s money, the first thing that should come to mind is taxes. It doesn’t matter how much you earn until you’ve considered what the taxman’s take is. You’re not going to get out of it, so get ready for it.
6. Insurance: Insurance is usually something more necessary for contractors and people with physical locations. If your business is 100% online, you probably have nothing to worry about. Chances are your stickers won’t make anybody sick, and people likely won’t sue you if they get a paper cut. But if you have any kind of physical location, even a workshop with other employees, insurance is something you should consider.
7. Contracts: Another way to protect yourself is with contracts. If you go full enterprise with your sticker business, you may find yourself working with professional printers and paper suppliers. But even if you only have one or two employees, you should always have contracts in place when working with other people.
8. Employment law: There’s a lot to think about when it comes to dealing with employees. There are financial considerations, benefits, and management concerns, to name a few. When you’re small enough, you might be able to handle it all yourself. But getting an attorney or working with an HR firm is something you should consider as you grow.

Marketing

Stickers are, all by themselves, a form of marketing. They’re basically advertisements. And while ads aren’t as effective as they used to be, anything that exists in the real world is going to have a better chance to capture people’s attention than an ad on the TV or radio.

Marketing these days is a lot more complicated than it used to be. In the last century, marketing was all about telling people what to buy and convincing them that it was a good decision. But now people make up their own minds about what they want.

If you want to reach modern consumers, you need to connect with them on a personal level. You need to create a brand that people will gather around, feel excited about, and want to share with their friends.

That’s easier said than done, though. And it will require hard work and thinking like a marketer.

Thinking like a marketer

When you think of marketing, you may be thinking of things like Google analytics, facts, figures, and return on investment (ROI). But actually, marketing is a social skill. There’s a fair amount of technical understanding required, of course. But really, it’s all about reaching people.

There’s a lot to learn about marketing, but here are three concepts that many people find vitally important:

1. Understand strategy vs tactics. When you first think about how you’re going to market your business, you may think, “All I need is an Instagram account and pretty pictures of my pretty stickers.” But that’s just a tactic. In order to reach as many people as possible, you’ll need a collection of tactics that forms a complete strategy. That includes having creative packaging, giving incentives for your customers to share their experiences, having a presence at public events in your area, and on and on.
2. Find your people and lead them. Stickers are kind of a funny thing. Where do you go to buy them? The best ones aren’t mainstream items. They’re something that restaurants hand out to kids. Businesses present them as swag, and you often have to ask for them specifically. Or they’re tucked away in novelty shops like Hot Topic. Each of those three examples represents different kinds of people who would collect stickers. What kinds of people are you hoping to connect with? Figure out who those people are, and become central to them.
3. Get out on the long tail. The long tail is a marketing concept that you can look up for more information. Boiled down to its core, it means that you shouldn’t try to compete with Hot Topic. Hot Topic has a niche, but it’s very broad. You’ll need an even smaller niche to avoid getting lost in an ocean of big-brand advertising. You need to be the main source of stickers in your very tight niche. That niche doesn’t need to exist yet, though; you can create it.

You can learn all three of those concepts and many more from Seth Godin. So far, he’s written 20 bestsellers, and he publishes great advice on his excellent daily blog. The best book to get you started is This Is Marketing. Even if you’ll be hiring marketers, it’s a good book to help you understand this critical aspect of your business.

Doing the actual work

Now that you understand your niche, know your audience, and have a marketing strategy, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

You’ll want to show up regularly in the places where you’ve established a presence. It’s a good idea to start with the social media services you already use. That will make getting started a little bit easier.

And learning some actual marketing skills from trustworthy sources, like Udemy, will help also.

Sorting out the manufacturing

The actual hard work of running your sticker business from day to day is actually not that hard.

If you’re starting from scratch with a printer, some packing supplies, and a dream, then all you really need is an online presence and some spare time to ship your stickers. And if you want to automate everything, your stickers will ship while you sleep.

There are plenty of print-on-demand services available for people starting a sticker business. You can hook the better ones up to your storefront to completely automate the sales process. Once you’ve set everything up, all you’ll need to do is upload your designs.

Choosing the right software

Printing and shipping stickers doesn’t require a lot of knowledge or people to help you out. You can handle most aspects of your business by yourself, especially in the beginning.

There are some really smart tools available that can handle a lot of different kinds of jobs without requiring you to learn a lot of different kinds of software. Here are three of the best:

1. Google Docs, Gmail, and Meet: Google’s cloud-based suite of tools will let you and your team communicate and work together in real time. And when your business grows, they offer Workspace, which is designed for companies of every size — from tiny mom and pops to massive enterprises.
2. Jotform: Jotform is the premier communication automation tool. Its versatility means you’ll constantly find places in your business processes where it’s the perfect match.
3. Notion: Notion is a knowledge management tool. It provides a collaborative editing environment that gives you smart tables and lets you embed other software into your pages. You can even embed Google’s and Jotform’s tools into your Notion pages, making it a great center for all your business processes.

Managing your business processes

Once you’ve gotten the hang of things, printing and shipping stickers will be pretty automatic. But down the road, you’ll probably want to hire somebody to do the work for you. You should consider the processes that you’re using from the beginning and document them. That way, bringing on new people will be as simple as handing them a checklist and saying, “Get to work.”

The E-Myth by Michael Gerber is an excellent book that will teach you how to work on your business, not just in your business. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris is another outstanding book that will teach you how to automate and outsource much of your business.

Here are some common processes and some tricks for managing them:

1. Accounting: This involves bookkeeping, payroll, and taxes. QuickBooks is the most popular choice for small businesses and the self-employed.
2. Human resources: This department handles hiring, firing, managing benefits, and more. You can take care of most of your HR with Jotform. You can use it to receive resumes, fill out legal documents, manage employee lists and information, and much more.
3. Customer service: Keeping your customers happy is probably the most important part of your business. This is another area where Jotform is your friend. You can create forms to collect service requests, return requests, product feedback, and more.
4. Research and development: You’ll constantly need to create new designs and consider different mediums to keep your customers excited about your brand. You can track all of your research using Google Docs. It’s also great for collaborative work.
5. Marketing: We’ve already discussed this in detail. Google Docs can help you manage your campaigns. Jotform has many marketing templates that you can use to collect email addresses, do market research, and much more. Buffer can help streamline your social media marketing by automating posts. And Mailchimp will help you launch professional email campaigns without getting flagged as spam.
6. Quality assurance: It’s vitally important to make sure your end product meets the highest standards possible. Jotform can help you streamline the inspection process, and Jotform Approvals can automate your policies and procedures for decision-making.
7. Shipping and receiving: You don’t need a huge warehouse to store all of your products these days. There are many fulfillment services available. They’ll store your product, pack it, and ship it. They’ll also handle returns and a certain amount of customer service. Amazon is one reliable provider of fulfillment.
8. Manufacturing: You’ll need a lot of records and documents to manage your manufacturing. Google Docs should provide everything you need.
9. Storefront: Jotform can make setting up an online store one of the easiest parts of building your business, thanks to its Online Store Builder tool.

Making it stick

There’s a lot involved in starting a business, but the most important thing is to start! Don’t overthink it. Don’t over plan it. Don’t spend too much on it. Don’t psych yourself out. Just roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Okay, we did say you’ll need to do a lot of upfront planning, and that’s true. But it’s mostly to get the ideas out of your head and somewhere safe. Once you’ve done that, just get back to work.

This article covered a lot of territory. You can safely bookmark it and forget most of what you’ve read. But keep it in the back of your mind. When you need more information, come back here to start figuring out your next steps.

Whatever success looks like for you, here’s hoping you’ll see it. And here’s to you for taking the first steps!

Photo by Javon Swaby