Good evening!
I own an Etsy shop. I sell many products, including png designs and POD (print on demand) items.
When I first began doing this, I didn’t know about the multitude of free tools out there to do some of the digital work for me. I was using the free Paint program on my computer to remove backgrounds and edit photos, and I was doing WAY too much work.
I knew I could pay someone for these services, but I don’t have the funds to allocate to that, and, luckily, I’ve found ways to not pay.
If you’re having similar issues, here are a few of the resources I use, and this will hopefully inspire you to look out for more neat tools to do work for you, because I guarantee that this list isn’t exhaustive.
Remove backgrounds from photos (good to convert jpg files to png files) – remove.bg
Edit pictures (similar to Photoshop) – www.photopea.com
Convert pictures to a higher resolution – https://clideo.com/dpi-converter
Find copyright-free photos – Pixabay
Research Etsy SEO – erank.com
Find POD mockup pictures for products – placeit.net (This one wants you to subscribe to their site to download images… but I’ve been screenshotting the webpage and cropping what I want… I’m probably not supposed to do that… and I use this site so often that I need to subscribe anyway and get the free watermark out of my photos.)
I also know that there are sites that will use AI to write blog posts, transcribe, and create pictures, but I don’t actually have experience using those.
With all of these, I’ve found that YouTube has been a major help – especially with Photopea. Anytime I can’t figure out how to do something, I just go to YouTube, and I’ve always been able to find a tutorial video.
As I said, this isn’t an exhaustive list, so definitely keep looking. I know there has to be more; I just haven’t come across them yet. I hope this helps you on your journey!
Frugal Treehugger 