Starting a print-on-demand ecommerce business has never been easier — or more difficult. On the one hand, AI-generated artwork now rivals human-created versions. A merchant can construct dozens of print-on-demand-ready products in minutes and at almost no cost. Unfortunately, the combination of that extremely low barrier to entry and AI-driven changes to ecommerce product discovery makes it difficult to start a POD business. AI makes print-on-demand design easy and customer acquisition difficult. It can seem almost impossible to get even the first sale. POD merchants now face at least three tough promotional challenges: Zero-click search results, AI-driven product discovery, The “margin-to-CAC” challenge. Zero Clicks Google’s AI Overviews have crushed organic search traffic by an estimated 58% in 2025, according to data from Ahrefs,   SparkToro, Pew Research , and many others. Google is apparently taking steps to restore at least some of the clicks its AI killed.…