How I earn money designing T-shirts in my free time
A guide to starting selling T-shirts online without caring about logistics
Do you like graphic design? Have you ever tried to design your own T-shirts? I do, and I love to spend my free time creating new illustrations and patterns.
But how can you get some profit from that? I have my own work, and I cannot afford to create my own T-shirt business right now due to the lack of time. However, there is a solution for those of you who want to benefit from your hobby. The answer to our problems, like many others, is on the Internet.
Before telling you how do I did it, I will share some of my numbers. Of course, you will not be a millionaire because of this method: remember that this is just a way to get some extra money from your hobby!
In the last two years, I have earned approximately $850.50 passively, and $1,160 actively. So, in total, I received something more than $2,000 from my designs. That is not so much, but it is more than what my other hobbies reported me! The active method requires you to spend more time than the passive, but it will depend on the quality of your products. I will explain both methods in this article.
From a business point of view, there are indeed people living from this methods, working full-time as T-shirts designers. If you are an entrepreneur who wants to enter this market, it is perfectly feasible and profitable. However, the modus operandi is very different and we can explain it in a future article.
1. PASSIVE INCOMES FROM T-SHIRT DESIGNS
This is my favorite method. It is not the most lucrative, but I like it for getting some long-term income.
Since I do want to focus on the T-shirt design, I do not want to spend my time managing the printing, delivering, or marketing issues. However, there are companies that already do that, and all they need are original T-shirt designs from independent designers around the globe. We will call these companies permanent store websites.
You can just update your designs to their website, and they do the hard work. You will earn some royalties for every sale they make, delivering worldwide. The money you receive from every sale varies from one website to another, but you can expect royalties to be around 10% of the sale price.
Here you have a list of some of the best permanent store websites:
- Red Bubble. It is probably the biggest permanent store website at the moment. They sell thousands of different designs, digitally printed not only on T-shirts but on a variety of 60 products like phone cases, mugs or pillows.
- Tee Public. They were recently acquired by Red Bubble, but they keep working like separated brands and websites. Personally, I always had my best experience working with Tee Public. Almost all the money I earned passively comes from Tee Public. Their fanbase is more oriented to pop culture, TV parodies, comics and games fandom. You can find T-shirts, sweatshirts, phone cases, mugs, banners and more.
- Design by Hümans. DBH is other of the main permanent stores. They support independent artists and designers, and you can find also designs for officially licensed brands like Star Wars, AC-DC, Marvel or NASA. They print also on different types of clothes and accessories.
- Merch by Amazon. The newest competitor on this market. Amazon opened its own permanent store for independent designers but to create an account you need an invitation that you can request on their website. Of course, Amazon works with licensed brands too.
- Spreadshirt. A German company, it is probably the biggest European permanent store website. Their model is very similar to the others, and they give you the option to create your own T-shirts store.
WHAT SHOULD BE YOUR STRATEGY WITH THESE STORES?
If you want to sell your designs, I recommend you to choose one or two of these stores. Browse them to check their different designs, and choose those that better match with your style.
Once you select them, just create an account and start uploading. From my experience, I can give you some extra information that they will not tell you in their websites:
- You can publicize around your designs, but if you don’t have access to a big community, your efforts will not be profitable. The marketing campaigns of Tee Public, Red Bubble or Amazon will probably work much better and faster than you, so let them do the work if you don’t want to spend much time and money on that. Of course, if you are an influencer, do not hesitate to make use of your social media!
- T-shirts sell better than any other printed product. Focus on designing for T-shirts, and don’t worry so much about how your designs will look on mugs or notebooks. Less than 5% of my sales have been products other than T-shirts. At first, I tried to adapt my designs for different products, but then I realized of this. Lesson learned.
- You have to upload designs. Many designs. There are thousands of designers uploading contents, so you will not attract the customers with only 1 or 2 great artworks. As in any other content-based Internet site, it will take some time to see your first earnings. However, do not be discouraged: enjoy your hobby and keep uploading. Your designs will stay online for a long time, and that means that if you increase the number of designs uploaded, your probabilities of making a sale will increase. In the end, you will reach stable monthly incomes.
- Know your public: study the demographic and geographic data. It will depend on your own style, but I can give you some data from my own experience. Most of the visitors to my designs in Tee Public come from the USA. At least, that is what Google Analytics says. Nevertheless, you can see that my designs have some public from all over the world. Most of my public is aged less than 35.
2. ACTIVE INCOMES FROM T-SHIRT DESIGNS
This second method will require you to spend some more time, and to be much more competitive in terms of design quality and trending detection.
Apart from the permanent store websites, there are other online T-shirt companies that we will call daily sale websites. If you like original T-shirts design, you may have heard about them already. Their fandom is usually related to pop culture, TV series, comic and films.
Their business model is clear and simple: their curators select designs uploaded by independent creators, and they print 2 or 3 selected designs for a limited time. Typically, only for one day. They sell the daily T-shirts at a low price (around $12) and print on demand, after they have collected all the orders of the day. Designers receive around 10% of the sale price as royalties.
There are lots of websites following this model. I can summarize the best sites from my experience, so that you can check them and try your best uploading your own designs:
- Qwertee. Based in UK, the biggest European daily sale website. They sell 3 selected designs for 11€ each, and you can also purchase some legacy designs.
- ShirtPunch. American website, selling 4 selected designs every day. Their price is lower, at $10 each one.You can also get some older designs.
- RiptApparel. Another american website, offering 3 selected designs at $13 apart from other older designs.
- Pampling. Spanish company, with online and also physical stores in Europe. They sell two selected designs at 10.90€, and you can also find many other designs in their shop.
- TeeFury. The last of my selection of daily sale websites. They sell two selected designs at $12 each, and they have a big permanent store from older selected designs. They also sell all-over prints!
At a first sight, it may look that you cannot earn a lot of money from this method. After all, if you get selected they will sell your design only for one day, while on the permanent stores you can sell them permanently. However, you should consider that all the marketing efforts of the website will be focused on selling your design (and maybe 1 or 2 more), so that the number of sales per day will be actually higher. Much higher.
In the end, you can sell hundreds -or even thousands- of T-shirt in just one day, and this is clearly profitable. Of course, the difficult part is to get your design selected.
WHAT SHOULD BE YOUR STRATEGY WITH THESE STORES?
Follow the trends, polish your technique for screen-printing design, and try to be original. Most selected designs are somehow related to the news, the latest film releases, the most popular games and TV series, etc.
Again, I recommend you to select 2 or 3 stores and keep uploading all your designs to their websites. It is not easy, but you can get some of your work selected and you will receive fast income from that.
If you have further questions, do not hesitate to ask me about this matter. If you like design and digital business, check our other articles on Drill!
Innovation is always spinning forward. Just like a Drill.
