Outlaw Design Blog

I’m not sure if there is a documented case of a single artist making a million dollars selling their art work to t-shirt companies, but that’s not to say it can’t be done. We all have to have goals right? Well, if you are a t-shirt designer that could be your new goal. As if us coming up with your new life goal wasn’t enough, we are also going to point you in the right direction to getting your goal of the ground. Below are some of the most popular websites that either buy t-shirt designs or give you an affordable outlet to sell your own designs.

What route will you take?

Just do me a favor and remember me when you make your first million.

Big Cartel

A tee shirt artist can set up his or her own customized store. Big Cartel’s objective is to provide simple stores for small businesses. Each artist prints his or her tee shirts and ships them to buyers. Big Cartel has about 14,500 stores selling tee shirts.

There are no contracts and you can cancel at any time. An artist can show 5 tee designs for no charge. For 9.99 per month an artist can show 25 tee shirt designs, and $19.99, 100 shirts. On both paying plans, you get custom HTML, inventory tracking, use of your own domain name, discount codes and more navigation and search capability.

Design by Humans

Members vote on tee shirt designs and the winners win prize money. At last look, there were 1160 designs that could be voted on. Design by Humans (DBH) allows artists to use 14 colors and gradients and half tones, (as compared to 5 colors allowed at Threadless).

DBH considers some other factors in awarding prizes, such as where the votes came from. The shirt of the day wins $750, the shirt of the week wins $1,000, and the shirt of the month wins $1,750. These prizes are less than the amounts awarded by Threadless. When a artist’s design sells 500 shirts, there’s a Rock Star” bonus of $500. A design with sales of 10,,000 would result in a total bonus en artist would get a total of $5,000.

Threadless

Designs submitted by artists are put on the Threadless website so that members can give it a score of zero to 5 and make comments. Threadless has about 700,000 members. It’s a very competitive process with about 400 designs to vote on at a time. On the basis of the scores, Threadless decides whether to use buy particular designs.

When a design is selected, the artist is paid $2,000 and given a $500 gift certificate (which can be reddemed for $200 in cash). Every month members vote on “Bestee of the Month” and the winner gets $2,500. The annual winner gets $22,500, which is the biggest prize for tee shirts on any website.

Cafe Press

Cafe Press sells over 5 million tee shirt designs, as well as many other items. They offer a standard tee shirt for $9.99. Cafe Press does only Direct to Garment (DTG) inkjet printing, which is not considered high quality by some artists.

Cafe Press provides a free basic shop where you can sell over 80 products, and you can open as many shops as you want. Cafe Press will produce the tee shirts with an artists’ designs. Cafe Press handles all the payment transactions, ships the tee shirts, and handles any returns or exchanges. Cafe Press offers what they call a premium store for a one-time charge of $59.95 and a $4.99 monthly charge.

My Shirtcity

Artists can set up customized teeshirt shops at no charge on the My Shirtcity website. Custom graphics and colors are available for the shops. Artists post their designs on the shop, and when orders come in My Shirtcity prints and ships the tee shirts in the US and EU. The artist decides on his/her profit that will added to the base price of the tee shirt or other article of clothing.

All tee shirts are printed with Screen Printing which is higher quality than the Direct to Garment inkprinting used by Cafe Press. An artist can choose among several types of Screen Printing at MyShirtCity. Pixel graphics are used for digital printing and dark photo printing, and vector graphics are used for the Flex Transfer printing process.

Spreadshirt, Inc.

An artist can open a shirt shop at no charge, and there are currently about 400,000 shops on Spreadshirt. Each artist can decide on his or her own commission. When an order comes in, Spreadshirt prints it and ships it. The artist maintains all legal rights to the design.

Spreadshirt offers high quality printing,such as Screen Print, unlike Cafe Press, which only has the lower quality Direct to Garment inkjet printing. Spreadshirt offers about 100 different articles of clothing, including tee shirts, hoodies, jackets and caps. The shops on Spreadshirt are operated by companies, bloggers, and clubs, as well as artists. There are shirts for kids and babies as well as adults.

Zazzle

Zazzle is second only to Cafe Press in products sold. Zazzle offers 15.4 billion customizable products, including tee shirts and other clothes, posters, skate boards, and all kinds of other things. At Zazzle, artists can set up a free shop that can be customized however they want to. A design can be put on 25 product lines. Each artist decides what his or her price for products, as with Spreadshirt.

When a product order comes in, Zazzle prints and ships the tee shirt, typically within 24 hours. Zazzle also does embroidery on demand. Artists get royalties on all sales. Zazzle also has ProSeller program that give volume bonuses to artists who are invited to participate.

Red Bubble

Joining Red Bubble is free and there is no risk. The artist sets the retail price of the tee shirt by adding their “mark up” to the base cost established by Red Bubble. A short sleeve tee shirt’s base price is $19.95. Artist retain the copyright on their work. Red Bubble manufactures the tee shirts that are ordered, ships them and sends payment.

You can connect your website/ blog/myspace to your Red Bubble store by means of HTML provided by Red Bubble. Artists can join different tee shirt groups, which have their own pages for posting designs.

Printfection

Artists can set up their own tee shirt stores at no cost. Artists don’t have to invest in any inventory. Printfection sets and keeps the base price. The artists gets whatever markup he decides on. Printfection is unique in offering the opportunity to give quantity discounts if the artist wants to do that. The discounts can start at two tee tee shirts, regardless of color and size.

Shoppers browse through a shopping mall to find the tee shirt store. There are different styles and colors of tee shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts for children and adults. When an order is received, Printfection prints the tee shirt, ships it to the customer, and handles any returns.