I make around $1000.00 a month from various shirt sites, both actively from the daily  shirt sites, and passively from royalty incomes. Etsy and Redbubble, for me, are by far  the biggest sellers in terms of passive income. I don't often submit to the daily sites,  but they can be a massive boost in income if you get work printed and it really resonates  with people.

You get what you put into it. You need to have a combination of things, namely an eye for  appealing designs, and a large catalogue of designs you can upload to different sites.  The more designs, the better - but if your designs aren't targeted towards a certain  niche (a popular video game, for example), then they just probably won't sell. I know  some artists are making in the mid thousands from selling shirts (mostly passively), but  most folks I know are between the $200 - $1200 range a month. It's tough to get the ball  rolling, but once things "click", it can become a steady and solid part if your income.

The Yetee (whose logo you posted) are run by some of the nicest people. They're a great  site to try and test the waters a bit if you're beginning to explore this avenue to  income. Passively speaking, Redbubble is the best place IMO to start uploading work.


1. The days of exclusive sites are long over. When you submit a design to a shirt site,  you still retain all the rights to your own. It's like this for pretty much all the major  shirt sites, both dailies and passive sites. It's to your benefit to submit the same work  to as many different places as possible.

2. Make no mistake - anyone who sells work that can be clearly linked to copyrighted work  is definitely infringing on the UP. Parody and fair use go out the window for the most  part when you're actually making a profit.

It's not as scary as it sounds though. You are never going to get sued. At its worst,  when a company finds a product infringing on its IP, they issue an DMCA takedown to the  site, and they remove your listing. That's it. If you keep reuploading the same design  that has been taken down, you risk your account being closed.

You'll be fine as long as you avoid certain IPs known for being tough on issuing  takedown. For example, any HBO designs (game of thrones) have a high risk of being taken  down. Nintendo, on the other hand, is very relaxed with their IP when it comes to selling  fan art, which is why you'll see so much Nintendo stuff everywhere.




Threadless is past its heyday. They used to pay $2000 per designs, now they moved to a standard royalty payment, but their sales have slumped. They're okay if you can get selected to be printed on a regular basis.

Republic is pretty solid for shirts, as is designbyhumans. Society6 blows my balls, but they sell the highest number of actual art prints. Zazzle and cafeoress are not worth uploading to, IMO.

For daily sites, theyetee is totally solid, but can have small sales (my last design only made me $76 :^( ). Teefury is still probably the reigning king, and shirtpunch is worth looking into. The market is so unbelievably saturated that sales have slumped on all these sites.

My largest earner is etsy by far. Etsy is not like the others, as you can't just upload your work and leave it there. It's a marketplace, and you sell your own products. I use a dropship printer called "printful", to print and ship goods in my name. For example, a customer buys something for $25, and I pay the dropshipper $15 to fulfill the order. I pocket the $10 profit. It's slightly more hands on, but a $10 profit margin is much, much better than any other site. Sell just 3 things a day and youll get around $900 a month. Definitely something worth looking into!


I first started submitting to Threadless in 2011 as my first foray into shirt stuff. It took me ~25 submission to get my first print. Don't let failure keep you down - keep on making new stuff and you'll naturally improve and learn what works and what doesn't. There's a lot to be learned from shirt design that can translate well into other fields of illustration and design.


For passive sites:
They're all DTG - meaning direct-to-garment printing. You can have an infinite amount of colors, and you don't have to worry about your color count. You send them your design as a high res transparent .PNG with the background removed.

For the daily shirt sites:
Many of them are still screen printed. Most of the time, you submit a .PSD or .AI of your design with the colors separated. For example, if your design has red and white ink in it, your file should have reds and whites on separate layers. The background will also be transparent. These sites will usually have an art technician take it from there, or help you if you're struggling to get your colors separated.

If you have a large following you can sell whatever you think your audience will buy. If you're going for the hands off, passive approach, then you need to think in terms of niches. The way you write your titles and tags determines how your work appears in searches, so you need to make work that you think people are searching for. For example, [zelda shirt], [goat shirt], etc. Pop culture stuff is the easiest to sell by far.

 Art theft is a major issue that is only growing. I'm actually in a few Facebook groups that focus exclusively on sharing art theft hotspots and accounts.

Personally, I've had a few different things stolen over the years. Some people get ripped all the fucking time, but I've been thankful to only have a few. 99% of the time when people do this, they're not making any sales or really profiting off your work that much. To deal with them, you basically send a DMCA notice (similar to how a company would do it), stating that this user is selling your stolen work. Most of the time, this will get the listing removed.

This biggest issue - without a doubt - is TeeChip campaigns. If you're unfamiliar with TeeChip, it's like a Kickstarter campaign for shirts, prints, etc. You try and fund your design, and if you get (for example) 250 buyers, then when the campaign ends they'll print and ship the product to those 250 people.

Here's what happens: People build up Facebook fan pages (take Game of Thrones, for example). They'll usually use a bunch of black hat techniques to do so. This makes them look legitimate. Then, they start a TeeChip campaign selling your stolen GoT design. Then, they start a Facebook ad campaign and it spreads like wildfire. They could make a $5.00 profit on 800 sales, netting them $4000.00.

These are hard to catch since they're temporary campaigns that if you don't catch them while they're live, you'll never know that someone profited majorly off your stolen work. If you catch them and report them in time, Facebook is usually good about removing them.

 It took me ~25 submission to get my first print. Don't let failure keep you down - keep on making new stuff and you'll naturally improve and learn what works and what doesn't. There's a lot to be learned from shirt design that can translate well into other fields of illustration and design.


I'm unaware of any reliable and smooth services that integrate into Etsy's API to connect Etsy to Printful. Maybe there are some now, but I just do everything manually. I thought it would end up being a hassle to do everything manually, but it's very, very easy. I spend ~5 minutes a day placing orders, and sending out shipping notifications. The process goes like this:

1. Customer orders something on Etsy (for example - something that costs $25.00)
2. Open up Printful (I usually have them open side by side), and use their interface to upload your design. You pick out what type of product, what size, what color and what design (they're all saved for easy access) the customer ordered.
3. On the next page, there's a way to copy/paste their shipping info in, and it automatically formats it. Super quick. Then you
4. Final page is to review and place the order. You get charged ($15)
5. You keep the $10.00 profit.

Whole process takes about 30 seconds. When the order goes out a few days later (you get an email when it does), you just copy/paste the tracking info and shoot the shipping notification over via the Etsy order page.

It takes longer to set things up on Etsy (gotta make all your own listings, product images, shipping policies, etc.), but once you do, all you have to do is quickly place orders. You also have to do any customer service too, which is probably the shittiest part of it, but it's still worth it.


There are two types of shirt designs you're talking about:
Seasonal = shirts focused around a specific event or date, which will sell well for a short period of time. Doesn't have to be as broad as "Christmas" - it can be as narrow as a design based on the solar eclipse, or Fathers day.
Evergreen = alluding to Evergreen trees which keep their leaves all year. The demand for these designs will be year-long.

To answer your question: both approaches are totally acceptable. It's smart to focus on Evergreen designs mostly, as that is where your stable and steady base income will come from. I'd personally consider Seasonal to be a bonus - if you have the time to do them and you think there will be a spike in demand for them, go for it.

Putting up a website and hoping companies randomly contact is THE worst business model you can come up with for a freelance artist, of any kind.

If you want to get people to hire you, you have to make yourself known to them. You send samples, you call, email, advertise. You hustle. You figure out your market, once you do that, you figure out how to put yourself in front of them. If you want to make furry porn, you find out where that kind hangs out. If you want to do book covers, you contact art directors at book publishers.

For t-shirts, I've seen sites like Neatorama will pimp t-shirt designs, if they like them, so you can try and send them some designs, and see if they'll run a blurb on you - I know they've gotten some fan artists a ton of sales, by showing their work on there.

Nobody is going to troll the internet to find you. You have to pimp yourself, as many places as you can.

It could be your first design ever and still get printed on The Yetee. You don't have to have a social media following at all. In the end, all they want is a good design that will hopefully sell well.

Here's what to expect with The Yetee: I mentioned The Yetee earlier because I think it's a great starter site for those who wanted to make a movie/game design. It's a great place to get your feet wet and it has less submitter competition than some other sites, but don't expect to make the big bucks there. Margins are $2 per shirt sold (if you upload it there before other daily sites). I've had prints there that sold only around ~20 shirts, netting me only around $40.00. To contrast, my highest selling shirt there moved 188, which was $376.00. Not too bad for a design you still retain the rights for, and can continue selling other places. These figures seem to be the average, according to a few other artists I've talked to. I've heard of people moving several hundred shirts from a single design on The Yetee, but I think that's with a mix of social media promotion and luck.

The folks that work there are super nice. Reach out to them if you have questions.


>what sells best on redbubble? i've seen a lot of people just do sticker designs, are those big sellers?
Stickers are probably my top seller, and I get around ~$1.50 per standard sticker sold. Shirts are where it's at though for most sites including Redbubble. You can set your retail price to ~$25.00 (people will definitely pay this for 1 shirt) and make a decent margin. Phone cases are also popular, as are different types of apparel other than shirts.

It's important to make work that can look good on multiple different products. This usually means having a design where the artwork is centered and the background color is worked into the design. Save it as a transparent .PNG with the background removed, and you can slap it onto many different products. To contrast, a less efficient design would be a rectangular painting, which would not look as good when slapped onto a shirt or other products.

>would it be possible to get your design chosen and not sell any shirts during the 24 hours in the daily sites?

Not a weird question at all! Totally valid concern. It is totally possible to not have a single sale when you design goes live. I think the likelihood of selling absolutely nothing is real slim, but it's possible I guess. Remember that it's not just on you whether or not a design does well. It's the sites decision to actually print it, so both of you placed your faith in it doing well. The 'blame' is on both parties.

I don't think you need to worry about sucking so much no one wants to print you anymore. These sites just want designs that they think will sell well to their audiences, and that's what they'll print, regardless of your past performance. On The Yetee, I've personally had some real stinkers - sometimes in a row - but I kept submitting and had some more solid performers. On Threadless back in the day (not a daily site, but still selective), it took me 25 rejected designs before I got my first print (was my first published work ever actually).

Even if there was an issue with totally bombing, I wouldn't let the fear of failure prevent you from just trying and giving it your best shot.



> do you keep it limited to American clients?
I've really considered doing so, but ultimately I still keep international shipping. Most international orders are actually to Canada or the UK, which can be shipped to very reliably. Printful actually just opened a European print shop in Latvia, drastically cutting down on international shipping times. I'd guess that 15-20% of my orders are international, again - mostly to Canada or the UK.

The big issue comes when shipping to Mexico and South America. It can be very expensive and their mail systems are incredibly unreliable. Sometimes if things go wrong, you just have to eat the costs and move on. You'll ultimately make more than you lose by offering international shipping.

>do you have all the same designs there or do you try to avoid overlaping?
All the same designs on all the same sites. There is absolutely no benefit to having some designs purposefully exclusive to certain sites. It's to your advantage to spread all your designs on all the sites, giving them all the best chance to make sales.

>is it possible to make sales with zero marketing?
Absolutely. I hardly do any marketing.

For the daily sites, their reach will be much greater than yours is (assuming you don't have a massive following). You could do a little self promotion on the side (sometimes a relevant Reddit post can really boost sales with a little luck), but they'll definitely market it for you through their channels.

For the passive sites, the designs will sell themselves so long as they don't completely suck, and that you have created them with specific keywords in mind and tagged them appropriately. I know many people who actively market their passive sales, but I don't have any actual data illustrating how much it helps.

Hope that helps!

>how about the redbubble watermark options, would you recommend having that on or off?

I have the option selected to place the small watermark in the corner of the image. Honestly these are relatively useless in terms of deterring art theft.

According to TeePublic on their artist FB page, they shared that intrusive watermarks have a noticeable and negative effect on sales. So it hurts sales to use big watermarks, and it's useless to use small ones. Overall, watermarks don't seem to do much, so I couldn't recommend them one way or another.


>when you submit seasonal designs to the daily sites how much do you have to take into account 1) the time they take to accept/reject your design 2) if there is a waiting list for the designs chosen 3) the time is published
1. The time taken to hear back about your submitted designs varies from place to place. It can be as quickly as a few days to a few weeks. Generally speaking, if there is a rush to get designs approved (for a seasonal event like Halloween, for example), they'll probably go through and review submissions a bit faster.
2. The waiting list to be printed is malleable. These daily sites don't schedule prints on a "first come, first serve" basis, but rather they take into account many different factors such as whether there's an upcoming seasonal event, or if they're waiting to match up your design with another artists (like if you made a Zelda design, they'll try and schedule you with another Zelda design. Many daily sites have 2 designs up for sale at a time).
3. You don't really know when it'll be published exactly. You won't know until you get a print date in your email. It's impossible to account for when it'll go up for sale since you just don't know when it will. Getting things earlier rather than later is probably a good idea if you wanted to hit a specific window.


>>3123746
>when they send you the free shirt with your design, do you have to pay the shipping cost
Nope! They're totally free. You don't pay any shipping.

>>3124661
I think the request to for your portfolio link is more to do with them having a link to promote you with, rather than for them to review your other work. If they actually look at it for anything, it'd be just to see that the design is yours and that you are an actual artist making stuff, as opposed to an art theft who is submitting ripped artwork. But I think it's just for promotional purposes, so there's nothing to worry about there.

A social media page/album is totally fine.


>Another thing, how much is the "polite" time to wait before sending another ilustration to these daily sites?
This is not something to be concerned about. You don't have submit designs one by one, while waiting to hear back before submitting the next one. You can submit as many as you want, whenever you want.

>>3125987
Pretty much all shirt / print-on-demand sites are non exclusive. You maintain all rights to your designs. If you're not sure, it'll say in the sites FAQ.

>>3128041
>>3128112
They rejected my first few too. You've got the right attitude though - do NOT give up. If you're not used to rejection in your creative endeavors, submitting shirt designs are a fantastic way to get used to it. You'll get rejected, and that's okay. Though in order to grow, you need to be able to reflect on what's working and what's not working, and try and think about how "wearable" your design is. It's vital that you try and put yourself in anothers shoes, and to think about how appealing your design is to other people.

If you're comfortable with it, would you post your designs that were rejected? I may be able to offer a bit of direction on what's potentially working and not working.

Regardless, it's worth sticking with it. Designing for shirts can be a very rewarding experience and the things learned can definitely cross over into other areas of your art & design. Things like how to make things appealing to others, or how to think up clever and creative concepts.



>say if i want to make a design that is kirby character + popular horror tv show, would they allow it?
A mashup like this should probably be totally fine. Go for it!