One of the ways I make money working from home is by creating T-shirt designs and selling the T-shirts through print on demand (POD).
T-shirts are one item that people will buy and buy and buy more of. T-shirts are popular. Why? Because a person can wear a T-shirt that says or shows just about anything you can think of. It’s a way for the wearer to show or tell their thoughts and/or feelings, all worn for the world to see. And people want to world to know what they think about this or that. When they can find it on a T-shirt and wear it, they usually buy it.
What kind of T-shirt designs can you make and post for sale? Funny T-shirts, faith T-shirts, doggy love T-shirts, romance T-shirts, geek T-shirts, zombie T-shirts, name T-shirts, coloring T-shirts … anything that’s hot, popular, trending, classic… you name it.
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Designs for T-shirts can be made using Photoshop and/or Illustrator. You can also use Gimp. I personally use Photoshop most of the time and occasionally use Illustrator when needed.
T-shirt designs can be graphics but can also be plain text. The text on a tee design can be all in one font or a variety of fonts combined.
Before starting on the tee designs, it’s a good idea to make accounts on the places that you want to sell. That way, you’ll already know what size to make them and it will save time on have to go back and change.
The size of the overall design depends on where you’re going to post it for sale. Some tell you what size to use, others don’t. On the ones that don’t tell you, try using what you have for other sites that specify a size and see if it comes out looking okay. It usually will but you might have to adjust it somewhat. You don’t want a warped or icky looking design.
We’re going to use POD (print on demand) printers to take care of printing and mailing the T-shirts to the buyers. This means it doesn’t cost you anything to upload your designs or to sell them. When a buyer purchases a T-shirt, you make a commission. The amount of the commission made depends on where you posted and the amount of the sale. You get paid when you reach whatever the payout amount is for that particular site. Check the payment terms when you register for each site so you will know when to expect payment.
The first place you want to sign up for is Merch by Amazon. They now have it set by invitation only, so sign up and be on the waiting list. This is THE best place to sell T-shirts online. As you make sales, the amount of live designs you can have is increased.
Another really good place to make and sell your own T-Shirts is on Zazzle. I like this one also because they have larger sizes available. Payout is $50 but you can request it for less.
Next, you can sign up with TeeSpring. You can upload your design, set your price, and decide how long to run the campaign. Once the time is up, you get paid for any sales made.
TeeChip is another good one to sign up with. Upload your design, set a price, how long to run it for, and get paid when it’s over. You can have each one set to restart when it’s ended. You now must have $20 at least to be paid.
You might also want to sign up for Viral Style. They’re another POD for T-shirts and fairly new, but good.
Be sure to sign up with Society6 also. They’re pretty well known.
These aren’t the only PODs for printing T-shirts but they are some of the ones that I’ve personally used.
Disclaimer: I don’t know how much money you may or may not make as far as overall earnings go. That all depends on if you pay for advertising, how much time you put into marketing, how good your designs are, etc. This post is to share what I do and have done to get you started and/or help you along. It’s not a promise of any kind of earnings. I can’t possibly know what anyone (myself included) will or will not make in the future.
Once you’ve gotten your designs onto the sites and the T-shirt designs are live, it’s time to promote them. The cold truth is that in general people aren’t going to magically find your designs. You have to let folks know the designs are out there. The exception to this is Merch. Amazon is THE biggest online shopping place, and you can make sales without doing near the marketing. Just imagine how much more you can do if you do market!
This is what I personally do as far as marketing. You can do more or less or the same. It depends on what you need and want. I don’t pay for advertising. This is my personal preference. In the future, I might change my mind on that. For me personally, I found it a waste of money. The outcome wasn’t enough to justify the amount spent. Your results might be different. When I post a design for sale, I post to Facebook… to my personal page, to my groups and others that are pertaining to the design, to my Facebook pages, to Pinterest, and Facebook automatically posts to Twitter. I sometimes post to my websites. I don’t boost posts on Facebook. I don’t pay for Facebook ads. I sometimes posts pictures of this and that on Facebook and put a link to a T-shirt on it. That gets shared and others see the link also.
Using the methods I just mentioned, I make sales. Using POD to deliver to buyers means I don’t carry any inventory, deal with delivery, or anything. I just make the designs, upload them, post a link to them, make sales, get paid. It’s really THAT simple! If you choose to advertise, you’ll likely make more sales. Just be sure the money you spend to advertise is worth the sales made.
T-shirts are very popular and continue to sell. Folks don’t just buy T-shirts for Christmas, they buy regardless of the time of year. I highly recommend creating and selling T-shirts for working from home income.