If you’re creative or can come up with catchy sayings, you can make money online designing and selling your own T-shirts. Sites like Teespring, Bonfire, and Printify allow you to design and sell custom shirts without paying anything upfront or holding inventory. 4 Websites to Make Money Online by Designing T-shirts in India. There is a different system for every website and different business plans. To make some money out of these websites, you need to know mainly about 3 things. For example, winning entry of the shirt of the day category will entitle the designer $750 cash, for the shirt of the week the winner gets $1,000, and it is $1750 for the shirt of the month award. To make it even more interesting, designers can claim even more bonuses if the T-shirts that carry their designs turned out to be hot sellers.

Have you ever read a funny slogan or an inspirational quote and thought, “I wish I had a T-shirt that said that!”? I would say most of us (including myself) have. As you might have guessed, this post is going to highlight several sites that pay you to design T-shirts.

So if you're someone who is forever having creative flashes and you also happen to be a fairly decent designer, there's potential for you to earn money here!

Today I did lots of digging around and found quite a few sites you can use to get paid to design T-shirts.

I want to say upfront that most of these only offer a chance to get paid — you'll have to have a “winning” design, or your shirt will have to receive enough interest from potential buyers. Even so, it may be fun to try out if you think you'd be good at it!

8 Ways to Design T Shirts to Sell Online

1. SpreadShop

SpreadShop makes it possible for you to open your very own T-shirt store. Plus there are no fees — the site is completely free for you to use.

There are two ways to earn here — by being a marketplace designer and setting your own prices based on what you think your designs are worth, or you can become a shop owner and earn an commission off each sale of your products.

Go here to check out SpreadShop, or read our Spreadshop review.

2. Teespring

Teespring has an easy online designer to create T-shirts. Then, just set your price and a sales goal.

If you collect enough pre-orders, they will manufacture and ship the T-shirt to buyers. One of the best things about this site is that you keep ALL of the profit on T-shirt sales.

However, there is of course a chance you won't get enough pre-orders for Teespring to decide to print and ship the shirt.

This site is open internationally, although you do have to have a Paypal account for collecting payments if your shirt is sold.

So do people actually make money on Teespring? Looks like it! Here's a pretty impressive claim.

You can also check out our overview of Teespring for more details on how it works, or just go ahead and visit the site here.

3. SellMyTees

This is another website that will provide you with an online shop for selling your designs on T-shirts. Note that while they do have a free plan for sellers which lets you open up a small basic shop with 20 designs, they do offer paid (monthly) plans as well.

SellMyTees pays monthly via Paypal or check, your choice. There is more info on how payment works here.

You can go here to check out SellMyTees and learn more.

Who knew they could be money-making machines? Apps that pay real money to paypal. All you need is your smartphone to download some apps. You read that right.

4. Threadless

This is an online T-shirt shop featuring designs from many independent artists around the world. Threadless has an ongoing design challenge that you can submit your own designs to.

Members of the Threadless community are allowed to score the designs submitted, and if yours is one of the best of the best, it will be manufactured and sold. You'll get not only a cash prize for having your design selected, but you will also receive ongoing royalties from sales of your design.

In addition, you can set up your own artist shop on Threadless. Go here to check them out, or read our Threadless review.

5. Bonfire

This site offers a very easy way to design and sell your own premium, custom T-shirts. Bonfire caters not only to individuals, but also to organizations. It's free to get started here with very easy setup and fast payouts.

Payments are made via Paypal, and you get 100 percent of your profit. Bonfire even has a unique feature that enables you to accept tips.

Go here to learn more about Bonfire.

6. TeePublic

Create your own design for a T-shirt, upload it, and it immediately will go up for sale. For 72 hours, the shirt you design will be priced at just $14 but will go up after that so they encourage promoting it heavily during the first three days.

You can check out their commission rates here.

Want to go ahead and get started with TeePublic? All the info is here.

7. Zazzle

You've probably heard of Zazzle — it's very well-known. You can put your artwork not only on T-shirts, but also on coffee mugs, calendars, posters, and more.

Zazzle allows you to open your own online store and also set your own royalty rates for your creations.

I've actually written a review of Zazzle if you'd like to learn more about how it works. Or, if you'd like, go ahead and check out their website here.

8. CafePress

This is another site very similar to Zazzle and about as equally popular. With CafePress, you can create designs and put them on T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, etc. and then sell them.

You can get your own online branded shop through CafePress. They will handle marketing for your shop and then you can earn royalties on all sales.

I also have a review of CafePress if you'd like to learn more about it, or go ahead and get started with them here.

I've always thought that I'd love to create some designs for sites like this and just see what happens. It could, at the very least, result in some extra fun money here and there.

As it is, I don't have time to try it these days. If you try it — we wish you the best of luck!

Stack of colorful t-shirts on table against gray background

Post originally published on October 3, 2014. Updated and republished on June 9, 2021.

by Michael Essek · Updated: June 5, 2020

Can you make money with Print on Demand? The answer is yes.

I’ve been making money selling Print on Demand T-Shirts online for over 6 years.

In my first month (August 2013) I made just $50.

But for the past 3-4 years, my average monthly income from Print on Demand has been between $9,000 – $15,000.

As you can see from the graph below, it took me a while to reach numbers like that:

So if you’re looking for a ‘get rich quick’ scheme then you’ve probably already gathered that this isn’t it.

Three years is a long time – though I’m pretty sure that if you followed my steps and advice you could reach these numbers (or much better) within 2 years or even less.

So what’s the secret?

No secrets really, but there are a few key principles to making money from print on demand that have helped me, and I think they will help you.

But reader beware: this isn’t going to be the ideal opportunity for everyone – and there are no ‘turn-key’ solutions here.

The people who are especially well-placed to take advantage of this opportunity are:

Designers / Illustrators / Artists who have competent design abilities. (ie. you know your way around photoshop/illustrator, and have been earning some money from your artistic skills for at least a year or so – even if not full-time).
The Hard Worker (With Time On Their Hands). Even if you aren’t a great designer, and have absolutely no online following, I believe you can make decent money from T-Shirts if you are prepared to knuckle down, outsource, learn, and above all do a lot of ‘grunt work’ – repetitive, boring tasks that don’t seem to be actually achieving anything. It may take slightly longer, or be a bit more expensive for th

Earn Money By Designing T Shirts Online