Category — Resources

If you are a T-shirt designer you may already be using a template to mock up your design while submitting it to any online design contest or to show your client. And if you are not doing that already I highly recommend you start.

Why? Well, mocking up a design on a template makes it visually more appealing. It also makes it easier for the viewer to see how the design may look on an actual t-shirt as it can highlight details like design placement, how the design fares against the t-shirt color etc. You get the point. No, well here’s what you can do, make a mock up on a realistic looking t-shirt template and then compare it with the plain design, you’ll know what I mean.

Anyway, this is not a tutorial and I am not going to waste more of your time by bragging on. This is a list of t-shirt templates that you can use to mock up your designs.  I have listed bot free and paid templates here and make sure you check them all out to find the one that specifically suits your need.

Paid Templates

GoMedia Arsenal’s ultimate shirt mockup collection

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I did a post on a collection of Twitter T-shirts sometime back. There are some cool tees in that collection, but if you don’t like them then you can create your own Twitter T-shirt. Yes, you can create your own Twitter t-shirts easily with the following sites.

140tees
140tees lets you create your own Twitter t shirts in just three steps. First you need to choose a tweet to print on the tee then choose your Twitter t-shirt and customize the design and finally make payment.

Twitoshirt
Twitoshirt lets you create your own Twitter tees by putting your favorite Twitter status message on them. Juts enter the URL to your favorite Twitter status message and customize the design and buy the resultant t-shirt.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Want to create your own retro styled t-shirt with your own text, but don’t know anything about designing t-shirts? Well, not a problem.
T-Shirt Humor lets you create your own retro themed tees using a bunch of templates. There are a good number of templates with different designs and you just need to replace the text on the speech balloon with your own text at the time of checking out. So, if you always wanted to create a retro tee, you know where to go now.

Create your own retro tee.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Storenvy is an online store system and social shopping community. Storenvy is an online social community for shoppers that allows shoppers to interact with each other and comment on products across all stores. Storenvy uses PayPal’s new Adaptive Payments APIs that allows shoppers to shop using a single shopping cart across multiple stores.

Storenvy offers free and feature rich online store to merchants worldwide. You can create your own free store with Storenvy even if you don’t have any programming knowledge. The stores are fully customizable (with CSS & HTML). Storenvy also offers screen printing services, if you are a Storenvy store owner; you can use their printing services for your printing needs (although it’s not a requirement). A Storenvy store has many important features and advantages. They are free to create and maintain which means  there are no set up fee or monthly/annual fee, no listing fee, no transaction fee (except PayPal specific). You can list unlimited products in your Storenvy store and they allow up to five images per product.

The stores are highly customizable using design templates, or using custom CSS and HTML if you are good at it. Storenvy is very user friendly both from the shopper and store owner’s perspective. Storenvy’s admin dashboard gives you quick and easy access to manage orders, view and analyze store stats, track inventory, create and promote discount coupon codes for your products etc. For a list of features click here.

Visit Storenvy.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Political T-shirts are very popular. It allows people to make a statement, let others know of his view, show support to a cause or just make fun of the system. The popularity of political T-shirts have seen many online stores coming up with their own collection of such shirts and while some of them have  great collection some are quite forgettable. This is my attempt to list all the good sources of political T-shirts online and while I have taken time to research a bit, it’s possible that I may miss some great sites. If you think I have missed out any store, please be kind enough to comment. Okay, so here we go…

Political T Shirts
Political T Shirts is a good place to buy political t shirts. This store features political shirts across various categories like Anti Obama T shirts, Pro Obama T shirts, Pro Democrat, Pro Republican, Anti Democrat, Anti Republican T shirts. This store also features some good politically incorrect t shirts, jokes and offensive t shirts.

Redmolotov
Redmolotov is another great place for buying political t shirts. Redmolotov’s political t shirts features the great and good (and the not-so-great and not-so-good) of over a hundred years of political theory.

RoadKilltShirts
RoadKilltShirts features some very good political and politically incorrect t shirts. Although it seems a little biased in focusing more on the slogan than the design, the shirts are still very good if all you want to do is to make a statement.

CconservativeCotton
CconservativeCotton feature political t shirts across several categories like Anti Barack Obama T-Shirts, Conservative T-Shirts, Immigration T-Shirts, Patriotic & Pro Military T-Shirts, Pro Gun T-Shirts, Pro Life T-Shirts, Republican T-Shirts, and Ronald Reagan T-Shirts etc.

ThoseShirts
ThoseShirts has a good collection of political shirts. The shirts here are mainly anti Obama shirts, anti Che shirts, military shirts, Reagan shirts and gun shirts. Definitely a must look if you are looking for a political shirts that fall in one of those categories.

RadicalRags
RadicalRags is features political t shirts across various categories like anti Bush T-Shirts, anti Republican T-Shirts, anti Religion T-Shirts,      anti War T-Shirts, Barack Obama T-Shirts, Democrat Election T-Shirts, Feminist T-Shirts, Gay Rights T-Shirts, Immigration T-Shirts, and Weed T-Shirts etc.

BAN T-Shirts
One of the most popular t shirt stores featuring political t shirts. Ban T-shirts has an excellent collection of greatly designed and innovative political t-shirts with progressive messages. The t-shirts usually revolve around big issues like the environment, democracy, freedom, war and peace etc.

FoulMouthShirts
Another source of high quality political t-shirts! You can find political t-shirts across various themes that ranges from Obama t-shirts to gay t-shirts. No matter which political faction you support or hate, if you want to make a political statement chances are you will get the t-shirt to make it here.

CultClassicTs
Not a huge collection, but a good collection nonetheless that features t-shirts based on different themes like war, the environment, immigration, racism and social injustice.

Demockratees
Some high quality political t-shirt that makes a statement!

t-shirt Humor
This online store has a good collection of political t-shirts with a touch of humor.

CafePress
CafePress is another place where you can search for political shirts. A search in CafePress for various political phrases can find you the t-shirt you are looking for. However due to the nature of the store the quality of design can be average to great.

Zazzle
Zazzle is an online store that works in a similar way to CafePress. You can search this store for political t-shirts.

BustedTees
BustedTees is a popular online t-shirt stores with a huge collection of quality t-shirts with excellent designs. BustedTees also has a “Political” section that features t-shirts with political colors.

BadIdeaTShirts
BadIdeaTShirts has a good collection of political t-shirts that will let you make that statement.

CausticConservative
CausticConservative features political tees and humorous tees.

RetroCampaigns
RetroCampaigns’ political t-shirt collection is unique in the sense that they focus on past campaigns.

T-shirt Outlet
T-shirt Outlet has a decent collection of political t-shirts too apart from featuring other kinds of t-shirts.

AryanWear
A small but good collection of political tees!

The Political Emporium
A small collection of political tees! They also have a collection of political themed hats, buttons and stickers.

Politically Erect Shirts
Politically Erect Shirts has a decent enough political t-shirt collection to help you make your statement.

RedBubble
A search for political t-shirt will throws up many results in this community driven t-shirt store. Worth a look!

8ball
8ball also has a political t-shirt section and it is mainly based on UK Politics.

PrankPlace
PrankPlace has a small but good collection of political t-shirts.

tshirthub
Another small but good set of political t-shirts.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Continuing the series on “Creating your own T-shirt store easily”, let’s talk about another web store that offers services to help you set up your own t-shirt shop. Streetshirts.

Streetshirts is a service similar to Zazzle, CafePress that lets you open your own store (called a Streetshop) through their service and makes managing your online store easy by handling most of the demanding tasks required to run a web store. Basically how it works is, you create a shop after registering with Streetshirts and then customize its look and create and upload your designs on the products you choose to.

When any of your designed products is ordered online, Streetshirts makes the product and usually dispatches it within 48 hours using Royal Mail 1st class delivery. Another important aspect of an online store, customer service is handled by Streetshirts itself and thus it saves you the main troubles of owning an online store that is, payment processing, manufacturing the product, shipping and customer services.

In short Streetshirts handles the following tasks in respect to your Streetshirts shop.

• Order/Payment Processing.
• Producing the item and shipping.
• Customer service/refunds.
• Paying you (the owner of a Streetshirts shop) your commission.

And as the owner of your Streetshirts shop, you will be responsible for the following tasks.

• Setting up your shop. (From creating, naming to customizing the look)
• Creating your designs for the products.
• Organize products and categories.
• Maintaining your Streetshirts shop.

Apart from T-shirts you can also design and sell other items like mugs, badges, hoodies etc. You can either use the online designer to design your tee or you can also create your design on a graphic tool like Adobe Photoshop and upload it in the online designer. One advantage Streetshirts offer compared other similar services is that they don’t put any obtrusive banners and logos branding your Streetshop. The only place where Streetshirts appear is at the bottom of the Streetshop and that should be fine with most Streetshop owners. A Streetshop offers you the ability to change virtually every aspect of your shop allowing you to customize the look of your shop to your liking. What’s more, you can even use your own domain to point to your Streetshop. A Streetshop also have other helpful features, like integration with Google analytics to track visits to your shop, embedding your shop onto another site using iframe etc.

How much you can earn from your Streetshop? Well, depends on how well you sell your products. You get a commission of 15% for all products. That is, you get 15% of the sale price after VAT and postage of £1.50 per item. However you don’t qualify for a commission if the item is returned by the customer. Commission is paid every quarter by check given you earn more than £10. If you earn more than £50 then your commission will be paid at the beginning of the following month.

Visit Streetshirts.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

If you are a good designer with ideas and want to make money selling your own T-shirt s, it’s possible. The easiest approach to it will be to open an online store with the help of any of the online customized item shops that allow designers to sell their design on many different kinds of products. In my Create Your Own Online T-shirt Store series I have already covered CafePress, Zazzle and Spreadshirt. Today, let’s talk about PropellShop.

PropellShop is a web store that features customized merchandise. It works in a similar way to Zazzle, CafePress etc., that is, you create your design and upload it to the site using their online tools, choose the items you want to sell and set their price and you are done. The demanding tasks like hosting your shop, making the actual product with your design on it, processing payment and shipping them to customers are done by Propelshops. Like most of other such stores, PropellShops pays you a certain share of every sale.

A PropellShops shop can be integrated into your own website (without advertising the name PropellShop).PropellShop is free to set up and maintain. Each item on PropellShop has a wholesale price that is visible only to the shop owners. PropellShop also provide shop owners with a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail price (MSRP), which gives a 20-25% profit to shop owners. When any item is sold, PropellShop keeps the wholesale amount (and shipping plus handling charges) and the rest is the amount earned by the shop owner. The payment to shop owners is made via check or PayPal, and the minimum payout amount is $25.00 (Though balances on all accounts are paid out with no minimum at the end of every year).

To know more about PropellShop you can visit this tour

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Spreadshirt is an online store/service similar to CafePress and Zazzle. With Spreadshirt you can create your own T-shirt by designing it online with their easy to use online T-shirt designer.  After designing your T-shirt you can order it online and Spreadshirt will ship the t-shirt with your custom design on it.

Okay, but we are looking at the business aspect here. To be precise, a store just like the ones they offer at CafePress or at Zazzle. Can I have such a store a Spreadshirt? The answer is a big Yes. You can have your own store at Spreadshirt.

Opening a Spreadshirt shirt shop doesn’t cost you money. It’s free and just like in the case of CafePress and Zazzle, Spreadshirt takes away the pain off your online business by handling most of the more difficult tasks like payment processing, shipping etc.

A Spreadshirt shop integrates well into your online presence that is for websites you own to communities to MySpace profile or blogs for that matter. You also have the option of setting up your shop in English or in French. One difference of Spreadshirt from CafePress or Zazzle is that it doesn’t have as many different items as CafePress or Zazzle has. Most common items on Spreadshirt are shirts, hoodies, jackets, caps, bags, coffee mugs etc.

Spreadshirt also offers you a premium option to open your shop. This costs $10 per month and in return you get your own designer shop (up to 3 shops), where customers can create products based on your designs and you get 20% commission on every sale made. These premium shops are completely ad free and you also have the option of running your own newsletter, customized invoices and packaging slips etc.

Try Spreadshirt.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Well, this is the second post I am making in the “Create Your Own Online T-shirt Store” series. In the last post I talked about “Starting an online T-shirt store with CafePress”. In this post let’s take a look at one of the most popular alternative to CafePress, Zazzle.

Zazzle had been around for quite a while and has really been gaining in popularity for some time. The working of Zazzle is almost similar to CafePress. With Zazzle you can create your own custom designs and buy products with those designs on it. Zazzle offers many types of products like T-shirts, Hoodies, Postage stamps, Shoes, Postcards, Calendar, Posters, Skateboards, Bags, Hats, Ties, Aprons, Business Cards, Mouse pads, Flyers, Letterheads, Stickers, Pet Clothing, Magnets, Buttons, Key chains and many other items.

Zazzle’s easy to use interface makes it a breeze even for a new user to the site to create a custom design just by selecting the item from the list and then customizing the template with the online designer. The designer is also very easy to use.

Now, let’s come to selling your own design stuffs on Zazzle. Like CafePress, Zazzle allows users to set up their own shop and sell their created designs on it. However, the one advantage that you have with Zazzle is that there is nothing like a free basic and a more privileged pro shop like CafePress. In Zazzle there is only one type of shop and that doesn’t cost a thing. Yes, Zazzle shop is free to set up.

With a Zazzle store all you need to do is to create your designs and upload it to your store. Zazzle will take care of the more demanding tasks like transaction processing, shipping the item, customer service etc. Zazzle store can be customized to match your designs and brand, Zazzle stores has RSS feed and Google Base feed, the store features a comment wall to interact with buyers and fans, unlimited design storage (unlike CafePress, which allows only 80 items in their free shops). Each product on Zazzle has a base price that includes a 10% royalty paid to the creator of the product. But with Zazzle “Name Your Royalty” feature you can earn more than that if you want to. All you need to do is to set the royalty rate anywhere between 10% to 99%. As Zazzle’s base price is fixed, the increase in the royalty will be earned by the products creator.

Zazzle stores are very flexible to set up and customize. You can sort your products within a store by dragging and dropping products use a custom image thumbnail to represent any category etc. And if you are good at HTML and CSS then what you can do with the look of your Zazzle store is limited only by your skills.

Uploading your designs to your store is also easy with Zazzle. And using Zazzle “Quick Product Create” feature you can actually create up to 100 products at a time from your own templates or Zazzle templates.

Zazzle is very beginner friendly! Zazzle University is a good place to learn things about Zazzle and marketing your store. Zazzle blog also features useful tips and tricks from time to time and Zazzle’s forum is a great community of helpful users. So, if you were looking for a place to sell your designs without all the headaches that doesn’t involve designing (like payment processing and shipping the item), why not try out Zazzle today?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Okay! So you are a T-shirt designer and want to start your own design brand but don’t know anything about starting a clothing business or are just plain afraid to do so? Don’t worry, you will find many others like you who are dealing with this dilemma. Starting a t-shirt brand all by your self is no small task. More so, if you decide to go all the way and start right from designing to printing, marketing etc. etc. Not to mention the heavy investment it will need which not everyone can afford.

So, what should you do now? How about starting out small and learning things and then expand your business? How do you start out small? Well, it just depends on your skills. If you are good at marketing then you can sell T-shirts online from other brands, or if you are a designer you can design tees for brands. But wait, let’s say that I am a designer and I want to create my own brand identity and online store without taking the headache of printing, manufacturing, customer service etc. What then?

Well, the answer is, I can definitely do that. So how do you start your own t-shirt store online? There are a growing number of websites that helps you do it. These websites provides you with options to create your own store with your own designs and sell them. The good thing about this is that they handle all the printing, transaction, hosting, customer support etc. work while all you do is designs your stuffs and market them. These kind of stores are a great option for you, the designer to try out how your designs actually sell without investing any money. Let’s take a look at one of such popular stores, CafePress.

CafePress claims to be the world’s largest collection of user-designed products, with over 6.5 million users. At CafePress you can create a design for any of their "print on-demand" products and order it for yourself. What you also can do is to create your own shop there with your own designs and sell them. So, what can you sell at CafePress? Well, just about anything. Anything, from T-shirts to mugs, arts, posters, calendar, stickers and many more. 

Setting up a store at CafePress is very easy. There are two types of shops that CafePress offers. The free of cost basic shop and the premium shops which costs money. CafePress basic shop allows you to sell over 80 products in an one page shop while the premium shops allows you to sell unlimited products and have multi-level pages. You can also try out the premium shop for free for 15 days. For a more detailed comparison between CafePress free and premium shops see here.

How it works? You create your own online shop with your designs at CafePress. If a customer orders any of your products, CafePress produces the item using their print-on-demand technology; it also handles all payment transactions, ships the product, manages all returns or exchanges, and provides customer service. So, as you can see that CafePress handles most of the difficult tasks. This leaves you with more time and peace of mind to concentrate on your designing and marketing your products. Marketing your products is important as even though CafePress is hosting the shop doesn’t mean they will be advertising your products. If your designs are exceptionally great or are selling well, it may get featured on the front page or the like, but apart from that it is important that you market your own designs. 

How much do I earn? Well, every product at CafePress has something called a ‘Base Price’. You can view this ‘Base Price’ as CafePress’s cost in producing that item. Now how much money you earn in selling an item depends on the retail price that you set on the item. The markup above the base price is your earnings. To make things clear, let’s say the base price of an item is $10 and you have set the retail price of that item at $15. Then the markup ($15-$10) of $5 is what you earn when any of those items is sold. There are other factors involved in the pricing too, and you can read about it in details here.

So, how much can I earn with CafePress? Well, there’s no definite answer to that. It depends on many factors like the quality of your designs, how many products you have in your shop, how you are marketing them etc. The best way to find this out is to create a shop and try it out.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!