Microstock Sites for Passive Income
If you’re new to microstock industry or you want to earn more, it’s vital to know what microstocks you can work with. In this blog post you ...
If you’re new to microstock industry or you want to earn more, it’s vital to know what microstocks you can work with. In this blog post you can find information about best microstocks, how much they pay contributors and what you can sell there as well as useful resources on each of them.
Shutterstock is one of the most established and most well-paying microstock agencies out there. It was founded back in 2003 and since then it gained 200 million images and 10 million videos. And, what is more important, millions of paying customers. If you’re not yet uploading to it, you definitely should, since it is also one of the well-paying agencies with $250 million paid since its founding.
AdobeStock is a microstock that was known as Fotolia before Adobe acquired it in 2015. Adobe inherited 100 million of images and more than 10 million clips in addition to graphics and 3D content.
iStock is probably the most famous now for its exclusivity program: contributors can sign special agreement and in exchange to increased rates they will not upload their artworks to other microstocks.
Depositphotos is a well-established agency, founded in 2009 in Ukraine featuring more than 140 million assets. Depositphotos has been around for a while being one of the top agencies both for customers and contributors. They constantly improve technologies and asset base is also growing very fast.
Dreamstime is one of the oldest microstocks, founded in 2000 in US. Today they host 122 million stock photos, vectors and videos. Dreamstime has never been a leader of the market, but they maintained their position for a long time being relatively stable. Also they feature the biggest number of licensing options for customers: royalty free, extended, editorial and full copyright.
If you’re an artist or designer, the internet is an essential place to show off your work, offering a wider-ranging audience from potential clients to buddies to partners to work with. Your portfolio represents you and your work so it needs to be just right, and easily accessible by everyone.
Behance
More than just being a go-to portfolio site for artists and designers - from animators to photographers, and everything in between - Behance is a very active social network with job postings, comments, the opportunity to follow artists, gets you ‘appreciates’ on your work and even be part of curated galleries.
Adobe Portfolio
Behance Pro has made way for Adobe Portfolio, a platform where you can quickly and easily build a fully responsive site to showcase your creative work.
Everything
is easy: pick a layout, customize it – including your own domain name and the
entire library of Adobe Fonts – and then sync with Behance.
Wix
Wix is innovative and evolving, and we've spotted many fresh grads opting for it for their portfolios.
Wix
is free, but premium plans offer more storage, bandwidth, no ads (ahh, sweet
silence) and more.
Weebly
Weebly was founded by three college friends who wanted to make it easier to display and promote their work online. Today their site has a plethora of features that make it a top choice for building a slick portfolio.
Carbonmade
Carbonmade’s website may not be the sleekest or aesthetically pleasing at first site, but we were thoroughly impressed with their beautiful themes. As they describe it, “our gorgeous themes are so nice you’ll think they’re Canadian."
If you are interested in designing t-shirts, then there are plenty of earning opportunities that you can explore. For freelancer designers, many online sites offer them the flexibility to work as per their time and skills. Even if you are employed, you can add to your regular earning using your skills.
01.
Spreadshirt
Spreadshirt lets you upload your t-shirt design for free. In fact, you can open your own online store at this site for free and then you can sell it to your audience. On selling t-shirts regularly, you can surely earn good money.
02.
Designhill
Designhill is another leading marketplace where t-shirt designers can get work regularly and earn money. At this site, as a designer, you have plenty of work to do. The site also lets you build your designer’s portfolio where you can display your t-shirt design works.
03.
Printful
Printful is the site where you can open and run your store without facing any hurdles. You will not be asked to pay any monthly fee.
04.
Threadless
At Threadless, open and start running your customized artist shop without paying anything to the site. It allows you to set your custom t-shirt design prices so that you can earn a nice profit.
05.
Cafepress
Cafepress is a free marketplace where you can easily earn a decent money every month. You can set up your own branded online shop. At this site, big brands such as Paramount and ABC have their stores opened.
06.
BlueCotton
BlueCotton is a custom print t-shirt shop and a design studio. Individual buyers visit this site to look for t-shirts of their choice for commercial and personal use.
07.
Tee Spring
Tee Spring is another easy to use site where you can upload your t-shirt design and set your sales goals. You are then allowed to launch a campaign using your website, email, and social media. After your campaign ends, the site will print your t-shirts and sell them. You will then get a check of profit.
08. Zazzle
Zazzle gives you access to a free designer store that you can name. You can design at this site or upload your design to sell it.
09.
TeePublic
TeePublic is the place where you can design your t-shirts, upload them to your store. You can open your store at this site to sell the products. The site offers you a set commission on the sales.
10.
Red Bubble
At Red Bubble, you upload your t-shirts and sell them through your store. The site allows you complete control over how you want to sell the designs. All you need to do is to start with the site, list your products, and set your base price.
So
you’ve got yourself a profitable niche, now you need attractive designs that
drive sales. But even with your golden niche in the bag, making designs solely
on your own creative energy does not guarantee success.
Here's
a streamlined approach for building an online t-shirt business:
Tracking
down the bestselling designs is very research intensive, but when you find ones
you can add value to, it will be well worth it! Here's how to get going:
Check Out Pinterest
Pinterest can be a goldmine for creative design. In between the furious pinning, repining and liking you can discover popular designs from a variety of sellers and platforms. It's also great for exploring through to related photos and discovering more designs.
Head to the Online Markets
The
next method to try is head straight onto the individual t-shirt selling
markets. Many of them allow you to browse through bestsellers or categories,
but not all reveal their exact sales figures.
Measure Social Engagement
The
buzz of likes, shares, comments and social engagement is a good indication of
design popularity.
Grab direct campaign links and input them into free tools such as How Many Shares, to see the popularity of each design on Facebook.
While
time-consuming, these methods are mighty effective for uncovering bestselling
designs. Then all you've got to do is come up with your own twist!
Now you understand the factors that drive the sales and revenue to profitable niches, let’s hunt them down.
There’s a bunch of methods for tackling this, but these will be the main sources you need to search for:
Social Networks
FB ads and FB audiences offer a swift way to research interests and uncover niches. Search for large audiences or followings.
Use
the Facebook Graph Search to locate fan pages related to your niche. If there's
a mountain of likes, followers and engagement, you're on the right track. It
also signifies fertile grounds for setting up your own group for marketing
purposes.
Selling Platforms
Amazon and eBay can also be a great way to find potential markets. If your niche is catered to here, it’s big enough to consider. Look at the Amazon's best-sellers, if others are making a lot of money in your niche, it’s likely you could too!
Search
Engines
Try simply Google searching your ideas and seeing which ones gain the most traction. Look for highly active online forums relating to your niche, it’s a strong indicator of passion and future marketing opportunities.
GoogleTrends is very useful for discovering trending subjects and growing popularity.
You might just spot the next big craze emerging!
Creating a t-shirt business is no little task, it requires a high level of commitment to materialize your ideas into products people are actually willing to pay for.
So if you already made that first step and launched your
brand, make sure you also dedicate some time to promote your t-shirts.
1.
Up-to-date Profiles
Make sure your profiles are up to date with basic information on the brand, products and promotions you may be holding at the time.
2. Create Audiences for Targeting Ads
Facebook allows you to build different audiences and use these for creating adverts that target specific groups of people.
For example, if you are selling heavy metal tees, it only
makes sense to target users with musical interests, hobbies and activities
related to that.
That makes t shirts Facebook ads particular powerful because
you can advertise to a very specific segment of the market.
3. Join Facebook Groups
It’s important to become an active member of the community. Use Facebook groups and forums not just to connect with potential customers and partners, but also with other t-shirt sellers like you.
If you sell your designs on the different P.O.D sites, make
sure you interact with your peers, this way you will get a real insight on best
practices.
4. Be Consistent with Your Posts
Got a new design?
Make sure to share it on all your social media channels as soon as it’s up and running, linking to the actual item is a great way to drive traffic to your shop.
Tip: work in progress pots are a good way to get your
customers involved.
5. Visual Content Really Matters
I can’t emphasize this enough, visuals are what turns Facebook
followers into converting customers.
That’s the awesome power of t shirts Facebook ads. You instantly gain the user’s attention with an intriguing visual.
Many people struggle with new
creative t-shirt design ideas. But don’t worry. I’ll show you how to come up
with t-shirt designs in only 5 minutes.
1. Coming up With Creative T-Shirt Design Ideas
All of us in the t-shirt business would want to create a t-shirt idea that would go viral, right? Not only will it be good for our bank accounts, it’s so darn good for marketing our business, too.
But viral t shirt marketing is
mostly a hit or miss thing which even the best t shirt design research can’t
guarantee.
2. Read the News and What’s Trending
Whether you make political shirts or not, the news is a good source of inspiration when it comes to finding t shirt design ideas which would make good marketable t-shirts.
Whatever is trending in your market
has a big chance of making a good impression when printed on a tee.
3. Research on What Works and Then Steal It
This is like cheating, but not really. It’s just a design hack. Look for the t-shirts that your famous competitors are selling (the ones that sell really well) and use these shirts as inspiration for your t-shirt ideas.
4. Quotes
or Text That Tickle Your Market’s Fancy
Texts, phrases and quotes will never go out of style. Research what texts your market would love to see on a tee and your shirts would surely be selling like hot cakes.
But once you get it right and identify those truly creative
t-shirt design ideas, you’re guaranteed to sell. Also make sure that you’re
still unique.
5. Offer
Customized T-Shirt Designs
No matter how focused you are with your niche, you can never
be as focused unless you make custom printed tees.
So if your goal is to become marketable, then offering your
market an opportunity to become unique by having their own personalized t-shirt
design is one sure way of achieving it.
By gaining design inspiration from others you’ll be able to understand what makes a particular t-shirt design work more than another, and you’ll be able to gauge which of the 5 t-shirt styles you prefer and find the most effective. Overall, sourcing design inspiration is a great way to save time, gauge your preferences and know which mistakes to avoid.
Let’s jump into the 5 main types of
t-shirt designs.
This design focuses almost exclusively on messages, phrases or slogans, with little-to-no images or photos on the t-shirt. The creativity for this type of t-shirt design is in the development of the phrase, message or slogan on the t-shirt, as well as deciding which font, or pairings of fonts, to use.
Pros:
Cons:
2.PHOTOGRAPHY DESIGNS
This t-shirt design is characterized by hyper-realistic images. T-shirts that focus on photography designs focus on an image itself, and any text is complementary. Since your image is the main factor of this t-shirt design type, the printing method is especially important so the image looks exactly as it should.
Pros:
Cons:
3.GRAPHIC DESIGNS
This type of t-shirt design has elements of both typography and illustration. The major design parameters include images that are usually paired with typography to create a stylized, illustrative t-shirt design that’s interesting and eye-catching.
Pros:
Cons:
4.BRANDED DESIGNS
This type of design is created with the sole purpose of promoting a product, brand, or a company. To create an effective branded design, you need to be well versed with your own brand and know exactly how you want it to be “branded”.
Pros:
Cons:
5.ABSTRACT DESIGNS
Abstract designs spark people’s interest in being repeated or nonsensical arrangements of images or text that don’t have a particular narrative, representation or meaning behind them.
Pros:
Cons:
Some of the greatest designs are simple. But even simplest designs need to do some things right and avoid the most common mistakes to achieve that greatness.
How to Avoid the 10 Most Common Mistakes When Designing a T-shirt:
In this post, I’m going to outline the top ten things you should be thinking about as you design your printed masterpiece. Some of these might seem obvious, others could be news to you. Read on to find out.
1.
Sizing
There may be things in life where size does not matter. In T-shirt design, it matters a lot. And yet, most people tend to go with standard sizing most of the time.
Here’s the thing: size should be
decided based on the nature of the design, and the properties of the garment to
be printed. There should be some thoughts put into it.
2. Placement
Your design could be so amazing that it turns heads– but get the placement wrong, and heads will be turning for the wrong reason. A common mistake is the belly print, which is never flattering. In an upcoming post, I will discuss this unfortunate placement in detail.
3. Typography & Fonts
Typography, in its most basic form, is the visual component of the written word. It’s not the text itself– but anytime text is printed or displayed, it involves some degree of typography.
When it comes to design, typography is the art of typesetting or arranging type in a way that makes sense, along with choosing typefaces (fonts), making sure the letter spacing and line spacing is correct, and the way it interacts with the graphic elements is aesthetically pleasing.
4. Composition
Composition is something you may remember from your high school art class. Every design has elements that are arranged in relation to each other, and this relation is what makes up the overall composition.
5. Image Quality
This is one of the most common problems with our customer-submitted art files. Images are all too often “low resolution”. In other words, they don’t have enough pixel information to give us the quality and details that make for good print quality.
6. Colors
Color choices are some of the most important decisions; not only for design reasons, but if you want screen printing, making sure the job fits your budget. More colors = more cost per item. Of course, you could always buy more shirts to decrease your cost per item. Spend more to save more. Sales logic.
7. Contrast
Contrast is a part of color choice, but it’s a very specific and important part to consider. What exactly is contrast? It’s the degree of visual difference between the darker and lighter parts of an image, or the way shades of colors correspond to each other.
8. Inversion
Inversion is something fairly common that needs to be done, usually when printing white ink on black garments. Unless you’re some kind of Goth art band, you probably don’t want your photo looking like an x-ray.
9. Complexity
The human eye can only process a certain amount of information at once, graphics or otherwise, and with a T-shirt design you not only have limited viewing time, but you’re usually a moving target. So keep it simple!
10. Borders, Masks & Edges
Many designs that we print feature one or more photographs. A photo just sitting on a shirt with plain edges can look boring or even cheap and unprofessional. An easy solution to this is to “put a border on it”!
If you’re new to microstock industry or you want to earn more, it’s vital to know what microstocks you can work with. In this blog post you can find information about best microstocks, how much they pay contributors and what you can sell there as well as useful resources on each of them.
Shutterstock is one of the most established and most well-paying microstock agencies out there. It was founded back in 2003 and since then it gained 200 million images and 10 million videos. And, what is more important, millions of paying customers. If you’re not yet uploading to it, you definitely should, since it is also one of the well-paying agencies with $250 million paid since its founding.
AdobeStock is a microstock that was known as Fotolia before Adobe acquired it in 2015. Adobe inherited 100 million of images and more than 10 million clips in addition to graphics and 3D content.
iStock is probably the most famous now for its exclusivity program: contributors can sign special agreement and in exchange to increased rates they will not upload their artworks to other microstocks.
Depositphotos is a well-established agency, founded in 2009 in Ukraine featuring more than 140 million assets. Depositphotos has been around for a while being one of the top agencies both for customers and contributors. They constantly improve technologies and asset base is also growing very fast.
Dreamstime is one of the oldest microstocks, founded in 2000 in US. Today they host 122 million stock photos, vectors and videos. Dreamstime has never been a leader of the market, but they maintained their position for a long time being relatively stable. Also they feature the biggest number of licensing options for customers: royalty free, extended, editorial and full copyright.
If you’re an artist or designer, the internet is an essential place to show off your work, offering a wider-ranging audience from potential clients to buddies to partners to work with. Your portfolio represents you and your work so it needs to be just right, and easily accessible by everyone.
Behance
More than just being a go-to portfolio site for artists and designers - from animators to photographers, and everything in between - Behance is a very active social network with job postings, comments, the opportunity to follow artists, gets you ‘appreciates’ on your work and even be part of curated galleries.
Adobe Portfolio
Behance Pro has made way for Adobe Portfolio, a platform where you can quickly and easily build a fully responsive site to showcase your creative work.
Everything
is easy: pick a layout, customize it – including your own domain name and the
entire library of Adobe Fonts – and then sync with Behance.
Wix
Wix is innovative and evolving, and we've spotted many fresh grads opting for it for their portfolios.
Wix
is free, but premium plans offer more storage, bandwidth, no ads (ahh, sweet
silence) and more.
Weebly
Weebly was founded by three college friends who wanted to make it easier to display and promote their work online. Today their site has a plethora of features that make it a top choice for building a slick portfolio.
Carbonmade
Carbonmade’s website may not be the sleekest or aesthetically pleasing at first site, but we were thoroughly impressed with their beautiful themes. As they describe it, “our gorgeous themes are so nice you’ll think they’re Canadian."
If you are interested in designing t-shirts, then there are plenty of earning opportunities that you can explore. For freelancer designers, many online sites offer them the flexibility to work as per their time and skills. Even if you are employed, you can add to your regular earning using your skills.
01.
Spreadshirt
Spreadshirt lets you upload your t-shirt design for free. In fact, you can open your own online store at this site for free and then you can sell it to your audience. On selling t-shirts regularly, you can surely earn good money.
02.
Designhill
Designhill is another leading marketplace where t-shirt designers can get work regularly and earn money. At this site, as a designer, you have plenty of work to do. The site also lets you build your designer’s portfolio where you can display your t-shirt design works.
03.
Printful
Printful is the site where you can open and run your store without facing any hurdles. You will not be asked to pay any monthly fee.
04.
Threadless
At Threadless, open and start running your customized artist shop without paying anything to the site. It allows you to set your custom t-shirt design prices so that you can earn a nice profit.
05.
Cafepress
Cafepress is a free marketplace where you can easily earn a decent money every month. You can set up your own branded online shop. At this site, big brands such as Paramount and ABC have their stores opened.
06.
BlueCotton
BlueCotton is a custom print t-shirt shop and a design studio. Individual buyers visit this site to look for t-shirts of their choice for commercial and personal use.
07.
Tee Spring
Tee Spring is another easy to use site where you can upload your t-shirt design and set your sales goals. You are then allowed to launch a campaign using your website, email, and social media. After your campaign ends, the site will print your t-shirts and sell them. You will then get a check of profit.
08. Zazzle
Zazzle gives you access to a free designer store that you can name. You can design at this site or upload your design to sell it.
09.
TeePublic
TeePublic is the place where you can design your t-shirts, upload them to your store. You can open your store at this site to sell the products. The site offers you a set commission on the sales.
10.
Red Bubble
At Red Bubble, you upload your t-shirts and sell them through your store. The site allows you complete control over how you want to sell the designs. All you need to do is to start with the site, list your products, and set your base price.
So
you’ve got yourself a profitable niche, now you need attractive designs that
drive sales. But even with your golden niche in the bag, making designs solely
on your own creative energy does not guarantee success.
Here's
a streamlined approach for building an online t-shirt business:
Tracking
down the bestselling designs is very research intensive, but when you find ones
you can add value to, it will be well worth it! Here's how to get going:
Check Out Pinterest
Pinterest can be a goldmine for creative design. In between the furious pinning, repining and liking you can discover popular designs from a variety of sellers and platforms. It's also great for exploring through to related photos and discovering more designs.
Head to the Online Markets
The
next method to try is head straight onto the individual t-shirt selling
markets. Many of them allow you to browse through bestsellers or categories,
but not all reveal their exact sales figures.
Measure Social Engagement
The
buzz of likes, shares, comments and social engagement is a good indication of
design popularity.
Grab direct campaign links and input them into free tools such as How Many Shares, to see the popularity of each design on Facebook.
While
time-consuming, these methods are mighty effective for uncovering bestselling
designs. Then all you've got to do is come up with your own twist!
Now you understand the factors that drive the sales and revenue to profitable niches, let’s hunt them down.
There’s a bunch of methods for tackling this, but these will be the main sources you need to search for:
Social Networks
FB ads and FB audiences offer a swift way to research interests and uncover niches. Search for large audiences or followings.
Use
the Facebook Graph Search to locate fan pages related to your niche. If there's
a mountain of likes, followers and engagement, you're on the right track. It
also signifies fertile grounds for setting up your own group for marketing
purposes.
Selling Platforms
Amazon and eBay can also be a great way to find potential markets. If your niche is catered to here, it’s big enough to consider. Look at the Amazon's best-sellers, if others are making a lot of money in your niche, it’s likely you could too!
Search
Engines
Try simply Google searching your ideas and seeing which ones gain the most traction. Look for highly active online forums relating to your niche, it’s a strong indicator of passion and future marketing opportunities.
GoogleTrends is very useful for discovering trending subjects and growing popularity.
You might just spot the next big craze emerging!
Creating a t-shirt business is no little task, it requires a high level of commitment to materialize your ideas into products people are actually willing to pay for.
So if you already made that first step and launched your
brand, make sure you also dedicate some time to promote your t-shirts.
1.
Up-to-date Profiles
Make sure your profiles are up to date with basic information on the brand, products and promotions you may be holding at the time.
2. Create Audiences for Targeting Ads
Facebook allows you to build different audiences and use these for creating adverts that target specific groups of people.
For example, if you are selling heavy metal tees, it only
makes sense to target users with musical interests, hobbies and activities
related to that.
That makes t shirts Facebook ads particular powerful because
you can advertise to a very specific segment of the market.
3. Join Facebook Groups
It’s important to become an active member of the community. Use Facebook groups and forums not just to connect with potential customers and partners, but also with other t-shirt sellers like you.
If you sell your designs on the different P.O.D sites, make
sure you interact with your peers, this way you will get a real insight on best
practices.
4. Be Consistent with Your Posts
Got a new design?
Make sure to share it on all your social media channels as soon as it’s up and running, linking to the actual item is a great way to drive traffic to your shop.
Tip: work in progress pots are a good way to get your
customers involved.
5. Visual Content Really Matters
I can’t emphasize this enough, visuals are what turns Facebook
followers into converting customers.
That’s the awesome power of t shirts Facebook ads. You instantly gain the user’s attention with an intriguing visual.
Many people struggle with new
creative t-shirt design ideas. But don’t worry. I’ll show you how to come up
with t-shirt designs in only 5 minutes.
1. Coming up With Creative T-Shirt Design Ideas
All of us in the t-shirt business would want to create a t-shirt idea that would go viral, right? Not only will it be good for our bank accounts, it’s so darn good for marketing our business, too.
But viral t shirt marketing is
mostly a hit or miss thing which even the best t shirt design research can’t
guarantee.
2. Read the News and What’s Trending
Whether you make political shirts or not, the news is a good source of inspiration when it comes to finding t shirt design ideas which would make good marketable t-shirts.
Whatever is trending in your market
has a big chance of making a good impression when printed on a tee.
3. Research on What Works and Then Steal It
This is like cheating, but not really. It’s just a design hack. Look for the t-shirts that your famous competitors are selling (the ones that sell really well) and use these shirts as inspiration for your t-shirt ideas.
4. Quotes
or Text That Tickle Your Market’s Fancy
Texts, phrases and quotes will never go out of style. Research what texts your market would love to see on a tee and your shirts would surely be selling like hot cakes.
But once you get it right and identify those truly creative
t-shirt design ideas, you’re guaranteed to sell. Also make sure that you’re
still unique.
5. Offer
Customized T-Shirt Designs
No matter how focused you are with your niche, you can never
be as focused unless you make custom printed tees.
So if your goal is to become marketable, then offering your
market an opportunity to become unique by having their own personalized t-shirt
design is one sure way of achieving it.
By gaining design inspiration from others you’ll be able to understand what makes a particular t-shirt design work more than another, and you’ll be able to gauge which of the 5 t-shirt styles you prefer and find the most effective. Overall, sourcing design inspiration is a great way to save time, gauge your preferences and know which mistakes to avoid.
Let’s jump into the 5 main types of
t-shirt designs.
This design focuses almost exclusively on messages, phrases or slogans, with little-to-no images or photos on the t-shirt. The creativity for this type of t-shirt design is in the development of the phrase, message or slogan on the t-shirt, as well as deciding which font, or pairings of fonts, to use.
Pros:
Cons:
2.PHOTOGRAPHY DESIGNS
This t-shirt design is characterized by hyper-realistic images. T-shirts that focus on photography designs focus on an image itself, and any text is complementary. Since your image is the main factor of this t-shirt design type, the printing method is especially important so the image looks exactly as it should.
Pros:
Cons:
3.GRAPHIC DESIGNS
This type of t-shirt design has elements of both typography and illustration. The major design parameters include images that are usually paired with typography to create a stylized, illustrative t-shirt design that’s interesting and eye-catching.
Pros:
Cons:
4.BRANDED DESIGNS
This type of design is created with the sole purpose of promoting a product, brand, or a company. To create an effective branded design, you need to be well versed with your own brand and know exactly how you want it to be “branded”.
Pros:
Cons:
5.ABSTRACT DESIGNS
Abstract designs spark people’s interest in being repeated or nonsensical arrangements of images or text that don’t have a particular narrative, representation or meaning behind them.
Pros:
Cons:
Some of the greatest designs are simple. But even simplest designs need to do some things right and avoid the most common mistakes to achieve that greatness.
How to Avoid the 10 Most Common Mistakes When Designing a T-shirt:
In this post, I’m going to outline the top ten things you should be thinking about as you design your printed masterpiece. Some of these might seem obvious, others could be news to you. Read on to find out.
1.
Sizing
There may be things in life where size does not matter. In T-shirt design, it matters a lot. And yet, most people tend to go with standard sizing most of the time.
Here’s the thing: size should be
decided based on the nature of the design, and the properties of the garment to
be printed. There should be some thoughts put into it.
2. Placement
Your design could be so amazing that it turns heads– but get the placement wrong, and heads will be turning for the wrong reason. A common mistake is the belly print, which is never flattering. In an upcoming post, I will discuss this unfortunate placement in detail.
3. Typography & Fonts
Typography, in its most basic form, is the visual component of the written word. It’s not the text itself– but anytime text is printed or displayed, it involves some degree of typography.
When it comes to design, typography is the art of typesetting or arranging type in a way that makes sense, along with choosing typefaces (fonts), making sure the letter spacing and line spacing is correct, and the way it interacts with the graphic elements is aesthetically pleasing.
4. Composition
Composition is something you may remember from your high school art class. Every design has elements that are arranged in relation to each other, and this relation is what makes up the overall composition.
5. Image Quality
This is one of the most common problems with our customer-submitted art files. Images are all too often “low resolution”. In other words, they don’t have enough pixel information to give us the quality and details that make for good print quality.
6. Colors
Color choices are some of the most important decisions; not only for design reasons, but if you want screen printing, making sure the job fits your budget. More colors = more cost per item. Of course, you could always buy more shirts to decrease your cost per item. Spend more to save more. Sales logic.
7. Contrast
Contrast is a part of color choice, but it’s a very specific and important part to consider. What exactly is contrast? It’s the degree of visual difference between the darker and lighter parts of an image, or the way shades of colors correspond to each other.
8. Inversion
Inversion is something fairly common that needs to be done, usually when printing white ink on black garments. Unless you’re some kind of Goth art band, you probably don’t want your photo looking like an x-ray.
9. Complexity
The human eye can only process a certain amount of information at once, graphics or otherwise, and with a T-shirt design you not only have limited viewing time, but you’re usually a moving target. So keep it simple!
10. Borders, Masks & Edges
Many designs that we print feature one or more photographs. A photo just sitting on a shirt with plain edges can look boring or even cheap and unprofessional. An easy solution to this is to “put a border on it”!
If you’re new to microstock industry or you want to earn more, it’s vital to know what microstocks you can work with. In this blog post you can find information about best microstocks, how much they pay contributors and what you can sell there as well as useful resources on each of them.
Shutterstock is one of the most established and most well-paying microstock agencies out there. It was founded back in 2003 and since then it gained 200 million images and 10 million videos. And, what is more important, millions of paying customers. If you’re not yet uploading to it, you definitely should, since it is also one of the well-paying agencies with $250 million paid since its founding.
AdobeStock is a microstock that was known as Fotolia before Adobe acquired it in 2015. Adobe inherited 100 million of images and more than 10 million clips in addition to graphics and 3D content.
iStock is probably the most famous now for its exclusivity program: contributors can sign special agreement and in exchange to increased rates they will not upload their artworks to other microstocks.
Depositphotos is a well-established agency, founded in 2009 in Ukraine featuring more than 140 million assets. Depositphotos has been around for a while being one of the top agencies both for customers and contributors. They constantly improve technologies and asset base is also growing very fast.
Dreamstime is one of the oldest microstocks, founded in 2000 in US. Today they host 122 million stock photos, vectors and videos. Dreamstime has never been a leader of the market, but they maintained their position for a long time being relatively stable. Also they feature the biggest number of licensing options for customers: royalty free, extended, editorial and full copyright.
If you’re an artist or designer, the internet is an essential place to show off your work, offering a wider-ranging audience from potential clients to buddies to partners to work with. Your portfolio represents you and your work so it needs to be just right, and easily accessible by everyone.
Behance
More than just being a go-to portfolio site for artists and designers - from animators to photographers, and everything in between - Behance is a very active social network with job postings, comments, the opportunity to follow artists, gets you ‘appreciates’ on your work and even be part of curated galleries.
Adobe Portfolio
Behance Pro has made way for Adobe Portfolio, a platform where you can quickly and easily build a fully responsive site to showcase your creative work.
Everything
is easy: pick a layout, customize it – including your own domain name and the
entire library of Adobe Fonts – and then sync with Behance.
Wix
Wix is innovative and evolving, and we've spotted many fresh grads opting for it for their portfolios.
Wix
is free, but premium plans offer more storage, bandwidth, no ads (ahh, sweet
silence) and more.
Weebly
Weebly was founded by three college friends who wanted to make it easier to display and promote their work online. Today their site has a plethora of features that make it a top choice for building a slick portfolio.
Carbonmade
Carbonmade’s website may not be the sleekest or aesthetically pleasing at first site, but we were thoroughly impressed with their beautiful themes. As they describe it, “our gorgeous themes are so nice you’ll think they’re Canadian."
If you are interested in designing t-shirts, then there are plenty of earning opportunities that you can explore. For freelancer designers, many online sites offer them the flexibility to work as per their time and skills. Even if you are employed, you can add to your regular earning using your skills.
01.
Spreadshirt
Spreadshirt lets you upload your t-shirt design for free. In fact, you can open your own online store at this site for free and then you can sell it to your audience. On selling t-shirts regularly, you can surely earn good money.
02.
Designhill
Designhill is another leading marketplace where t-shirt designers can get work regularly and earn money. At this site, as a designer, you have plenty of work to do. The site also lets you build your designer’s portfolio where you can display your t-shirt design works.
03.
Printful
Printful is the site where you can open and run your store without facing any hurdles. You will not be asked to pay any monthly fee.
04.
Threadless
At Threadless, open and start running your customized artist shop without paying anything to the site. It allows you to set your custom t-shirt design prices so that you can earn a nice profit.
05.
Cafepress
Cafepress is a free marketplace where you can easily earn a decent money every month. You can set up your own branded online shop. At this site, big brands such as Paramount and ABC have their stores opened.
06.
BlueCotton
BlueCotton is a custom print t-shirt shop and a design studio. Individual buyers visit this site to look for t-shirts of their choice for commercial and personal use.
07.
Tee Spring
Tee Spring is another easy to use site where you can upload your t-shirt design and set your sales goals. You are then allowed to launch a campaign using your website, email, and social media. After your campaign ends, the site will print your t-shirts and sell them. You will then get a check of profit.
08. Zazzle
Zazzle gives you access to a free designer store that you can name. You can design at this site or upload your design to sell it.
09.
TeePublic
TeePublic is the place where you can design your t-shirts, upload them to your store. You can open your store at this site to sell the products. The site offers you a set commission on the sales.
10.
Red Bubble
At Red Bubble, you upload your t-shirts and sell them through your store. The site allows you complete control over how you want to sell the designs. All you need to do is to start with the site, list your products, and set your base price.
So
you’ve got yourself a profitable niche, now you need attractive designs that
drive sales. But even with your golden niche in the bag, making designs solely
on your own creative energy does not guarantee success.
Here's
a streamlined approach for building an online t-shirt business:
Tracking
down the bestselling designs is very research intensive, but when you find ones
you can add value to, it will be well worth it! Here's how to get going:
Check Out Pinterest
Pinterest can be a goldmine for creative design. In between the furious pinning, repining and liking you can discover popular designs from a variety of sellers and platforms. It's also great for exploring through to related photos and discovering more designs.
Head to the Online Markets
The
next method to try is head straight onto the individual t-shirt selling
markets. Many of them allow you to browse through bestsellers or categories,
but not all reveal their exact sales figures.
Measure Social Engagement
The
buzz of likes, shares, comments and social engagement is a good indication of
design popularity.
Grab direct campaign links and input them into free tools such as How Many Shares, to see the popularity of each design on Facebook.
While
time-consuming, these methods are mighty effective for uncovering bestselling
designs. Then all you've got to do is come up with your own twist!
Now you understand the factors that drive the sales and revenue to profitable niches, let’s hunt them down.
There’s a bunch of methods for tackling this, but these will be the main sources you need to search for:
Social Networks
FB ads and FB audiences offer a swift way to research interests and uncover niches. Search for large audiences or followings.
Use
the Facebook Graph Search to locate fan pages related to your niche. If there's
a mountain of likes, followers and engagement, you're on the right track. It
also signifies fertile grounds for setting up your own group for marketing
purposes.
Selling Platforms
Amazon and eBay can also be a great way to find potential markets. If your niche is catered to here, it’s big enough to consider. Look at the Amazon's best-sellers, if others are making a lot of money in your niche, it’s likely you could too!
Search
Engines
Try simply Google searching your ideas and seeing which ones gain the most traction. Look for highly active online forums relating to your niche, it’s a strong indicator of passion and future marketing opportunities.
GoogleTrends is very useful for discovering trending subjects and growing popularity.
You might just spot the next big craze emerging!
Creating a t-shirt business is no little task, it requires a high level of commitment to materialize your ideas into products people are actually willing to pay for.
So if you already made that first step and launched your
brand, make sure you also dedicate some time to promote your t-shirts.
1.
Up-to-date Profiles
Make sure your profiles are up to date with basic information on the brand, products and promotions you may be holding at the time.
2. Create Audiences for Targeting Ads
Facebook allows you to build different audiences and use these for creating adverts that target specific groups of people.
For example, if you are selling heavy metal tees, it only
makes sense to target users with musical interests, hobbies and activities
related to that.
That makes t shirts Facebook ads particular powerful because
you can advertise to a very specific segment of the market.
3. Join Facebook Groups
It’s important to become an active member of the community. Use Facebook groups and forums not just to connect with potential customers and partners, but also with other t-shirt sellers like you.
If you sell your designs on the different P.O.D sites, make
sure you interact with your peers, this way you will get a real insight on best
practices.
4. Be Consistent with Your Posts
Got a new design?
Make sure to share it on all your social media channels as soon as it’s up and running, linking to the actual item is a great way to drive traffic to your shop.
Tip: work in progress pots are a good way to get your
customers involved.
5. Visual Content Really Matters
I can’t emphasize this enough, visuals are what turns Facebook
followers into converting customers.
That’s the awesome power of t shirts Facebook ads. You instantly gain the user’s attention with an intriguing visual.
Many people struggle with new
creative t-shirt design ideas. But don’t worry. I’ll show you how to come up
with t-shirt designs in only 5 minutes.
1. Coming up With Creative T-Shirt Design Ideas
All of us in the t-shirt business would want to create a t-shirt idea that would go viral, right? Not only will it be good for our bank accounts, it’s so darn good for marketing our business, too.
But viral t shirt marketing is
mostly a hit or miss thing which even the best t shirt design research can’t
guarantee.
2. Read the News and What’s Trending
Whether you make political shirts or not, the news is a good source of inspiration when it comes to finding t shirt design ideas which would make good marketable t-shirts.
Whatever is trending in your market
has a big chance of making a good impression when printed on a tee.
3. Research on What Works and Then Steal It
This is like cheating, but not really. It’s just a design hack. Look for the t-shirts that your famous competitors are selling (the ones that sell really well) and use these shirts as inspiration for your t-shirt ideas.
4. Quotes
or Text That Tickle Your Market’s Fancy
Texts, phrases and quotes will never go out of style. Research what texts your market would love to see on a tee and your shirts would surely be selling like hot cakes.
But once you get it right and identify those truly creative
t-shirt design ideas, you’re guaranteed to sell. Also make sure that you’re
still unique.
5. Offer
Customized T-Shirt Designs
No matter how focused you are with your niche, you can never
be as focused unless you make custom printed tees.
So if your goal is to become marketable, then offering your
market an opportunity to become unique by having their own personalized t-shirt
design is one sure way of achieving it.
By gaining design inspiration from others you’ll be able to understand what makes a particular t-shirt design work more than another, and you’ll be able to gauge which of the 5 t-shirt styles you prefer and find the most effective. Overall, sourcing design inspiration is a great way to save time, gauge your preferences and know which mistakes to avoid.
Let’s jump into the 5 main types of
t-shirt designs.
This design focuses almost exclusively on messages, phrases or slogans, with little-to-no images or photos on the t-shirt. The creativity for this type of t-shirt design is in the development of the phrase, message or slogan on the t-shirt, as well as deciding which font, or pairings of fonts, to use.
Pros:
Cons:
2.PHOTOGRAPHY DESIGNS
This t-shirt design is characterized by hyper-realistic images. T-shirts that focus on photography designs focus on an image itself, and any text is complementary. Since your image is the main factor of this t-shirt design type, the printing method is especially important so the image looks exactly as it should.
Pros:
Cons:
3.GRAPHIC DESIGNS
This type of t-shirt design has elements of both typography and illustration. The major design parameters include images that are usually paired with typography to create a stylized, illustrative t-shirt design that’s interesting and eye-catching.
Pros:
Cons:
4.BRANDED DESIGNS
This type of design is created with the sole purpose of promoting a product, brand, or a company. To create an effective branded design, you need to be well versed with your own brand and know exactly how you want it to be “branded”.
Pros:
Cons:
5.ABSTRACT DESIGNS
Abstract designs spark people’s interest in being repeated or nonsensical arrangements of images or text that don’t have a particular narrative, representation or meaning behind them.
Pros:
Cons:
Some of the greatest designs are simple. But even simplest designs need to do some things right and avoid the most common mistakes to achieve that greatness.
How to Avoid the 10 Most Common Mistakes When Designing a T-shirt:
In this post, I’m going to outline the top ten things you should be thinking about as you design your printed masterpiece. Some of these might seem obvious, others could be news to you. Read on to find out.
1.
Sizing
There may be things in life where size does not matter. In T-shirt design, it matters a lot. And yet, most people tend to go with standard sizing most of the time.
Here’s the thing: size should be
decided based on the nature of the design, and the properties of the garment to
be printed. There should be some thoughts put into it.
2. Placement
Your design could be so amazing that it turns heads– but get the placement wrong, and heads will be turning for the wrong reason. A common mistake is the belly print, which is never flattering. In an upcoming post, I will discuss this unfortunate placement in detail.
3. Typography & Fonts
Typography, in its most basic form, is the visual component of the written word. It’s not the text itself– but anytime text is printed or displayed, it involves some degree of typography.
When it comes to design, typography is the art of typesetting or arranging type in a way that makes sense, along with choosing typefaces (fonts), making sure the letter spacing and line spacing is correct, and the way it interacts with the graphic elements is aesthetically pleasing.
4. Composition
Composition is something you may remember from your high school art class. Every design has elements that are arranged in relation to each other, and this relation is what makes up the overall composition.
5. Image Quality
This is one of the most common problems with our customer-submitted art files. Images are all too often “low resolution”. In other words, they don’t have enough pixel information to give us the quality and details that make for good print quality.
6. Colors
Color choices are some of the most important decisions; not only for design reasons, but if you want screen printing, making sure the job fits your budget. More colors = more cost per item. Of course, you could always buy more shirts to decrease your cost per item. Spend more to save more. Sales logic.
7. Contrast
Contrast is a part of color choice, but it’s a very specific and important part to consider. What exactly is contrast? It’s the degree of visual difference between the darker and lighter parts of an image, or the way shades of colors correspond to each other.
8. Inversion
Inversion is something fairly common that needs to be done, usually when printing white ink on black garments. Unless you’re some kind of Goth art band, you probably don’t want your photo looking like an x-ray.
9. Complexity
The human eye can only process a certain amount of information at once, graphics or otherwise, and with a T-shirt design you not only have limited viewing time, but you’re usually a moving target. So keep it simple!
10. Borders, Masks & Edges
Many designs that we print feature one or more photographs. A photo just sitting on a shirt with plain edges can look boring or even cheap and unprofessional. An easy solution to this is to “put a border on it”!
If you’re new to microstock industry or you want to earn more, it’s vital to know what microstocks you can work with. In this blog post you ...
If you’re an artist or designer, the internet is an essential place to show off your work, offering a wider-ranging audience from potential ...
If you are interested in designing t-shirts, then there are plenty of earning opportunities that you can explore. For freelancer designers, ...
So you’ve got yourself a profitable niche, now you need attractive designs that drive sales. But even with your golden niche in the bag, mak...
Now you understand the factors that drive the sales and revenue to profitable niches, let’s hunt them down. There’s a bunch of methods for ...
Creating a t-shirt business is no little task, it requires a high level of commitment to materialize your ideas into products people are act...
Many people struggle with new creative t-shirt design ideas. But don’t worry. I’ll show you how to come up with t-shirt designs in only 5 mi...
By gaining design inspiration from others you’ll be able to understand what makes a particular t-shirt design work more than another, and yo...
Some of the greatest designs are simple. But even simplest designs need to do some things right and avoid the most common mistakes to achiev...