Friends, family, and other artists often ask me: can you make money on Threadless?
I’ve been a designer for 8 years now and I’ve been selling my art on Threadless for the past 5 years so I think I can answer that. The short answer is: Yes! You absolutely can make money on Threadless. Nearly every month I earn a substantial part of my income from Threadless.
When you are just starting selling your art online it might seem daunting. I know – I was there. So here are a few things that will help you if you want to earn money on Threadless:
- Make a lot of designs. You never know which one is going to be popular.
- Don’t get discouraged when no one buys your designs at first. Just keep designing and publishing.
- Try to find your niche. I make a lot of designs with cats and space because that’s what I like to draw. Maybe you like dogs or hiking or pizza? Draw that.
- Post about your new designs on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook. The more people see your designs the better.
- Tags! Add tags to your designs so people can find them. I try to add at least 8 tags to each design. It’s a good idea to also write a short description.
- Submit designs both to your Artist Store and to Design Challenges. Even if you don’t win a challenge, more people will see your designs and you will gain new followers.
- When you add a design to your store make sure you enable it on other products, not only t-shirts. Customers often buy hoodies, masks, tote bags, and pillows.
- If you haven’t yet opened a store, you should open one now! I have no affiliation with Threadless, I just like them a lot and earn a lot of money there. If you don’t know how to name your store, here’s a short guide.
Hope that helps. Here is my store if you want to take a look.
Hi Justyna ,
Thanks for your advice -Love your cat designs- They’re AWESOME- Also very much into cats.
Currently jobless .My niche is most definitely in design . Although not very Social media savvy.
Need to earn money as quickly as I possibly can. Can I possibly use Canva to design ?
Whats your best possible advice to someone in my situation
Hi Razeen,
I don’t know Canva well so I don’t know, but Krita is free and I have used it to create many designs.
In your situation I would create as many designs as possible, focus on cute and/or funny designs. Upload them to Threadless/Redbubble/TeePublic and see where they sell best. For me Threadless has always been the most profitable but your designs might find more success on other websites.
Hi, Thanks for your article. Do you market your designs yourself or are the sales organic traffic?
Organic traffic mostly. I also post on Pinterest, Twitter, and here on my blog.
Im not finding too many other artists claiming to make money on threadless. are you sure threadless has had much to do with your success?
I know other artists who make money on Threadless 🙂
For me Threadless is the best place to sell my designs. But there will be others who have more success somewhere else.