Justyna Dorsz

Money

Can you make money on Threadless?

Make money on Threadless

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:

  1. Make a lot of designs. You never know which one is going to be popular.
  2. Don’t get discouraged when no one buys your designs at first. Just keep designing and publishing.
  3. 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.
  4. Post about your new designs on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook. The more people see your designs the better.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.

7 websites that send me money

In March 2012, I quit my job. I had a three-month notice period, but my boss feared that a mistreated employee might sabotage the company, so he told me not to come to work anymore. Then an assistant accompanied me to the kitchen and watched closely while I retrieved my teacup, and that was that. They still had to pay me my salary, though, which was good because I didn’t have much money saved.

Long months of sitting in my room and drawing ensued. And I will write about that because I know how much we all love stories about grit and perseverance. But let’s skip it for now and let me show you how I’ve been earning money since then. Here is a list of 7 websites. To this day, I sell my art on all of them.

  • Design By Humans – this is the one that started it for me. A friend had a t-shirt from them and told me that they accept designs from independent artists.
  • Threadless – this is my favorite one. The nicest people work there. I buy my clothes on Threadless too and even right now I am wearing their hoodie. It was very difficult to be printed there at first. I simply didn’t have the skills for the first 2 years.
  • TeeFury – the first website that I sent my designs to and the first one that accepted one of them for printing. They look for different designs than Threadless, mostly related to movies or games — that was easier for me to draw back then.
  • Qwertee – like TeeFury, but it’s Europe-based, which is good because some customers prefer not to pay for shipping from the US.
  • TeePublic – this one didn’t exist in 2012, it was founded in 2013, and I was one of the first artists there. Also, very nice people, one of the few companies that put artists first.
  • Redbubble – a huge marketplace. Your art can easily get swamped there with all the other designs. Still, I earn a regular income from them every month.
  • Woot – they run a derby every week, you can submit designs and compete with others, and then they select a few designs to add to their shop.

This is a tiny sampling of all the websites where you can sell art online, but for me, those were crucial.