Threadless added a new type of t-shirt. It’s called Vintage Wash and the colors are lovely, more subdued than normal t-shirts. They also have very creative color names. Instead of simple “Red” it’s “Nantucket Red”:
And this color is called “Summer Sky”:
This is “Saltwater”, my favorite:
I wrote a blog post about earning money on Threadless. It’s titled “10 Steps to Earning $1000+ Monthly with Your Shop”.
The post is now live on their Creative Resources Blog. Go read it. I tried to make it as helpful as possible. I hope you find it useful 🙂
Threadless added an option to print on the back of t-shirts. They say it’s an “uncharted territory” and I must agree — I own a lot of t-shirts but now one of them has a design on the back. I will try to think of a design that would look good on the back, but I don’t have any ideas yet.
You can read more about back prints here. And there’s also a competition.
My new store, TRUFFLEPIG, got featured today as “Artist of the Day” on Threadless! That’s a delightful surprise 🙂
Cut & Sew T-shirts are t-shirts that can be printed all over, like that:
Threadless recently wrote an article about different types of Cut & Sew designs. Read it here: 6 Design Ideas for the Cut & Sew T-Shirt.
Of those 6 types, I mostly have one type in my store: all-over patterns. And only 10 of my designs are available on Cut & Sew t-shirts. These are the most popular in my store:
Cut & Sew t-shirts are, of course, more expensive than usual t-shirts, so they are rarely bought. Only 67 people bought Cut & Sew t-shirts with my designs.
For example, this one has only been bought 3 times:
I will likely never meet anyone wearing it 🙂
When you open an Artist Shop on Threadless, you will receive a bunch of emails with tips on how to: promote your store, prepare design files, customize the shop, and so on. Since I’ve created my new store, I’ve been getting those helpful emails too. One of them was titled “And the Best Selling Products are…” and said:
Tees, Mugs, and Totes!
These are the three most popular products across all Artist Shops and could be in yours as well!
I got curious if that’s the case for my stores as well. My new store has been opened for a day only, and I haven’t sold anything there yet, but I sold a lot of products in my main Fox Shiver store. So I exported the data and calculated how many items of each product I sold.
Mugs and Totes are not selling well in my store at all. Tees — on the other hand — are the most popular products by far. I sold more t-shirts than all other products combined. Take a look:
Today, I opened my new store on Threadless. It’s called TRUFFLEPIG because I like pigs and it’s a funny words. There will mostly be cute and humorous designs there. The main reason why I had decided to start a new store is that my main store, Fox Shiver, has gotten too big and is a mess — there are all kinds of designs there, no consistency.
From now on, I will be adding most of my designs — if they match the style — to my new store. But designs that aren’t funny and don’t have cute animals I will submit to my old store. I am also planning on opening yet another store with a completely different style. But for now, I want to make more designs for TRUFFLEPIG.
Here is my new store: TRUFFLEPIG
And here is my main store: FOX SHIVER
I know how it is. Every few weeks, you hear about yet another website where you should be selling your designs. And you wonder, Is it worth my time?
If you have ever submitted your designs to any Print-On-Demand websites, you know that it takes a lot of time. And sometimes, after all that effort, you see no sales. Worse, some of those websites may disappear after a while and stop paying out royalties to artists. It happened to me twice.
It’s understandable that you ask yourself, Should I invest my time in yet another website? Is Threadless worth it?
If you are scanning this article to find the answer, then here it is: Yes! You absolutely should submit your designs to Threadless.
I have been selling my art on Threadless for the past 5 years. No other website has brought me as much money in passive income as Threadless. The beginning was tough — I wasn’t making much money right away. It might be the same for you. But don’t get discouraged, keep making designs — the more you submit, the more likely it is that you will be successful.
8 Tips for Selling on Threadless.
Open your Threadless Artist Shop
What happens when Threadless selects your design?
Did you know that when your t-shirt is selected by Threadless to be added to their catalog, you usually get a $250 coupon code? I use my coupons to buy hoodies and t-shirts for my family and friends.
If you want your design to be added to the catalog, you need to submit it to their main design challenge. Every week they select new designs. If your design doesn’t win, don’t give up. Try again. The more designs you submit, the better the odds of one of your designs being selected.
Here’s one of my recent designs:
It has just been added to the Threadless catalog. This means more people will see it and more people will buy it. And even if they don’t buy it, they might check out my other designs and find something else for themselves.
It look good on triblend blue:
I’ve notices that Threadless published a useful article in their Creative Resources section: Get Featured on Threadless.
One of the questions that new Threadless artists often ask is whether they should opt into the Threadless Marketplace. I think it’s really worth it to opt in — most of my sales come from the marketplace. If you are a new artist then most likely you are not very good at promoting your art yet. If you don’t opt in you will have a difficult time getting people to visit your shop. It’s of course up to you. You can read Threadless’s advice here.
One other topic that Threadless mentions is that you should submit 1-2 designs a week. I admit I haven’t been designing much recently. I wish I could submit more but I’ve been swamped with other work like preparing our game for releasing on new platforms and migrating the manichyena.com website to a new server. But that’s all behind me, I plan to draw more in May.
Go read the whole article, it’s full of good advice 🙂