1. Threadless

This is the most famous contest site on the Internet. There is a ton of competition and many talented designers in the Threadless community. If your design is chosen you will receive $2,000 for the first printing, and $500 for any reprints. Winners also get a $500 Threadless gift certificate. If you win design of the year in their annual Bestee Awards you will receive an additional $20,000! The Bestee Awards also give smaller prizes in many other categories. Anyone can submit a design, and once submitted the community will vote on your design for 7 days. The resulting score helps decide whether your design will be a winner.

2. Design By Humans

Design By Humans is another popular site which runs more than one design competition at a time. In addition to their main contest, which runs daily, they run a wide selection of special contests. These contests vary in their theme and their prize selection. Winners of the daily contest receive $1,000. Daily winners can receive an additional $1,000 and $1,750 for winning the Shirt of the Week and Shirt of the Month contests respectively. If your design is particularly good, you’ll get additional cash as your design reaches certain sales milestones. See their contest rules and prizes page for complete details.

3. Woot Shirt

Each week Woot runs a contest called the The Derby. These contests are themed, and a new theme is posted every Thursday. On Friday  designers can submit their designs. Voting continues on the submissions until the next Wednesday. The votes are then tallied and the top three designs go on sale that weekend. Winning designers receive $1,000 and $2 for each shirt sold after the first day it’s available. This contest is unique because the themes keep the designs fresh and interesting. You can find more information about the entire process on their “What Is Shirt.Woot?” page.

4. itself

The eligibility period for itself designs are a whopping 60 days! This means that for approximately two months the community will vote on your creations. At any time during that time period your designs may be chosen. If your design is chosen you will receive $1,750 and 250 itself coins. These coins are redeemable for purchases at the site. The initial printing is 3,000 shirts, and if it does well they may make an additional run of 3,000. You get the same prize for this second run, so you can win up to $4,000. They also print every shirt with your name on it, as if you didn’t need the ego boost already!

5. la Fraise

I have previously discussed la Fraise in much greater detail, so this will be a brief recap of that post. They are a European website and, as a result, their shirts are not available outside of Europe. However, they accept design submissions from anywhere in the world, so you will still get paid if your design is chosen. Similar to Threadless, submitted designs are shown for 7 days and then la Fraise uses this information to choose their winners. Designers will receive 1,000 euros, and they retain full control over their designs.

6. Allmightys

Unlike most contests, which have short durations, each Allmightys contest lasts more than a month. They only have one going on at a time, so new contests appear once every few months. Because of the time allotted, the quality of submissions is very high. Once the contest deadline is reached three winners are chosen (Bronze, Silver, and Gold).  Any number of Special Selections may also be chosen. Compensation is received in the form of commissions, and the commission rates are decided based on how well a design did in the competition. If you’re interested, take a look at their prize structure.

7. Uneetee

Every Monday Uneetee announces their grand prize winner. The community can vote on submitted designs for 21 days. After the voting period they are still eligible to win for 90 days from the original submission date. If your design is chosen you will receive $1,750 of cold hard cash. Keep in mind that Uneetee retains exclusive rights to your design for printing and selling purposes. The quality of submissions here seems hit or miss. If you’ve got designs that haven’t won other contests, I would definitely give Uneetee a chance.

8. teetonic

At teetonic, there is an ongoing competition without any theme. Designs are limited to 4 colors, which I could see becoming a concern. Submissions are eligible for 30 days. The resulting vote is used to determine any winners. They typically choose one shirt per month, but that isn’t set in stone. It’s a Scottish company, so the rewards come in pounds. Winners receive £100 initially, and 50p for each individual shirt sold. You also get a free shirt featuring your design! Keep an eye out because they will occasionally run competitions alongside their main.

9. springleap

Every two weeks springleap chooses a winner for their contest. Winners receive approximately $750 (based on an exchange rate), a hand drawn rendition of their design, and royalties on all shirt sales. You may receive additional prizes based on any active sponsorships. They promote the designer heavily, which I find quite interesting. Shirts are branded with the designer’s name, and shipped with a postcard containing information on both the design and the designer. They also interview the winners, and show their picture alongside their creation!

10. Chimpogo

The £500 prize at Chimpogo might not seem like a lot, but the designs there are of slightly lesser quality than the other contests I’ve listed. Each week one winner is chosen and that design becomes available within a few weeks. Like Uneetee, Chimpogo retains exclusive rights to any design they choose as a winner. This is a relatively new site so in the future their quality of submissions and prize amounts may increase. They also run a slogan contest called “Say What?” that anyone can enter. Winners of this contest will receive £100.

Conclusion

As I mentioned above, I can’t possibly cover every design competition on the Internet. There are blogs that focus on this niche, and one of the best I’ve found is compete-tee-tion. They update regularly, and they have a comprehensive list of t-shirt contests. If anyone has any questions or comments I’d love to hear them. I’ll be keeping you updated on any contest related news I encounter. I hope this list was informative, and I wish you the best of luck with your contest entries!

The online shirt business is a budding industry. Every day there are new shops, designers, and shirts flooding the internet. It also happens to be an excellent way of making money online, most of the time with little to no start up cost. There are 5 main techniques. Some of them take more work than others, but no matter who you are I guarantee there is a technique that will work for you.

1. Product Commissions

There are several sites that let you design shirts and sell them in your own online shop. If you’re graphically talented, you can upload designs that you’ve made and place them on any clothing item you want. Don’t worry if you have no talent with graphics, some of the sites allow you to use designs that others have made on your own products. You can usually mix and match multiple graphics and add text to create unique designs for your shop. These shops are provided for free, but are usually limited in several ways. As long as you plan on selling a few products a month you can cover the cost of upgrading to premium shops. Premium shops give you greater control and give you the power to earn even more money.

3 Best Online Shops:

• Spreadshirt
• CafePress
• Zazzle

2. Affiliate Marketing

Almost every shop that sells shirts online offers some sort of affiliate program. Even the online shops listed above provide affiliate marketing for their website and products. These programs either run directly through the website itself, or through 3rd party websites like ShareASale and Commission Junction. The types of commissions you can get vary from a percentage of the sale, to a flat fee per shirt sold. It costs no money to sign up for these accounts, but it can be hard to get enough traffic to begin to see a profit. If you’ve already got a high traffic website you could easily supplement your content with affiliate marketing on shirts related to your niche.

3 Shops Offering Affiliate Accounts:

• BustedTees
• SnorgTees
• NerdyShirts

3. Contests

A few websites run ongoing contests that reward designers if their shirts are accepted. The processes vary slightly between sites, but usually they have a system in place that lets others vote for their favorite designs. Designs are then accepted based on their ending popularity, and sometimes the discretion of the site itself. Rewards for the top contests are usually in the thousands of dollars, and if you win Threadless’ Bestee Awards they will give you 20,000 dollars! This method takes the greatest skill of all, because the people entering these contests are extremely talented graphic artists. If you’ve got the skill to create shirts that could win these contests they could be an excellent source of supplemental income.

3 Shirt Contest Sites:

• Threadless
• Woot Shirt
• laFraise

4. Design Commissions

This method is similar to Product Commissions. For designs that you submit you can let them be used by other designers as well. You then earn royalties for any design that is used in other people’s shops. There is usually a limit to the amount of designs that you can submit, but with upgraded accounts you can expand that limit. Out of the three online shops listed above, Spreadshirt and CafePress allow you to receive royalties on your designs. If there are any other sites that support this method please let me know.

3 Sites Allowing Design Commissions

• Spreadshirt
• CafePress
• Shirtcity

5. Sell Your Ideas

If you have no artistic talent, but have great ideas for shirts, then you can sell your ideas for money to existing t-shirt shops. You are usually rewarded with money if your idea is accepted, and sometimes you get free shirts as well! There are a surprising amount of websites that let you sell ideas for cash, but you usually have to dig to find out the specifics. If you’re interested in this tactic, I would suggest doing a search online for additional websites that provide this service that I don’t mention here specifically.

3 Sites That Accept Ideas:

• TypeTees
• Snorg Tees
• BustedTees

Review

As you can see there is a wide variety of ways shirts can make you money online. If you’re serious about it, then it would be best to combine the methods listed above to make money in any way you can. You can see that several of the methods overlap slightly, so you can try multiple at a time very easily. If you think I’ve missed anything in this article I’d love to hear about it. Any comments are welcome, and please let me know if the methods above work for you!