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inverts · 2 years

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So you wanna put your art on a t-shirt

I, too, love putting my art onto shirts! Love to wear a garment that I designed myself. It feels good!

And then, of course, it’s also fun to have OTHER people wear those shirts! And naturally, it’s very nice to get some money too.

So this is a post that compares six popular websites that sell shirts produced by independent artists. This post will compare them both from a artist and customer perspective. I’ll be talking about print quality, customer service, and also my opinion of the company’s moral stance.

I’ve used all of these sites myself, as both an artist and a customer, except Threadless, which a friend of mine used instead and shared their observations with me. (I also got to examine the shirt they ordered as a sample.)

This is written in December of 2021; if you are finding it at a later date, some things may have changed.

The websites I’ll be discussing are:

The Yetee

Teefury

Teepublic

Redbubble

Society6

Threadless

First off, The Yetee.

Print quality: 10/10. The Yetee is the only one of the companies in this post that actually uses silk screening. I’m not going to get into the technical bits of the process--you can search it up on duck duck go if you’re curious, but suffice to say, it means that the quality of the print is very high. A shirt purchased through the Yetee will probably last longer than a shirt purchased from any of the other sites on this post; it will survive the most cycles through the washing machine without damaging the artwork. If this is a high priority for you, The Yetee is the company to use.

User interface as an artist: unlike some of the other companies on this post, you cannot simply upload your art and immediately have it available for purchase. It is not a print on demand site. The Yetee has open submissions; any artist can submit their art for consideration, and then every week or two, staff at The Yetee will review the submissions and accept some while declining others. Accepted art will be given a print date. On that day, the art will be available for purchase for 24 hours only. While it’s live, you can log in to your account to track sales, which is always very exciting.

The benefits of this are that the Yetee is known for high quality art, and subsequentially, it feels very good if your art is accepted. Of course, the downside is that the people making the selections are humans with their own tastes and opinions, and it can feel bad if art you were confident in does not get accepted. However, it’s important to remember that there can be many reasons a piece of art might be declined. It may be a good piece of art, but the staff at the Yetee feel like their audience won’t appreciate it. It may be that the art will lie on someone’s body in an unflattering way (maybe there are focal points at the nipples). It does not mean the art is bad if it doesn’t get accepted, just that the Yetee staff feel that it won’t be a good fit as a Yetee tshirt.

(Additionally, out of respect to indie game developers, they will not accept designs of indie games, such as Undertale, Hollow Knight, Hades, or Untitled Goose Game. They do, however, sometimes partner with indie game developers to offer official merch for those games, but becoming an artist for an official collection seems to be a matter of invitation only.)

Lastly, if your art has transparencies, the Yetee will convert them to halftones for you. In fact, they specifically request that artists let them handle this process.

Money: The Yetee pays $2 per shirt sold in this 24 hour period. They pay pretty quickly--usually the next business day after the shirt is up for sale--and you also get 3 free shirts with your design.

Customer Service: The Yetee’s customer service is helpful and responsive.

Overall impression of the company: There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but I’ve enjoyed working with the Yetee. They have a discord community that’s friendly and supportive. It includes a feedback and critique channel, and many members of the community are helpful and encouraging; I’ve seen many designs workshopped in this channel to make it to accepted shirts, including my own. Staff members will also occasionally offer feedback, though this does not guarantee acceptance, but can be helpful insight into the factors that affect selection.

The Yetee also partners with various charities throughout the year, making huge donations to non profits such as The Trevor Project. There are a lot of LGBTQIA+ people in the Yetee community, and I feel safe being open about my own identity in the Yetee’s discord community.

Also, the Yetee is firmly anti-NFT, which is clear from their social media on twitter but is nice to repeat here. A+ Yetee. It’s pretty clear I’m biased towards this company but in my opinion they’ve earned my good will.

Last notes: The only thing I think the Yetee could improve is that sometimes--rarely--their hoodie or longsleeve image previews do not provide accurate colour matching for the product you receive. I’m aware that this is sometimes a supply issue, especially due to covid, and they match as closely as they can, but as I know some people have strong opinions about shirt and hoodie colour, I’d love to see them do better on the preview images so that people don’t get a surprise when they open their package and find a hoodie that looks different than what they thought they ordered.

Secondly, Teefury.

Print Quality: Eeeeeh. It’s fine. It’s not any better than Redbubble or Teepublic, because it’s DTG, or direct to garment printing. Teefury’s own website has a FAQ about this, so I’ll leave it to them. However, it means it won’t survive as many washes as a silk screened garment. But, it allows them to do the rest of their business model, which I’ll get into...

User interface as an artist: Much like the Yetee, Teefury has open submissions and will accept or reject shirt designs. If accepted, a shirt may go up as a daily. Unlike the Yetee, however, after the shirt’s initial 24 hours as a daily, it then will make its way to their massive gallery of past designs. Alternatively, some designs won’t be accepted as dailies and will simply go straight to the big gallery.

Teefury’s artist interface USED to be completely awful and impossible to navigate. It wouldn’t show you your sales or anything. They’ve made massive improvements to it recently, though, so now it’s all right.

Because Teefury uses DTG printing, they don’t have to do the prep work that silk screening demands, and they are able to continually offer designs after the initial 24 hours. This lets you continue to make sales after the initial hype, which can be especially nice during holiday seasons.

If your art has transparencies, you’ll need to convert them to halftones on your own.

Money: Teefury pays $1 per sale when a shirt is up as a daily, and $2 per sale for all sales when a shirt is in their gallery. Also, if your shirt is selected as a daily, you get one freebie. Payments typically arrive on the 15th of the month, give or take a few days if it’s on a weekend. Also, whether because of paypal fees or something else, you typically lose about 2 cents per dollar, so technically you’re getting $1.96 per sale instead of $2.

Customer Service: I haven’t used their customer service in years, but when I did, it was like pulling teeth. I’d have to ask my questions multiple times to get an answer, and they didn’t explain things well, leading me to have to ask again or reword my question to try to get the information I needed. Now that they’ve updated their artist user interface and FAQ, it might be better, but it used to be pretty terrible and I haven’t seen anything to make me think it’s improved.

Overall impression of the company: I still use them because their reach is greater than what I have been able so far to achieve on my own, but I don’t like it. They also have no respect for indie game developers, allowing people to submit designs for things like Undertale, despite that the game developer has asked that people not mass produce fanart for sale such as print on demand tshirts, which is exactly what Teefury sells. I know they have a discord community for artists, but I haven’t joined it, though I think about it sometimes.

Last notes: How could I write this post without doing a little boost? I’ve got a couple of shirts up on Teefury and it’s cool if you check them out. :3

Next, Teepublic.

Print Quality: I’ve only gotten their tshirts, but the print quality varied from order to order. The first order I did, the print was blurry, as if it had become slightly offset during the printing process. However, when I contacted them about this, they provided free replacements, which had crisp printing. The quality of the print is still average, but not bad. I like wearing my shirts.

If your art has transparencies, you WILL want to convert them to halftone. Teepublic provides a pdf guide on how to do this. Teepublic’s printing does not handle transparencies super well.

User interface as an artist: Teepublic is a print on demand site, so you can upload your art and have it available instantly, on a variety of products. The interface for adjusting the size and positioning of your art is easy to use and pretty good about automatically sizing art to fit the different products. I prefer their interface to Redbubble’s. However, Teepublic won’t let you upload art below a certain dpi; all the art uploaded needs to be big enough to go on a tshirt. Even if you want to disable certain products, it’s got to be big enough.

Additionally, it’s very easy to see your sales, because when viewing your storefront while logged in, you can see how many sales any given design has had during its lifetime in your store.

Technically Teepublic does not allow fanart, unless it’s through their partnership programs, but lots of artists manage to get away with selling fanart there anyway. However, takedowns do occur. Nothing to do but accept it gracefully when it happens.

Money: Because Teepublic has lots of different products, payouts are different for each one. Additionally, when Teepublic is having a sale--which they do at least once a month but usually more--you make a bit less. However, at full price, you can get $4 per shirt, which is more than any of the other companies on this list. The downside is that you’ve really got to build your reach and get people’s eyes on your art yourself.

They pay typically on the fifteenth of every month. At the time of this writing, you don’t have to reach a certain minimum to receive your payment; they’ll payout all your earnings.

From a buyer’s perspective, I never pay full price on Teepublic, because they have sales so frequently it’s very easy to just wait for a discount.

Customer Service: as mentioned above, when I received a product with bad printing, Teepublic was happy to replace it for free. They also didn’t ask for the bad product to be returned. They did want to see photos of the printing on it as proof, but this is likely to prevent people from abusing their system to get free extras.

Overall impression of the company: They’re a fine way to get your art out there and make a couple of extra bucks. Some people find a lot of success with putting designs on this site, and some people don’t. You have to put in a lot of work getting yourself out there. But it’s nice to have them do all the distribution for you.

The downside of this company (and Redbubble as well) is that it’s very easy and common for art thieves and bots to upload art that is screencaps or manga scans, or steal art from other fanartists and upload it here. It’s best to go to an artist’s teepublic by finding their own link on their own socials; that way you know it’s legit.

Last notes: Of course, I once again am going to plug my own art here. :3

Redbubble:

Print quality: I was actually pleasantly surprised last time I ordered a shirt from them. Still DTG, but very crisp and good colours. Again, you’re going to want to convert transparencies to halftones.

Conversely, I was disappointed last time I ordered stickers from them. The print was grainy, and even contacting customer service and getting them reprinted didn’t fix this. Which is hilarious, because after sending photos of the original order, customer service agreed that the quality was poor, but the replacements were just as bad.

User interface as an artist: Like Teepublic, RB is a print on demand site. You upload the art and it’s immediately available on lots of products. Teepublic and RB are actually owned by the same parent company, but they have lots of little differences in user interface. Honestly I prefer Teepublic’s interface to Redbubble’s; Redbubble is more annoying with resizing and positioning. However, you can upload art of any size to Redbubble, and if it’s not big enough for some products, simply disable those products. There are a lot of things I uploaded to RB solely to sell as stickers and/or buttons.

Like Teepublic, RB doesn’t allow fanart outside of their partnerships, but people sell fanart there all the time anyway. As I have shops on both sites, it’s been funny to me when some fanart gets taken down on RB but not Teepub, and vice versa.

Money: Again, lots of different products mean lots of different rates. You can actually increase your prices on RB to increase your profit margin, but then some people might not want to buy your stuff if it costs more than other people’s. Redbubble has probably the worst payout rates of the various sites on this list; to add insult to injury, you only get paid when you’ve made $20 or more, OR if by the end of the year you hit over $2. It’s not going to make or break my income, but I’m not a huge fan of RB holding on to my money for so long.

Customer Service: Like Teepublic, they’re happy to replace anything that has issues. They also want to see photos first. Customer service is easy to contact and helpful.

Overall impression of the company: Pretty much the same as Teepublic, just with some little quirks and differences. They do probably have a bigger customer base than Teepublic, so you do probably have a greater chance of people randomly stumbling across your art, but the payout is worse. Win some, lose some.

And again like Teepub, there are art thieves and bots aplenty. Make sure you’re supporting the actual artists.

Last notes: You know I’m going to put a link to my own redbubble storefront here right?

Society6:

Print quality: Variable. Shirts that I ordered looked nice, but the masks were kinda blurry, but still good colour quality.

User interface as an artist: Another print on demand site with a huge selection of products you can put your art on. Personally I find S6′s interface to be one of the most confusing to navigate, but that could just be because I’m not uploading things at a big enough dpi.

Money: I haven’t actually made any sales on S6, probably because I haven’t put very much of my art on this site yet, so I can’t tell you anything that their FAQ doesn’t. But it’s going to once again be varying amounts from varying products.

Customer service: N/A, haven’t yet had the opportunity to speak with them.

Overall Impression: I started using Society6 because my friends liked the folded face masks they offered, which are different from the masks offered via Redbubble and Teepublic. So far they seem much the same as the other two print on demand sites reviewed above, though with perhaps less reach than Redbubble. The print quality does not stand out as particularly better or worse than RB or Teepub. I have run across fewer bots on this site, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Last notes: .... yeah why not. All I’ve got on s6 are some cute patterned masks, but if you’re interested, go ahead and check em out.

And lastly, and definitely least, Threadless:

Fuck these guys they’re going into NFTs. Don’t touch em, don’t use em, and if you have a shop there take it down and migrate somewhere else. The one time I got to look up close at a shirt ordered from them, its quality was exactly the same as Teepublic or Redbubble. They offer nothing you can’t get from another company.

That’s all! I hope this post can help artists out. I’d like to edit it to add photos one day, but I knew if I waited until I had photos to make this post, it would never get made.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a coffee or checking out my art in the above links.

#tshirts #printing #review #print on demand #opinion #the yetee #teefury #teepublic #redbubble #society6 #threadless

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