If you are an artist or illustrator and haven’t considered tweaking or selling your artwork on t shirts then you may be missing out on some vital income, but more importantly, exposure and new customers.
Selling your art on t shirts can provide a number of great benefits including those highlighted below. In this post we are going to take a look at some of the advantages of selling your art on t shirts, how it can be done, and why it does not de-value your art.
Extra Income
The most immediate effect of selling your artwork on t shirts is extra income. Selling work on tees gives you another valuable income stream that can slowly tick over, or potentially grow to something quite big with a bit of clever marketing and promotion by yourself. People only have a certain amount of wall space, and if you sell prints and originals to your fans and followers then obviously you are limited by this. So it makes sense to offer another way for the people who love your work to buy your stuff and give you some money basically.
Extra Promotion and Exposure
One of the most exciting things about selling t shirts is the extra exposure that they can give you. If somebody is wearing one of your t shirts, then they are effectively a walking billboard advert for you and your art, especially if somebody asks them where they bought their t shirt from. For these reasons, t shirts are a great marketing and promotional tool, and one that you don’t have to pay for… in fact, people pay you to wear your stuff and effectively promote you and your work.
It doesn’t de-value your art
Some people may think that the shift from paper and canvas to cotton is selling out, or could de-value your work. On the contrary, this could actually have the complete opposite effect. For example, If your t shirt designs become really popular, then there is likely to be a knock on effect that spills into people buying prints of your work. So your popularity, demand for your work and sales could also increase. This may also even allow you to increase the price of your work and/or services.
Where can you start?
If you like the sound of creating t shirt from your existing artwork, or fancy creating some exclusive designs then there are a couple of options available.
You could print some tees yourself and sell them through your existing website. Though obviously there are some start up costs here, as well as a fair bit of leg-work involved in sourcing suppliers of t shirt and also someone to print them and so on. Also, card payments, packaging and postage can be a pain. But if you already have all this set up then you can be independent and go for it.
A second, simpler option is to get someone else to do all the leg-work for you, so you can just concentrate on designing great t shirts. There are a number of websites that can do this for you, including my website Artybuzz.com. At no cost, Artybuzz allows you to upload as many designs as you like and set your own price. We then handle payment, manufacture, and postage, once one of your t shirts is purchased. And because you set your own ‘mark-up’ above our base prices, once something is bought we simply send you your earnings… it’s all pretty straight forward really!
So if you have been thinking about selling t shirts for a while now, or this is not something you have considered before, seriously give it some thought, as it can bring some great benefits as mentioned above. Plus it’s pretty cool to know that someone is walking around wearing one of your designs and showing it to the world. Bumping into someone who was doing so would be cool too!
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Great post.
Selling your art on a tee is a very satisfying way of generating passive income. I’ve made some reasonable money from selling tees through print-on-demand stores like artybuzz. And I was more than stoked when a friend of mine turned up on new year’s eve wearing one of my creations as a surprise, even more so when he told me how many people in the club had asked where he got the tee!
One of the best things about using a print-on-demand store is that they are pretty much risk-free; if no-one buys your tee (shame on them!) you don’t really lose much other than a slightly bruised ego.
Of course, it may not be down to your work. As with selling anything online, promoting yourself is paramount to success. Artybuzz help with this by hosting groups where you can showcase your work to others.
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spot on post. look at the value of merchandising for music as an example. How many people would have their favourite tee as their classic rock band shirt. I’m for the mobile art gallery on the front of your wardrobe
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