Do you know how to make money online with t-shirt design contests? What are t-shirt design contests? Are all t-shirt design contests scams? How much money can you make with t-shirt design contests? Read on for all the answers.
T-shirt design contests allow anyone to submit original t-shirt designs to win cash prizes.
The original concept of crowdsourcing t-shirt designs was pioneered by Threadless.com back in 2000.
Here's how it works:
The contests fall into two categories:
Users rate, vote and comment on the designs. The ratings and comments help the website owners select a winner.
You may wonder who owns the rights to your t-shirt design.
If your t-shirt design isn't picked to go into production, you keep the rights to your design.
If a website decides to print your t-shirt design, then you give up some or all of your rights to the design. How much you give up varies from site to site.
Here are three examples:
What this means: with Threadless you only give them rights to use the design on apparel like t-shirts and hoodies. You're free to use your design for all other products. And they make sure you're compensated when they use your design.
laFraise goes further requiring the rights to your design for 5 years.
Springlead is the other extreme, requiring you to give up all rights to your design.
You can read about how each site treats your rights to your design further down this page.
I did a lot of research on this topic. And here's the conclusion I came to...
T-shirt design contests are a legitimate way to make money online.
Companies offering t-shirt design contests don't charge for entries. If you come across a t-shirt design contest website that requires payment for entering or more information, run the other way! :-)
If you have any opinions or experiences with t-shirt design contests, please post your comments at the bottom of this page.
How much money you make with t-shirt design contests depends on your talent for designing t-shirts and how many t-shirt design contests you enter.
Winning t-shirt designs pay in 1 of 3 ways:
To give you an idea of how much money you can make with t-shirt desgin contests, here are some examples of what t-shirt designers have earned.
Threadless is a very popular t-shirt design contest website.
Threadless gives you the chance to make as much as $25,000+ with one winning t-shirt design.
Winning designs receive:
Here are two examples of how much Threadless t-shirt designers have earned:
Source: Threadless.com/artists
Here are TeeFury.com's top 3 t-shirt designers and their earnings:
Source: Teefury.com/submit.php
Here are DesignCrowd.com's top 3 t-shirt designers and their earnings:
Source: Tshirt.designcrowd.com
As you can see, you can make some pretty decent money winning logo design contests. I'd definitely suggest giving it a go if you've ever fancied yourself as a t-shirt designer.
Here's a table of the top 11 t-shirt design contests, along with their prize money, and how long each contests run for.
Prizes with a "+" sign indicate additional rewards on top of the cash prize or royalty payment.
You'll find further information about the rewards for each t-shirt design contest further down this page.
INR = Indian Rupees, "~" = approximately, O = Ongoing, W = Weekly, M = Monthly
Here are my top 11 t-shirt design contests, ranked by the cash prizes on offer.
Threadless has a vibrant community of an estimate 1.8 million members. In 2008 Inc. magazine estimated that Threadless sold over $30 million of t-shirts that year. They probably sell lot a more now.
Threadless accepts designs for:
The community rates and comments on the designs over a period of seven days.
Every couple of weeks Threadless select designs to print partly based on the design's score, comments, and the number of "I'd Buy It!" scores.
Ultimately the decision of which designs to print is up to Threadless. The scoring system mrely helps give Threadless an idea of which designs customers want.
The winning designs are printed on t-shirts, clothing and other products. They're sold on the online store and at the Threadless retail store in Chicago.
If your design is selected as a Threadless t-shirt, you'll receive:
Payments vary for other product lines.
Threadless requests the rights to the design on clothing only. Designers keep the rights to their designs on all other media.
The Bestees is the Threadless monthly design award. The community are invited to vote on their favorite print of the month. The winning designer receives $2,500 and the winning design is reprinted.
Every week laFraise select new t-shirt designs to be printed in a limited edition of 500 t-shirts.
Each winning designer receives:
laFraise get the rights of the design for 5 years.
DesignByHumans hosts two types of contests:
The daily contest consists of two awards, "Shirt of the Day" or "Rock Star Awards".
The daily contest are where t-shirt designers submit designs to be voted on by the DesignByHumans community.
The winning design is printed and made available for purchase through the DesignByHumans online store.
DesignByHumans also occasionally partner with companies in the entertainment, apparel, and lifestyle industry to run special contests.
Special contests typically have a theme and run alongside the DesignByHumans daily contest.
Special contest prizes vary from contest to contest and may include cash, concert tickets, apparel, and other prizes.
In March 2012 DesignByHumans ran an official Dark Knight Rises contest.
Over $13,000 in cash and prizes were on offer, with $3,500 going to the winner.
Director/Writer/Producer Christopher Nolan and Producer Emma Thomas chose the top 3 winning designs. Cool!
Check out these impressive contest stats:
The Shirt of the Day winning designer receives $1,000 and six t-shirts with the winning design. Shirt of the Day is awarded Mondays to Thursdays.
In addition to the daily prizes, designers are paid an additional cash award as their winning design reaches certain sales targets.
Springleap offer two types of t-shirt design contests:
Every 2 weeks, a winning design is selected from the top 15 voted designs. The winning designer wins a cash prize of $500 plus royalties.
Winners of both open theme and brand contests also receive the following royalties in addition to the cash prize:
Royalties are calculated every three months. Accounts with over $20 are paid out.
Shirt.Woot are part of Woot, the pioneers of the "one day, one deal" concept.
Did you know... Amazon acquired Woot for $110 million in 2010? Woot! Woot! :-)
Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Shirt.Woot sell the top 3 most popular t-shirts from their weekly t-shirt design contest.
T-shirts sold on other days are designed by Shirt.Woot's staff and other t-shirt designers.
If you're an experienced t-shirt designer, contact Shirt.Woot at artists@woot.com about joining their team.
Winning designers are paid depending on their choice of two contracts:
You retain the copyright on the design with both contracts.
If you are younger than 18 years old, you must get your parent or legal guardian to submit your design on your behalf.
Submit positive t-shirt designs for the up and coming caused-motivated generation. Goodjoe periodically review submissions and pick a design with 50+ votes to print.
The weekly t-shirt design contest accept designs that have a positive, inspirational, or humorous message. Every Monday Goodjoe staff select the winners.
The winning designer of the ongoing and weekly t-shirt design contests receive:
Every month Goodjoe run a Design for a Greater Good contest based on the mission statement of a nonprofit organization.
At the end of the contest, the nonprofit selects the winning design and earns up to 50% of proceeds from each t-shirt sold.
Goodjoe selects 2 winning designs and the winning designers receive:
Goodjoe requires a worldwide license to use your design for any product, including but not limited to Goodjoe products, for 18 months.
Winning designers receive:
Christian t-shirt designs must be inspired by the Bible in some way and include one of the following:
Winning designers receive:
Teefury offer a similar model to popular daily deal sites. They sell one new t-shirt everyday. The sale starts at midnight eastern time. The sale ends when the t-shirt sells out, or after 24 hours, whichever comes first.
If your t-shirt is selected to go on sale, you'll receive $1 per t-shirt sold.
You keep full rights to you design. After your t-shirt stops selling on Teefury, you're free to do what you like with it, such as submit it to other t-shirt design contests. Cool!
Teefury don't say how much you can make having your t-shirt sold for a 24 hour period. But here's how much TeeFury's top 5 t-shirt designers have earned:
Source: Teefury.com/submit.php
The winning designer receives:
Inkfruit host two ongoing t-shirt design contests:
Winning designers receive:
Inkfruit retain all rights to winning designs.
Here are some t-shirt websites that no longer run t-shirt design contests:
T-Shirt Hell accepts entries from t-shirt designers of all ages worldwide.
T-Shirt Hell offers two types of contests:
If T-Shirt Hell use your original idea, you'll receive $200 and a t-shirt.
According to T-Shirt Hell, they have awarded 1,138 prizes, totaling over $250,000 since 2001. Sweet!
Here are my top 2 online marketplaces offering t-shirt design contests. I've ranked them by the number of open t-shirt design contests at the time of writing.
They have over 45 open t-shirt design contests at the time of writing.
99designs offer cash prizes ranging from $149 to $499.
The cash prizes on offer ranged from $100 to $330.
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