top 12 places to submit your tshirt ideas

So you have a Tshirt idea. Threadless rules, but there are a stack of other sites out there asking for your tshirt ideas. The rewards can vary enormously depending on where you send your design - anything from a sticker, to one off cash payments to a cut of all Tshirt sales.

So which site gives best value for you? You need to weight up a few factors:

Traffic, if you get a cut of shirt sales you better hope the site has a lot of customers
Reliability, do you trust the site, have other people received the cash?
Kudos, you want to get a job doing this? Go for the big ticket sites!

So below are links to the submissions pages of 20 sites offering to print your shirt. Any experiences of submitting to these would be vastly useful - comment below. The list:

J!NX Shirts
J!nx are very geek focussed, a typical shirt featuring an RPG joke. They offer $100 for an idea, $400 for the artwork if they use it.

Threadless
Now offering $2000 worth of benefits ($1500 cash, the rest essentially in Tees). Competition is fierce on Threadless, but if you get a shirt printed you instantly become a shirt design legend among your peers.

Cafepress
You don’t so much submit your design to cafepress, as just publish it. You take a cut of everything sold. Cafepress has some sweet designs on it, but you do risk simply sinking into the clutter unless you put some effort into an affiliate style site to promo your shirt. Potentially higher rewards, but you have to do most of the promotional work yourself.

NerdyShirts
$200 for a shirt design, $50 for a slogan. They do promise a quick response though - “if you win, you’ll get an email on monday”. And if you want a portfolio piece, they take some nice promo pics!

Busted Tees
Busted have a simple policy “just send it to us at ideas@bustedtees.com and if we like it we’ll give you $150 and a shirt with your idea on it too!”. You can’t say fairer than that.

TShirt Hell
An edgy shirt site, TShirt hell may be a home for your more… out there ideas. $200 plus 10 shirts of your choice is on offer. Picking 10 shirts won’t be a problem, $200 is typical, and you get a different kind of cool point here!

Shocker Tees
If tshirt hell blushed when you showed them your idea, try shocker. They print anything! $150 for your idea. Cool points? Perhaps. Infamy? Guaranteed.

Stagehand Tees
Stagehand do a seemingly endless list of black shirts with simple lettering with some pretty funny stuff on them. Which is about right for a seller of apparel for stagehands, roadies and entertainment technicians. Not exactly the mightiest of prizes no cash, just the first tee off the presses but hey, it’s a free tee.

Thoseshirts.com
“where conservative humor, superior quality, and professional artistry come together.”. $200 for your idea, so if you have a great Clinton gag, or firearm pun, this may be the best place to try.

Split the atom
A slightly above average $250 is on offer here for your submission. Guidelines, templates etc… are all particularly good although I find the flash site a pain to use on my laptop. User voting a la threadless is also used on split the atom.

Off Your Back Shirts
OYB shirts offers a $100 voucher plus 2 of your shirts. Some pretty ‘worthy’ shirts on offer, so if you have a cutting comment on our tv obsessed lives in the form of a 16″x16″ square - you my have found it’s home.

Uneetee.com
This is a pretty unique site, operating a single lead design at any one time. It offers $2 per shirt sold with your design on it, so if it sells a few thousand you’ll be better off here than at Threadless. I like the JENIUS shirt.

Thats the list! If you know of, or are, another place to submit ideas comment below!

Comments

11 Responses to “top 12 places to submit your tshirt ideas”

john on May 28th, 2007 8:40 am

i submitted to Busted Tees and they used the idea from my design, with a simple reworking of the image and gave me no credit, or $.
Robert on June 1st, 2007 3:52 am

Do you know shirtcity.com? There is a designer contest running that lets you gain 500$ - if you are the winner. Then they give you the opportunity to open up your own shop and sell your ideas. You make some money for every T-shirt or item sold (depending on how much you choose to add to the basic price).

Cool site btw. (yours that is)

cheers
Steve OMG on June 4th, 2007 1:25 pm

Thanks for the pointer Robert!
filip on June 12th, 2007 7:56 am

and..

http://www.allmightys.com
Ed Gawrys jr on November 26th, 2007 8:19 am

I have four dozen or so really good slogans that I have never seen anywhere. Having done some research, I know that it is near impossible to copyright just a slogan without a design. I am possibly looking for someone who is in the business and already established that would, I guess be willing to enter into some sort of a partnership. Someone who, like me is sick of seeing the same old tee shirt slogans over and over.Especially at Laconia N.H. Bike Week which I am very familiar with. Ed G. jr
Howtobecomeaphotographerblog.com on February 13th, 2008 2:16 pm

John, thanks for sharing that about Busted tees.

That’s what I am worried about. Sites taking your design and selling it and you getting nothing.

As is, $100-$200 is pathetic if a site is able to sell hundreds, thousands of your shirt.
Ben on February 19th, 2008 12:29 pm

I agree with howtobe…
I’ve got what I think is a golden idea but am too scared to let it go because I think it’s good enough for big money but i won’t own the concept once i’ve sold it.
Arul Kumar on March 18th, 2008 12:09 am

Try this site for designer quality Tees, Polos and ribbed tank tops! http://www.tmart.in
Amit on March 25th, 2008 8:05 pm

hey jon, same thing just happenend to me! It sucks because the hassle and money it would take to take them to court isnt worth it and they’ll keep on ripping people off. They also have ZERO idea of how to conduct customer service or business for that matter
Gripex on March 27th, 2008 9:46 am

We are running our first t-shirt design contest at http://www.pooshirts.com . We are looking for rude poo related designs/logos. WE PAY $100 . We are brand new but we have some great designs! Come check us out and submit your design or logo! Some examples of our designs are “Turdy Sanchez”, “Soft Serve”, “Got Turtlehead?” and “Do you smell what my ass is cooking?”.
Ben on May 12th, 2008 1:34 pm

Jeez, I hope the same thing doesn’t happen to me… I sent my designs to Busted Tees, too… crap…