Subject Matter that Sells

I’d recommend developing a niche subject to start — this avoids competing with the masses and enables honed marketing. What are your interests? Crime stories? Hot sauce? 17th-century poetry? The more obscure, the better. Your inherent knowledge and an inclination to research new ideas will give you motivation and a competitive advantage. Like-minded people will love what you create.

I am into Space X and all things Elon Musk, evolutionary science, cameras, and technology. Yes, I’m a nerd, and I’m not alone. My biggest seller is a design of a fruit fly in the pose of Leonardo DeVinci’s Vitruvian Man — a lot of scientists use this creature to study genetics. I call it Vitruvian Drosophila.

Vitruvian Drosophila by Nic Kocher

If you are data-driven, create a series of competition ratios. Find subjects that lots of people are interested in and have very few designs. Type a word into a keyword popularity tool such as wordtracker.com (set to global), then enter the same word into Redbubble search. Divide the first result by the second — the bigger the final number, the better. Try a few more. For example, the word ‘evolution’ has a ratio of 21.5 (532,899/24,773), ‘horse’ has 7.4 and ‘horses’ has 2.0. Make artwork about evolution over horses.

Of course, you can also create work that just looks cool. Abstract painting or colorful patterns sell incredibly well.

Once you establish the process, it’s not hard to consistently create designs. I once overheard someone on a train say they would buy a t-shirt that said ‘Done is Better Than Perfect’. I pulled out my laptop and had it uploaded in a few minutes. (I didn’t tell them — too weird, although I have sold it several times).

Inspiration is everywhere. Keep a note pad or use your phone to record ideas throughout the week — they tend to appear at the strangest times. I use Evernote. It keeps me organized, and it syncs nicely to my desktop when I’m ready to work.

Production

I’ll focus on Photoshop, although there are many cheaper alternatives such as GIMP, Affinity Photo or the online Photopea or Picmonkey.

There is also software that specializes in design such as Adobe Illustrator Adobe InDesign, Affinity Designer or Open Office Draw. Use what you are comfortable with.

It’s handy to understand the difference between raster and vector graphics. Rasters contain pixels, such as photographs or scans — these need to need to be high-resolution to look good. Vectors are mathematical constructs —usually in the form of type, paths or shapes. They can start low-resolution and will upscale seamlessly.

If that is confusing, don’t worry — just start with a high-resolution canvas. If you want to cover all products such as shower curtains and duvet covers use 12000 x 8000 pixels. (If you have a slow computer 6000 x 4000 pixels is adequate for 90% of items).

You often want transparency so your design will appear cut-out on the product (and not a big ugly rectangle). Work with layers and note the Photoshop checkerboard pattern around your work. Turn off the background layer when exporting.

Text

Often text on T-shirts uses a simple design. The sixth best selling t-shirt on Redbubble says “Surely Not Everyone was Kung Fu Fighting.” It’s in centered Helvetica font. You can’t get more basic than that.

You can use the Photoshop text tool to write something and then play around with the design. It sometimes pays to install an exciting font that supports your message. For example, use ‘typewriter’ font for a classic quote or ‘dripping slime’ font for a horror message. Dafont is a great free resource.

You can use Photoshop tools to manipulate the type. Bend it, stretch it, or adjust the scale of different words. Change the color or add a drop shadow. If you need some help to create professional designs, use Canva. There are many templates you can choose from, and you can easily create something slick (The free version only creates low-resolution text, so go pro).

You will want to preview your text in Photoshop on the same color as your product. Create a solid-color adjustment layer under your type with the same HTML color code as you want your product to be. You may want to create a few different ones for variety. A good strategy is to create one light-colored text version for dark products and one dark-colored text version for light products. When you are ready to export, turn off these background layers.

Photos

Photos can look good on many of the various print on demand staples such as t-shirts or shower curtains, or they can also sell as prints on paper or canvas for people to frame. Natural and urban landscapes are popular, as are celebrities.

You don’t have to do much to prepare photos for print on demand websites. Make sure they are high-resolution. They tend to look better if they are bright and contrasty (pictures will print darker than they appear on your screen) — so adjust them in Photoshop.

You can also make photos into illustrations. Use Photoshop filters such as ‘Stamp’ to create stencil-style graphic images. Play around and have fun with it.

Illustrations

If you can draw, paint, or design, the sky is the limit. Illustrations are consistently the best sellers. They are also the most promoted — POD sites heavily feature ‘original artists’ in their marketing.

You can create work on paper, scan it, and then adjust and size it in Photoshop. Add text or other graphic elements.

Going completely digital has many advantages. Use an iPad, a stylus, and one of the many drawing apps such as Procreate, or use Adobe Illustrator on your desktop. These tools will allow you to correct mistakes and quickly create and duplicate perfect circles, delicate curves, straight lines, and gradients. You can try out different versions of your work with a variety of color pallets.

Patterns

Patterns work exceptionally well on clothing and household linen. They can be abstract or reference real items such as flowers or animals. Do some research on famous pattern designers such as William Morris, Sarah Morris, Yayoi Kusama, or Marimekko Design. Find objects that you can place together in a visually exciting way, or gain inspiration from popular culture or nature.

As with illustrations, patterns can be created on paper or with digital tools. If you want to create continuous patterns (that repeat forever), use the offset feature in Photoshop (filter/other/offset). Create your pattern and then offset it vertically and horizontally (so the seams appear about halfway), then redraw those bits or use the Healing Brush.

Best Selling Dresses from Redbubble

Color

Everyone loves color, except perhaps Emos and Death Metal fans. If these are not your target demographic, then use a color palette creation tool such as Adobe Color. You can search by keywords such as ‘70’s’ or ‘science fiction,’ or you can mix up your palette based on harmonious combinations. Complementary colors work exceptionally well if you want something to stand out.

You can use these colors in your design as well as the base product. If you have an Adobe CC account, you can sign in, add them to your library, and they will sync with Photoshop or Illustrator. Or, just copy and paste the HTML code.

Upload and Choose Products

So you have created your design. The time has come to upload and position it onto all the various items. Export your file as JPEG at maximum quality or PNG if you want transparency. (Most sites only accept these two formats, although Zazzle does accept PDFs and Illustrator files too).

Spend some time using the templates to size and position your artwork. Preview it in different colors. Don’t be sloppy here — if you get too many returns for the poor layout of work, you will get kicked off the platform. Don’t feel like you have to use all the products, especially if it doesn’t suit your design.

When choosing products, there is a sliding scale between quantity and price. One extreme is stickers that sell in large numbers for a few cents, and the other is duvet covers that rarely sell, but when they do — you earn big. There are a couple of strategies here: most people choose to put their designs on absolutely everything; others specialize. I think it’s good to make your design suit the product, i.e., repeated patterns look good on items that bend and fold, such as shower curtains, leggings, and scarves. Bold, colorful images work on smaller items such as clocks and mugs. For sure, concentrate on T-shirts. They not only sell in large numbers but also for a reasonable price.

Metadata

Metadata is very important because it is often the only way people will find your work. There are usually three fields: title, description, and keywords.

The title should be a concise, clear sentence that describes your work. Don’t be obscure or use numbers.

The description can be much longer. If you exhibit your work, a detailed artist statement can go here, otherwise talk about the subject matter and why it might resonate with the buyer.

Keywords are a comma-separated list of words. Start by typing all related words you can think of and then use a tool like mykeyworder.com to flesh it out.

Price

Many sites allow you to set the mark-up. For example, if a t-shirt costs $30 to produce and you set a 25% mark up, the customer pays $37.50, and you receive $7.50.

Put the price up if you are making lots of sales, although a word of caution, be careful with high prices — there is a lot of competition!

If you don’t want to think about it: make everything 25%

Marketing

If you do zero marketing, you will still make sales, although doing at least a little should become part of your routine.

Get into a habit of posting each design on social media. Copy and paste your text from the description. Make some of the keywords into hashtags and add a link to purchase. If you make something great, promote it with a paid ad, targeted at people who are into your subject matter.

Think about other places where you can promote your work. Forums and blogs are all fair game. Reddit is a favorite of mine.

If this becomes more than a side-hustle, think about building your web store and build an email list.

Copyright

Copyright gets tricky very quickly. The bottom line is: never take someone else’s artwork and post it as your own, including imagery from movies, TV shows and computer games. Especially frowned upon is the use of company branding and logos.

You will see many breaches of this rule. Rest assured, suspension awaits these accounts. For the moment, it’s a slow process that is initiated by complaints, but there is an indication that AI will soon scour all work for infringements. They take it seriously.

Here where it gets fuzzy. You can take an idea, image, or character and recreate it in your style. Fanfiction is a good example: Harry Potter as a stick figure is OK. Even better, just draw his distinctive scar or write a spell in the Harry Potter text. There are lots of ways you can skirt the edge of fair use.

Parody art and images of celebrities and other public figures are usually OK, although you may be breaching the rights of the photographer.

Decide to always to make your own art. It’s a better long-term strategy, and you will gain more followers who value originality.

Print on Demand Websites

Many POD sites offer a dizzying array of services and options.

If you want to have your own website and branding, Printiful and Printfy are leaders. For example, if someone purchases from your Spotify store, these POD services will print it, package it with your logo, and send it to the customer.

Cafepress and Merch by Amazon have their own interfaces, but you still need to market your products.

If you want a variety of products and don’t want to bother with marketing, chose Redbubble or Zazzle.

Fine Art America and Society6 specialize in fine art, the former in painting, the latter in design and illustration. They produce wall prints and a few other items such as cushions and bath towels.

If you are all about t-shirts, Teepublic, TeeSpring, Sunfrog, Teefury, and Threadless are all very popular. Design by Humans is excellent for buyers, although the selection of your work is through a competitive process.

These are the sites that will give you the most significant returns, although there are many others. Experiment and find a community that is supporting and suits your work.

Start with Redbubble. It has the most substantial amount of customers, the highest site ranking, they do a lot of marketing, the products are high quality, and you can choose your mark-up. You will get sweet notifications of a sale faster than any other site — which provides valuable motivation when you are starting.

Once you are up and running, try some others; if you have a large body of work, it pays to be on multiple sites. After about 3–4, its a case of diminishing returns because the time it takes to upload and keyword on various interfaces is time-consuming.

How much will you make?

I make $9 per design, per website, per year. This amount is an average. Like everything else in the universe, POD follows the 80:20 principal. 20% of the work makes 100% of the sales. So a small number of designs make much more than $9, and most make zero.

I can do about ten designs in a day. After five years (of one a day per week), I’ll make $23,400 per year.

Do calculations for the amount of time you will commit and how many sites to which you will upload. Disclaimer: your designs may better or worse sellers than mine, and the marketplace could change over time.