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July 11, 2008

How a Simple T-Shirt Design Made Me $629.85

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Less than a month ago (25 days to be exact), I designed a simple t-shirt with the line “There is No Charge for Awesomeness.” It’s a line I really liked from the movie Kung Fu Panda and thought it’d be great to have on a tee — I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought so! A google search for the line puts Kineda at the top of the search pile.

Since posting it for sale at RedBubble, I’ve sold 85 shirts for a grand total of $628.85. Not bad for 30 minutes of work in Photoshop eh?

Pricing is controlled by you and you decide how much you’d like to be paid. RedBubble doesn’t charge a commission, they simple charge a base price of $19.95/shirt while you set the markup. I set my earnings to 37% which comes out to $7.41 per shirt sold. It’s not as much as I could have earned had I used a local printing shop (where it’d probably only cost about $10-12 to produce), but it’s also much less work. I can live with that. A notice is sent to your e-mail every time you sell a shirt which is a nice touch.

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And if t-shirts aren’t your thing, RedBubble also makes it easy to sell your art, photos, designs and illustrations as high-quality framed prints, mounted prints, greeting cards, or posters. It’s easy money in your pocket, so what are you waiting for? Design a shirt today!

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  • http://webjay.org/by/bgizzie/djmikeyfresh djmikey

    Sounds easy, but it’s tough coming up with a catchy design that people like. I think you were lucky to catch the success of the movie and it’s young fans.

  • lina

    Nice job! :) I wouldn’t mind some extra spending cash. :p

  • AllaN

    Wow, Terry, NICE, that’s so smart.

  • benmanners

    theres something like that on threadless.com…its also a fellow shirt.artwork site, and has a section which lets you submit designs or just catchy phrases. however, they get rated and whatnot to see if people will buy the shirts, but nonethelss its pretty cool

  • http://www.kineda.com Terry Ng

    Yup, Threadless (which I wrote about last year) is also a great creative community.

    RedBubble is quite different though. It’s geared more towards the art community as a way to easily produce products.

    Threadless is much more contest-like in nature, and it’d be hard to build a business off your art… unless you’re so good that every submission you make wins the heart of the community. :p

  • madray

    $19.95 as a base rate for the t-shirt? Isn’t that a bit high??? You can get t-shirts made for a few bucks. I don’t see why they’re setting it so high.

  • David

    Nice Terry. :)

    They follow the same way methodology as Blurb.com does, of how the person who sells the product only increases the price of how much profit they want to make, in addition to the base price. Good way to make profit.

  • http://www.gamedudex.com GameDudeX

    Wow, that’s awesome, but since it’s a quote from a movie, aren’t you supposed to pay for the right to use that quote, especially since you’re profiting from it?

  • http://www.kineda.com Terry Ng

    Good question. Usually taglines, slogans, logos etc. are protected under Trademark law. Quotes and phrases usually don’t fall into this category.

    Take for example the highly popular men’s blog: You’re The Man Now Dog! http://ytmnd.com/info/about

    Which is a highly popular phrase from Sean Connery in Finding Forrester.

  • http://www.gamedudex.com GameDudeX

    Oh cool! I didn’t know that. (Now I also know what YTMND stands for too!) Thanks for letting me know… time to go make some t-shirts!

  • http://www.pinolobu.com/money/2008/07/how-terry-ng-made-a-simple-t-shirt-design-marketed-online-in-1-month-made-rm2000-profit/ How Terry Ng made a simple t-shirt design, marketed online, in 1 month made RM2,000 profit | Money Talks – it’s not everything, but everything is money

    [...] source [...]

  • http://www.edopeno.com Ed Penano

    Hey Terry! Thanks for introducing us to Redbubble! I’ve been fortunate enough to sell some of my designs and would HIGHLY recommend it!

    Thanks again!

    Edo
    http://edopeno.com

  • Joshua Coburn

    Pretty great feeling stumbling into a little bit of residual income!
    I think thats probably the best way to get through college. Build “streams” of income that support you in the moment AND help alot b/c of the investment for the future.

    “Its never too late to build your future NOW.”

  • Vicyn1962

    i want tshirt

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