Selling your art on t-shirts in India, without printing any

What changes when you stop holding stock

The obvious change is money. No upfront order means no capital tied up in cardboard boxes and no sizes you cannot shift. The less obvious change is creative: when a design costs nothing to list, you can publish things you are unsure about, and being wrong is cheap.

That matters more than it sounds. Artists who have to bet money on each design converge on safe ones. Artists who do not can be strange, and strange is what people buy.

What does not change

You still have to be good, and you still have to be found. Print-on-demand removes the logistics of selling; it does not remove the marketing. A design nobody sees sells exactly as well as a design nobody made.

Quality control also stays partly yours. The file you upload is the file that gets printed, so a low-resolution image or a design that relies on a white background will disappoint somebody who paid for it.

What works on fabric specifically

Fabric is not paper. It absorbs ink, it moves, it is rarely white, and the printable area is smaller than people expect. Bold shapes and confident line work survive that. Fine hairlines, subtle gradients and small text often do not.

Think about the garment colour before you draw. A design that assumes white behind it will look wrong on black, and a design built from mid-tones can disappear on both. Designs with a clear silhouette work on almost anything.

• Bold shapes over fine detail
• Consider how it reads on dark and light garments
• Avoid relying on a background colour
• Keep important elements away from seams and edges

Choosing which products a design belongs on

The same artwork rarely suits everything. A wide horizontal piece is a poster and an awkward t-shirt. A dense circular design is a perfect sticker and illegible on a bag.

Say which products each piece is for when you upload it. It takes seconds and it stops a customer buying your work on something it was never meant for, which is the fastest route to a bad review of a design that was fine.

Getting your first sales

Nearly every artist's first sales come from people who already follow them. Post the piece where your audience is, link to it directly, and say plainly that buying it supports you — most people are glad to and simply do not know how.

After that, specificity does the work. Designs about a particular city, community, profession or in-joke find their audience far faster than general prettiness, because somebody can search for them.

How to start

Everything runs through one place. Artists sign in at the artist studio, upload work, choose which products each piece suits, and see what they have earned. Customers browse the artwork, pick a design, and choose what to put it on.

Nothing about it is exclusive. You can sell the same work elsewhere at the same time, and there is no listing fee and no minimum.

• Apply with three pieces so we can see how you work
• Choose which products each design belongs on
• Get paid by bank transfer on what sells

Common questions