So you want to start selling T shirts but you don’t have a fancy cutting machine and you don’t want to stock up on inventory. No worries, I’m going to show you everything you need to start selling T shirts TODAY…like within the next hour!
I want to start off by making sure you know a few legalities first. To be able to start selling T shirts legally, you need to have a commercial license from the creator of the designs you’re using AND the fonts you’re using or you need to create the designs and fonts 100% yourself. I know that sounds scary but don’t worry, I’ve got you covered! Everything I’m going to show you will include a commercial license for free.
This post contains affiliate links. This just means if you purchase something by clicking one of my links I may receive a small commission at no fee to you.
What you need to start selling T shirts
There are three things you’ll need to start creating and selling T shirts. I’ll go over each of them in detail and show you how to use everything.
First up, Creative Fabrica! I rave about this website A LOT and with good reason! Creative Fabrica is simply the best place for fonts, graphics, clip art, digital paper, SVGs…you name it and they’ve got it. I run an Etsy shop where I sell decals and home décor and I make all if my designs using elements from Creative Fabrica.
Next on the list you need a free Printful account. Printful is a Print on Demand (POD) store. They hold all the inventory and do the printing for you. You’ll simply choose the shirt you want from their store and upload your design. From there Printful will print your design onto the shirt and ship it out to your customer for you.
And finally you’ll need some sort of web design software. I like Inkscape because it’s free. If you don’t already have something like Photoshop or another web design program, go download Inkscape for free. I’ll show you the basics of how to use it in the video below.
Creative Fabrica
I have an All Access subscription to Creative Fabrica. It cost $29.00/month and I can download as many fonts, graphics, SVGs, mockups, website themes, as I want for free! I don’t pay a penny for anything outside of my monthly subscription fee. They offer other subscription plans starting at $12.00/month so if the $29.00 is too steep right now you can find something a little less expensive that still suits your needs. And if you just want to purchase items one at a time you can do that too. The main thing to note here is that everything you download from Creative Fabrica will include a commercial license. This means you can legally use ANYTHING you download from this website to make and start selling T shirts.
Not only does everything come with a commercial license but they have thousands of graphics that are fully POD ready. This means you can download the design to your computer, upload it AS IS into printful and sell the shirt. Two clicks are your done! If the design you choose doesn’t say POD Usage Allowed then you just have to add a little to it like some wording or some additional graphics and you’re good to go. I’ll go over all of this in the video below.
Printful
There are 2 different ways you can use Printful. If you happen to have an online store like an Etsy Shop, Shopify or something like that you can integrate Printful directly with your shop. This means that you can create listings in Printful and they will show up in your online store. If you don’t already have an online store, say you’re selling locally or on Facebook, you will simply create manual orders one at a time in Printful as you get orders for shirts.
You can also use Printful to create all your mockups. This way you can create a digital image of what the shirt will look like without ever having to actually make the shirt first. With Printful you can start selling T shirts and never have to touch a single shirt. Just hop on your computer, design a shirt and offer it for sale. Then let Printful print the design and ship the shirt for you.
Inkscape
You’ll need Inkscape to edit and create designs. If you are not using a file from Creative Fabrica that states POD Usage Allowed then you will need to do a little editing to the design. Say you download a pumpkin. You’ll need to add some words like “Welcome Fall” and maybe a few little leaves or some more pumpkins. After those little edits you’re good to go with selling the shirt. The video below goes over how to use the basics in Inkscape.
That’s all there is to it. Sign up for your free Creative Fabrica account (or get one of those memberships). Sign up for your free Printful account and download Inkscape for free. Watch the video below and within an hour you’ll be making and selling t shirts.
