The best Print-on-Demand sites like Redbubble

So, you wanna be a T-shirt magnate, and have been inspired by articles like “how 2 guys in their 20s built a $150,000 side hustle selling tshirts on Amazon” and “How RIPT apparel turned $3,000 into $4million selling one tshirt at a time” You’ve heard of platforms like Shopify and sites like Redbubble allowing you to easily create tshirt designs and upload into the marketplace. But there’s got to be other options, right? Well, here are some other Redbubble alternatives when it comes to building your tshirt empire.

The great thing about these Print on Demand platforms is that, most of the time, they’re not limited to Tshirts, as you’ll see. Some of them allow you to design on mugs, tote bags, caps, socks and even notebooks! So now that t-shirt business can start to morph into an entire lifestyle brand if all goes well!

Before we dive into the platforms, you might want to think about how you want to set up your tshirt business, if you’re fine with using the platform’s marketplace if it comes with that, or perhaps using it only as a design and fulfillment partner while showcasing the products on your own site.

Redbubble Alternatives leveraging an existing marketplace

Zazzle

Zazzle is a marketplace where you, as a designer, can design for products ranging from tshirts to pillows to baby blankets and even golf balls! Their range of products is truly astounding, and can potentially be a gold mine if you have some really good design ideas.

Teespring

Teespring, also with its own marketplace, is catered more toward the traditional “tshirt” business, with tangential products such as socks, hoodies, mugs and totes.

Society6

Society6 is purportedly more for the artsy crowd. I’m a sucker for humor tees, so naturally I go searching for one on Society6.

Integration on your own site

Printful

Printful is a POD and Dropshipping platform that integrates with platforms like Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, SquareSpace and others. This means they’re perfect partners for if you’re looking to build up your own brand with your own identity and site, or if you’re a celebrity or influencer looking to start your own label.

Printaura

Similar to Printful, Printaura integrates well with Shopify, Etsy etc to enable you to easily create a site, and pull in your designs from printaura in order to sell. Shipping and fulfillment is also undertaken by them, so you can focus more of your time on creating and marketing your products.

How do I design the t-shirts?

You can use design software like Canva to help with the design of your tshirts. These sites will typically provide you with the dimensions to work with. Once you have those dimensions, you can easily recreate those on Canva, and then start your designing process.

Once your designs are done, save it into PNG or JPG format and pop it over to the site you’ve chosen and save those designs.

What should you do?

For a new designer looking to dip your toes into Print on Demand, I’d suggest leveraging the marketplace platforms to test your designs, and if they really fly off the shelves, think about cementing the brand and bringing it out as a standalone site.