How Much Money Can Custom T-Shirts Make?

Selling custom t-shirts is like unlocking a secret weapon, helping your dream of making millions from print on demand come closer. According to recent market research, it’s projected to grow to $10 billion by 2025, driven by trends like personalized fashion, company branding, and event merchandise. In this blog post, we’ll dive deep into the question how much money can custom t-shirts make and the factors that affect earnings. So let’s get started.

Estimating Your Potential Earnings from Custom T-Shirts

When starting a custom t-shirt business, accurately estimating your potential profits is key to determining if your business model will be viable long-term. There are several factors that go into these profit projections:

Pricing Strategy and Profit Margins

Custom t-shirt prices can vary widely, with $20-$40 per shirt being the norm for high-quality prints. However, production costs, including t-shirts, printing, packaging, and labor, usually range from $5 to $15 per shirt. This gives you a profit margin of 50-70%, depending on how you price your products.

Let’s break down the potential earnings with a simple example:

• Production cost per shirt: $10
• Selling price per shirt: $30
• Profit per shirt: $20

If you sell 500 shirts per month, your gross profit would be:

> 500 shirts x $20 profit per shirt = $10,000/month

You can further optimize your profit margins by selecting the right types of t-shirts based on production cost and demand. Here’s a breakdown of some popular options:

Bulk Orders and Economies of Scale

One of the most effective ways to boost profits is by securing regular bulk orders from corporate clients. Companies, schools, and events commonly order custom shirts in large batches of 100-1,000 units for promotional giveaways. The production costs per unit will be lower given the bulk order size, so you can offer volume discounts while still earning strong profits.

Consider this example:

• Bulk order of 300 t-shirts with a production cost of $7 per shirt = $2,100 total cost
• Selling price per shirt: $25 × 300 shirts = $7,500 revenue
• Profit: $7,500 – $2,100 = $5,400 profit

With just a few similar bulk orders each month, your income could grow substantially.

How to Price T-Shirts for Your Online Store

First, decide on an overarching pricing approach to inform your t-shirt rate setting when you sell shirts online. This will help you determine a strategy that aligns with your business model and target market.

Cost-Plus Pricing

This is the most straightforward pricing tactic. Tally up your t-shirt production costs, factor in operating expenses, then mark up the total by your desired profit margin.

For example:

• Blank t-shirt: $5
• Printing/embroidery: $2
• Labeling and packaging: $1
• Transaction fees: 5% of sale
• Shipping: $3
• Profit margin goal: 30%

Total expenses = $5 + $2 + $1 + $0.35 + $3 = $11.35

Sale price at 30% markup = $11.35 x 1.3 = $14.75

The upside of cost-plus is you are guaranteed to cover costs. The downside is it ignores market factors.

Value-Based Pricing

With value-based pricing, you set rates based on the perceived worth in the customer’s eyes rather than production expenses alone. This involves:

• Researching how much customers pay for similar t-shirt designs
• Surveying shoppers on pricing expectations
• Testing different price points to find the optimal balance of value versus turnover rate

If shoppers believe your shirts are worth $20 based on styling and quality, you can likely command that versus a lower cost-plus price even with higher margins. Perception is reality.

Competitive Pricing

Here you benchmark directly against rival t-shirt seller prices. The steps:

• Identify competitors selling comparable shirt designs and blanks
• Record their pricing across different styles and product groupings
• Average out the going rate for your niche
• Price above, below or on par with competitors

Matching prices is safe, but going lower or higher depends on your positioning.

Psychological Pricing

Psychological pricing uses buyer emotions and biases to drive sales, such as:

• Pricing just under even numbers like $9.99 not $10
• Flash sales and limited-time offers
• Free shipping or bonus gift incentives
• Bulk order discounts

The risk is conditioning buyers to only buy on discount.

Calculate Your Total Costs

To determine baseline pricing, you need to understand your all-in costs. Consider:

Blank T-Shirt Cost

T-shirt blank prices vary considerably based on brand, materials, manufacturing location and bulk order volumes:

• Classic Unisex T-Shirt (Vietnam-made) – $5.49
• Ringer T-shirt (Vietnam-made) – $9.50
• Gildan 6400 cotton tee (EU-made) – $6.55
• Unisex V-neck T-shirt (Vietnam-made) – $6.55
• Comfort Colors 1717 tee (US-made) – $9.99
• Unisex Jersey Short Sleeve Tee Bella Canvas 3001 (US-made) – $8.99
• All-over Print Unisex T-shirt (Vietnam-made) – $12

For commodity blank tees, Vietnam-made Gildan 5000s allow for better profit margins at $5.49. But for fashion and performance blanks, US-made tees offer quality textiles, responsible manufacturing and provide room for 20-30% markups. Choose blanks wisely to enable ideal cost-to-margin balance.

When pricing your decorated shirts, make sure to calculate total blank cost at your order volumes rather than MSRP. Bulk order 100+ shirts for discounted wholesale blanks rates whenever possible.

Decorating Expenses

Decorating runs $2 to $8+ per t-shirt depending on method, colors and details:

• 1-color screen print – $2 per shirt
• Full color front/back screen print – $4 per shirt
• Multi-location prints – $6+ per shirt
• Embroidery – $8+ per shirt

Keep per-unit decorating costs below 50% of blank price maximum for decent margins.

Labeling, Packaging & Hangtags

Branded custom neck labels, custom packaging and merchandising hang tags build perceived value. Budget ~$0.50 to $1 per shirt.

Shipping & Transaction Fees

Don’t overlook:

• Payment processing – 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
• Ecommerce platform subscription and transaction fees
• Website hosting, domain registration and email services
• Per order packing materials
• Shipping rates

These fixed and variable operating expenses chip away at margins.

How much money can you make selling custom T-Shirts?

Let’s break down profits for a sold Merchize Gildan 5000 tee. Suppose we sell one size large classic white Gildan 5000 cotton tee made in USA.

Our costs:

• Shirt production – $6.59
• Domestic shipping – $4.35
• Sales tax – $1.13
• Total Costs – $12.07

With 50% cost-plus pricing, retail price would be $18.11. Now Etsy fees:

• Etsy transaction fee – $18.11 x 6.5% = $1.18
• Etsy payment fee – $18.11 x 3% + $0.25 = $0.79

Gross sale price: $18.11

Total costs: $12.07

Etsy fees: $1.97

Net Profit = $4.07

So with the Merchize Gildan 5000 blank, the net profit per t-shirt sold is $4.07. If we sold 100 units monthly, profits would equal $407.

Real-World Success Stories for Selling Custom T-Shirts

Have you ever wanted to start your own online t-shirt shop? Well, you totally can! Here are 3 awesome stores that tweens just like you created and made super successful:

MakezBrightGifts

Dua started MakezBrightGifts in 2021 when she was just 12 years old. She loved designing clothes and wanted to sell her own creative t-shirt designs. So Dua used Print-on-Demand sites to print and ship her designs so she didn’t have to worry about any inventory.

Dua focused on making unique birthday and holiday gifts that people could personalize with names, photos and special messages. Her site got more than 100,000 visits in the first year! Other kids told Dua they loved how easy and fun it was to make their own custom tees as gifts for family.

Key to Success: Creative designs and easy personalization

Love & Faith Tees

Miguel began his brand Love & Faith last year in Germany when he was 13 years old. He sold t-shirts and other gifts featuring uplighting messages and cool images. His shop did $3.8 million in sales just in the first 12 months!

What made his shop stand out was the technology allowing people to upload photos and preview custom designs before ordering. The app Miguel used let people crop, edit and filter pics to create one-of-a-kind tees and gifts in just seconds.

Key to Success: Photo personalization technology

Wander Prints

Zahra started Wander Prints at age 12 with her 13-year old sister Zeina. They wanted to celebrate travel and adventure with fun gear featuring destinations around the world. They use environmentally responsible inks and recycling practices to keep it eco-friendly.

Even though the sisters live in Dubai, their shop ships merchandise to over 200 countries! The site also lets people customize items to remember their trips. The key is focusing on great quality and customer service.

Key to Success: Cool niche, sustainability, customization

With some creativity and the right tech tools, you can design almost anything imaginable on t-shirts, mugs, phone cases and other gear. Then have it printed and delivered without needing any upfront money or inventory!

Start Your Own custom t-shirt business with Merchize

Launching an online t-shirt shop is super easy with Merchize. You can get started even if you’re short on cash since zero money down is required upfront.

Merchize uses print-on-demand technology to print and ship your designs so you don’t have to worry about managing inventory or production. You only get charged when someone actually buys one of your sweet tees in your shop!

Designing your own tee graphics is a blast with Merchize’s Design Lab tools. It’s got awesome features like graphic elements, templates, and font options so you can be creative. Are you stuck on ideas? No problem, you can browse Merchize’s graphics database for inspiration.

Once your radical t-shirt designs are ready to roll, you can sell them on your own website or popular online stores like Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and more. Merchize lets you connect to a bunch of sales channels to expand your reach.

The best part is you set your own prices so you control how much profit you make! If a t-shirt costs $15, you decide how much of that goes to you.

Merchize makes starting an online t-shirt shop simple and profitable. Sign up and upload your first tee design today to get paid for your awesome ideas!