How to get your t-shirt designs printed

We recently received this email:

I see some dope custom design shirts on your site but now I want to know where do they make those? Because I have some custom design myself and trying to find a site but everytime the company say no we can’t do that so I hope you can give me a link to the site that make’s/prints those shirts u advertising for ?

Since Teenormous is just a search engine, printing t-shirts is not really our specialty. However, here is a brief summary of your options:

1) Print them yourself. Most of the merchants we feature that design their own tees print the tees themselves. However, if you have no background here that could be a tough learning curve and involve startup costs.

2) Find a (local) screen printer to do the work. This is a good option if you can make the price work. Screen printers are typically more expensive than do it yourself or PODs below but the quality is usually great.

3) Use a Print On Demand (POD) site. Many upcoming artists start out with POD sites such as: http://redbubble.com, http://zazzle.com or http://cafepress.com. They are very fast to setup and great if you are just starting out. However, most experienced designers graduate to another method of printing to control the quality and costs a bit more.

4) Create an online storefront. Sites like http://www.storenvy.com/ or http://bigcartel.com/ can give you an easy way to sell your tees. StoreEnvy also does screen printing but you need to have them printed already with Big Cartel (they just supply the site/store).

5) Enter a design competition. If all else fails you can try submitting your design to one of the popular tee design contest sites like:

• http://threadless.com
• http://designbyhumans.com

Good luck! Once you get your dope t-shirts printed, let us know so we can list them on Teenormous and send you some buyers!

Some advice for tee shops: link other colors, sizes, genders

Not every online store has the ability to choose tee colors on the design page so many sites have to have a separate page for each of the tee colors for a design.

If you do have to do this, be sure and link to all the other colors from each of the pages. For example… you have a FooBar design that comes in two colors of tee:

http://someteesite/foobar_orange.html

and

http://someteesite/foobar_grey.html

On the orange page you should have something like:
This foobar design also available in grey
and on the grey page:
This foobar design also available in orange

Someone might go directly to one of the pages and think it’s a cool design but not like the color tee and not realize you have it in another color. By mentioning it right there, while they are on your site, you could potentially make a sale you wouldn’t have otherwise. Some people will just move on to another site, thinking you don’t have the tee in a color they want – don’t let them go!

The same thing applies to men’s and women’s versions and even if you have separate pages for larger sizes (XL, XXL, XXXL, etc). Be sure and link back and forth between the two in case a guy hits the women’s version of your tee or vice versa. Show them you do have what they are looking for. Snorg Tees does this. Click on any of their tees and you will see on that page a link that says “Available in women’s sizes” or “Available in men’s sizes”