So you want to start a T-shirt line with your designs, but you aren’t sure how to get started? 

What’s holding you back from running a potentially rewarding business?

Is it the idea of starting your own online store without spending money?

Therefore, you probably started browsing for a product to help you achieve your goals and get you rolling with your online venture. 

Right?

In this article, we bring everything you need to know about how to sell t-shirts for free online with one of the world’s most popular platforms: Spreadshirt! 

Yes, with Spreadshirt as your business companion, you can sell your t-shirts for free and generate for yourself great revenues. 

Spreadshirt provides you with the tools and resources to bring up and run your online store (as we did here!) without worrying about the other aspects of the business, like manufacturing, inventory maintenance, logistics, etc. 

Would you like to know more about this platform? 

Well, then go on reading!

What is Spreadshirt?

Spreadshirt is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world for printing-on-demand apparel and accessories. 

Thousands of creative sellers sell their products on Spreadshirt without having to worry about creating and managing the inventory or organizing the logistics themselves because Spreadshirt takes care of all these aspects on their behalf.

Alternatively, you may consider starting selling on Shopify – we wrote a complete guide here!

Therefore, all you have to do is set up your own online store or sell your products on the website!

In this article, we will walk you through the step-by-step process of opening your e-commerce store on Spreadshirt and also show a comparison with its main competitor: Printful. 

How to Create & Sell T-shirts for Free on Spreadshirt

With an interface similar to Printful, Spreadshirt makes it easier for people or companies to operate the platform, design their desired merchandise & get it delivered to their doorstep.

Let’s dive in!

Step 1

First, go to ‘Spreadshirt.com‘ and sign up as a ‘partner’. You’ll be then asked if you want to start selling through your own ‘SpreadShop’ or on the ‘Spreadshirt Marketplace’. For the latter choice, you may start selling right away, but for SpreadShop, you have to register & create a shop.

Step 2

For the latter case, you need to register to Spreadshirt, and as soon as you proceed, the following dashboard would appear:

Step 3

After exploring the dashboard and the available options, click on ‘Create Products’ to create your first custom product! It’ll then ask you to upload your own design in one of the mentioned formats: .jpeg, .png, .gif, .svg, .ai, .cdr. 

NOTE - If you're using Adobe Illustrator to create your designs, export them as a high-quality '.eps file'

Step 4

Once your custom design is uploaded, you can start to create your merchandise by clicking on it.

Step 5

Spreadshirt automatically shows you a web-optimized version of your design to achieve better print results. Select the ‘Optimized Version’ (recommended) and then click on ‘Confirm Selection’ at the top-right of the screen.

Here’s how your design looks like now:

Step 6

Again, click on the design to move on and place it on some products.

Step 7

In front of you, there are now a plethora of items at your disposal, from t-shirts to hoodies, coffee mugs to water bottles, tote bags to aprons, or even a cut-out sticker. You can choose anything you want!

For simplicity, we will select the t-shirt.

Step 8

It comes the fun part! We’re finally in the main editing window, where we can play around with the design!

You can adjust the design size and choose whether you want it to be horizontal or vertical.

You may alter the color of the product as well, as per your wish (like we did it, from red to black).

Also, you can determine whether you want your design to be printed at the front or the back of the t-shirt.

Step 9

Once you’ve obtained your desired look, click on the ‘Apply’ button at the top right of the window. 

You’ll be redirected back to the page of the merchandise. You can tag each of them and adjust the design as you wish. 

Then, click on ‘Next’.

Step 10

You’ll now be asked to describe your design. You can add a suitable name, description, and tags to it. You may not skip this step since it would affect the SEO and your organic traffic.

Then, click on ‘Create’.

Step 11

Once you’ve created your line of products with the chosen design, the website will show you the following pop-up if you need to make further adjustments.

You can choose to tweak the site or get back to the product section and create better-looking items.

Once everything is ready, click on ‘Activate your store’ and just let your customers explore and purchase your creations!

After this step-by-step overview of the store creation, we’ll look at the differences between Spreadshirt and its main competitor Printful, which has earned its share of popularity in the print-on-demand (POD) industry throughout the years.

Printful & Spreadshirt

Printful and Spreadshirt are some of the most popular print-on-demand (POD) service providers in the scene right now.

Both provide suppliers who can make custom prints when somebody orders on our website/online store

In this way, there is no need to buy stock or inventory or manufacture or ship goods.

Printful

Offering a wide array of unique products, Printful flaunts having several production houses in Europe, Mexico, and the USA. In this way, they fulfill their commitment to supplying orders to customers worldwide efficiently.

The platform provides a demo version of your design on the chosen item (clothing, accessories,house-ware, etc.) to figure out how it would look like in real. You can add as many products as you wish to your store, and Printful takes care of printing, packaging, and shipping the order to your customers.

You just have to pay them a fee for their services and the shipping costs that had incurred 

Simply allow your creativity to flow, and let Printful handle the rest.

Spreadshirt

Like Printful, Spreadshirt offers printing, packaging, and shipping services to online store owners for reasonable fees (service and shipping ones). You can open your account quickly, design your products, and then display them on the Spreadshirt store. They print and deliver orders as soon as they are received.
Spreadshirt offers two ways in which you can sell your merchandise:

1. Open your private store
2. Sell directly through the marketplace

The difference would be only in the commission and the advertisement

In the second case, the platform will do it for you but will be more expensive. However, if you decide to open a store yourself, you have to develop an appropriate marketing strategy to drive traffic to your store.

This will also have a significant impact on your expenses.

Pros & Cons of Spreadshirt & Printful

You may want to consider several factors before making a decision, such as the tools provided and whether or not they fit with your e-commerce store. Additionally, it would be best to examine the product catalog, among the other factors. The pros and cons of each service provider will help you make an informed decision.

Printful

Pros

• Printful offers a wide array of excellent and high-quality products to choose from.
• It can integrate perfectly with other e-commerce builders and major shopping carts.
• It includes an ideal solution to automation order fulfilment.
• It offers great turn-around time and shipping facilities.  
• It provides numerous printing options.
• It caters to a vast customer base across the USA and Europe.
• It offers a mobile app that can make everything so easily manageable.
• It provides awesome customer service.
• It provides complete white-label professional services to all its customers (check our 10 best white–label products to customize!)

Cons

• It may seem to be slightly higher in pricing.
• Even though it has access to global production houses, it can still be difficult to reach certain parts of the world.
• It has a few customization limitations on its products.
• It doesn’t provide a marketplace to its sellers.

Spreadshirt

Pros

• No subscription charges are applied.
• It offers you the privilege to create your own store through SpreadShop.
• The sellers can choose from a line-up of product types as per their liking.
• It offers an array of printing options as compared with other companies in the industry.
• Due to its marketplace, reaching out to customers is straightforward.
• Sales are easily trackable due to the mobile app on its portal.
• Additional stats and reporting are also provided.
• Great customer support.

Cons

• Due to its limited tool options, it is somewhat restricted.
• It does not provide white-label or high-professional service support as most other POD service providers offer.
• It does not provide many colour options all in all.

Now that you know the pros and cons of both these platforms, let us see what parameters are similar and different.

Printful vs Spreadshirt

Similarities

• Both Printful and Spreadshirt do not charge their customers for the subscription. They are entirely free to use. 
• Payment methods are the same, as they both support credit/ debit cards and PayPal. 
• Printful and Spreadshirt integrate with e-commerce platforms and marketplaces like Etsy, Shopify, woo-commerce Amazon, E-bay and many others.
• Both offer quality printing facilities to their customers.
• They provide local as well as international shipping facilities to their customers.
• Printful and Spreadshirt offer reliable reports and statistics to their sellers for better business analysis.

Differences

• While both offer print-on-demand services, Spreadshirt mainly features clothing, while Printful features other products too.
• Printful doesn’t provide a marketplace for sellers, while Spreadshirt does.
• With Printful’s Product Personalization Tool, buyers can customize their orders, unlike with Spreadshirt.
• Printful flaunts being a completely white-label platform.
• Although both integrate well with e-commerce platforms, Printful claims to support more integration than Spreadshirt.
• Both companies provide their mobile apps. However, the difference lies in their features: while the Printful app has various features, the Spreadshirt app mainly provides sales monitoring.

Conclusion

We have seen exponential growth in the print-on-demand business since the last decade. Creating your designs and selling on your e-commerce store has never been as easy as it is now.

With the number of platforms like Spreadshirt offering plenty of services like printing, packaging, and shipping (or creating your own store for free from their site), this is the best time to start your e-commerce business.

However, you must work hard and be consistent in uploading your designs and promoting your shop to earn solid revenues

Now, if you have decided (wheater Spreadshirt or Printful), do not wait for more.

Don’t hold back your creativity.

Let it flourish!