47 Online Ongoing T-Shirt Contests

There are now tons of websites holding design contests as a way of sourcing designs for t-shirts and this is probably the most comprehensive list you are going to find. So if you are creating some awesome designs you now know tons of places you can submit to.

1. Threadless
   Of course Threadless would have to be at the top of this list as it is often credited as being the first to use this business model. It is also the biggest and probably the most successful of all the t-shirt contest sites.

   Prizes
   $2000 Cash
   $500 Threadless Gift Certificate (can be redeemed for $200 cash)
   $500 in cash each time your design is reprinted
   Up to $22,500 more if you win a “Bestee” in the Threadless Awards
   Alumni Club membership including a Medal of Honor and other goodies

   How often?
   Weekly.

2. Design by Humans
   At just about 2 years old Design by Humans is one of the most talked about tee contest sites and is famous for its large prints.

   Prizes
   Shirt of the Day: $500 cash plus $250 store credit
   Combined with Shirt of the Week/Month and the Rock Star program you could earn up to $8500

   How often?
   Almost daily.

3. Uneetee

   Prizes
   $1500

   How often?
   Weekly

4. laFraise
   Probably the largest t-shirt contest site in Europe. Owned by Spreadshirt they have a lot of resources. Specialize in cartoonish designs. Multilingual web site (German, French and English).

   Prizes
   €1,000

   How often?
   Almost daily.

5. Look- Zippy
   France based site I believe, multilingual (English, German, French and Spanish) and specialize in fair trade organic garments.

   Prize: €300 for 200 shirts, €75 for every 50 more printed
   How often? Monthly

6. Springleap
   South African based contest. Don’t expect to get paid soon. It is about one and a half years since I got runners up there and still haven’t seen a dollar which is probably about all I earned as the runners up prizes were probably the worst prizes ever for a tee contest. A few days ago I received an email saying that they are finally going to pay the winners but I’ll believe it when I see it. My advice: avoid this contest.

   Prize: About $900
   How often? Bi-weekly.

7. Red is White
   The premier Christian tee design contest site.

   Prize: $500 plus royalties after first 250 shirts
   How often? Perhaps monthly.

8. Bang Bang T-Shirts
   British contest site that focuses on pop culture.

   Prize: £100 – £125
   How often? Occasionally.

9. Edo Label

   Japanese contest site with bilingual site (English and Japanese).

   Prize: 50,000 yen + 10,000 yen  store credit.

10. Code Creations
    Organic apparel for you, your baby and your dog.

    Prize: Varies but mainly based on sales.
    How often? Monthly.

11. Shirt.Woot
    They have a Derby (contest) regularly as well as accepting submissions for their daily tee. Famous for $10 t-shirt deals.

    Prize: From $500 (I think)
    How often? Weekly (perhaps)

12. Scribtee
    It’s connected to the ShirtCity POD.

    Prize: $300-$500 plus $50 shopping voucher
    How often? Twice a month.

13. teetonic.com
    British site.  I haven’t notice much activity around here in a while.

    Prize: £100 plus 50p per shirt sold.
    How often? Rarely, if ever.

14. Allmightys
    One of the first contests where the prizes were based on sales.

    Prize: $2 per shirt sold.
    How often? Occasionally.

15. Cameesa
    This site added crowdfunding to crowdsourcing to build what should be a risk free contest site. They don’t print the tees until they are paid for.

    Prize: $200 cash, $50 credit plus $2 per shirt after the first 125 sold.

16. Ink Fruit
    India based site.

    Prize: 5000 rupees (about $100)
    How often? Every 15 days.

17. Monsieur Poulet
    Based in Paris, France, this is a bilingual site in French and English that uses fair trade cotton garments.

    Prize: €2 per shirt sold
    How often? Several times a month.

18. Fair and Bare
    British based site also using Fair Trade cotton.

    Prize: £200 plus residuals
    How often? Occasionally

19. Chimpogo
    British based contest site.

    Prize: £500
    How often? It says every week but I don’t think that is happening. Maybe occasionally.

20. Canvas
    Contest for Christian based designs.

    Prize: Up to $400

21. Ink Hound
    Design hats and t-shirts.

    Prize: $2 per shirt
    How often? Weekly.

22. Teextile
    Fairly new site that sells t-shirts for one week only.

    Prize: $4 per shirt for first 500, decreases after that for some reason.
    How often? Weekly.

23. Full Metal T-Shirt
    This site is wild. Like a cross between Dungeons and Dragons and bikers if you could imaging such a thing.

    Prize: $100 cash, $100 credit plus $5 per shirt (or print) sold for one year.
    How often? Weekly.

24. Teepay
    British site imilar to Cameesa in that the tees won’t be printed unless enough people order them.

    Prize: £2.50 per shirt sold.

25. Tilteed
    Another new kid on the scene.

    Prize: $500
    How often? Weekly.

26. Goodjoe
    Looking for designs that inspire.

    Prize: $1 per shirt
    How often? Weekly.

27. Scopial
    Another India based site that attracts a lot of great designers.

    Prize: About $400
    How often? Don’t know.

28. bookis.org
    Similar again to Cameesa. This time though the designer can set the profit he wishes to make per shirt. Based on the Chinese idea of “tuangou” where a group of people get together to buy in bulk from the wholesaler.
29. Metal Ink
    Tatoo inspired designs for tees.

    Prize: $700 cash + $300 store credit + residuals

30. ArtyTee
    Not too sure about this one. Seems to be some type of subscription based store.

    Prize: $2 per shirt (up to $100)
    How often? Monthly

31. SwishSwosh
    New site from the UK.

    Prize: £1100 + 50p per shirt sold for first place, £101 + 50p per shirt sold for runners up
    How often? Monthly.

32. Syckfits
    Another new contest site by the looks of it.

    Prize: $500
    How often? Monthly

33. Badashell

    Prize: $200 + $50 store credit
    How often? On a break.

34. nomoretees
    This is another site in the same vein as Cameesa. If enough people preorder it will be printed. Nomoretees is no more.
    
35. Camiseteria
    Brazil based website in Portuguese.

    Prize: R$800 in cash, R$800 in store credit

36. BlackEyedT.com
    Don’t know how trustworthy this site is. The fact that it is full of comment spam makes me think that it isn’t being maintained. Last update to their blog was in October and that was a cry for help. The tees are not the best designs I have seen so I am not all that surprised they are struggling.

    Prize: $500 cash + $100 store credit

37. Is This Chicken?
    Netherlands based contest wins prize for most creative name.

    Prize: Don’t know.

38. Collar Free

    Two guys got together to set up this contest site that favored graphic tees. Didn’t go so well and they tried to branch out into another business but it looks like they are coming back.

    Prize: Looks like it will be on a per shirt basis.
    How often? No idea.

39. itself
    Turkey based tee contest burst onto the scene about two years ago with a $4000 prize. Selected just a few tees and then no activity. While they appear to be accepting designs and if you dig around you can find a voting area I suspect there is no longer a contest. The last submission was in July. The last tee was chosen about a year ago.
40. Wooshka
    Australian based site. No recent activity. I imagine it will just disappear one day.
41. Milk Shop Gang
    Australian site with interesting site design. I have never seen any activity on this site.
42. Righteous Enterprise
    Disappeared
43. ice cream t-shirts
    Say they’ll be right back but they’ve been saying that for a bit.
44. Tasty Threads
    Never made it out of the gate.
45. Teeple
    Japanese t-shirt contest. Shut down recently.
46. tFuse
    Had a short run and then seemed to disappear. It is now a “Reported Attack Site”.
47. Caponocca
    So little activity on this site too I am going to assume it has gone under.

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Note: These are all just websites that I have come across over the last while or so. I didn’t search the web for t-shirt contests so I am sure there are some that I have missed. On top of that I am sure I have made some mistakes in the details. These things happen.

If you know of any other t-shirt contest sites or can see some mistakes I have made please leave a comment below and I will do my best to rectify the situation.

Obama vs. McCain T-Shirt Contest

Collar Free,  a t-shirt competition web site, is holding a special contest. The challenge is to design a pro-presidential candidate  t-shirt (either Obama or McCain) and the prize is $250 plus 20 t-shirts. (I don’t think the 20 t-shirts will be such an attractive prize for non-Americans entering the contest.) There is also a 10% royalty “for any design someone wants to purchase even if it doesn’t win”. The contest is over soon, October 6th, so you should try get your entry in as soon as possible to be in with a chance to win. Below are two submissions that I think are pretty sweet. It’s called Obama vs. McCain but that isn’t really the case. It is basically design vs. design and there will be one winning McCain T-Shirt and one winning Obama t-shirt. If you are going to enter now, I recommend designing a McCain t-shirt as there are only 8 other designs to compete against and in my opinion the standard of design in that category is a bit lower. Go to Collar Free for more info.

Collar Free, as I mentioned, is a t-shirt competition site. What makes it different from most of the other competition sites is the voting system which requires you to choose a favorite from the selection of tees. The reason for this system is to make voting simple and addictive and I can attest to the fact that it is both of those things. The prizes are $1 royalty per shirt but that increases if they sell more than 500 which you can see in the table below, 5 tees and a few more benefits.

Career T-shirt Sales Online	Your Per Shirt Royalty
0 – 500	$1.00
501 – 1,000	$1.50
1,001 +	$2.00
Career T-shirt Sales Wholesale	Your Per Shirt Royalty – Wholesale
All	$1.00

How to win at DBH

There are many t-shirt design contests out there at the moment and many people trying to win them. I have even tried a couple of times. It is not an easy thing to do though and the competition is is fierce so any tips you can get are welcome. Lucky for you (and me) the guys at Go Media Zine had an interview with Marc Hemeon from Design by Humans where he gives some ideas about how to improve your chances. It’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff but it all helps, right.

New T-Shirt Store: TorsoPants.com

It looks like the guys from T-Shirt Hell are trying to expand their market a little by including people who are not so easily offended. This new t-shirt store is called TorsoPants.com. On the left here is the face of TorsoPants – the inappropriately named Torso Ted. As you can see he is torso free. My belly button lint has more torso than this dude.

If you sign up as a free member of the Church of TorsoPants right now, they’ll drop $8 TorsoWashingtons in your account. They work just like cash towards anything you purchase on the new site. It’s a great way to get a discount on your first TorsoPants.com tee shirt. The web site is very similar to T-Shirt Hell but has more flash and therefore can take a bit of time to load. It is worth the wait though.

Below you can see a selection of t-shirts available at the store.

Another great thing about becoming a member is that you are automatically in with a chance to win free t-shirts in their ridiculously easy “Buy None Get One Free Contest”.

Just sign up to be a member, which is free, and agree to receive our monthly newsletter and you’ll automatically be entered in the 3x a day drawing. As a member you’ll be eligible for even more free stuff, member’s only benefits, discounts/sales, and other really cool junk. And the newsletter is great because unlike the typical, annoying newsletter, our newsletter is chock full of fun, and excitement. In effect we will be paying you: with laughter.

So, sign up to be a free member below for your chance to win Torsopants 3x a day, each and every day! That’s over 1000 chances to win per year! It’s so easy, that five people have won simply by trying to find a good chili recipe.