Making Money With CafePress – Here’s How It Works

Updated on August 21, 2024.

CafePress is a website that specializes in selling T-shirts, mugs, hoodies, tote bags, and more with various logos.

If you have a graphics program, you can create your own online CafePress store and design logos to go on these products. They are one of the oldest print-on-demand sites out there!

Once you learn how to sell your art online through their website, you can begin making money with CafePress. How? You earn royalties.

There are no upfront fees for starting your own store, and you do not have to concern yourself with inventory or anything like that.

Just create the logos, set up your store (which they say only takes a few minutes), and pick the products you want your logos to go on.

If your designs sell, CafePress takes care of all the billing, shipping, and general customer care for you. There are currently over 450 different types of products you can put your designs on and then sell them.

Making Money With CafePress

You can use the CafePress “Design & List” feature to get your products in front of people quickly and start selling them. You just upload your design, and CafePress will then showcase it on products it would be appropriate for and add it to their marketplace.

Another option is setting up your own seller shop to showcase all your products. This feature gives you a lot more control, but it will also take more time to set up on your end.

The way you earn money will depend on if you use the “Design & List” feature or if you set up your own shop.

With Design and List, you get 5% of the sale price on all your products sold in their marketplace.

With your own seller shop, you will receive whatever markup you set for your products.

Is setting up a shop free?

A Basic CafePress shop is completely free. However, they did have a Premium Shop option with more features that you do have to pay a monthly fee for.

I am not able to confirm if this is still an option (this post has been updated in August of 2024 with the newest info I can find).

Do you have to be an artist to create the logos?

Short answer is no. But, it does of course help if you're someone with a creative streak.

If you want to make quick and easy graphics to upload and sell, check out Canva. It's a web-based graphic design program that you can use directly inside your browser, and it is very much geared toward beginners!

In fact, Canva has a ton of templates that you can use to just copy and paste in your own wording and colors if you already like the basics of a certain template.

Then, just upload the design you made into CafePress to put on your merchandise!

Your creativity is ultimately what is going to sell the products you design.

If you are good at coming up with funny slogans or sayings, that will work in your favor to sell your creativity as I am seeing a lot of products like that for sale on CafePress.

There are also lots of things for sale with political stuff on it and with the upcoming election it might a good idea to get creative in that way.

The sky is really the limit!

How can you be sure your stuff sells?

You can't, and it will be partly up to you to make sure that people find your stuff.

If you have a website or blog that gets some traffic, you can place a link to your shop there, increasing your chances of making money with CafePress.

You can also share your designs on Facebook, or use Facebook's advertising options to promote them and spread the word more effectively.

How do you get your CafePress earnings?

CafePress gives you two options for payments — either Paypal or mailed check.

They will not issue you a check unless you have $100 in earnings. But you can get a Paypal payment as long as you have $25 in your account.

All royalties are paid out within 60 days of the month you made the money. So, you may have to wait a bit to get your earnings here once you start making money.

Can you sell on CafePress if you are not a US resident?

You can sell on CafePress even if you live outside the US. They issue royalty payments every month to many different countries.

Want to get started making money with CafePress?

Go here to sign up and learn more about the selling process. Good luck!