T-shirt Royalties for Artists: the 10%, Computed in the Open

Artists searching t-shirt royalties for artists usually get back a percentage with the base left out — and a percentage without a base is a headline, not a policy. Ours is a flat 10% of the sale price of your items, and the calculation sits in the open: what counts as the sale price, how promo codes reduce it, when the money becomes payable — the questions behind the broader print on demand royalties search as well.

The short answer

You earn 10% of the sale price of your items in every paid order — every product, every size, worldwide, for as long as the design sells. The base is what the customer actually paid for your items: not the whole order, never shipping, reduced by promo codes. Sales appear live in your designer dashboard, become payable once the order is delivered, and pay out monthly in USD. Joining is free, you keep the copyright, and every shirt is a reactive print on 100% cotton from our own factory. The designer FAQ answers the rest — files, moderation, rights — in the same spirit.

T-shirt royalties for artists: a percent of what

Three rules live inside the phrase "your items". First, only your items: if an order carries work by two artists, each is paid for their own pieces, so one checkout can fund two balances. Second, shipping never enters the calculation, in either direction. Third, the base is the price the customer actually paid, not the list price.

Discounts take the same door. A promo code lowers what the customer pays, and the discount is spread across the items in proportion to their price, so your 10% follows what remains: a $35 tee bought with a 20% code costs $28 and pays $2.80 instead of $3.50. The dashboard shows the list price next to what the item actually sold for, so the arithmetic is checkable, not narrated. A 100% code brings the sale price to zero and the order earns nothing — exactly how samples, photoshoots and gifts are meant to behave.

From sale to payout

A royalty accrues when the order is paid and matures when the order is delivered — not when it is placed. Because every shirt is made to order, delivered means produced and shipped, and the far end of the delivery windows runs close to a month; payable money is money for shirts that physically arrived, with the dashboard keeping the earned and payable figures apart.

Payouts go out monthly, by the 15th, for orders delivered the previous month, in USD, through our payout provider, with a $20 minimum; a smaller balance rolls over to the next month. Getting paid needs a completed payout profile — identity plus the provider's tax form, W-9, W-8BEN or a local equivalent, collected once. Royalty taxes are yours to handle; nothing is withheld unless the law requires it. One honest limit: the dashboard currently covers sales and payouts, while per-design view statistics are still on the roadmap. The binding version is the designer agreement — re-read it before your next upload.

The rules that keep the number honest

Three cases are where royalty stories go wrong, so here they are in the open.

Returns and cancellations reverse the royalty in the proportion the payment is reduced; if the refund lands after a payout, it deducts from the next one. The rule closes an obvious hole — without it, someone could publish a design, order a stack of it, withdraw, and refund the lot.

An order cancelled over an infringement claim earns nothing; royalties already earned on completed sales keep coming even if the design is later removed. The rights side sits with the file you upload — our intellectual property page covers what we can and cannot print. One vocabulary trap: the publishing license is royalty-free, which only means no per-use fee for the right to print your art; the sales royalty is where your money comes from.

Leaving behaves the way it should: designs come down the day you ask, in-production orders finish and ship, and the royalties on that tail still pay out — leaving forfeits nothing already earned for you.

FAQ

Is 10% a good royalty rate for print on demand?

The rate alone tells you little — the base is where platforms differ. This one is flat 10% of what the customer paid for your items, on every product and size, with no account fees, no premium tiers and no exclusivity. Read the arithmetic you would be paid on, not the headline.

What happens to the royalty on discounted or returned orders?

A promo code lowers the sale price and your 10% follows the remainder. A refund or cancellation removes the royalty the same way; if you were already paid out, it nets off the next payout rather than arriving as a bill.

Which products and sizes earn the royalty?

All of them. A design that passes review goes live on the products it fits, and royalties accrue on every paid order of any of them, worldwide, for as long as it sells — long sleeves and children's cuts included.

The bottom line

What makes a royalty worth trusting is not the size of the percentage but the openness of the arithmetic: the paid price beside the list price, refunds handled by rule instead of exception, payment gated on delivery — all of it signed in one agreement you can read before you upload anything. If that is the math you want to build on, become a designer and the first upload does the rest.