I wrote this for my blog. If you guys deem it worthy, Ill drop it in the resources, and will add more sites as I win or not.
My Experience with Online Design Contests
For 2008, I made it a goal of mine to become a professional contest winner. So far I have won 8 contests, and although it is not as many as I had hoped for the first half of the year, it has been quite fruitful in garnering a small fan base and in providing freelance work when I desire to take them. As a freelancer, I feel that it is in your best interest to keep busy with work when there is no freelance work coming in. There is a feast or famine phenomenon that comes with any business, but if you can take advantage of the free time in between the busy time, it should help to keep you afloat financially. Entering contests not only help to provide a modest income, it will help to increase your notoriety to potential clients, as well as building a fan base which you can count on to help you to win more and more contests.
I have participated in the following contest sites:
Designbyhumans.com
Threadless.com
Shirt.woot.com
Uneetee.com
Bangbangt-shirts.com
LaFraise.com
Artcotic.com
Popdeck.com
I hope to divulge information that may help designers who might consider entering their work in online contests. I will only be writing about the places I have won.
Most have a specific genre of work that seems to win more than others. It would be in your best interest to study the sites, and see where your work fits best. Although you could cater your work to win, if you are an artist, you know how frustrating and boring it can be if essentially you sell out and create work that is not your preferred content just to win.
Designbyhumans.com
Designbyhumans.com has been the site where I have been the most successful. I have four designs available for purchase, and currently I have three submissions that have a decent amount of votes. At least one has a moderately good chance of being printed.
Designbyhumans.com is interesting as the designs that win run the gamut, but most are very artful and unique. The only type of t-shirt design that do not seem to go over well, besides ones lacking in art skills, are the clever, cute designs. Those are better suited for Threadless.
The money is decent. For a regular win, the designer will get $500 cash paid through paypal, and $250 in store credit.
You can also win an additional $1000 for shirt of the week, and $1500 cash and $250 store credit for shirt of the month.
Obviously shirt of the week, and shirt of the month are difficult to attain. Out of the 4 designs that have won, only one reached week, and month.
So, disappointingly, the likelihood of receiving more than $500 is slim. That is the only drawback I see with DBH. Beyond that, they are one of the major hitters online in the t-shirt design contest arena. They are highly trafficked, and growing. I would surmise that they are the third most trafficked t-shirt design contest site on the internet.
The first and second being Threadless and Shirt.woot.com.
I would recommend any artist to submit to DBH. It seems to have the broadest scope of winners. Any style and genre can win provided it’s artful.
Shirt.woot.com
Shirt.woot.com is a monster. I’m not an internet traffic expert, but shirt.woot.com must be the most trafficked t-shirt website. It’s traffic comes mainly from the highly successful woot.com.
They hold weekly contests in which winners win $1000 plus $2 per shirt sold after the first day. There are 3 winners every week.
The possibility is quite tempting, but the community and market is unbelievable. It has a Walmart sensibility. It does not necessarily favor artistic ability. Clever, funny, generic, and cute are definitely quite successful there. Art is rarely received well, unless it is by some of their most popular derby winners who have built a very strong fan base. They have great success there.
To see the previous winners, check this link. http://shirt.woot.com/Forums/
You will be amazed how an insanely simple design with sparse artistic application sells much more than something artsy and skillful. This is what I mean by Walmart mentality. Walmart is not a producer of high caliber art, on the contrary, they produce generic products that sell cheap to the widest spectrum of customers.
If you are an artist, unless you are willing to bend cater your art to this market, you will be highly frustrated.
I attempted it myself for a couple of months. I have only won one derby, but am confident that if I stuck around and continued submitting, I would have been able to build a strong enough following to ensure at least one, if not two, derby wins a month. At a $1000 a pop, this could have greatly increased my income.
I decided that it was not the direction I wanted to go. The main reason for not participating was my desire to create art, and not designs that were clever or humorous. Besides, you spend your life drawing, and you see your design that you labored 5-8 hours on, get less votes because someone made a funny, yet artistically mediocre design that probably would have taken you 15-30 minutes, you get discouraged.
I would recommend participating f you are a patient artist who doesn’t mind selling out and can take the onslaught of snarky comments by some of the ornery community members or the lack of interest whatsoever. It would take an investment of several months to build a fan base, but you could greatly supplement your income with the contest winnings.
If you are an amateur artist, you have the greatest chance of winning there if you can come up with a great idea. I would also encourage your participation.
Shirt.woot.com is a good place. Even if you decide not to participate in the derbies, you can land some dailies. They commission artists to do designs the 4 days they are not printing the derby winners.
For 2008, shirt.woot.com has supplemented my income by approximately $3000. More importantly, having done dailies, they have increased my blog readership by direct traffic by approximately 30-50 new readers each time I have been showcased.
Uneetee.com
Uneetee chooses 4 designs a month, at $1500 a design. You receive $750 up front through paypal, and receive the rest, which is guaranteed, as the design sells.
Uneetee is great in my opinion. I have been lucky there. I have won two out of two. At $1500 each, that’s $3000 for 2008. Although I have yet to receive all the funds because they are in the process of being sold, you can’t beat $1500.
The competition is not as stiff as DBH or Threadless, but they are garnering more talented designers. The market or winning designs seem to be a mix of TL and DBH, illustrative with a mix of the occasional clever or funny.
There are only a few drawbacks with Uneetee.
Unless you are skilled, the four color restriction might give some designers difficulty.
Being that they only choose 4 designs to be printed, the chances may not be as great as the other sites where they print everyday.
Also, they do not specify how long the design is held from being submitted elsewhere. They chose to print one of my designs after a decent time had passed. I am uncertain, but I feel that my inquiries are what pushed them to decide to take it to print. I was attempting to retrieve my design to submit elsewhere, and two weeks later they told me of the upcoming debut.
BangBang T-shirts
BangBang T-shirts is a fairly small site. I have won one contest there. The prize varies from contest to contest, but my share was $250. They pay with paypal, and have deadlines so unlike many contest sites, have a specific time in which you will know if you won.
The competition is fairly weak. So if you are a moderate to advance artist, the likelihood that you will win is pretty decent.
I presume that the lack of competition is due to the smaller winnings and lack of traffic compared to the bigger sites.
They specialize in pop culture designs, so when my US Presidents design for Threadless was rejected due to their stricter policies regarding famous or notable figures, BangBang T-shirts was a great place to recycle the design.
I would recommend participation if you enjoy creating pop culture designs. The money isn’t great, but I would assume an artist could finish a design in a day, and for $250 a day… Not too shabby.
Summation
There are plenty of contest sites out there. It only takes participation and some skill to win. Go for it.
To find out more about the available contest sites, visit my friends’ blogs. They both an exhaustive list of contest sites.
http://compete-tee-tion.blogspot.com/
http://funkyduds.blogspot.com/
26 Comments
ihearithurts said about 1 month ago
Definite resource. ;)
skullface said about 1 month ago
MykeCatastrophic said about 1 month ago
Did you read it all already? Or do you just know it'll be good for resource?
Reliique said about 1 month ago
very good read!
Are you going to Submit collab. & Collision ''Panda'' soon? It looks very very good!
Matt-ate-u said about 1 month ago
Great read, Jimiyo you are the man! Your knowledge has always helped the community here at emptees. I say stick in resources because a lot of great points were made/
edgillustrator said about 1 month ago
a very good read jimiyo
jimiyo said about 1 month ago
cool. will do.
i thinking im going to make an excel spreadsheet with the contest details like design prison sentence, booty, genre, etc etc.
herky said about 1 month ago
I think you are spot-on accurate, describing the various competitions/websites. Thanks for sharing your experiences and a very interesting and informative read.
Randomentity said about 1 month ago
awesome, i might work on some stuff for the smaller sites.
Boycott Christian HC said about 1 month ago
Very informative. Thanks.
jimiyo said about 1 month ago
CT&JYO collab is going to be submitted somewhere pretty soon. CT is doing the submitting. ;j
thanks everyone.
aye. i feel like there are some solid sites i wish i MADE more time to participate at.
fairandbare.com
wooshka.com
rediswhite.com
artcotic.com
i just submitted to artcotic.com. the competition isnt that fierce there. although the frequency of winning designs is limited to 2 a month.
lafraise.com is difficult. very stiff competition, and being american, those europeans have a very different style that doesnt fall within my expertise.
id like to take a stab at abettertomorrow.com but i find its non english site... unreadable.
popdeck.com is a decent place. although its a hit or miss. thats for skateboards though... so im probably too removed from the market to know what they like. i lost one time with a solid design to a photo manip, which kinda pissed me off because it was just a rip of someone elses work.
http://www.districtcotton.com seems to be a good place for novice artists. the money isnt great, but the competition isnt that stiff.
anyways. ill probably have a part two with the information i just included.
heythequickness said about 1 month ago
Great read! Very informative and inspiring. I think this should be a resource for sure.
On another note, I just found out that uneetee headquarters is like 10 mins away from my house, and they just recently opened up their first little booth or cart in my local mall.
godmachine said about 1 month ago
great read- thanks jimiyo
Spaceone said about 1 month ago
Very informative, resourccccccccccccce it, thanks jimiyo
Ameeee said about 1 month ago
Thanks Jimiyo!
RikkiB said about 1 month ago
Jimiyo to the rescue da da da daaaaaaa
hunty said about 1 month ago
Just an echo...
But this is a great bit of summarising Jimiyo. Much appreciated...
Maybe I could persuade you to give MySoti a go as a comparison? As a sort of test... See how much you can earn through our kind of site rather than the win/lose scenario of a competition?
jublin said about 1 month ago
very cool read jimiyo. I didn't realize uneetee only printed 4 a month. I haven't had much luck at all over there myself. :/
You didn't say much about threadless (unless i missed it) Any reason for that?
bloodboy said about 1 month ago
Great Read .. indeed
SteveOramA said about 1 month ago
i read every word of this.
i don't like to read.
it was worth it.
quakerninja said about 1 month ago
Skill you say. hmmm. I'll try that then.
jsheldon said about 1 month ago
Excellent read. Your descriptions are right on. I wish I had some more time to submit more stuff, but I am far from being a "professional contest winner."
collisiontheory said about 1 month ago
Great read man!!
About shirt.woot. They get 75,000 visitors a day. Just to add, I've done 3 woots with no humor/wittiness to the designs and they've sold 1000+, 750+, and 1,500+ respectively. So I think they do have some room for more artistic tees.
dcastle8183 said about 1 month ago
Very good. I've been inspired. I think its resource worthy.
edword said about 1 month ago
Well done. great read, very informative for anyone that has questions about the contests out there.
When I'm doing a design about half way through I start to think of where it might do best. I've done pretty good so far.
I need to get some more submissions out there for the second half of the year.
BangBangTshirts said about 1 month ago
Fantastic post, jimiyo. Full of great information that I'm sure all designers will appreciate. Also, thanks for the mention of our site. I think you're spot on and, as our community grows, we will obviously much greater rewards to our winning designers. Obviously, getting to that stage is the most difficult part for but we're very, very determined to do it and so if anyone has any great ideas or contacts that might help spread the word about our community then feel free to let us know.
For anyone that might be interested to enter, our current contest doesn't have a theme and ends on 4th August. :)