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How to price t-shirts and print-on-demand products

T-shirts are easy to compare, so buyers notice when your price is high. That makes knowing your floor price even more important.

1. Base and print cost

Print-on-demand: your cost is the provider's base product plus print charges for your chosen placement, and often their shipping. Read it from your provider's current price list for each size, since larger sizes often cost more. Printing yourself: add the blank shirt, transfer or ink, and any screen setup fee spread over the run.

2. Labor and design

For POD, labor is mostly design and listing time. Spread it over the number of shirts you expect to sell, and be conservative. For heat press or screen printing, also time weeding, pressing, folding and packing each shirt.

3. Overhead

Design software, mockup tools, sample orders, a press and its upkeep, and ads if you run them. Ad spend can turn a profitable shirt into a loss, so track it per sale.

Platform and payment fees

Marketplaces usually take a percentage of each sale plus fixed per-order or per-listing charges, and payment processing is often separate. Fee schedules change, so read your platform's current fee page rather than trusting a number you saw once. Remember that fees are charged on the price the customer pays, so they grow as your price grows. Calculate them on your final price, not on your cost.

If you sell on a marketplace and your POD provider also charges you, you pay twice: the marketplace fee on the sale price and the provider's cost. Both have to fit inside your price.

Choosing a markup

Once you know your true cost (materials + labor + overhead), add margin. With POD, many sellers think in profit dollars per shirt instead of a multiplier, since labor per unit is small. A common maker rule of thumb is wholesale at about 2× true cost and retail at about 2× wholesale, but that is a starting point, not a law. Check the result against what comparable products actually sell for, then decide whether your quality, story or speed justifies sitting above or below that range. If the price you need is far above what buyers pay, the fix is usually cost or time, not a smaller margin.

Worked example

Notice that the profit line comes after you've paid yourself for your time. That's the number that tells you whether this product is a business or a hobby.

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