There is big money to be made by selling pre-printed heat transfer design. When I say pre-printed I am referring to heat transfer paper that already has a design printed on it. This is perfect if you are an artist and have unique designs that others may be interested in.

I have made a lot of money in the past doing this. I had some very unique designs that were based off of a particular style of t-shirt that was popular at the time. I was very busy printing the shirts myself but I realized there was an easier and more profitable way to sell my designs.

Instead of printing shirts I decided to just print my designs on heat transfer paper and sell the designs to people who wanted to make money printing their own shirts. At the time I was creating my designs on 11″ x 17″ heat transfer paper for dark fabrics. I had about $1.50 worth of transfer paper and ink. I sold my design for $5 a piece if a customer just wanted one! If they purchased in quantity their cost could go as low as $3.50 per heat transfer! What a profit margin!

Listen, this is about as close as you can get to printing money and not going to Federal Prison for it! A customer orders, you print. That simple.

But how did I convince customers they were getting a deal by purchasing my $5 heat transfers? I broke it down to them like this: You take a $5 heat transfer design, heat transfer it onto a $2 t-shirt and you have a product that easily retails for $15-$20. But if they buy in quantity they can enjoy greater profit margins. It’s a win-win situation both for me and the customer. Both of us are making money.

If you are thinking about trying this idea, let me tell you how I got started and how my system was set up. Well it all starts with a good design. I had a collection of over 100 designs to start with. I had an Epson 1280 inkjet printer that was a pretty good workhorse machine for the beginning graphic artist. I set-up an eBay store to showcase my designs along with an ecommerce site. When a customer placed an order all I had to do was simply find the image they wanted in my pc and print off the quantity they wanted on my Epson. 

One thing I quickly learned was I was going to need another printer! The single Epson 1280 just couldn’t print fast enough so I purchased another unit. And then another. And another! I had 4 Epson 1280’s spitting out my designs to fill customer orders. I had to step it up a notch. I took some of my profits and invested in an Epson 4000. This was a $2500 printer at the time but oh boy did it get the job done. 

One thing I would worry about was someone copying my designs. Here is how I tried to combat that. By printing my designs on 11″ x 17″ heat transfer paper it made it hard for someone to just scan my image and then print their own. Another thing that kept customers from stealing my designs was the fact that they were printed on heat transfer paper. Heat transfer paper is not the best substrate to scan an image off of and here’s why. When designs are printed on heat transfer paper they don’t have vibrant colors. The colors are made vibrant with the heat transfer process. So what a person would get if they tried to scan one of my transfers was a dull looking copy not suitable for a good shirt print. This is not to say that some didn’t copy them anyway but I bet the quality looked like crap!

Ok, so you are ready to get started. Where do you begin? With a design of course. Think about niche markets, holidays, fads, etc. If your niche market was the motorcycle riders. You could create motorcycle themed heat transfers. Think about the latest fads, designs shirts around them. Holidays are always good too. The ideas and possibilities are endless.

Well there it is. This is an easy way to make money at home printing. All you need is a computer, and inkjet printer, heat transfer paper and some designs. You do not even need a heat press machine. Good luck. Go print some money!

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One of the most frequently asked questions by beginner shirt printers is will the heat transfer paper leave a “white background” once the image is heat transferred onto the t-shirt. I have answered this question so many times I figured I would just put it in my blog and refer people to the post.

There are many methods for printing onto t-shirts. Each method has it’s advantages and disadvantages. It’s up to the customer to decide which is best for their situation. Some deciding factors are cost involved, difficulty, space requirements and how you want your shirt to look.

Most people want to print shirts like they are accustomed to seeing. More than likely they have seen a screen printed shirt and they want their shirts to look just like that. Well if you want your shirt to look screen printed then you need to use the screen print method to create the shirt. 

A lot of my customers purchase heat transfer paper for dark fabrics with intentions of creating shirts like they have seen. More than likely they are talking about a screen printed shirt. Once they have printed their design onto the transfer paper and heat transferred it onto the shirt I occasionally get asked “How do I get rid of the white background”? To properly answer the question it is only right for me to explain in detail the process of both heat transfer printing and screen printing.

Heat Transfer Printing

When printing with heat transfer paper you are printing with your inkjet printer onto a inkjet receptive film. That film is transparent when you are using heat transfer paper for light fabrics. The film is an opaque white when you are using heat transfer paper for dark fabrics.

Here is the reason why. Home use inkjet printers cannot print white ink. When you print on heat transfer for light fabrics (clear film) the design will utilize the light color of the fabric you are printing on as the white represented in your design. If you are printing on a yellow shirt your white will be yellow. If you are printing on an off-white shirt, your white will be off-white. Once the image has been heat transferred onto the shirt the clear film is almost not noticeable. Only on close inspection is it noticeable. 

This is where the questions start. When printing on heat transfer paper for dark fabrics (opaque white film) the design uses the white of the film as the white in the design you printed. This is exactly like printing a color image on regular printer paper.  If you print your design and heat transfer it to a dark colored shirt you will have a white square with your image on it.

Here’s the problem, most people do not want that white square around their image. There are a couple of ways to eliminate that.

1. The easiest (but not always practical) way to eliminate this white square is to design your image with a frame around it. For example, if you want to heat transfer a logo that is an oval shape you could redesign the logo to have a square frame around it. When you print your design onto the transfer paper you can easily trim around the square logo thus eliminating an unwanted white square. Trim using a straight edge and knife?
2. The second way is to take a sharp xacto knife and trim around the outline of your image. This technique can be very technical and requires time and a steady hand. I have done this many times with designs and I learned it is a lot easier to design the image so that it is easier for me to trim by hand. This is a fairly inexpensive technique but it does require time…….and time = money.
3. The third way is the most expensive but by far the best way to go if you can afford it. It involves purchasing a plotter that can “contour cut” around your printed image. There are printers that will print and then cut (most expensive) and you have the kind that will just cut the image that has already been printed on your printer. I have seen these machines brand new on ebay for about $400 and I have seen them elsewhere on the internet for thousands of dollars. If you are thinking about purchasing one of these plotters/cutters I would suggest you do a Google search for “contour cutting printer” or do an eBay search for “contour cutting printer”. With this method you get the best possible results out of your heat transfer paper for dark fabrics. When a novice looks at the image they will not be able to tell if it is a heat transfer design or a screen printed design.

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