Want to earn royalties with art?
There are dozens of so-called “print-on-demand” shops that invite artists to upload their images. These images will be used to illustrate everything from iPhone cases to coffee cups. Several of these sites will also put your art on canvas and prints. Artists decide what designs to upload and generally pick the products that they want it to illustrate. After that, you sit back and earn royalties without doing additional work.
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In some cases, the site will tell you how much of a royalty you’ll earn on each of those products — say 10% to 25%. In others, you set the royalty rate yourself. Either system can work and neither of these sites demands exclusivity. So you can list with one or both. Here are two of the best platforms that pay royalties on art.
Printful
Printful allows creatives to upload art — or create a design on the site — and have the site print the uploaded art on one (or many) of 200+ products the site offers for sale. The site publishes its prices and shipping terms, promising to fulfill orders within days of receiving them. Creatives simply add a mark-up to ensure that they earn a profit on each sale.
However, Printful doesn’t offer your products through its website. You need to have an e-commerce site of your own that you link to your Printful account. That allows you to essentially “white label” Printful’s products as your own. You can read our full review of Printful here.
Or you can offer products through Printful here.
Society6
Society6 has a default royalty rate of 10%. But the site will allow you to set a different royalty, if you prefer. The one exception is with prints. If you’re selling a print, the site will tell you its cost for each size and you add whatever royalty rate you want to come up with a final price. With the other products, Society6 simply pays you 10% of the sales price. Read our Society6 review here.