TEEPUBLIC is a new website and t-shirt store launched by Busted Tees. It uses a combination of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing pioneered by Cameesa back in 2008. (It might be notable that the Cameesa venture eventually failed.) TEEPUBLIC has the might of Busted Tees and College Humor behind it though so I think it will be more successful.

Here is a video that quickly summarizes how TEEPUBLIC works.

The video is no longer available.

Here’s how it works in text:

1. Create and upload your design
2. For 30 days people vote for your design by funding it (or not).
3. When/if you get 30 people to fund your design it will be sold on a tee.
4. Earn $5 per shirt sold for eternity.

Pretty simple right.

What kind of designs can you submit?

Almost anything it seems. Quality be damned because they even accept Instagram photos. Instagram is certainly not know for its high-resolution images. But they do have this to say:

We reserve the right to remove designs we feel are in either extremely poor taste or violate copyright laws. Use your best judgment; don’t steal designs or use copyrighted trademarks and don’t be racist or an ass.

Some Observations

You seem to retain the rights to your design which means that perhaps you can still sell you design on other sites such as TeeFury, RIPT etc.

The tees are made to order using Direct to Garment digital printing which means that there are no real restrictions on image colors; quantity or variety.

Many of the submissions look familiar as I have probably already see them at the daily tee sites or RedBubble. There are two t-shirts already funded.

Link: TEEPUBLIC