t-shirt candidate

[justin at shiningsilence.com]

> After a bit of browsing I think the best way is to set up a webshop at
> http://www.cafepress.com, any objections, considerations or other things
> I should need to know?

I've seen this discussion before with small-press comic creators.

Cafepress is low-effort, but they charge a significant base cost.  Even if
you aren't looking for any significant profit, it's still going to be
pricey for the buyer, especially for sales across the ocean.  (Do they do
international shipping?  I don't recall.)

The way that lets you charge the smallest price and/or make profit is to
get the shirts printed in a large quantity (>100) at a local print shop.
You get to see the quality of the print before it goes out, and you have
stock you can sell at conventions.  You can probably get it printed on
more types of material than you can at cafepress, believe it or not.

The downside is that you have to outlay some money for the inital print
run, and you have to handle mailing yourself.  Cafepress will work if you
have the volume to offset the margins, and I don't think the user base for
BSD is really big enough yet.

The price difference between selling it at a break-even price at
cafepress.com and printing it yourself with a small profit is probably
going to be more than US$10.  It all depends on how much time you have.