In Part 1 of this series, we broke down the basics of selling merch as an indie artist - why it matters, how it can seriously boost your income, and the types of products fans actually want to buy. We covered essentials like choosing the right items (from T-shirts to vinyl), how to price for profit, and why quality and audience fit are key to moving merch in 2025.
Now that you’ve got a sense of what to sell and how to think about pricing, it’s time to take the next step: creating your products. In this part, we’ll get into design, production options, print-on-demand vs. bulk, and how to bring your ideas to life in a way that’s professional, cost-effective, and true to your brand. Let’s go!
When it comes to actually making your merch, you have two main routes: Print-on-Demand (POD) or Bulk printing. Each has its pros and cons, and the best choice can depend on your situation. Let’s break it down:
Print-on-Demand means you don’t make anything until someone orders it. You design the product, list it for sale online, and a POD partner prints and ships it only when a fan buys it. Examples of POD services include Printful, Printify, TeeSpring, etc.
Pros (Low Effort, Low Risk): This is the ultimate low-effort setup. No upfront printing costs, no boxes of unsold shirts under your bed. A POD service handles the heavy lifting – printing, packing, and shipping – so you can focus on making music. It’s also great for offering a wide variety of products without investing a fortune. Want to offer 10 different shirt designs in 5 colors each? With POD, go ahead (you’re not paying for inventory sitting around). It’s an amazing way to test merch ideas and see what fans like, with little risk.
Cons: The trade-off for convenience is usually lower profit per item. POD base prices are higher than if you printed in bulk. For example, a POD might charge you $15 to print and ship a single shirt that you sell for $25 – that’s $10 for you, store and credit card fees and taxes. If you had printed 100 shirts in bulk, your cost per shirt might be only $5-7, yielding much more profit per item. Also, because a third party handles production, you have a bit less control over quality and speed. Most good POD companies produce solid quality prints, but occasionally colours might not be as vibrant as a traditional screen print, etc. Shipping times can also be a bit longer (since each item is made to order). Lastly, if a design unexpectedly blows up in demand, POD production could get backed up – but those are “good problems” to have.
Use Cases: POD is perfect for beginners and for artists who don’t want to manage logistics. If you’re not playing live shows yet (so you don’t need physical stock in-hand) or you’re experimenting with designs, POD is your friend. It’s also great for international fans – many POD services have global print facilities, meaning a fan in Europe can get their shirt shipped from a European print house, saving you both time and shipping cost. (Printify, for instance, lets you pick print partners in various countries.)
Bulk ordering means you order a batch of products (e.g. 50 shirts in various sizes) from a print shop upfront, then you sell and ship them yourself (or bring them to shows).
Pros (Max Profit & Control): You get a lower cost per unit by printing in volume. Buying 100 shirts might bring your cost down to $5 each, which you can sell at $20. Now that’s a 75% margin! If you sell out, you make significantly more money. You also have full control over quality as you can choose the exact garment, printing method (screen print, embroidery, etc.), and you can see the product before it goes to fans. And at live shows, you need physical stock, which bulk printing provides.
Cons: Upfront cost and risk. You have to pay for all that inventory before you’ve sold anything. This can be a few hundred to a few thousand dollars investment, which is tough if you’re a broke musician. There’s the dreaded scenario of “boxes of unsold merch”. If you misjudge demand or sizes, you could end up with leftovers that tie up your money. Bulk merch also means you handle the logistics like storing the items, packing them, shipping them for online orders, carrying them on tour, etc. It’s more effort. Also, guessing sizes can be tricky: order too many XLs and you’re stuck with them, too few mediums and you lose sales. It’s a bit of a gamble, especially early on.
Use Cases: Bulk can make sense if you know you have demand. For example, you’re heading out on tour and expect to sell merch every night. Touring artists often do bulk orders to stock their merch table and maximise profit on the road. It can also work if you have an online store with consistent sales and you’ve identified your most popular items; then you switch those to bulk to increase your margins. Some artists do a hybrid approach: use POD for a broad catalog of items (so fans have variety), but bulk-produce the top sellers or the items you want to sell at shows.
What we Recommend: If you’re just starting with merch go POD to start, minimize your risk. As you grow, consider bulk for specific scenarios (like tours). In 2025, the quality gap between POD and traditional printing has closed a lot; many fans won’t notice or mind that their shirt was printed on demand. And you can always evolve: start lean, scale up when it makes sense. The key is profit vs effort: POD saves effort, bulk boosts profit. Find the balance that works for you.
Speaking of which – preorders are another great low-risk strategy: announce a new merch item, let fans preorder it (pay upfront), then you manufacture exactly that many. This way you’re technically doing a bulk order but with zero leftover risk because everything’s already sold. Fans will wait a few weeks if they know they’re getting a limited item. Just be transparent about timelines when you do this.
Merch is more than an income stream, it’s a way for fans to wear their loyalty and for you to spread your name beyond the stage or streaming playlist. In 2025, with streaming payouts still tiny, merch can be the financial backbone of an indie artist’s career. The sale of a single hoodie or vinyl can eclipse what you’d earn from thousands of streams, and it’s money directly from fans to you, which is a beautiful thing.
Join us for Part 3 of this series on merchandise in which we will be taking a look at selling your products online.
