Do you sell shirts but have little money left afterward? You may be missing some costs. Let us work out a price one small step at a time.
Think of the customer’s payment as a box of money. The shirt, design, your time and other costs come out of that box. What remains must still help pay for your workspace, taxes and any costs you have not counted.
Start with everything you pay for
- The blank shirt and the cost of getting it to you.
- The printed design that goes onto the shirt with heat. This is called a transfer.
- Your time to prepare, place, check and pack the shirt.
- The bag and small supplies.
- A little money set aside for a shirt that may go wrong.
- The charge for taking the customer’s payment.
Try this example in US dollars
These are practice numbers, not a price list for your town. The design cost uses one supplier’s published rate. The other amounts are numbers chosen for this example.
- Blank shirt: US$4.50.
- Printed design: US$4.80.
- Your work: US$2.00.
- Bag: US$0.50.
- Money set aside for mistakes: US$0.70.
Total: US$12.50 per shirt, before the payment charge. Transfer Express’s 2026 guide lists US$0.06 per square inch for 1–24 individual designs. A 10 by 8 inch design covers 80 square inches: 80 × 0.06 = US$4.80. Shipping and tax are extra. Check the price before ordering.
Sell it for US$20: what is left?
Imagine your payment service charges 2.9% of the sale plus US$0.30. This is a practice rate. Check your own service’s actual charges.
On a US$20 sale, that charge is US$0.88. Now subtract: 20 − 12.50 − 0.88 = US$6.62. That is before workspace costs, taxes and anything else missing from the list. It is not all money you can take home.
Want to keep 30 out of every 100 dollars sold?
That is what a 30% margin means here. With these example costs, the price calculation is (12.50 + 0.30) ÷ (1 − 0.029 − 0.30). Rounded up to the next cent, it gives US$19.08. You can also try a price and subtract each cost, as we did with US$20.
Adding 40% to a cost does not mean keeping 40% of the selling price. If something costs US$10 and you sell it for US$14, US$4 remains before other costs. That is 4 out of the 14 dollars you collected.
Check these details before giving a price
Ask about sizes, shirt colors, design size and printing on the back. Count shipping if you include it. Check your costs again before offering a discount.
After each order, compare your plan with what you really spent. Use that result for the next order. A free design may save some design work. It does not make the shirt or printing free.
Keep planning your next order
- Buy a DTF Printer or Order Transfers? Do These Simple Sums
- How Much to Charge for 25 T-Shirts: Step by Step
- US$100 a Day Selling T-Shirts? See How Many You Need to Sell
Where the reference numbers come from
Reference pages checked on October 31, 2026. Prices may change. Our practice numbers are examples, not recorded business results.
Free worksheet to fill in
Open the CSV file in a spreadsheet app, such as Excel or Google Sheets. It is a table with example numbers and instructions. Replace them with your own costs. It does not do the calculations automatically.