What a Print-on-Demand Shirt Really Costs: My Real Numbers

I just launched four Build With DB pieces: three tees and a hoodie. No inventory, no warehouse, no Etsy. When you order, Printful prints it and ships it, and the order flows in automatically from my own store. Here's what that actually costs, because nobody selling a course shows you this part.

A tee sells for $39 CAD. Printful charges me $16.58 to print a small to XL, $18.52 for a 2XL and $20.48 for a 3XL. Shipping one shirt to Calgary costs me $11.29; I charge $14, which also covers a second shirt in the same order. Printful adds GST on its charge — about $1.39 on a tee — and Stripe takes roughly 2.9% plus 30 cents on the card payment.

So on a $53 tee order shipped in Canada, I keep about $22. On a $65 hoodie with $17 shipping, the math works out to roughly $30. That's before my time, the design work, and any advertising — so it's not a fortune per shirt. Anyone promising you $10k a month from print-on-demand is leaving these numbers out.

Why my own store instead of Etsy? Etsy charges a listing fee, a transaction fee on every sale, payment processing on top, and you don't own the customer. On my own site the checkout is mine, the customer list is mine, and the only cut is the card processor.

The part I care about most is the system. A paid order hits a webhook, gets verified, and becomes a Printful order with the right size and address — once, even if the payment notice arrives twice. Anything that doesn't add up gets held for review instead of printed. Right now I approve every order on my phone before it prints. When I trust it, it goes fully automatic.

No sales yet as I write this. I'll post the real results — good or bad — once orders come in. That's the deal with building in public.