What your design actually earns you

Three lines on a card, worked out with a pen. A list price, a percentage, and what that leaves.

That's the whole calculation on a marketplace that sets the price for you, and it's worth doing once so it stops being a mystery.

What decides what a design earns?

Two numbers you don't control: the garment's list price and the royalty rate.

Multiply them and you have the per-sale figure. Both live on the product and payout pages rather than in a designer's hands, which means the arithmetic is fixed the moment you publish — and the only remaining variable is how many times it happens.

Does the rate improve with volume?

On a flat royalty, no — and that's worth confirming before building a plan around it.

Some marketplaces tier the rate upward once a design passes a threshold; a flat one pays the same on the hundredth sale as on the first. Flat is easier to reason about and offers nothing to chase, which is either a relief or a disappointment depending on what you were hoping for. Check which kind you're on before assuming either.

Does a discount come out of my share?

It depends on what the royalty is calculated against, and this is the question worth asking first.

A royalty on the list price doesn't move when a sale runs — the discount comes out of the house's margin and the creator's figure is unchanged. A royalty on the paid price does move, which makes every promotion a quiet pay cut. Those are two very different arrangements wearing the same word, and the difference only shows up on a discounted order.

What if a garment carries two people's designs, front and back?

Find out which zone the payout is anchored to before assuming it splits.

The common arrangement is that one sale pays one design — whichever occupies the primary zone — rather than dividing between two. That's a rule rather than a split, so it's worth knowing which side of it your work sits on before counting a shared garment as two payouts.

When does the money actually arrive?

Three separate mechanisms decide that, and people usually only ask about one.

There's typically a hold after the sale, a payout schedule, and a minimum balance below which nothing is sent. A single sale can satisfy none of them. Knowing all three is the difference between "I sold one, where's my money" and an accurate expectation — and only the third one is really in your hands, in the sense that more sales clear it sooner.

So what's the actual lever here?

Not the price. How many people want the specific thing you made.

With the numbers fixed at both ends, demand is the only variable left, and it's the whole game. What tends to move it has nothing to do with pricing strategy, because there isn't one to run — which is genuinely freeing once you stop looking for the missing control panel.

How do I get one made?

Describe the design at JustOG — the garment, the colour, and whether you want it published for other people to buy. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

The card has three lines on it, and none of them is yours to move.