I sell jewelry on the internet.  If I were to actually put some real effort into it, it would provide a full income.   But I inherited the inventory, and am not particularly interested in keeping popular items in stock because it would require dealing with customs brokers and making fairly large orders from overseas.

But my point is that you can sell items online that other people manufacture, through you own store (not one that charges you a huge commission -- unless it's Amazon, which I wish I could use) -- and you can make a decent profit.

I sell almost exclusively wholesale, which cuts the profit per item in half basically, but gets me fewer, bigger orders, pay much less in shipping, and customers who are, for the most part, much better behaved than retail customers.

I think that Cafe Press may be a great way to start, but if you want an income, eventually you have to stop giving them $10 a shirt.  Because you'll never get your t-shirts in retail stores without a way to sell wholesale.  Selling retail on the web is damned hard when everyone can make their own Cafe Press store -- unless you can offer much more competitive pricing.  Even then, it's hard to market with so much competition.  Less competition in the wholesale sector. Much less.

ETA:  On the other hand, stores like Cafe Press require no monetary investment, so if you don't mind taking the time to do extensive marketing because you enjoy that sort of thing, there's no reason not to do it.  Also, I don't think these stores require that products be exclusive to them (worth asking about), so you might be able to sell the same design at all of them.

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