four years ago, i started uploading my art onto redbubble, and i ordered a few pieces to see
how they looked. they took ages to arrive, which i think has improved greatly since then, thankfully,
but other than that, i wasn't disappointed. redbubble merchandise is not particularly
low priced, so i was quite pleased in the quality of what i received. four years later,
apart from a bit of pilling from my coat, my tote bag is still kicking with no other sign of wear,
my pencil case has no hole or defects, my notebook is well used, but four years later,
do i still think it's worth posting my art into redbubble as a small creator?
yes and no. before i continue, what you're watching is sped up footage of an instructional
video i created to accompany a paint by number that i've been working on. this kit includes a top
quality watercolor paper with the outlines already drawn on it, synthetic paint brush, and five
colors of qor watercolor. so if you want to try making your own version of this exact painting,
check it out in the link in the description. so i posted my stuff on redbubble for one reason:
people prefer practical merch, right? original art is a really hard sell, not because it isn't
fantastic to own, but just because it's easier to rationalize the purchase of a shirt since
clothing is mostly required. i still don't have a large enough audience to order copies of a zine,
let alone sell hundreds of shirts in different styles. and you know that when you first start
getting your work out there, people start throwing requests at you to make this into a necklace,
make this into a shirt, make this into a bag, make this into a magnet, make this into a sticker,
yada yada, right? letting a print on demand company handle it means that
if one person just wants a notebook, a shirt, bag, sticker, they can just go and get that.
i don't have to undertake any financial risk myself or oversee the customer service aspect.
my experience ends at scanning my art and tweaking it to fit different items. that's
why i originally went with redbubble specifically because somewhere like society6 required separate
perfectly sized files for each product and that was just way too much fussing for what, a 30 cent
license fee? theoretically, these websites let you scan a piece of art, upload it to their website,
and then you can just sit back and watch the dollars roll in without doing any further work.
well, that's the idea anyway. as a small creator, i don't see redbubble as a money-making venture. i
mean, they say that passive income is the pinnacle of efficiency, to free yourself from daily work,
is to just have a system set up to make the money for you and function without your help right?
but ironically, you don't sell a lot on redbubble unless you have a huge demand, and if i had a huge
demand, i would much rather source my own products and pack them with love and attention. i would
definitely earn more than a dollar per item if i were to order these things myself.
i sure as heck wouldn't be sending that kind of business
to another company so that they can make the bulk of the profit unless i was a professional who was
very busy with something else that's better than this. if i was selling original paintings and
commissions left right and center and didn't have time to sell prints, i might consider it,
but i don't have a huge demand. in the last year or so on redbubble, i've made a grand total of six
dollars. you know, six dollars just for scanning some art, i don't have regrets about that,
and i'm hoping people are walking away with a nice item that lives up to their expectations.
the funky thing is that redbubble doesn't pay anybody six dollars. you have to earn twenty
dollars before they pay out, which is not a high threshold at all. i mean, even youtube,
you have to earn over a hundred dollars before youtube pays you anything, which could take years.
but like i said, i'm earning six bucks a year. it's so little that i don't even think about it,
but if i do, it it's kind of weird right? if it's not accessible to me, then it's money that's not
paid, so it's not even income yet. but redbubble is hanging on to anything less than twenty
dollars for how many people? hundreds? thousands? hundreds of thousands? i'm really curious to know
what their bookkeeping looks like. there must be a huge amount of money just sitting somewhere,
maybe earning interest for this company, and not going to the small creators who are providing
all the draw for this company's business in the first place. it definitely doesn't really feel
good to see redbubble selling hundreds of dollars of merchandise and i theoretically
may get six dollars out of it someday... maybe years from now, maybe never? i definitely
use redbubble for the purpose of giving you guys some where to go to get things that you
want during a situation where i can't do those things myself, and in the last several years,
i'm sure a bunch of new places have opened up. there's inprnt, which i think does print
services. i do sell my own prints, but it is a huge startup cost to do it and it takes years
and years for me to sell them. you already kind of have to have the money to sell merchandise, so
it's definitely a pros and cons balance. it's great if you really don't want to sell merch
but you want to have a place for you to send people when they ask about it, and then maybe
you'll get a dollar, 30 cents, five dollars if it's something big, maybe, theoretically,
in the long future of your life? if you're not making twenty dollars of fees, which is really
hard to do when you're only getting 30 cents a pop right? hands off customer service can kind of go
either way because you either don't want to deal with customer service and shipping and returns and
problem solving and stuff, and then other people might feel a little anxious about giving that up,
because you don't know what kind of service your audience is getting. are they walking
away with a sour taste and therefore they're going to associate that sour taste with you, even though
you weren't even involved? that could be a pro and a con depending on how it goes. i have never heard
anything, which is the design, that i'm not really meant to hear anything from happy or disappointed
customers on redbubble because they're not my customers. but at the same time, some people might
not understand that right? so four years later, despite the ridiculously low return, i think i'm
still technically pro redbubble and other websites just because they do perform a service. i haven't
really been marketing my redbubble site that much because again, it's not my business,
so i don't really know what it takes to grow there or if i even really want to grow there, you know
what i mean? i honestly kind of feel weird about merch in general. so without marketing, i'd say
they probably sell about as much as i could sell my own stuff with my art on it honestly. i really
do think that i could do better if i was at a market or something. i'm pretty sure redbubble
sells maybe two items a year? for me to be sitting at six dollars after a year, that must be a shirt
and a sticker and a card or something like that? so let's say redbubble can only sell three items
for me a year on their own. i could probably sell three items a year on my own, so that's definitely
something to consider. i just don't want to start building stock of a bunch of merchandise,
so i'm just gonna let redbubble handle my three sales a year. let me know in the comments how
you've been doing? have you tried these print on demand websites? have they been doing much
for you and has anyone ordered redbubble stuff recently? because i'm curious to know
if the products are still really good four years later, because the things that i bought
are doing really good. i mean, yeah, it's a $15 pencil case, but this pencil case is heavy duty
so i'm quite happy with that. let me know below what you think and i will see you in the next one.