Hello and welcome to design and business conversations for creatives. I'm Cheyney,
and today I'm chatting with you about my experience with Redbubble. In this video
I will give a little bit of an overview of Redbubble, along with the pros, the
cons, my experience with some of the products that I've ordered, along with
exposing my income (spoiler alert isn't great) and then compare and contrast that
income with what I have been earning on another print-on-demand site and hope
you enjoy. Let's jump right in. Redbubble is a print-on-demand website.
I'm assuming if you've come to this video, you probably know what that is already. I'll
give you a little quick insight for those of you who don't. Basically, print-
on-demand is literally print on demand. As an artist, you'll upload your content
to a platform, which will then superimpose your artwork onto a bunch of
products, but not actually print until someone has ordered the product. It's
really great for an artist because you can just upload the artwork and then
they take care of all the shipping, the handling, the customer side, sometimes the
marketing. However, you're not off the hook, you do need to market it
yourself in order to gain any traction with these print-on-demand websites. The
customer will order and the beauty of it is they can order from wherever in the
world, you can upload from wherever in the world, and the product gets shipped
to their doorstep, and you as a creator all you have done is uploaded the
artwork and marketed it. So, into some of the pros of Redbubble. What I really
like about Redbubble is, I'm in New Zealand and there is the option for my
products to be sold in Australian dollars, which is cool because with some
of the other websites it's only American. They also pay me out in New Zealand
dollars which is really great. I really like that Redbubble has analytics, so
you can link up your Google Analytics and monitor the traffic, and where in the
world the traffic is coming from, and the behavior. If you don't know anything
about Google Analytics and you have a Redbubble, I do suggest that you
look into Google Analytics. I haven't made a video about this, however its
YouTube, there will be a video somewhere, and I think it's really great to be able
to understand some of your customer behaviour. Another pro of Redbubble is
the uploading process is very simple and quick. Unlike some of the other
print-on-demand websites where it can take a long time, and it can be a little
bit confusing, the interface, Redbubble has really nailed that. I don't feel
daunted when I go to upload artwork, I don't think 'oh here goes an hour of my life'.
You've already invested the time in creating the artwork, and then it can be
a real pain if it takes a long time for it to upload to the platform. Another
thing I really like about Redbubble is I've had a really great experience with
some of the quality of the products, which I'll show you later. I also like
that Redbubble is on top of trends so they are regularly updating their
product suite. Most recently, they've put on masks which has been really good with
Covid-19. I quite like Redbubble's backend interface. So, if you can see my
computer here, gives you a good idea of your earning summary, and gives you a few
analytics in the backend and all the information, which is pretty
helpful. I would say the best part of Redbubble for me has been within the ease
of how to upload artwork. I think it's really intuitive, you don't need to be
super techy to be able to become a Redbubble artist. Okay, some of the cons that
I have experienced with Redbubble. One which I'll jump into next, my earnings. My
earnings have not been great. It no way matches the energy that I have put into
this platform. I have been searching around the internet to try and find
videos like these, but from people who have had better experiences with
Redbubble, to try and figure out how to do better on the platform and I haven't
been able to figure it out. Another bug bear that I have with the website is
that I don't think the shopping experience is as pretty as it could be.
That is obviously up for debate, it's just my personal opinion and I don't
think it does affect people's success on the platform, however
I'm not sure that I would be the target market for Redbubble as a consumer. So
that's enough with the cons, let's move on to the products. When I first started my
Redbubble, I ordered a few of my own products to compare them with other
print-on-demand website products and I was pleasantly surprised with a couple
of products in particular. I ordered these stickers.
I'm really happy with those.
I also ordered a mug, which has been one of my better selling products
on the shop. 'Zero bad word starts with 'f' given' and that was really cool. I really
like the print, it was a good quality mug, nice and sturdy. One of my
favorite products that I ordered from Redbubble is the scarf and I was not
expecting to be so blown away by this. The print is good, it was one of
my abstract prints that I had printed on the scarf and I think, yeah,
really nice, really happy with that. So I think, all in all, I'm really happy with
the quality of products on Redbubble. Ooh, another pro that I forgot to
mention earlier is, with the shipping with red bubble, they combined all the
shipping. So if you're buying multiple products, unlike society6 which I have
spoken about in my society6 video that I made about a month ago, Redbubble will
print new products from different suppliers and what I like about Redbubble
is they combine all the shipping, and you know the shipping before you
commit to the purchase, and it's treated like one sale, rather than say if you
ordered five products, five individual sales, with shipping from five different
suppliers. My earnings on Redbubble. What I have earned as an artist on Redbubble.
I'm just gonna reference down here, I have it written down, I haven't memorized
it, so bear with me while I look down. Income for one year. I've been on Redbubble
for twelve months, and in twelve months I have earned $33.94 New Zealand Dollars.
That equates to roughly $2 83 a month, New Zealand Dollars.
That's with 83 designs uploaded.
Is it worth it, for me? Not yet. I am forever hopeful that it will
continue to grow, and I will have some more success with Redbubble like I
have on, say, Society6. Just to give you a comparison, I uploaded a video on
Society6, which again I will link below if you're interested in watching that. In
11 months, because I was on Redbubble first and then I decided to join Society6,
I have made $366.38 in US dollars. So that
equates to about $33.31 US dollars and that's
really great. I'm in New Zealand and with the exchange rate that ends up to be a
few more New Zealand Dollars, so the difference between my experience with
Redbubble and Society6 is the difference between $2.83 a
month and $33.31 a month. with about the same level of
energy put into both. The artwork is similar, I don't tend to upload identical
artwork on the two platforms because I've always felt a little bit funny
about the offering and having the same thing on two different platforms, so
they're slightly different. So if, you know, you like this color, you could go to
my Redbubble shop, if you like this color you can go to Society6. Yeah, a
slightly different artwork, but easy enough to upload to both and tweak the
artwork a little bit to upload. So it's safe to say I am performing a lot better
on Society6, however I am very far off having print-on-demand websites be my
only source of income. I'm a full-time graphic designer and I
could not live without being a full-time graphic designer. That is what pays me my
income. It is a really nice supplement to my income, and I really enjoy uploading
to these platforms and seeing my artwork on different products, and every time I
make a sale, it makes my day. When I wake up and I check Society6, because I
have a little bit more luck on Society6 than Redbubble, I do a little happy
dance. It's really exciting, and I feel like the work that I did back then pays
off, even though it no way matches the amount of time and energy that I've put
in. I'm forever hopeful that it will continue to
grow and one day will just be a nice little earner that ticks over for me.
So that is the end of my video. Thank you for watching and for sticking through. I
would love to hear your experience with Redbubble, I would love to hear if this
video was helpful for you at all. Although I wasn't necessarily giving any
tips, because I don't have a whole lot to offer for you, it might have provided
some solidarity if you have been disappointed with your Redbubble
earnings or you feel like everywhere you see, 'I earned this much, I earned this
much, I'm a millionaire from Redbubble', and this is just an honest video. Maybe
you've had a similar experience to mine and you can think, 'oh ok I'm not the only
one.' Thank you for watching. If you liked this
video, give a thumbs up, or subscribe by clicking the button below, and I will see
you next time. Bye.