Tag: fashion

How to Sell your Art on Redbubble

sell art on redbubble
~ Julie ~ 3 Comments
selling art on redbubble

Hello fellow artists!  Today I’m sharing some info about how to sell your art on Redbubble, a well known Print on Demand website.

In this post I will be giving a review of my experiences with Redbubble where I have been selling my art for a few years now.

Read on to learn more about how to sell your art on Redbubble!

You can also watch this video I created about the pros and cons of selling your art on Redbubble and other Print on Demand websites.

Store Front

My first impressions of Rebubble is that they are artist focused, cater to a young and trendy audience and have a sense of humour.

Their website layout is sleek and easy to navigate. On the home page there are rotating featured artists and art works that are updated daily.

You can easily customize your store front with a header, profile photo, bio, collections and a featured collection which shows at the top.  Your art is displayed on a variety of products in order of the most popular or most recently purchased.

You can also “like” other people’s designs and “follow” other artists, and leave comments on their work.

Products

In terms of products, the range is similar to Society6,which includes apparel, various electronics cases, and home décor items. The prices are about the same as other POD’s and they often offer 20% off or other promotions.

Redbubble has some unique products that are not on other POD’s such as mini skirts, dresses and scarves. Below is a scarf I purchased featuring my Blue and Gold Mandala Pattern.

sell your art on redbubble - scarf

I love this scarf, the print turned out beautiful and the fabric is and soft and silky. I find it is well made.

I’ve also purchased a hoody, t-shirt and stickers with my own designs.  All are good quality and I’ve had no issues, however I did find the t-shirt ran a bit large.

One really popular product on Redbubble are stickers. I usually sell a few of these daily. So optimizing your designs for stickers is a great way to sell your art on Redbubble. Below is a picture of several of my sticker designs. They are super cute, and affordable too!

redbubble stickers

I also created a Youtube video showing all of the products I’ve bought from Redbubble over the years, if you want to see them in real life:

Ease of Upload

Redbubble’s uploading tool is by far my favourite out of all the POD sites I’ve tried.

I find it efficient because you can upload one image of your main design and adjust it straight in the browser for each product.  There are also tiling options, or you can replace the image entirely if neither of those options work.

You can also change the background colour which can be very handy when working with transparent designs.

You can also copy existing settings from another design, making uploading similar designs a breeze!

Earnings and Payment

It took about a month after opening my store before I saw any sales, but since then I have been getting consistent earnings every month. (I should note here that I was lucky enough to have a design featured on the front page which boosted my sales a lot.)

It’s not going to replace my day job any time soon, but any amount of extra cash is always welcome!

You can adjust the markup for individual products (in Account Settings), but it is automatically set to 20%.

Earnings are paid out automatically around the 15th of every month (to Paypal, or direct deposit), and there is a $20 minimum threshold.

Marketing

Redbubble has their own marketing team who are pros at driving traffic to their website, so it’s just a matter of getting your own designs on the website and seen by then.

Check out my post on Social Media Marketing Tips for Artists to learn more.

If you’re lucky and get featured on their front page, then you’re good to go for a long time. You can also find some nice promotional tools on the Redbubble blog. For example, fun marketing templates like this one:

throw pillow mock up template

Shipping

Redbubble has headquarters located in San Francisco (U.S.) and Melbourne (Australia). Products are shipped from suppliers in one of those areas depending on your location.

I have found they offer reasonable shipping costs to Canada, and even more reasonable within the U.S.  The shipping is generally pretty quick, and you can choose a faster shipping method if required.

Also, you get a free sticker with every purchase! 

Summary of How to Sell your Art on Redbubble

In sum, I highly recommend Redbubble for selling your art online!

I hope you’ve found some useful information here about how to sell your art on Redbubble. If you have any questions, or want to share your own experiences with Redbubble, feel free to leave a comment below! Also check out the Artists Resources section of this website for even more print on demand tips.

Have a great week!

Cheers,

julie signing off

Selling your art on Print on Demand Websites – Zazzle vs Society6 (Part 2)

zazzle vs society6
~ Julie ~ 22 Comments
zazzle vs society6

Welcome back to my 2 part series on Selling your Art on POD Websites: Zazzle vs Society6!

I hope you’ve had a chance to read Part 1, but if not you can do so here.
Now, carrying on from where we left off….

Payment

On Zazzle you will get paid once your balance clears $50. You can request a payout to Paypal, or reach $100 to request a cheque.

Society6 pays automatically to Paypal, any balance on the 1st of the month following the 30 day clearance period. I am not sure if any other payment methods are available from them.

society6 can cooler review
Can coolers from Society6

Product Quality

As you can see, I have ordered a few items for myself from both stores.  Overall, I have been happy with my purchases from Zazzle and Society6.

It’s hard to compare the quality of items since I’ve purchased different types of items from each store. However, I think the products on Society6 look slightly nicer.

Society6 carries American Apparel brand, so their apparel is consistent quality but not *the best* in my opinion (shirts are a little thin).  The cell phone case I purchased from them was OK, but didn’t provide much in the way of protection for my phone. The design looked quite nice and crisp however.

I ordered a biker tank from Society6 which has a nice image, but is very large (granted, it was unisex).

Zazzle’s t-shirts are nice quality but the print fades after awhile (after several washes), which is to be expected.  Some mugs I received looked OK but the image was little fuzzy. This may have been my fault due to not uploading high enough quality images).

Another point about Zazzle is that there are A LOT of products to choose from, and new items are added on a regular basis.  This can be a little overwhelming. But, since there are so many options you can create niche stores for things like just t-shirts or baked goods or only home decor products for example.  Personally, I am a little haphazard in my store and just make whatever my designs look the best on!

Society6 has a more refined list of products available in their store but they do add new products quite often. Their recently added throw blankets look really nice and cozy.

brunette girl yoga pose elephant pattern leggings
Leggings from Society6

Marketing of Products

Zazzle takes the cake in this regard, for having the simplest marketing options available.  They have an easy “sharing” section on the product page where you can copy and paste different links, share to social media, or select a nicely laid out clickable product image with options for both HTML or BBCode. You don’t need to know any coding or even have an image editing software in order to advertise your products.

Under Zazzle‘s Affiliates section you will find various sized banners which you can use to generate referral traffic.  If someone makes a purchase through those links you will receive referral income. Keep in mind — you can also received referral income on your own products ON TOP of your regular royalty!

Society6 has a curator link (similar to an affiliate link) on each product page. You can receive royalty on your own products or anyone else’s using this link.

One marketing initiative that Society6 does well is they will send an email before a big sale, such as Black Friday for example. In this email they provide you with templates overlays to help you create ads for your store so they look nice and consistent.  

Shipping Costs

Unfortunately the shipping costs to Canada on Zazzle can be pretty high. If you are in the U.S. however, then their shipping rates are more affordable. They even have free shipping promotions (only one time in a year did I see this promotion though).

Society6, on the other hand, often has FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE promotions. Sometimes the promotion is site-wide, while other times they give you a special link for just your friends and customers. However, not ALL products qualify for free shipping, like the framed prints.  They do a promotion like this just about once a month though which is awesome.

zazzle socks cat pattern print
Wine Coffee Cats Socks from Zazzle

Summary of Zazzle vs. Society6

So which one of these websites is better?

I think that is something you have to decide for yourself!  There are a lot of factors to take into consideration such as your art style, how comfortable you are with HTML coding, and how much time you have to put the work in for designing and advertising your products.

In my opinion, if you’re trying to sell prints of your fine art then Society6 might be better for you.  If you like design and making text-based graphic t-shirts and invitations then Zazzle will be your thing.  Try both and see what works for you!

For me, having stores on both websites is great for maximizing exposure.  I also sell on a few other websites like Redbubble, Teepublic and Amazon Merch.

I hope you have found this guide detailing the differences between Zazzle vs Society6 useful.  Feel free to leave any questions or comments below, and follow my blog if you like what you’ve seen here!


You may also like these posts:

Cheers,

julie signing off

Selling your art on Print on Demand Websites – Zazzle vs Society6 (Part 1)

zazzle vs society6
~ Julie ~ 14 Comments
zazzle vs society6

Welcome to part 1 of my 2 part series about Selling your art on POD Websites: Zazzle vs Society6!

I’ve been selling my designs on Zazzle and Society6 for several years now. So, I would like to share what I’ve learned so far about these two different Print On Demand demand platforms.

I hope this guide can help you decide which of these sites could be best for you!

“Print On Demand” basically means an item is printed or created after it has been ordered. You upload your art or designs onto a website and digitally place them on different product mock-ups. Then, the company prints and ships the product to the customer after they buy it, and pays you a commission in return.

You do not have to pay for anything or maintain an inventory, so this is a fairly risk-free way to get your art and designs out into the online world!

There are several websites out there who offer this service.  I chose Zazzle and Society6 after doing some research because they are both popular and widely known, offering good customer service and fair designer programs.

Pros and Cons of Zazzle vs Society6

Now I would like to discuss some of the major differences (mainly pros and cons) between Zazzle vs Society6. This is my experience as someone who lives in Canada.

Audience

Society6‘s audience is fine art based. There is more of a focus on prints, and different ways of displaying unique art work (ex. framed art prints, tapestries).

Zazzle caters more towards audiences looking for graphic design based products. Think wedding invitations, birthday cards, and business cards.

 Also, graphic t-shirts with funny/topical sayings are top sellers on Zazzle.

Store Front

As an artist I prefer Society6‘s store front, as you can customize your store front to show either just your designs as prints, or the different products you have for sale. You can also sort by new, random or most popular.

On the Zazzle storefront your “Home” tab is the landing page for your storefront.

Under the “Home” tab your “Most Popular” products show up first, followed by your “Categories”, then “Recently Sold” products, and finally “Latest Products”.  You can customize which categories are shown and re-arrange these under the Store Settings.

There is also a “Products” tab which shows a mix of your most popular items, a “Collections” tab (which can include your own products as well as other people’s), followed by “Comments” and “About” tabs.

While this storefront is a major improvement from what they had before, I find it a little cluttered and also think it may be confusing or overwhelming for a first time user.

A redeeming factor for Zazzle is that you have the ability to have multiple stores under the same account, which is not possible on Society6 at this time.

Ease of Upload

When I first started I thought Zazzle was easier to create products with, but once I caught on to Society6 I realized it is actually less work in the long run.

This is because first you upload your original image and choose the appropriate tags, and then your work is automatically placed on all of their different products. You may have to adjust the size or orientation for some products but most of them should work if your image is large enough.

On Zazzle you upload your image only once but then you have to create each item separately (they do have a “Quick Create” tool but I don’t recommend using it), and then add custom tags for each product. This one by one process can be very time consuming.

One thing that does set Zazzle apart though is that you (and your buyer) can customize each individual item with text or other images, all within their website.

Society6 has no options for customization after you’ve created your products, besides changing the colours of some items.

Earnings

Now the part you really want to know – which of these websites can make you the most $$??

Personally I have made more on Society6, but it will completely depend on your style of artwork, target audience and how well you market your products.

On Zazzle you can set your own commission rate, so it can be as  high as you choose — but keep in mind it will be hard to compete with other stores and get sales.  The typical commission rate is usually around 10%. I get anywhere from 0.10 cents to $10 depending on the item sold.

On Society6 you get a fixed commission rate on products, but you can choose your own commission for prints.  I generally earn about $4-$5 per sale, so the set commission rate seems pretty fair to me.

Also keep sales cycles in mind. Generally I get the most sales around the Holidays and Back to School (August) while the Spring and early Summer is generally quite slow.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2 of Selling your Art on Zazzle vs Society6 including information about: Payment, Quality of Products, Marketing of Products, Shipping, and my own Summary remarks!

What has been your experience selling on Print on Demand websites?  Do you have any of your own tips to share?  Feel free to leave your comments below!


Cheers,

julie signing off