What: Redbubble puts your art on t-shirts, hoodies, notebooks, stickers and posters — and lets you set your own profit margin.
Expected pay: NA
Husl $core: $$$$
Commissions and fees: Not applicable (You get a royalty on each product sold with your art on it; the royalty depends on the product and the mark-up you set.)
Where: Nationwide
Requirements: Be 16 or over; have art available for upload that doesn’t infringe on the copyrights of others
Review:
Like Society6, Redbubble puts your art on t-shirts, hoodies, notebooks, stickers and posters — and a wide array of other products. However, where Society6 sets a price per product and tells you how much you’ll make on each, Redbubble has a dynamic pricing formula where you can set your own margin.
For instance, if a t-shirt’s base price is $18.50, you can add a $10 mark-up and the site will sell it for $28.50. Or, you could decide to accept a lower mark-up to sell at a lower price. By and large, seller reviews are positive. Sellers get paid on the 15th of the month for the previous month’s sales. However, RedBubble has a minimum $20 payout. So, if your balance is less than that, the payout will be delayed until you hit or exceed the threshold.
Another positive: RedBubble sells your designs on a breathtaking array of different products, from stickers to clothing and device covers to home goods. The site says that the average artist earns a 17% commission. Artists on this site maintain all rights to their work, so you can sell here, as well as with the site’s many competitors.
Recommendations
There are several other print-on-demand services, including Threadless and Design by Humans, but our read is that Society6 and RedBubble are the two best. (If you want to sell art outside of print-on-demand, consider Etsy or Zibbet.)
What their sellers say:
“I’m a seller on Redbubble (I earn about 40-70 dollars/month) and I really like the platform. Good quality products, even tutorials and easy understandable guidelines when it comes to uploading and promoting your artwork. I also did some research and compared other websites to Redbubble and most of them can’t keep up and got less than 2 stars ratings and an immense amount of people complaining. On the other hand, they deleted 2 designs from my account once. I got no email or anything so I asked if something was wrong with it and why it was deleted. Since I got no response weeks later I just re-uploaded them and I had no further problems. But of course I’d have been happier with a proper reply and explanation.”
I was treated with great kindness and respect and felt that the support actually wanted to help me and find a solution. I didn’t have to wait long for responses and was met with a generous and very fair solution within one day, after explaining to the customer service that there was a difference between the color of the shirt i ordered (as seen in the preview online) and the actual color i received. So my concern was taken seriously and i was offered a satisfying solution.”
“Didn’t get a clear reason to why my account got deleted by them, contacted support and they sent me to their “specialists” that handle that stuff but haven’t heard from them in weeks. They also did’t answer any other mails about why it’s taking so long… Also, the products are under mediocre quality, but at an expensive price.
Additional reading
Nice comparison of competitor Society6 vs. RedBubble
Endorsement from artist/blogger Michael Essek
And another positive review from EmptyEasel
And from Fish of Gold
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there’s no image quality control. ordered an “exhibition quality print” that turned out to be a pixelated blown up thumbnail image.
I’ve been trying to use Redbubble for a few months now and have hit some important snags to note. I can’t customize the backs of the greeting cards with my own information. Kind of a big miss for me. Also ordered one of my designs to check the quality and it was total shite. I was really unhappy with it and now I’m left second guessing myself! I also find it hard to intuitively navigate through the site and set things up (like how a mug will look in the shop so you can ACTUALLY see the design). I HIGHLY recommend getting the templates and dimensions and designing your products to the exact specs. I had a “tall” mug made up and they stretched the design so it looks really dumb.
I am 14 and looked at the terms of service on the website, all they said was that you had to be old enough to have your own google account (13 yo). Why is it saying you must be 16?
Steer clear of Red Bubble if you are an artist or buyer:
I signed up as an artist to sell my work on Red Bubble.
I wondered why I received no money from the sale of my work so I logged into my account the other day and to my horror discovered that the bank account info in my account was not mine, I tried to change this and it wouldn’t allow me to do so, so I emailed support at Red Bubble and waited ages for a reply. Juan replied telling me to log in from a new browser and try again. I did this and then my account was suspended so I emailed Juan back and a bot sent a reply, I then went back to the site and tried to log in again but was told to appeal against my account being suspended by taking a photo of myself holding up a piece of paper with today’s date on it, my user name and real name and send it in with my appeal. I did all of that and the message was that they cannot guarantee a successful appeal which will take weeks. Now my account is offline as is my work – well to me anyway – I now feel that they have been paying the commission monies into their own account and don’t want me to find out so they have stopped me logging in. I was getting messages to say I had made sales and the pittance due to me would be paid to me and it was a pittance, I have tried several times to email them and my email tracker shows they are not even reading my emails. They have made a lot of money and are on the stock market, I suspect they are selling people’s work in Australia where they are based and not telling artists overseas, they are a bad company and they abuse and ill treat artists, I would strongly recommend that people steer well clear of this company and its website as that will put them at risk of the same abuse as I have endured. They have bots sending you infuriating emails and they don’t help when there is a problem. I am now considering legal action I feel they have stolen my work. They are crooks. (attached is a photo of what I now see when I try to access my profile on Red Bubble they have stolen my massive collection of artwork)
Hmmm..I’m doing the rounds of various selling sites, being a photographer İ want to sell prints, I was interested in the variety of products my photos can be added to..I thought more product to choose from makes sense, then I do a check to see how they are with copyright..as some of my music shots are of well known musicians and copyrighted to myself obviously..I made a little search..starting with ‘Wılko Johnson’ all the ‘products’ that came up are blatant copyright infringements especially as İ know the designers personally…namely the ‘Blockhead’ logo for İan Dury and the Blockheads..and The Dr Feelgood logo being used in another..not a good sign!! This should be noted and removed immediately..I will be informing said designers..not on..and therefore İ will give Redbubble a wide berth……
Artists and Designers READ the FINE Print before you place items on Redbubble. I spent close to 10 weeks in my spare time setting up my designs on Redbubble. I was doing the final tweaks before putting my items live when I was kicked off the site and when I went to log in I was told my account was suspended. I sent a couple emails with no response. I did not receive even an automated response. I final was able to find a way to appeal. It has been several weeks with no response from them. I am completely clueless why I was suspended. I followed the advice of an individual that had success from an individual on you-tube. I wrote them on facebook, today about two weeks later I received a response from them that said to send them an email with a link. However, if you read the fine print they can shut you down and suspend your account for any reason or none at all. They do not have to tell you why and basically say you are S____ out of luck. They also state they do not get to most appeals because THEY GET TOO MANY. So I am not alone. Lesson learned I opened my own site. I was very disappointed in this position and would have gladly addressed any issue(s) but clearly they were not interested in interacting with me as an artist on their site. The appeal process is to take a picture of yourself holding a note with your name and the date on it. Maybe if I was cute I would have gotten a response???? Very frustrating. If I ran a business like this I would not have any clients or suppliers but doesn’t seem like they care.