Society6: Earn Royalties with Print-On-Demand

What is Society6?

Society6 is a print-on-demand site that invites artists and photographers to upload their images and use them to decorate a variety of products, ranging from tote bags to iPhone cases. Artists earn a royalty on each sale.

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How it works

The process is fairly simple. You sign up and start uploading images — the bigger the better. You then go through their process to determine whether you want to sell your image only as a print or if you want to put that image on anything from clocks to quilts.

Society6 review:

Like most print-on-demand operations, artists can upload photos, drawings, or other images to be printed on everything from posters to iphone cases. You decide what you want to make available and tell your clients where they can find it. Society6 does the rest, including getting your art on high-quality products, mailing the products to your customers, and sending you the agreed-upon royalty.

If you’re selling prints, the site will tell you its cost for each size print and you add whatever royalty rate you want. You add those two together to come up with a final price.

With the other products, Society6 has a “default” mark-up of 10% of the sales price. However, if you want to mark your products up more or less, you can adjust the default price in your pricing dashboard.

Default vs. Dynamic pricing

For instance, with the site’s default pricing, the artist gets $3.80 on a $38 sale. A comforter that retails for $110, would pay the artist $11. If you want to sell your art on t-shirts, you’ll earn about $1.80 with each $18 purchase.

With dynamic pricing, you look at the site’s base price for goods and add the margin you want on the sale. So, if the base price of a pillow is $35 and you want a 15% commission, your pillow will sell for $40. And you’ll get $5.25.

Promotions

However, Society6 does sometimes run promotions, where they’ll discount various products on the site. While you will earn whatever commission you set, discounts will affect your cash earnings. For instance, if Society6 ran a 20% sale on that pillow, its base price would be discounted to $28. Your 15% mark-up now amounts to $4.20.

Caveats

Realize that there is a ton of great art on this site and it’s all decorating the same products. So, to stand out enough to make sales, you’ll need to do two things: Use appropriate headings and keywords to show up in search. (Keywords are simply descriptive phrases, like “pink peonies” or “spiral design in blues and teal.”)

And market yourself through your own social media channels — Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok — or anywhere else you have a following.

Customer complaints

Also, the site has gotten some terrible customer reviews lately on TrustPilot, complaining of mis-shipped items and poor print quality. While customer reviews are different than artist reviews, they can impact your sales. Indeed, since our last update of this site, the customer reviews have have only gotten worse, with many customers saying they’re no longer willing to buy products here.

Worse, it appears that the problems are not on the artists end. (Artists need to make sure that the image files they upload to any print-on-demand site are dense enough to produce sharp prints, even when they’re enlarged.) That means there is little that artists can do, other than simply list their art elsewhere.

Payments

Artists are paid once a month via PayPal. Payments are made at the beginning of the month, 30 days following the sale.

Recommendations

Because of the raft of recent complaints about Society6’s print quality, we would recommend that you sell your products elsewhere. That said, Society6 does not demand exclusivity with your designs. You can sell them through other print-on-demand sites, as well as here, if you want to. But we no longer recommend this site. If you want to use Society6 anyway, you can sign up with Society6 here.

Other print-on-demand sites that appear to be better at delivering consistent quality: Spoonflower, which is particularly good for artists who want to sell repeating designs; FineArtAmerica, which makes extraordinary puzzles; and Printful, which charges less but leaves more of the marketing to you. (You can sign up with Printful here.)

If you want to make products yourself and sell them, we also recommend Etsy.

Want to try Society6?

Click here to join or browse products

What their customers say (from TrustPilot):

I was sent a print that was supposed to be 11×19″, like I selected on the website. It arrived 10.5×19″ – an entire half inch off and a size that there are literally zero pre-made frames for out there (would need custom only). Well, they won’t return it! Horrible horrible quality of product + customer service!

I paid top dollar ( over $200) for a pair of William Morris curtains. It took a while to get them and when l did l was shocked. The print was pixelated and extremely blurry and printed on some kind of rubber material. The shower curtain l had ordered from Amazon for 19.99 was better quality. I contacted them right away but haven’t heard back. Thank God l used PayPal. The curtains were horrible and looked nothing like the pictures.

Poor quality

I am an artist. I began to host some of my artwork for print on demand on Society6 around 3 months ago and ordered by first sample piece as a Christmas present for my mother. It was a small framed print. The printing, the one point of quality this site advertises, was abysmal. The colors were dark, muddy, and undefined. There were strange white spots that looked like mold in a grid across the print and the frame itself was flimsy and had no back stand. It was not worth the $20 price I spent, it felt more like a $3 execution at most. I will be removing all my artwork from this Society6. I do not feel comfortable with any fans of my artwork buying from their site.

This order was my absolute last and I won’t ever use this company again. They make returns as difficult as possible and put the entire burden on the customer. I will never support that kind of company practice and neither should you.

I ordered a a queen sized printed blanket. The blanket was extremely thin and the printing was just awful. I ordered November 7, as a Xmas gift and paid over $100. My grandson hates it and I cannot return it! Live and learn. Won’t be ordering from here again.

What artists say:

Marc Johns: Why I sell my work on Society6

From XO Pixel: How I made extra money with Society6

*Updated 1/22/2024