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What is Redbubble?
Redbubble is a print-on-demand company that allows you to upload your design and sell different merch with your design on top to people on the Redbubble marketplace.
When someone orders your product, the design is printed on the merch of choice, send to the customer and the money gets delivered to your account. You don’t handle any shipment or any return. You don’t handle any products. All you do is create the design, upload the design, market your store, and that’s it.
Sometimes you may not even have to market your store because people can find your product in the marketplace.
This is what makes Redbubble stands out. Most print-on-demand companies require you to do all the marketing yourself and if you don’t market your store, no one will find your products, Redbubble has its marketplace where people come on the site ready to buy things. They’ll search things up and maybe find your product on the marketplace.
Step 1: Sign up for a Redbubble account
To sign up for a Redbubble account, simply head on over to redbubble.com
You can see the signup button on the top right-hand side of the page. Click on it and it’ll bring you to this page.
Make sure to click on artist signup instead of customer signup. The default setting is the customer sign-up.
You’ll enter your email, shop name, and password. Don’t worry, you can change your shop name afterward if you do decide to.
Step 2: Upload your design
The next thing you’ll do is to upload your design on RedBubble, you can create designs for free using Canva if you wish. Or, pay $9.99 for Procreate to design things on your iPad.
Click on the pink button called “Add new work”, and you’ll see the following page.
Click on “upload new work” and select the file you want to upload.
Fill in the title, tags, and description, and then scroll down.
You can edit the products to make sure everything is the right size.
You can scale the image, center vertically and horizontally, and change the color of the product.
Click on apply changes when you’re done editing.
You can also change the markup (price) of the products.
Click to disable the products you don’t want to show up in the shop.
Scroll down to the bottom to see the following:
You can select up to two media. For instance, I chose “design and illustration” and “digital art” for this design.
Next, you’ll select the default product in your shop. In my case, I chose “sticker”. This is what the customers will see when they browse for designs that they like. They’ll see the sticker as a default view and if they like it, they’ll click into the design to see all the other merch options available for them to choose from.
Select “anybody” under “who can view this work”.
If your design has mature content, you’ll have to select “yes” under “is this mature content”. For me, I chose “no” for this design.
Finally, you’ll click on the bottom box asking you if you have the right to sell the product with the design on top. If you designed it, you have the right to sell it.
Click on “save work” and proceed to the next step.
You’ll see the following page once it’s done processing.
You can click on “edit” if you still have to edit things. Click on “view” to see your product page.
Congratulations! Your design is live and you can start making money!
Step 3: Set up your portfolio
Navigate to the top right corner of the screen and click on the person icon. Select “Account settings” from the drop-down menu.
You’ll see this: Choose an avatar image by clicking the “choose file” button and then click on “upload”.
Continue to fill out the rest of the info on the page.
Once you’re done hit “save changes”.
Step 4: Edit payment details
Remember to also edit your payment details. You can find the tab on the left-hand side of the screen.
You’ll fill out your personal details including your first name, last name, email address, residential address, etc.
To get paid, make sure you select the right currency you want to be paid in.
You can choose to get paid via PayPal or direct bank deposit.
Once you’re done, click on “save changes”.
Step 5: Market your Redbubble shop
Now that you’ve successfully uploaded your design and set up your account, your next step would be to market your shop!
You can just stop here if you want because people can find your shop via the tags you put in when you uploaded your design.
But, the better thing to do would be to market your shop on your existing social media accounts.
Tell your friends and family that you have a Redbubble shop and invite them to view your available products. Encourage them to purchase some but don’t be upset if they don’t want to.
Tips on selling on Redbubble
- Find a niche
To do well on Redbble, you should find a niche. If you do want to dabble in another niche, create another account for it. You can link more than one Redbubble account to the same Paypal or bank.
Having a niche would make it easier to make a sale. Would you go to a doctor who specializes in ear infections or a doctor who does all kinds of treatment for humans and animals alike? This is why you need to niche down.
- Create social media accounts for your brand
I would recommend you create social media accounts for your brand. You can do so on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, p-interest, etc. You’ll see that a lot of top-performing artists on Redbbubble have a dedicated fan base on their social media platforms who are willing to buy anything they have in their shop.
It’ll take time to build up a social media following but the result can be so worth it.
I recommend you post at least once per day on all social media platforms. Interact with your viewers and those who comment on your posts. Learn how to grow on different social media platforms on YouTube. With time, the followers will come and you will be able to make more sales.
You should like what you’re doing so you’ll keep at it. There won’t be an overnight success. If you already love drawing, continue to draw, market your work, and release new designs on Redbubble.
- Take a look at the top artists to see what style of art is received well
You can click on the search bar and you’ll see the top artists pop up. Head on over to their shops to see what kinds of arts are doing well on Redbubble. Pick a design you like that is similar enough to your style and begin to create arts like that. You should love it because if you don’t what’s the point of creating an entire brand on something that you won’t enjoy enough to endure through the first few months of low sales and hard work?
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. You’re seeing what works and creating similar works of art of it. Of course, you shouldn’t copy them. Have your own take on the art style.
- Use as many tags as you can
Tags are how people can find your designs. People will type in keywords into the search bar to find products. It’s the tags that you put in that allow people to find your designs.
Make sure you utilize all the available space for your design so you maximize the chance of someone finding your design.
You should make sure the tags are relevant to your design and you aren’t just including tags that are popular.
- Do keyword analysis
A keyword analysis is good for any type of business and it’s also true for Redbubble as well. Here’s what you need to do. After you created your design, you want to go to the search bar and think about what people will type in, if the name pops up when you type it in, it’s a good indicator that enough people are typing it into the search bar and therefore it is a good keyword to use in your tag.
This can be tedious work but it ensures that you’re using the right tags that people are using and that increases the chance of people coming across your products.
- Enable all or most of the products
You can see that you can disable certain products when you upload a design. It’s better to have all or most of the products enabled as Redbubble is more likely to promote your design to the top of the result if there are more available products to choose from.
- Make sure you upload the largest dimension of your design
Say you make a design, you can upload it as a 300px x 300px file but the quality wouldn’t be as good. If it’s printed on the physical item, it may look very pixelated. You don’t want that. You should aim to get the highest quality design up on Redbubble. Yes, even if your design is 1500 px x 1500 px.
- Make sure all your designs fit comfortably on the merch
You’ll notice that some editing is required when you upload a product. Sometimes you may have to zoom out on the pictures and sometimes you may have to zoom in. Sometimes you may have to center things and at other times, you may have to change the background. Make sure you do all the editing required so you give your potential customers a good visual experience. It shows that you do care about your work and that everything you have in your shop is high quality.
- Design for trends
Keep an eye out for any trends happening. This is especially the case if a major holiday is coming up. You can also keep an eye out for holidays that aren’t mainstream. Holidays that only certain cultures celebrate can still bring you some money for you as there aren’t as many selling the designs for those holidays.
Keeping up with the trends is a good way to gain some following on Redbubble and thus sales.
- Try to get people to follow you on Redbubble
You can see that this artist in the picture above has a lot of followers and they are very active on many social media sites.
To gain a following you should make sure you invest effort into your bio. Your bio should talk about what your art is about. Perhaps slip in hints about your niche. For instance, your niche could be “millennials thoughts” or “cute animals”, etc.
Those who like your niche would follow you.
Final thought
It definitely is possible to make a few hundred per month from Redbubble. Some people are making thousands per month from Redbubble.
The work is mostly passive as you can design the work, upload it once, and continue to make the sale again and again but you do have to maintain your social media accounts if you have them.
Having a brand is definitely going to help you make sales and building your brand through social media would be quite helpful although it’ll take time to build up an audience.
Have patience. You won’t make a hundred sales overnight even if your design is amazing. There are tons of artists on Redbubble. You need to make sure you have an audience to market it to on social media. You can build up your audience as you continue to upload new designs into your shop.
Good luck on your Redbubble money-making journey!
Comment down below your shop name!
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