Redbubble is a website that allows independent artists to sell their designs on different types of merchandise, including clothing, stationery, device cases, greeting cards, wall art and home decor. It has become extremely popular for selling stickers because many people use them as laptop decor.
If there is something you’re looking for in particular such as a quote, band or TV show and you can’t find a design you like, it is surprisingly easy to make your own. You can either purchase it for yourself or make it public so other people can buy your designs.
Even if you don’t consider yourself an “artist”, Redbubble makes it easy and fun to create designs and earn a little extra cash. The best part is, it doesn’t cost you a cent. The site creates the actual products and handles packaging and shipping, so you only have to focus on designing.
Choosing the Right Software
It can be difficult to find the best editing website to use when creating designs. Adobe Photoshop, for example, can cost around $20/month. A good website to use is Free Photo Tool. This website is free and performs many of the same functions that Photoshop does. Most importantly, it is capable of formatting the types of images that are compatible with Redbubble.
Formatting the Design
When creating a design, it is best to use a transparent background. Start by selecting ‘File’, ‘New’, then ‘Transparent.’ This makes it so that Redbubble can cut out the design to place it onto their products.
Sizing is also very important because the design needs to be compatible with anything as small as a sticker, to a large sweatshirt. Redbubble’s recommended size is 3200 pixels in width, and 2900 pixels in height.
Free Photo Tool has a large selection of fonts, but if you don’t like any of these, you can download fonts from different websites, such as Dafont.
You can now create your design by adding text, colors and uploading images. When you are finished with your design, make sure to export your image as a PNG. This is the best format for Redbubble to work with.
Uploading to Redbubble
Start by creating your own Redbubble account. Then, you can begin uploading your art. Come up with a title and tags, so it is easy for customers to find your products. It is recommended that you come up with a minimum of 15 tags. Select the products that you would like to make your design available on and manipulate them to fit each item. When you are finished, make sure your item is public, so other people can purchase it, then click ‘Save Work.’
Getting Paid
It is important that you set up a payment plan so that your products can be made public to buyers. Redbubble recommends that you create a Paypal account. Once a month, the profits that you earn are directly transferred to your Paypal account. Redbubble takes a large portion of the profits of your design, but you can increase the percentage of your personal earnings from each product in your account settings. Ultimately, this will increase the price of your products, but you will bring in a larger income.
As rewarding as it is to sell products, just know that it isn’t necessarily a lifetime career. Most of the time, you only make about .50-70 cents per sticker sold. Clothing items bring in a larger profit, but these purchases only come every once in a while, especially when you’re just getting started. You can call yourself an entrepreneur, but you may not want to quit your day job.