I’m a designer at heart. I love to create cool images and funny puns and make something with them. That’s why I’ve chosen print on demand as one of my side hustles, alongside my writing. Currently, I have a few designs up on Redbubble and Spring, and I have some thoughts.
While this isn’t intended to be any sort of in-depth Redbubble review (though that may come later) I do have some thoughts I’d like to share with anyone who cares to read them.
Redbubble is a site that allows artists to upload designs to be put on all sorts of products to be sold. When someone buys one of those products, the designer gets a cut of the sale. Pretty cool. This is often referred to as print on demand. As a customer buys (demands) a product with your design, that product is created (printed) and shipped to the customer. You then get paid an amount based on which product is sold.
I’ve been creating designs under my company named Grace Grounded and have been posting them on Redbubble and Spring. While I don’t consider myself anywhere near an expert, I’ve learned a bit about how it works and some of its benefits and drawbacks.
Redbubble vs the competition
Redbubble isn’t the only print on demand site out there, of course. And it isn’t perfect. But it does do some things very well. There are plenty of other sites out there that offer much of what Redbubble can do – and even more in some cases.
I’m trying out Spring (formerly TeeSpring) as well, and also looking into Zazzle. But we’ll see how Redbubble goes for now.
I like a lot about Redbubble.
Redbubble does a lot of things well. Granted, I’m still learning about the print on demand options, and I may eventually find that I like another better. But right now, I’m enjoying the functionality that Redbubble provides. Maybe you will too.
Redbubble has a built-in audience.
Whereas some print on demand providers don’t do much more than fulfill orders as they come in, Redbubble is a bit more. It’s a marketplace of sorts. Artists can set up storefronts and be discovered by any of the website’s many users.
Redbubble has tons of available products.
From t-shirts to shower curtains, there are tons of products on which artists can put their designs to be printed and shipped to customers. I’m enjoying creating everything from mugs to desk mats and pet bandanas.
Marketing images of my products? Yes please.
Being able to upload my designs to Redbubble to be sold and printed is cool enough, but Redbubble even provides downloadable and shareable images of what my product will look like. These images can be used to market my products across social media or on my own websites. That means I don’t have to create my own mockups or spend too much time on leg work before I create posts promoting my products. Pretty cool.
Redbubble’s support seems great so far.
So far I’ve had to reach out to Redbubble support twice. Not because of anything wrong, but because I’ve had questions that I’ve needed clarification on, and both times I’ve been helped by extremely helpful customer service agents.
While I would hope to have a great experience with the support team at any company, I’ve had some pretty bad support experiences with various companies over the years (not print on demand providers, just in general). So it’s certainly a feather in Redbubble’s hat in my mind.
But Redbubble isn’t perfect.
As much as I do like Redbubble, there is one thing I wish I could change. As time goes on, I may find more things that I’ll wish I could change about the site, but right now this is the biggest.
Artists cannot turn off certain colors for certain designs.
TeeSpring isn’t perfect either, but one thing they allow that I appreciate is the ability to turn off certain colors of fabric for certain designs. Let’s say I have a design that’s white. Clearly I don’t want that to be printed on a white piece of clothing because the white design on white fabric would mean the design wouldn’t be visible. And sometimes a design just doesn’t look good on a certain color.
I have some that don’t look great on darker colors but do look decent on lighter colors. But Redbubble provides no way for me to specify that a design should not be available on this or that color. TeeSpring does allow this, and there I can disable certain fabric colors if I don’t feel they would be a good fit for my design.
Will Redbubble add that functionality in the future? I don’t know, but I can hope.
Redbubble is definitely worth a try.
While I haven’t tried many print on demand sites yet, I’m liking Redbubble so far. The process of uploading a design is very easy, and I like how flexible that workflow is. There are plenty of products and product types to choose from, and their support seems knowledgeable and helpful.
I haven’t been on Redbubble too long, and I don’t know if I will use it as my main print on demand provider long term or not, but in the meantime, I can honestly say I like it, and if you’re thinking of starting a print on demand side hustle, maybe consider checking out Redbubble.