Comments on: Selling Photos through Red Bubble

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:28:34 +0000

I have been with redbubble for about six months now and am very happy with their management of the site and the way they handle my sales which are not brilliant but still another useful outlet. I don't expect anything much because the site is free but even if I had no sales of prints etc. it's a good shop window for commissions.

If David Winge [real name?] didn't sell anything, except to himself I can only conclude that his stuff wasn't very good and nobody wanted it.

By: Zehda

Zehda — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:45:08 +0000

I have been on Red Bubble for 1 1/2 years now. I am very pleased with the site & the artists!
I have seen some exquisite work on Red Bubble. A great deal of imaginative & fanciful work as well as beautiful realism.
I love the site. It's easy to use & I feel appreciated as a n artist.
I was reading your statistic about a possible yearly earning of $27 per artist per year.(hypothetically if every artist was making sales. I create mostly T shirt designs with some cards & posters, but I am pleased to report that I make $100-$125 a month roughly & I intend to keep participating. I am very pleased! I hope in future Red Bubble includes more T Shirt clothing styles.

By: Rowland Jones

Rowland Jones — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:21:08 +0000

It's distressing to read when people get conned by any site: but on a lighter note is David WINGE your real name or are you being ironic? Sorry to hear about your bad results.
If it's any consolation, I just submitted 10 shots to Shutterstock ..... and they rejected all 10.

by the way I have been taking photographs for nearly 50 years, have a Masters degree in photography, taught photography and film at University in Liverpool, Chester and Stafford. Awell.... what do I know......

By: barbara

barbara — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:47:16 +0000

It was my experience that management of RedBubble was so inept I shut down my account. People copy your ideas like wildfire; after coming up with something creative and different, suddenly there appeared 10 or 20 similar ..well, makes it hard to stand out. Happened a lot. Mgmt never answers your email .. that drove me NUTS. Very unprofessional. If you stand up to a fellow artist because you get NO support (i did this once and only once) .. then, as WendyL says .. those who MAKE WAVES get talked down to like they are school children. They scold you anonymously of course. There are several wonderful artists and photographers and the chatter is fun .. but you need to spend many many non-money making hours; I hosted a group. Management of course didn't even acknowledge this nor say thank you for the volunteer hours and hours Hosting takes. One woman copied an art piece of mine, almost to the letter, and after redrawing my art and publishing it - I sent her a copy of my piece and she chose to ignore me, REPORTED ME and management scolded me (anonymously generic email of course). You will need a lawyer if you are on redbubble. In my experience and my solitary opinion, redbubble stinks.

By: trena

trena — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:02:17 +0000

My husband and I are avid RB members. The ppl on there are so helpful... they offer you constructive criticism! I love hearing from the different members about how I can improve! Their comments make us do better! I would recommend RB to anyone!!!!!

By: wendyL

wendyL — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:51:20 +0000

Hi, I have been a faithfull member of this site since the beginning. I have sold alot of images! I have also hosted atleast 4 groups since I have joined.
Recently, I stuck up for another member when someone left a nasty comment for one of her images. His comment was "this picture sux" Not only did I send a sweet, yet diplomatic b-mail to him, but publicized his profile and rude comment! The woman (my friend) was really hurt by this! It was amazing how many people responded to my journal about this uncooth gesture. She was touched.
Nevertheless, I was suspended! Not only did this rude character have no art of his/her own, but went to the quote unquote LOL RB gods and complained! I let them know that what they are doing with my account now is copyright infringement, and they should be ashamed of themselves for not having the backbone to go after this rude person themselves! I am still suspended, yet they can sell my work????? WTF

By: Craig Bourke

Craig Bourke — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:31:54 +0000

Have to agree with Steven, products are way over priced for how poor a quality they are. I had a buyer contact me after purchasing a print through them saying how disappointed they were in it.

Really did not look good for me...

As for the facebook/myspace feel, do not ever offer some advice to people, you will be shot down all over the place, it seems the site is all about blowing smoke up someones arse rather than a good community to pick up tips on.

By: Steven Geer

Steven Geer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:41:54 +0000

After one year with Red Bubble as a contributing member and group moderator, I decided to leave as well.

As far as products go, they lack in variety and tend to be over priced.

Personally, I grew tired of it feeling more like facebook or myspace, rather than an artists' community. It just was not for me...however there are some wonderfully talented members on there. In the end, if it works for you- then that's what counts.

By: painterperson

painterperson — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:26:45 +0000

it would be good to hear what Redbubble has to say in answer to David Winge

By: Jackie

Jackie — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 07:35:03 +0000

I too have had nothing but the best experience with Redbubble, along with others when it comes to buying and selling work. As for it being an Australian based company - only adds to it imo.

By: Rory Kelly

Rory Kelly — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:50:32 +0000

Redbubble is an incredible community on which I have sold dozens of cards and prints over the last year and a half. I have also bought several cards, prints and T shirts. I have been delighted by the quality of service and the products. I would recommend the site to anyone.

By: David Winge

David Winge — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:56:31 +0000

The saga of my experience with Red Bubble and a warning to you.

I joined a site called RedBubble thinking they were a good resource for selling prints, getting prints done and t-shirts printed, I could not have been more wrong.

I loaded some print sized images and created a t-shirt design, shortly after this, I ordered a shirt, it arrived and looked good, the only problem is these were not preshrunk shirts, they do suggest washing them in cold water but what they don’t tell you is these are the cheapest cotton shirts in existance.

No worries, now I know, so I order a large laminated print as a test, thinking I can order my book cover laminated for a display during my shows, this was April 12th. I’m informed by one of their minions that my print shipped on 4/17 and should be here in a maximum of 10 days. Then by May 5th when nothing had shown up yet… I’m writing in their customer service ‘forum’ and someone else tells me to be patient, it’s coming from Australia. HUH? Ok, whatever. In the meantime I order 9 t-shirts to have on hand for my book signing.

May 27th, I have not recieved the print, the shirts do arrive BUT 3 of the large shirts are NOT PRINTED. WTF? Back to the forum… I post photos of the shirts: http://www.pbase.com/dwinge/image/113073536/large and I’m told all will be reordered and shipped.

La la lala la …June 10 I receive the print (still wondering where the first one is and who sold it) the print has this god awful crease across it, just below the center of the image, it’s unusable! ...Saturday the reprinted shirts show up, not the 3 Large that were missing, one each Medium, Large and XLarge.

Summary… they cannot read, they do not followup, their customer service is abismal and their attitude is one of go screw yourself.

Thank goodness Red Bubble is not representative of most Internet merchants, just sucks to be the one to get burned by them.

BTW, this is the reason my work is no longer available there.

By: Jo Star

Jo Star — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:57:55 +0000

Around our shop we refer to these as "vanity para_sites"
They get a free art department and full retail markup. The end user or buyer does all the vetting. A sweet deal indeed.

By: Matthew Erricson

Matthew Erricson — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:20:10 +0000

Well in this day and age of highly competetive marketers its not enough just to be able to take good photos.My advice is to learn and get a grasp of how to market.Its imperative you do this.Ive been a phtographer for over 25 years and it was only recently I actually acquired the nesessary skill to be able to market my own photos.Although Ive been fortunate having a productive career,its amazing what new doors open when you learn this seemingly simple fact. Photo F stop

By: samuel cain

samuel cain — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:06:44 +0000

I'm a RB member for more than a year and only sold a postcard, it's a very good site but for the moment photographers have to create their own sale, not enough traffic on RB to sale "alone". And they give a lot of tools for that (button, flash shows etc.)