RedBubble Routine

Hi I'm Byron from Canada and I draw Zombies.

When I first started as an online artist, I went the route many new artists take when they start getting comments from their fans to put their artwork on prints, shirts or stickers. I searched out how to do this with POD (print on demand) websites. 

And then, like many inexperienced artists hoping to make a living from their artwork, I dove right in to websites like Zazzle, Redbubble and Spreadshirt. I spent countless hours adding artworks to those sites, putting my work on shirts, prints, mousepads, stickers and whatever else I thought someone might like to buy. 

Sadly, I didn't really know what I was doing back then, or how to properly market anything. People wanted tshirts and prints and stickers, so I made those available, but no one was buying. So many hours spent and zero return ... it was very disheartening. I had birthday cards, socks, tshirts, puzzles, mousepads, stamps, stickers, coffee mugs, keychains ... so many different products. 

I think I over did it though. Like I said, I was new to it all and didn't know what I was doing. I had to learn about product design and commission percentages. I also didn't have high speed internet so I had to spend hours uploading print quality artwork to the websites and then more time spent setting up the artwork on dozens of different products. I read and asked questions and tried hard to make it work, but I had some other things going on in my life so my focus wasn't there. 

Eventually I gave up the idea and closed it all down. Mostly for my mental stability because even though the POD site sort of runs itself, it's always in my mind that I needed to work on it and keep adding to it.

Quitting those gave me some peace of mind and let me refocus on just making art and connecting with people. A few years later I tried again with my own prints that I could sign and mail out to my customers myself. There's something cool about having actual stock supply of prints.

But it's just as hard to sell as the POD website stores, because you still need to create a storefront, set up shopping cart systems, put the items up for sale, etc etc etc ... and let us not forget the advertising. So many posts were made on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and anywhere else I could post my items to try and make a sale. I am very honest when I say this ... selling art online is hard, no matter how good you are.

That being said ... selling NFTs online is super duper easy. Building an audience/fan following using NFTs is also super easy. So easy in fact, that I completely stopped trying to sell original artwork of my signed prints. Totally gave it up without a second thought. 

Now, after nearly 2 years of selling artwork as NFTs and building up a fan base that likes my artwork, I've started to poke the POD bear again. This time though, I'm taking it easy and just selling stickers to start off with, and sticking to just one POD site instead of all of them.

You can visit my REDBUBBLE Sticker store here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/ArtistByron/shop?asc=u

The reasons for choosing RedBubble over any other POD site out there was simplicity. It's easy to set up the product, it's easy to set the royalty, it's easy to accept the payment and it's easy to market. And right now, I like easy. I like simple.

The fact that RedBubble is also available worldwide is cool. Most POD sites are, but not all of them. This image is directly from the RedBubble site about where they print and ship their products. This makes it much easier to sell to people around the world.

By keeping my products on just one site I'm able to update it daily, even if it's just one or two designs a day, and advertise it daily too. By driving traffic to just that one site, my views will go up, sales will go up and soon enough my little sticker shop will be making a few bucks. With a little luck, time and consistency my Sticker Shop can become a decent revenue source

Having the NFT audience that I have, and knowing that many of them also really like my art style, I now have the perfect crowd to market too. Many of them have been waiting for me to start selling my art on merchandise and I'm hoping it will pay off with a few sales here and there. I will post an update about my progress in a month or so. 

I might have rambled on a bit, or forgot to post some things, so I will re read this later and add to it if adding is needed.
If you have questions or comments, please let me know. Thanks for reading :)