Cautionary Tales Of Print On Demand: When Redbubble Suspended Me
A bad experience but a good lesson. My loss, but your gain.
I have been on Redbubble since 2020 and have accumulated over 300 designs on my shop. All original designs. But one day in April 2023, the same day after I updated my shop with 5 new designs, my shop got suspended with no explanation given. I have no idea why, and I will probably never find out why.
I did all the usual things to resolve it.
I sent in an appeal and followed their instructions to send in a homemade mugshot of yourself that you take at home with a piece of paper detailing your shop URL and email. They did not respond or reactivate my shop.
I sent in more emails to helpdesk.
I messaged them on Instagram and Facebook.
I commented on my problem on their Facebook page, which by the way is full of disgruntled artists facing similar situations and a variety of other frustrating problems.
The common thread was that nobody responds to any of my emails, comments, DMs, messages. Zilch, nada. You cannot reach a human being, all they ever send out are automated replies.
What made things worse was the fact that there was a minimum amount you must have earned for the month (USD$20) before you are allowed to cash out on a monthly basis. If not, the amount is rolled over until the end of the year before you will be paid. So if you made $18 in January and nothing else for the rest of the year, you will have to wait until December before you can get that money.
So when my account got suspended in April, that also meant all the money Redbubble had yet to pay me was still with them. They sold my work and kept my earnings. And apart from legal action, which I can’t afford and will probably cost more than I can get back, there is nothing I can do.
So if you’re looking to get started on a P.O.D site, these are some things you should pay attention to_
- Do they have a responsive customer service team? Both as a customer and as an artist!
- What is the quality of their products?
- Do they do good marketing to constantly promote the platform and products?
- How often do they send payments for the designs you sold? Every month? Every two weeks?
- Is there a minimum cap on the amount you have to earn before you can get paid?
- Do they do good in house marketing / run regular promotions for their website to draw customers to shop with them?
- Have a look at the offerings of other vendors on the platform. What is the quality of the designs? Are they original work? In the case of Redbubble, it was also inundated with people stealing university logos and selling products with it, thus diluting the overall quality of the website since these sellers were essentially ripping off trademarked logos and profiting off it.
- Are you able to control the prices of products or adjust the artist margins? While Redbubble allows you more flexibility for adjusting a higher artist margin, the fact that there is a minimum cap on monthly cash-out is a red flag that I should have recognized. Hindsight is always 20/20.
Does it suck to see all your hard work put into a platform go down the drain? Yes it does.
Redbubble has never been my first choice P.O.D site, it was another avenue that I decided to expand to after finding some success with Society6. However, that success couldn’t be replicated with Redbubble due to many different factors such as:
1. Their reluctance to deal with the amount of low-quality accounts selling trademarked university logos even when I reported them. They said nothing could be done unless the trademark owner emailed them about it, even though it was something that can be easily investigated and verified with 5 mins of googling. Yet they refuse to do so. Which I feel says a lot about their stance on keeping good quality artwork and designs a priority on their website.
2. The lack of effective in-house marketing done on the platform. The in-house marketing at Redbubble felt very lacklustre as compared to Society6. It barely feels like they did any marketing at all. I manage to sell more through Society6 than Redbubble and it’s all through the website’s own algorithm and SEO functions. Sales happen VERY SLOWLY on Redbubble. As compared to Society6 where I consistently make sales every month, I make a sale on Redbubble once every few months. I upload the same art on both platforms but somehow sales always feel kinda stagnant on Redbubble.
3. The fact there’s a minimum cap on sales before you can cash out your earnings on a monthly basis is actually somewhat a red flag. Not every artist can confidently and consistently make at least $20 worth of sales monthly because every platform is different. While I could do that on Society6, I couldn’t replicate that success on Redbubble. You should be able to withdraw your entire profits on every payment cycle and not wait until end of the year to get paid.
But since there was nothing I could do about it, I decided to PIVOT.
I still have my Society6 store which will bring in the passive income, albeit slowly but money is money. I’m holding on to a lot of stock that I want to make more accessible for sale so I decided to restart my Etsy shop (which is a story for another day.)
So learn from my experience. Never put all your eggs in one basket and if possible, try to diversify after you’ve stabilised one source of income and build multiple streams of income. Don’t let yourself get caught off guard when something unexpected like this happens.
Have any business nightmares that you’ve experienced or stories to share? Drop a comment below or email me!
