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Author Topic: redbubble experience?  (Read 24489 times)

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« on: October 26, 2008, 21:16 »
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anyone have experience with selling on redbubble.com? 

http://cascoly.redbubble.com/

it's easy to set up to sell images as cards, prints, calendars, etc, and their tools for a website subdomain, or calendars

http://www.redbubble.com/people/cascoly/calendars/1932308-2-mountains-majesty

the big question of course is whether anything will sell



« Reply #1 on: October 26, 2008, 21:56 »
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I use redbubble, for me, well my work isn't arty really so I'm not shocked that my offerings haven't moved. I have friends who have sold a reasonable amount of cards on their but prints are rare sales. The big thing that sells are the t-shirts, I keep meaning to sit with my tablet and work on some shirt designs but time  >:(.  Mostly I use redbubble for the communities, the challenges give me fun things to do and I find that unlike say deviantart, the userbase are older and give better comments and critique.

« Reply #2 on: October 27, 2008, 04:52 »
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I only had one sale in about 6 months and deleted most of my portfolio there.  I couldn't put up with not having a watermark.  It is far too easy for people to take the large unwatermarked preview image and print their own cards.

I prefer zazzle but haven't found the time to upload much there.

« Reply #3 on: October 27, 2008, 07:42 »
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I couldn't put up with not having a watermark.

I agree.  The watermark is useless and they refuse to listen to their contributors.

hali

« Reply #4 on: October 27, 2008, 09:43 »
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I only had one sale in about 6 months and deleted most of my portfolio there.  I couldn't put up with not having a watermark.  It is far too easy for people to take the large unwatermarked preview image and print their own cards.

I prefer zazzle but haven't found the time to upload much there.

sharpshot, is zazzle giving you much sales? i 've been told i should get some of my archive to a place where they make cups, tshirt, cards,etc... but did not know too much about where.
now , as always, through this forum, i find zazzle.
is it the same method as micro, where you just UL your images...
do you ul the same image format like we do with stock?


« Reply #5 on: October 27, 2008, 11:18 »
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I only uploaded a few there and sold a couple of calendars.  It is a bit like uploading to a micro site but there are more options to choose when you select what you want to sell and that can be time consuming.  I decided that for now it would take too much time and it is probably best to stick with what I know makes money.  I don't think many people make as much there as most of us do with the micros.

« Reply #6 on: October 27, 2008, 11:28 »
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I only had one sale in about 6 months and deleted most of my portfolio there.  I couldn't put up with not having a watermark.  It is far too easy for people to take the large unwatermarked preview image and print their own cards.

I prefer zazzle but haven't found the time to upload much there.

sharpshot, is zazzle giving you much sales? i 've been told i should get some of my archive to a place where they make cups, tshirt, cards,etc... but did not know too much about where.
now , as always, through this forum, i find zazzle.
is it the same method as micro, where you just UL your images...
do you ul the same image format like we do with stock?



My photography really does not sell on Zazzle. Only a few cards, two posters.  But the stupid stuff I do, which would never be accepted for stock, does. T shirts about beer, politics, and just plain really stupid stuff, do ok. The more idiotic it seems, the better. My revenue there about $500 so far for the year.

« Reply #7 on: October 27, 2008, 12:20 »
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I have been on RB for more than a year now.
To date I have had 9 sales.
I'm not really all that concerned about the sales as my port there is for images that are not really stock.

It's a good place to showcase your more creative work.

« Reply #8 on: October 27, 2008, 14:58 »
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Red Bubble is really a site set up for artists who want to show off their work to other artists. Most the sales come from the contributors. The mob that own it are pretty lazy and are not into marketing their site to buyers.

You will never get rich there.

hali

« Reply #9 on: October 27, 2008, 15:06 »
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My photography really does not sell on Zazzle. Only a few cards, two posters.  But the stupid stuff I do, which would never be accepted for stock, does. T shirts about beer, politics, and just plain really stupid stuff, do ok. The more idiotic it seems, the better. My revenue there about $500 so far for the year.

 ;D i can do idiotic stuff too. if it sells, i wouldn't mind trying  ;D
but like sharpshot says, it's more work than micro.
do you find it so stormchaser?

« Reply #10 on: October 27, 2008, 15:51 »
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Red Bubble is really a site set up for artists who want to show off their work to other artists. Most the sales come from the contributors. The mob that own it are pretty lazy and are not into marketing their site to buyers.

You will never get rich there.

right, never expected to compete with SS sales -- but a few sales could easily bypass yay, cut, most, featurepics et al which dont seem to be able to get higher prices for what is essentially MS. 

the advantage seems to be an easier way to set up for calendars, cards, etc

s

« Reply #11 on: October 28, 2008, 00:36 »
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I've been with RB for a year, I think, and have sold enough to make a payout.  Several cards, two prints and two t-shirts.

But...I really don't use it to sell stuff.  I mainly use it so I can buy my own stuff at discount, which I then markup and sell locally at a few places.

hali

« Reply #12 on: October 28, 2008, 09:20 »
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right, never expected to compete with SS sales -- but a few sales could easily bypass yay, cut, most, featurepics et al which dont seem to be able to get higher prices for what is essentially MS. 
cascoly, that's what i've been thinking. i am wondering about just keeping DST,StockXpert, BigStock,
which are giving me sale ( not much but enough considering my small portfolio in such a short time),
and then forget about the rest esp the ones you mentioned. all big promises with bigger commissions.
but 70 % of nothing is nothing.
i will try zazzle. at least it will be one UL vs 4 or 5 Uls to sites that have not produced any sales.

« Reply #13 on: October 29, 2008, 10:36 »
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Redbubble is the first online art gallery that I joined and continues to be my favorite. We had just moved for the first time in over 20 years, and I was stuck inside by an extremely hot summer, asthma, and few friends. I decided to try and take a negative and make it a positive. I found Redbubble through a thread on dpreview.  It was still under 20,000 members when I joined. Initially, I joined with visions of large steady sales. It was naive of me to think that of any online art site. What I have used RB for is the community. I now have artist friends from all over the world. Plus, if I have any sort of question about photography technique, someone will always have the answer. One of the best ways to learn photography is to look at great photography, so I look almost daily to get new information on cutting edge techniques and subject matter. It's also useful for linking all of the sites where I post images. I've listed all my microstock pages on my Redbubble page. Since I've joined PrintBusinessCards.com, I offer T-shirts on Redbubble to match my business card designs. This could easily be done on Zazzle or Cafe Press, too. Plus, I love RB's framing. It's light, good looking, and durable. I have no experience with Zazzle's framing, but it's probably comparable. An odd thing that I've discovered is that when I Google myself, my RB images and journal writings are often the ones that rank the highest. Reading my friends' journal entries also led me to to stock photography. Overall, I'd say that Redbubble has been a very positive experience, but don't go into it expecting big bucks. It is a use tool for marketing, linking sites, education, and socializing.

« Reply #14 on: October 29, 2008, 13:51 »
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I was with Red Bubble for a while until about a year ago. I left because the watermarks were inadequate, and totlearnings were not recorded properly. These things may have been corrected since, but Zazzle is a much better site.

« Reply #15 on: October 29, 2008, 14:01 »
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I was with Red Bubble for a while until about a year ago. I left because the watermarks were inadequate, ... These things may have been corrected since...

I don't believe that the watermarks have changed any.  They are still pretty useless.

« Reply #16 on: October 29, 2008, 15:17 »
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My photography really does not sell on Zazzle. Only a few cards, two posters.  But the stupid stuff I do, which would never be accepted for stock, does. T shirts about beer, politics, and just plain really stupid stuff, do ok. The more idiotic it seems, the better. My revenue there about $500 so far for the year.

 ;D i can do idiotic stuff too. if it sells, i wouldn't mind trying  ;D
but like sharpshot says, it's more work than micro.
do you find it so stormchaser?

When I first started Zazzle it was kind of addicting. But I had a lot of silly ideas that would never fly with stock, so it was the ideal arena for it. Funny thing, if I really think about a concept or design, it will just lay there. But then I'll come up with something very stupid at 3 am, post it on a whim, and I'll sell 20 shirts. When Eliot SPitzer, NY governor went through the prostitute mess, I just used the stupid text tool right on Zazzle, slammed something stupid on a black shirt, and sold about 40 in 3 days. I also had a caustic Hillary Clinton Shirt there that did very well.

Zazzle does not support IPTC, so you have to put in keyword,description etc and I find that a huge pain. So yes more work there.

Because Zazzle is such a cess pool, full of teenage kids, copyright infringers etc, it can be tough to sell anything serious. But putting up a blog that relates to your content helps. The Zazzle pages are not search engine friendly, so you really won't be found through search engines.

So I just design some silly stuff maybe once a week, write a little blog thing with a design I like. I haven't worked really hard at it since my addition there has expired.  But the sales do come a few times a week. And if I think of something fun regarding current news, I get it posted really fast before they are flooded with them. If it appeals, I'll get a nice little sales bounce.

In order to sell serious photos there, well Zazzle flooded with the stuff. You would absolutely have to supplement with a blog/website. Stupid shirts, hats, buttons, do much better there. I stopped posting photos on cards and posters long ago.

Sharpshot mentioned calendars - yes those are a lot of work, but the singe image stuff goes up quite easily.

« Reply #17 on: November 10, 2008, 03:32 »
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Well I am certainly a RB fan here myself, as far as the watermarks go, they now also have a 1px gif overlay, so anytime u right click on someone's image that has this protection enabled (yes, it is up to the artist if they wish to enable this) it only downloads 1px. The BubbleSites ROCK! I honestly tip my head to RB for this, giving artists an actual website that stands on it's own OUTSIDE the community atmosphere, where people can order directly from. My BubbleSite is far from done at the moment, but I am seriously considering pointing my domain to here once it is: http://kkart.redbubble.com/

« Reply #18 on: November 10, 2008, 07:12 »
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Well I am certainly a RB fan here myself, as far as the watermarks go, they now also have a 1px gif overlay, so anytime u right click on someone's image that has this protection enabled (yes, it is up to the artist if they wish to enable this) it only downloads 1px.[/url]

It still does not protect an image from a thief that uses screen capture (e.g., via the PrintScreen button).

That is why a proper watermark is the only true protection from pirates.

« Reply #19 on: November 10, 2008, 08:28 »
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Well I am certainly a RB fan here myself, as far as the watermarks go, they now also have a 1px gif overlay, so anytime u right click on someone's image that has this protection enabled (yes, it is up to the artist if they wish to enable this) it only downloads 1px.[/url]

It still does not protect an image from a thief that uses screen capture (e.g., via the PrintScreen button).

That is why a proper watermark is the only true protection from pirates.


And your work there is watermarked. If you are worried about that, why even put your work online to begin with then?

« Reply #20 on: November 10, 2008, 08:52 »
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Well I am certainly a RB fan here myself, as far as the watermarks go, they now also have a 1px gif overlay, so anytime u right click on someone's image that has this protection enabled (yes, it is up to the artist if they wish to enable this) it only downloads 1px.[/url]

It still does not protect an image from a thief that uses screen capture (e.g., via the PrintScreen button).

That is why a proper watermark is the only true protection from pirates.


And your work there is watermarked. If you are worried about that, why even put your work online to begin with then?

The smaller view of the image (which is about 550 pixels on the longest side) does not have a watermark at all.  This would be considered a blog size or web size image on most stock sites.

The larger view (which is about 650 pixels on the longest side) contains a small watermark in the bottom right of the image.  Someone could just crop this out or remove it with Photoshop in less than 5 minutes.

The watermark there is pathetic.  To even call it a watermark is crazy.

To not protect the intellectual property of the contributors makes absolutely no sense to me.

They will never see any of my stuff (and lots of others on this board) on that site until they fix the watermark (and their attitude).

« Reply #21 on: November 10, 2008, 09:01 »
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Well I am certainly a RB fan here myself, as far as the watermarks go, they now also have a 1px gif overlay, so anytime u right click on someone's image that has this protection enabled (yes, it is up to the artist if they wish to enable this) it only downloads 1px.[/url]

It still does not protect an image from a thief that uses screen capture (e.g., via the PrintScreen button).

That is why a proper watermark is the only true protection from pirates.




And your work there is watermarked. If you are worried about that, why even put your work online to begin with then?

The smaller view of the image (which is about 550 pixels on the longest side) does not have a watermark at all.  This would be considered a blog size or web size image on most stock sites.

The larger view (which is about 650 pixels on the longest side) contains a small watermark in the bottom right of the image.  Someone could just crop this out or remove it with Photoshop in less than 5 minutes.

The watermark there is pathetic.  To even call it a watermark is crazy.

To not protect the intellectual property of the contributors makes absolutely no sense to me.

They will never see any of my stuff (and lots of others on this board) on that site until they fix the watermark (and their attitude).


Well I spose that's fine, less competition then for me lol I do great on there personally. I think though you may be looking at this from the wrong POV, this isn't a stock site, it is more along the lines of a fine art photography site, and images are in frames and such, think above the fireplace photograph. The last thing a customer whom is dropping big cash on a shot wants to see is a watermark plastered smack dab in the center of an image. It is an entirely different market and an entirely different need than stock.

I haven't experienced anything bad as far as attitude there goes, in fact, quite the opposite with seeing several things I suggested implemented, like direct reply to comments for instance.

There is always 2 sides to the coin and this is mine. I have had nothing but an awesome experience there and have sold quite a few things! I think, I will double check this later, that the watermarks have been updated to where you can move it within an image though to where ya want it be at. I will check that out

« Reply #22 on: November 10, 2008, 09:57 »
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In Shutterpoint, we can see when a comp download was made.  It's smaller than a screenshot, yet it makes people uncomfortable because seldom this turns into a sale.  Some people get LOTS of comp downloads, and they are concerned images may be misused.  And mind you, in SP you can draw your own watermark, and have several of them to usethe one that best suits your image.

It doesn't matter to me who is the normal public of a site.  I refrained from uploading to Alamy because of their lack of watermark.  Even if a regular customer of them would not steal an image, others who may find it may. 

So even if this is not an absolute security measurement, I value watermarks.

Regards,
Adelaide

« Reply #23 on: November 10, 2008, 10:24 »
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People can pay large amounts for stock photos that have a watermark on the preview image.  I don't understand why someone buying a print needs a preview without a watermark.  There might be a few photos where the watermark covers an essential part of the image but that can be fixed by letting the contributors move it, like some of the stock sites do.

« Reply #24 on: November 10, 2008, 12:53 »
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Well I am certainly a RB fan here myself, as far as the watermarks go, they now also have a 1px gif overlay, so anytime u right click on someone's image that has this protection enabled (yes, it is up to the artist if they wish to enable this) it only downloads 1px. The BubbleSites ROCK! I honestly tip my head to RB for this, giving artists an actual website that stands on it's own OUTSIDE the community atmosphere, where people can order directly from. My BubbleSite is far from done at the moment, but I am seriously considering pointing my domain to here once it is: http://kkart.redbubble.com/


And your work is awesome too! I actually have you on my dA watch and RB watch, love your HDR work.

The watermark is shoddy but I do two kinds of photography these days, the stock is something that I do watermark heavily but the arty stuff I do which I put on places like RB etc are less of a worry to me as they are primarily for print sales and anyone who does steal the websize image either has an inferior picture to blow up or is advertising for me.
« Last Edit: November 10, 2008, 12:57 by Einochi »


 

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