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Author Topic: POD monthly average income  (Read 5114 times)

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lucato

  • [<o>] Brasil


« on: May 02, 2015, 04:07 »
0
Hi folks, I'm wondering what is your monthly average income at POD sites such as:

Zazzle
RedBubble
Twenty20
Fine Art America
Society6
Crated
Displate
or any other from this 250 places list.

So, what is your POD site/average income. I'm wondering if it worths the effort and time consuming. I will appreciate your honesty. ;0)


Hobostocker

    This user is banned.
« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2015, 05:04 »
0
not worthy as these POD guys expect YOU to find buyers and not viceversa, good luck with that business model ...

for anything else they're not bad as a platform but terrible for batch uploading a big portfolio.
this wouldn't be an issue if sales were steady but that's not the case in my experience.


« Reply #2 on: May 02, 2015, 08:21 »
0
I average $150+ net from Zazzle per month. Put a lot of effort in initially to set it up, haven't done anything for months. I need to give it another burst.

ShadySue

  • There is a crack in everything
« Reply #3 on: May 02, 2015, 08:27 »
0
I've only tried FAA so far.
The prices are such that the market is mostly US. I've only sold 2 phone cases and 2 greetings cards to buyers outwith the US.
Although US subjects are a small part of my port there, that's where most of the sales have come from. Two Scottish subject sales have been to US buyers (same 'landmark' subject) and one 'general' nature photo also to a US buyer.
You really do need to market outwith the site, they make no bones about it. Essentially, you bring in the buyers and they do the fulfilment.
My 'average' would be meaningless, it's just luck for me, as I don't market. Some months no sales, some one or a few.
Look at some search results. There are 'featured' images at the top, and often the first page of a search consists of images almost all by one artist, who presumably got in with the bricks and did well so got a high search position.
Still, I get enough (not many!) sales to make it worthwhile, but not enough to make a trip to the States specially to make more saleable images there!
« Last Edit: May 02, 2015, 08:32 by ShadySue »

objowl

« Reply #4 on: May 02, 2015, 10:34 »
0
Zazzle were my no1 seller this month with society6 in 3rd place, shutterstock were 2nd.   Are they worth the time and trouble?  If you have a good number of top sellers it would work, check out the competition.   I get a poor return for my efforts, but I don't do much promotion and funds keep coming so it might work out in the long run.

« Reply #5 on: May 03, 2015, 21:44 »
0
I get sales on Zazzle regularly, FAA once in a while, ArtofBusinessCards rarely, Crated never. That's all the POD sites I'm on, if there are any others worth the investment in time and effort please chime in.

« Reply #6 on: May 04, 2015, 01:41 »
0
To do it really working - it is correct - you have to do self promotion and bring buyers. With frequent changes of searches, policies, product spamming, keywords spamming, favoriting your return is depending only from you, your direct communication. These sites provide only platform, they promote themselves and who is involved only.

« Reply #7 on: May 04, 2015, 07:21 »
0
It's not steady for me but I think it's worthwhile - last month only sold one card on FAA - but other months I've had nice big print sales on both FAA and Crated - have sold more on FAA than Crated but I've been with FAA for a few years. A few smaller sales on redbubble. I don't have work on any of the other sites. I do some self-promotion across various SM sites - twitter, FB, pinterest and G+ and can trace some of my sales to my efforts - not sure how others find my work. My stock photo port has a lot of travel images and these also sell on the POD sites as do some of my more edgy artsy work, and some mixed media work, which isn't with any stock agencies. The only way to know if it's worthwhile for you is to try it. Look at the recently sold photos to get a sense of what's selling. Good luck.

« Reply #8 on: May 04, 2015, 10:38 »
-1
I gave up on Crated long ago because of their screwy 'curation' policy - basically if they didn't like you,  you didn't get in the search - and there was no way to find out what they wanted.  But I just looked at their site again, and it seems to be saying something a bit different.   Does anyone know if it's actually changed?

Is there now a process by which you can submit something and get a thumbs up/thumbs down, and maybe find out what they're looking for?

« Reply #9 on: May 04, 2015, 12:15 »
0
I started with zazzle few weeks ago but these days I wanted to finally start uploading. That site is a complete mess judging from my perspective...

First I created few templates to save time, apparently products show up in template after 2 days.  Then when I wanted to use them 3/4 of products that I wanted to create were showing the image that I used for creating template. So I manually changed image on those products one by one yesterday and today products finally showed up...
Tadaaaaaam... all showed up with the image I used to create the template and not with the one I used for the product itself.
That site is so tempting to throw your computer trough the window  ;D so if  anyone knows any trick to make templates work please let me know :)

I'm doing fine on FAA which is  with my best microstock site in earnings and recently started to build portfolio on redbubble.  As I'm setting high royalty percent I dumped society6 in start because Im not interested in anything bellow 30-40% and above 70% on prints and they have fixed prices on mostly everything except art prints but also there they set the canvas prices so you are forced to accept about 10% on them.

Never sold nothing on Crated but I have very limited portfolio there.






« Reply #10 on: May 04, 2015, 12:19 »
+3
Zazzle is the only one I have experience with, but the process of producing products is so tedious that I'd rather donkey-punch myself in the throat (even using custom quick-create templates).  It's a solid earner, and I'm glad I did the work in the past to produce so many items, but sales are just a small portion of what they used to be, ever since they changed the design of the website and probably jacked up something with their SEO. 

« Reply #11 on: May 04, 2015, 18:26 »
+1
I average $150+ net from Zazzle per month. Put a lot of effort in initially to set it up, haven't done anything for months. I need to give it another burst.

-1? I guess someone isn't doing so well. What a lemon

« Reply #12 on: May 04, 2015, 19:57 »
+3
Zazzle, IMHO, deserves some sort of award for being the most messed-up web-based business of all time, hands down.  The utterly mind-numbing complexity and endless, repetitious tediousness of their 'product creation' system cannot be described, it must be experienced.  I feel no shame in admitting I completely gave up, threw in the towel, closed my account, walked away and never looked back.  Life is too short.

 


 

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