3 Simple Ways to Make More Money on RedBubble

Building an income stream on print-on-demand sites such as RedBubble can take a lot of work and patience. Hours go into creating great designs and uploading them to the site. Below, I've compiled a list of three quick and easy ways for you to boost your earnings based on the work you've already put in.

Tip #1 Promote your products and designs on social media.

This tip is number one for a reason. In a highly competitive market like RedBubble, many designs fall to the bottom of the native search results. This means that they aren't getting many views from potential customers. Once a design sells, it has the potential to move up in search results thus increasing its visibility and allowing for more sales. But if your designs aren't being seen, they aren't being sold, and therefore they aren't climbing up this ladder. By posting your designs across social media you can increase your audience and thus your design's sales potential.

My favorite social media site for this is Pinterest. Instead of maintaining a feed, like Instagram or Facebook, you can organize your pins into boards and then leave them alone for people to view. Pinterest also offers analytic options, allowing you to gain insight into the other interests that people interacting with your pins have. I noticed that users interacting with my designs also had an interest in baby clothes and parenting, so I created a board that includes some of my designs on onesies and toddler shirts.

Tip #2 Increase your margins, especially on low-cost, high-demand items like stickers.

You might assume in a highly competitive market that you need to lowball other sellers to make a sale. For low-cost items, I've found that this isn't necessarily the case. If someone is searching for a sticker, they likely won't be swayed by marginal savings to purchase a design they are less interested in, and instead, you are simply losing money on the sales you do make.

From my sales, it seems a lot of RedBubble users take advantage of RedBubble's buy 4+ or buy 10+ deals on stickers, which can cut deep into already low margins. If a customer buys one of your designs on a small sticker with the buy 10+ deal and your margins are at the default 20% markup, you make only 21 cents for that sale.

If your margins are set at a 100% markup for stickers, which is my current setting, you'd make $1.07 on that same order. Even at a 100% markup for stickers, they are still a best-selling product for me and I make a sticker sale almost daily.

Tip #3 Add more variations to designs that are already selling.

Do more of what works! If you have a design that is selling well, capitalize on that good idea and find ways to replicate it. For many designs, it may be as easy as adding another color variant. If you've created a black design for white t-shirts and products, create a white design to show up on dark fabric and transparent stickers. If the design falls under a certain topic or niche, think about other designs that could relate to people with that interest.

Many of the sales you make on RedBubble may include only one design. By adding multiple designs related to a singular hobby or interest you increase the likelihood of a customer purchasing multiple items from your store at once. Your customer isn't likely to purchase the same design multiple times or on multiple products, but if you have many different designs relating to their interests, they may choose more than one.

If you are creating sets like this, remember to turn them into a collection on your RedBubble store page so potential customers can more easily find the designs.