How I Made Passive Income On Redbubble

Anyone can start designing on Redbubble. But not everyone will be able to make consistent sales on the platform.

It requires a strategic plan to tackle the growing demand and competition and rise on top.

How I Started On Redbubble

I started selling my designs on Redbubble at the end of March 2020 after coming across a youtube video that excited me.

The idea in the video revolved around making simple text-based designs and selling them on Redbubble, where they will be customized into different products such as mugs, T-shirts, stickers, and phone cases.

I didn't have any design skills, but I had the curiosity and motivation to dive into a new venture.

I can summarise my journey in eight simple steps. These steps are critical to apply when you are starting on Redbubble.

1- Choose a niche:

Preferably, I would select a niche that I am interested in. I want you to forget the number for a while and focus on what topics you know.

• It is important to niche down, at least 70% of the time since this is where the majority of your sales will come from.
• Specialize in a specific language, hobby, culture, or social group. Once you have done so, then you can expand to specific events later on in your journey, for example, Spanish Christmas-themed designs for children.

2- Perform Keyword Research

This step can be broken into two parts, searching tags on Redbubble and using BubbleTrends to help generate trending tags.

• Search trending tags and designs on Redbubble: You can easily do that using the simple trick on the Redbubble website search bar. Type each alphabet one by one at a time in the search bar and view which keywords have the scaling graph image next to them.
• Open excel and take a note of the trending keywords then search them up one by one.
• The simple rule is that if there are less than 300 designs per trending keyword then it's a great opportunity to make your own designs on that keyword.
• Search on BubbleTrends: Alternatively, the quickest way is to go to BubbleTrends which shows you what are the best trending keywords and each search results.
• Opt for designs with less than 500 results for a better appearance of your designs in Redbubble’s search engines.

Remember to have your excel spreadsheet open so you can record the keywords you would need to focus on.

3- Allocate what categories you post in

My simple design formula: 80% niche-based, 10% general, and 10% trending designs.

1. 80%: Start by focusing on making 80% of designs niche-based
2. 10%: general designs will bring in sales but not as consistently and regularly as your niche designs, yet are still essential.
3. 10%: trending designs which will give you a boost in sales during the trend season which at the same time these need to be monitored and updated regularly. Avoid deleting them since you never know when they might bring in the random sale.

An example I’d like to share is of an RBG design I created a few months back. I used one of her legendary quotes and it didn't sell at all during the time it was heavily trending. Surprisingly in the last 3 weeks, I sold three RBG designs, two stickers, and one T-shirt. If I would have given up, then I would have lost these potential sales and possible futures ones.

4- Get designing

You can focus on basic designs to start off with text-based designs and then move to graphics.

• You can use the Canva program to incorporate some free graphics into your designs.
• Other great sites like Ipiccy, that has great free editing abilities and you can make gold and silver foiled designs with ease. These are great to add that spark and appeal to those who love glossy and shiny designs.
• If you are into photoshop but don’t want to spend on the membership, you can opt to use Photophea. It has all the elements of Photoshop but can be used for free without any download or disk space required.

Not into graphic design and looking for an easy way to create stunning designs? I’d recommend trying out Creative Fabrica or Vecteezy. They both provide you with a commercial license of text and graphic-based designs. The designs are created by creatively talented artists. Just make sure to use the .psd file of each design your download and change it around to make it your own unique design. This can be done by adding a different color, pattern, or element to make it yours. You can open the file in Photophea and add a border or text to incorporate your own touch then upload it to Redbubble.

5- Enable all products

Take the time to enable all products. This will help you to maximize earnings and exposure to your designs.

You will never know when someone will buy a high-earning tapestry just from seeing your design on a sticker.

6- Take promotion and marketing into your own hands

Redbubble is amazing when it comes to promoting your designs.

They have active cookies that follow the customers everywhere once they have viewed a design.

Yet in order to maximize earnings, you must be in charge of your marketing.

• Use free tools such as Pinterest to schedule 5 pins a day consistently.
• Tools such as Tailwind or Canva can help you schedule your pins.
• Canva is also amazing for helping to provide you with amazing Pinterest templates that are professionally designed to attract clicks.

You can design and schedule all your pins all in one through Canva in simply a few clicks.

7- Automate the process

Get organized by planning and creating many designs.

Plan to publish 10–20 designs per day with each having 15–20 tags each.

Automate the process of designing the pins on Pinterest. You can simply create up to 50 pins per document all with the same template, colors, and fonts. Simply change the text and image accordingly. This will save you hours of time and effort.

8- Batch Design

Batch designing is critical to staying on top of the competition and standing out among the crowd.

Use Canva to create designs. Inside each Canva file, you can open a maximum of 100 designs sized at 5000x5000 pixels. This is the perfect sizing for T-shirts, stickers, and canvas prints.

About The Author

Noor is a second-year business student at Tredu. She is also studying for Diploma of International Smart Industry at Tampere University. She is passionate about marketing and content creation. She recently launched her YouTube channel specializing in holistic healing.