Redbubble is a home for any voice and is reflective of almost every form of creative expression. It’s a marketplace of thousands of shops, all operated by independent artists from around the world. Artists like you.

Your shop is your own. And it’s up to you to make it thrive. But you’re not alone in this. We’ve got your back.

Think of your corner of Redbubble like any other retail space. But with a notable exception: no upfront expenses. So you can focus on delighting customers with original art on awesomely unique products.

That’s why we built this guide. To help you take care of the essentials from the beginning.

Let’s start with the basics. Your artist profile. The face of your brand.

Your shop’s appearance tells customers a lot about what they will find inside. Think about showing up at a store with no signage, descriptions, or any sense of organization. Not as impressive as it could be.

Customers often develop personal connections with brands. Your profile is their first exposure to your brand and kickstarts that relationship.

Spend some time writing a description of your creative style and the role of your Redbubble shop. Keep it short. Remember the 15-second rule, the amount of time you have to capture their attention.

Your profile and cover images are visually your chance to wow customers and encourage them to browse and ultimately buy from you. It’s often helpful to create consistency between the artworks they will find in your shop and the profile and cover images.

Whether it’s the new season of your favorite show, a social or artistic movement that calls you, or meme-worthy animal friendships, we all get excited about rad new things. The more often you add beautiful new artworks to your shop’s portfolio, the more options customers have, and the more likely they are to buy.

In case you’re thinking, “I’ll add everything now and never come back,” hold your horses.

A slow drip over time helps to reduce the effects of overwhelming visitors with too many options and provides frequent opportunities to get customers excited about new products and designs.

It’s a great idea to get your first five works added in the first month of creating your shop. Then keep things fresh by releasing new artworks each week and sharing that new stuff is available with your network.

The artist margin is the percentage of a sale that you take home. Chaching!

The full retail price a customer pays is the base price plus your artist margin. The base price includes Redbubble’s service fee and production costs. This changes based on where a customer is in the world.

You can increase the artist margin or markup as you see fit. For instance, if an artwork took more time to create or is popular, increasing the margins might be beneficial. Just remember that increasing the artist margin will also increase the retail price the customer pays overall. Got to keep the customers happy.er mindfully.

Placing your artwork nicely on each product is a big step.

Imagine you’re a customer. You come across an artwork you love. You also happened to be looking for a coffee cup to brighten your day on those stressful Monday mornings or during your study breaks on campus. The artwork looks great on a t-shirt, but not on the cup. Major bummer.

You love the artwork, but you don’t need another t-shirt right now. Guess you’ll have to pass on buying.

You can help this interested customer out in their decision making. When uploading artwork, consider adding multiple files with adjustments that will make them shine on individual products. You won’t regret it.

Tags are a big part of the experience on Redbubble.

Without getting into the tech details, tags are used to surface artwork and products to customers. Tag your artwork with the relevant keywords to help them get discovered and into the grateful hands of giddy admirers.

Keep in mind that no one likes a spammer or bot. Adding unrelated keywords won’t help you. Even if your work of a medieval castle shows up in a search for cute foxes

you still won’t make a sale. It’s also a hardcore party-pooper move.

Focus on words you think visitors are likely to use to find what you are offering. It can be a single word or a phrase. For example, words like “space” or “cat” and phrases like “cute fox” or “avocado pun.”

Remember, separate individual keywords and phrases with a ‘,’ and try to add at least 15 keywords to each work. It’ll take practice, but you’ll get the hang of it.

Google Trends

Google Trends gives you a high-level view of what people are searching for on the web. Get this: you can ever search popularity based on a specific word or phrase. A great way to see if those 15 keywords you’ll be adding to your artworks will land with the general web using public.

Social Pulse

Pop culture, entertainment and news sites like BuzzFeed and Mashable or microblogging sites like Twitter and Reddit are great channels for checking in on what people are talking about. You don’t need to be a superuser. Just helps with staying in the know.

On Redbubble

It’s a good idea to have a poke around Redbubble. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Go looking for something that speaks to you. See what other artists are creating. What styles pop up. You’ll start to see how you can create artwork unique to you that customers will love.

If you’re like most artists, you probably worry about promoting your art and yourself. But it’s a hurdle you can overcome.

Think of it this way. You made something awesome. It could be a hit. You can feel it. Then you go and put it in a dusty old broom closet somewhere. Brilliant, right? Wrong.

Unless you can say with 100% certainty that all your followers are psychic, it’s likely it won’t be found. The best way to help customers continue to discover the art you create is to tell them about it.

Trust in your art. Trust in your fans. And trust that if you continue to share, over time, they will become customers.

You will have to explore sharing in different places and at different times. But you got this.

When a customer buys a product with your work on it, they are often doing it for two reasons. The first is because they love the way it makes them feel. The second is often unspoken, but many buy from sites like Redbubble specifically to support artists and art in general.

Spread the word by starting an email list and sharing on social media. Create a promotion schedule. Get comfortable with asking others to share on their social channels and email lists as well. Remember, this is about more than just your art. It’s about sharing something special with others.

Redbubble is changing the way fans celebrate fandom.

You can now create officially licensed fan art on Redbubble. That’s right. Partner with your favorite movie, TV show, game, and digital brands to show off your creative chops. These brands love what you do. They’ve told us.

Entering the program is easy. Read the basic guidelines before you start. The rules are different for each brand, so don’t skip this step.

Then upload your fan art to Redbubble. Be sure to add the correct tags. They are specific to the brand and appear in the guidelines.

Cue the review process. FYI, work that is under review will not be available for sale. We’ll send you an email about the status of your work.

Once approved, sit back and watch as fans go into a frenzy over their new swag that you created!

Dashboard

The Dashboard in your artist profile is Redbubble’s way of doing metrics differently.

Get insights about customers, where traffic comes from, find out trending topics, and more. Less guessing = more creating.

The Blog

Stay up to date with all the latest trends, insights, and interviews and more, right here on the Redbubble blog.

Redbubble Artist Social Channels

Follow along on Instagram and Facebook for inspiration and fun updates.

Dimensions Clifnote

The dimensions of the file you upload effects your ability to sell art on products.

High-resolution files make the best prints. Big doesn’t necessarily mean massive file sizes. Resolution is the key here.

Email List

Stay in the know. Subscribe and manage your email preferences for game-changing insights from Redbubble experts to keep your shop growing.

The Help Center

Get your questions answered whenever, wherever!