Redbubble – the good, the bad and the Tukti

Redbubble is a print-on-demand site that works almost exactly the same as Amazon: we provide the content and Rebubble takes care of the rest. No need for a merchant site or shopping carts or the hassle of shipping to customers, Redbubble does all of that, and when things sell the artist gets a ‘cut’, usually about 20%.

So far so good. What’s not so good is the interface. Redbubble may be easier to use than other POD sites, but there are things you need to know, and the interface doesn’t tell you.

What sort of things?

The one that’s had me pulling my hair out by the roots is the requirement to upload FIVE, separate images to Redbubble. Until you do, nothing happens.

I uploaded three Tukti images when I first started playing with Redbubble. I made sure to enter my account details, my Australia ABN, and all the other bits and pieces that the tutorial demanded, but no matter how long I waited, I could not see any of my designs on Redbubble. And when I searched for ‘Tukti’, which should be pretty unique, I got zip. So I searched the internet for answers and eventually found out where to contact Redbubble support.

Only at that point was there any mention of 5 images. Nowhere in the introductory tutorial is there any mention of how many images you need to have before your ‘shop’ will go live. Internet searches popped up advice such as ‘it may take 5 days to go live’ etc, but nothing about needing five images.

So I emailed Rebubble support:

So…I /do/ have to have 5 individual pieces of artwork up BEFORE my shop becomes visible?

WHY is this not made plain right from the start??????

If I had known, I could have saved myself days of frustration. And now anger.

I’ll be posting about this on my blog. Pathetic.

yours most sincerely,

acflory

To which I received the following reply:

Hi,
It looks like you’ve reached out about an account restriction status. For your Shop to be visible to the public, you must upload at least 5 pieces of public artwork and enable at least 1 product for each design. After uploading your first 5 designs, it can take up to 5 business days for your shop to be visible to the public in Redbubble searches and with direct links.
If you still need to upload 5 designs to your Redbubble Shop, your Shop will be private to you, and your customers won’t be able to see your artwork.
During this time, you may see a temporary banner when viewing your artwork that says:
This work is not publicly visible as this account is currently Restricted

I joined Redbubble on March 4th, 2023. I received that confirmation email on March 31st, 2023. The time between March 4 and March 31 was spent trying to find an answer. The time from March 31 to today was spent creating more images.

And now the good news: today, finally, my shop and my merchandise are visible and open for business:

Clicking on any of those images will take you to a page on which you can see the items displaying that image. For example, if you click on the image called ‘Little Miss says MINE!’, you reach the page below:

I’m not sure how many people would want to spend almost $6 AUD on a cutesy pin, but then I’m the world’s original Scrooge. At this point I’m simply relieved that I have merchandise at any price!

So, if you’ve been going crazy wondering why none of your images/merchandise is showing up on Redbubble, make sure you have 5 images uploaded and maybe that will do the trick. Good luck!

As for me, I’ll put up a direct link to my Redbubble page, eventually, but until then, you can find my ‘shop’ here or simply go to the Redbubble website and type either ‘Tukti’ or ‘acflory’ in the search box. ‘Tukti’ will take you to some of my stuff, ‘acflory’ will take you to an option to ‘view’ my shop where you can find everything.

I do NOT expect you to buy anything, but a ‘Like’ and a ‘Follow’ would be lovely. I think both help to make my stuff more visible to buyers in general.

And now I’m making a pot of green tea to recover from all this excitement.

cheers,
Meeks