Merch by Amazon and Redbubble are print-on-demand sites; they’re very different. Finding out the differences and who is better will be the main motive of this article. But before figuring out which is better Merch by Amazon vs. Redbubble, let’s find out what print-on-demand sites are.
Print on demand (POD) is a process in which book copies, t-shirts, mug designs, stickers, laptop covers, etc. They +are not printed until the company receives an order. The design gets printed on whichever product is selected by the customer.
- You need to have an online store.
- Your customers place orders.
- Customers upload the unique design, and sometimes it’s a kind of logo, sometimes it’s a meaningful picture or anything else.
- Dropshipping companies print for the customer and fulfil delivery.
What is Merch by Amazon?
Merch by Amazon is an exclusive print-on-demand service offered by Amazon. This service is an excellent way to make money as it does not involve any upfront costs. You need to submit an original graphic design and set a price for the product type to sell your design to the buyers.
The product can be anything that typically falls in the merchandise product category like hoodies, t-shirts – long sleeve and half-sleeve, pop-sockets, etc.
Merch by Amazon is ideally suited more for famous brands and others who already have an audience or following. Even if you are not a well-renowned brand, you can still use this service as long as you work at it and spend a reasonable amount of time promoting your designs.
You can sell designs created by you if you’re an artist, or you can even hire a professional to design for you. You can also buy readymade designs and sell them.
Another vital factor to keep in mind is to check what’s trending to keep up with the times. If you want to check what designs are popular, the Amazon Best Sellers Rank gives you all the information you need.
How Merch by amazon works for sellers
It allows designers or sellers to list and sell their artworks and designers on Amazon without any upfront investments. You have to submit your design, choose colors, and set a price. Amazon will do the rest.
- You create a t-shirt design, upload it to Amazon, and earn a percentage of each t-shirt sale.
- The royalties vary depending on the price you set for your shirt.
- You don’t have to do anything except upload designs.
- There is no fee to participate. Amazon only takes a percentage of each t-shirt sale.
- There is no fee to participate. Amazon only takes a percentage of each t-shirt sale.
Now, when it comes to the design itself, focus on the symmetry of objects in the design and use color contrasts effectively to highlight a specific part of your design or to attract attention to the whole thing
- Upload the design by following Amazon’s design specifications
- Decide on a price for the products you want to sell with your design
- Amazon will then create a product listing for people to see and buy from
- When someone purchases, Amazon takes care of the printing, packing, and shipping
You can make good money with Merch by Amazon, depending on your pricing and the kind of products you sell. T-shirts and hoodies are said to be the cash cows. The number of products you can sell decides which tier you belong to
You can get away with high pricing if you’re a well-known brand as you already have a dedicated, loyal customer base.
A Merch Dashboard helps analyze sales and promotion of your products. It is also the place where one uploads his designs.
What is Redbubble?
Redbubble is a print-on-demand website that works in an art licensing format.
They sell the finished product on which the artwork of an artist gets printed, and on each sale, the artist gets paid a royalty fee.
To start selling on Redbubble is entirely free.
All you need is just a PayPal account and, of course, original artwork that belongs to you to upload and place on their products.
You have complete freedom over which items you want your art to sell, so if you only want to have it sold on t-shirts, you can get it with Redbubble. You have the freedom to set your margin over their selling price. Still, a good rule to go about is to stay within a 20% markup because you are competing with thousands of artists on the platform;
For example, The customer looking for a unicorn t-shirt isn’t buying the one that comes with a 50% markup when hundreds of other unicorn designs are available with a 10–15% markup.
Redbubble will cover everything: hosting your images, printing them when someone orders, and shipping. You have to worry about bringing people to your shop; the promotion and marketing are 100% on you.
Also, Redbubble, like all other Print on Demand websites, is not a way to make quick money; that first sale can take months to complete.
You also need to be posting new work regularly; none of the platforms will say it openly. Still, we firmly believe they favor regularly active artists on their platform. You can’t upload ten designs in one day, do nothing new for six months and then upload one or two pieces and go silent again.
Also, thrive on posting original work, do not just slap a stock photo on a t-shirt; there are too many “artists” doing that these days. At the least, they get lost in a crowd of people doing the same thing; at the worst, they breach somebody’s copyrights, and if caught, it could be banned from the platform they sell on.
How Redbubble works for sellers
Redbubble sells pretty generic products, and the market is saturated with cartoon t-shirts, mugs, and stickers. You can only hope to make sales with Redbubble if to be serious. And a dedicated artist who produces original work and markets it right to your audience.
Unlike the other person who answered, it is NOT about the product. Let’s face it; it is a super generic mug/t-shirt/poster/whatever
None of the RB products are massively original or have a unique selling point. You can get those types of products anywhere.
What is unique is the ARTWORK on the product, and that is why if you hope of selling on PoD, you should be very clear about the fact that you are an artist and not a “t-shirt seller” You sell art, the PoD company is in the business of selling t-shirts (or other products)
All the well-known artists who sell on PoD have a very distinctive style. If you look at their social media handles, they don’t sell you the product on which it’s printed; they sell you the idea of their art on a wide variety of products.
Redbubble will not push a new artist at the top of search results because what Redbubble wants out of the deal is to grow its audience.
They have millions of designs in their database along with a pool of existing customers; they take on new artists because of the potential for new customers that a contemporary artist will bring them.
Redbubble also wants active artists, it’s not stated outright, but they favor regularly uploading artists. So you need to aim at uploading at least 1–2 designs a week and be very consistent with your uploading pace. It’s not about quantity, and it’s about quality and consistency.
We’ll go over some practical Redbubble selling tips so you can make money the right way on Redbubble.
- It doesn’t matter how good your designs are if they aren’t seen.
- Redbubble is a free platform that can help you get your work in front of the right people if you use it correctly.
So, here are a few tips and techniques to help you increase your visibility on Redbubble – and your chances of being seen and making sales.
Use ‘search friendly’ keywords in your titles, descriptions, and tags.
- Giving their designs appropriate, relevant, and search-friendly titles are one of the most common mistakes Redbubble Artists make.
- RedBubble also wants to know who it’s for and what search terms and phrases people might use to find it.
- This pattern is how Redbubble decides where your designs will appear – on which pages – and how it will promote them on Google.
- So, suppose you want Redbubble customers to see your designs. In that case, you must describe them using words and phrases that potential customers are likely to look up to buy.
- These words should appear in your title, description, and tags.
- On Redbubble, quirky titles and inside jokes may not help you make organic sales.
- Instead, use titles that are appropriate and specific to your design.
List your design on as many Redbubble products as you think are appropriate.
- Redbubble has over 60 different products to choose from, which can be overwhelming if you have to customize the position, colors, and other details.
- As more products are added, more product images are created, indexed by Google. This method will increase the number of times your designs appear in Google Image searches, resulting in more traffic and sales.
- You never know who is looking for that particular item.
Create Appropriate Collections (With Search-Friendly Names)
- This method creates a new web page with a relevant title and key terms that may rank in Google and help Redbubble better identify and promote your work.
- It also assists customers in locating similar designs that they may enjoy.
- But don’t overthink it. Don’t worry if you don’t have any apparent designs that lend themselves to a collection.
Also Read: How does Teespring work
Merch by amazon vs. redbubble
Merch by Amazon and Redbubble are print-on-demand sites; they’re very different. Now let’s compare both and find which is better in various aspects.
Accessibility
Anyone can create an account in redbubble and start selling immediately. You can go from hearing about the website for the first time to signing up and uploading designs within five minutes.
On the other hand, Merch by Amazon has a strict interview process. Going through the application alone can take upwards of 20 minutes, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll be accepted.
So, there’s no denying that setting up a Redbubble account is much easier.
Customer Base
Redbubble and their sister company TeePublic served 5.4 million customers combined in 2019. That works for about 450,000 customers per month.
Amazon is a gigantic beast, though, which according to many reports, serves between 150 to 200 million customers per month.
So, according to those reports, Amazon has almost 30 times the amount of customers in one month than Redbubble has in a year.
Product Choice
Uploading one design to redbubble results in the opportunity to publish over 70 different products. They’ve got t-shirts, hoodies, and all the usual stuff you find on POD sites, as well as pillows, phone and laptop covers, prints, shower curtains, mugs, skirts, bags, books, face masks, and more. Uploading one design means that Redbubble can put all these products on your artwork, which increases your likelihood of getting sales. You have access to all these products from day one.
Amazon has only 14 products to choose from options. Also, they don’t have the option to resize your design on a site like Redbubble.
So here, Redbubble is a clear-cut winner due to more variety of products.
Color Choices
Redbubble allows 18 color options available by default on their traditional print clothing, meaning customers can decide for themselves what they’d prefer. You’re also able to select a custom color on all their products, and there are millions to choose from. It can result in some fantastic combinations that attract buyers.
Amazon has 21 colors to choose from. Once you’ve uploaded your work, allow you to pick 10 of them to be displayed to your potential buyers.
So Redbubble is better in this aspect.
Profits
Redbubble allows you to set your product price but so does Amazon.
So whichever platform you sell on, you get to decide the profit margin as long as customers are willing to pay, of course.
Redbubble charges a base price of $16.87 for their standard t-shirts, and then you can decide your profit margin.
Amazon charges only $13.07 for their standard t-shirts, and then you can add your profit margin on top.
So, in terms of earnings, Amazon is better comparatively.
Copyright Infringement
Redbubble has a lengthy policy against copyright infringement. Still, they seem to rely on people reporting copyright material to take it down. They can lead to removing your product, or sometimes your account can be suspended if you repeatedly break the rules.
Amazon also has a lengthy policy against copyright infringement, and they are extremely strict too. The manual vet uploads for new sellers can wait days to publish your design.
Amazon checks designs as well as keywords you’ve used to describe it.
The punishment for violating copyright is getting your work rejected or removed.
Amazon will quickly suspend you if you violate those rules too frequently.
Recommendations
Amazon and redbubble both have pros and cons, so it depends on what you’re looking for in a print-on-demand site. Luckily you don’t have to choose just one; you can register for free and sell the same artwork on both platforms to expand your customer base and your passive income.
How to find what sells on Merch by Amazon
As you know, Pod sites, especially Amazon, are very competitive, so a seller must understand what products they can focus more on to sell. To find out what sells on Merch by Amazon, you can follow the below steps:
- Understanding and exploiting the amazon BSR.
- By using MerchInformer. It is a faster way to find as compared to BSR.
- Change the settings and target medium BSR products.
- Investigating the niches you’ve found.
And, also as days pass, you gain more experience and understand the marketplace better; you will know on your own what sells there quickly.
10 Reasons Why You Should Sell Merch On Redbubble
Talking about significant reasons to sell on Redbubble are:
- It is more user-friendly for beginners and more accessible.
- Simple signing up process.
- Simple designs also get sold in Redbubble.
- Redbubble has a wide variety of products.
- More color choices.
- There are a lot of items on the site that can be customized with text or images using the customizer tool.
- Your design will automatically show up in the store.
- Low competition as compared to other sites.
- Easy brand collaboration.
- Easy way to advertise.
How much can you make with Merch by Amazon?
It depends on various factors, but you can make some good side income from Merch by Amazon.
When you initially get approved for Merch by Amazon, you’re going to have ten slots open. Fill up those slots! Of course, the designs that you upload must follow all of Amazon’s terms and conditions, or else you’ll get banned.
Some people earn $20,000 a month, and some people deserve nothing.
Marketing your product can be a slight challenge. Luckily Amazon has one of the largest customer bases in the world. Start with basic keyword research. Think, “What would someone put into the search bar?” Your title and description can determine how you rank on Amazon, kind of like ranking on Google.
Share your shirts as much as you can. Friends, family, maybe even your Crossfit buddies. If you are active on social media, purchase your shirt and model it!
It may take you anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to see your first sale, but you will see an increase over time.
how much can you make with redbubble
Earning money on Redbubble is not related to your expertise. Still, to your graphic skills and (maybe more important) to the topic or niche you operate in. If your idea is excellent and trending, you can obtain good sales even if it is not so complicated in the graphic skills needed to create it.
Ideas sell more than skills and skill seniority.
Redbubble’s platform is easy to use, offers a vast selection of products, empowers retailers to sell their merchandise online, offers good customer service, and provides the ability to grow as a business person.
It is a powerful tool for the modern internet marketing age.
If you’re thinking you might want to start selling your artwork online, want to begin generating a passive income.
Or want to try your hand at online retailing in general, Redbubble is a great place to start.
The Redbubble designers will receive a royalty, usually between 10%-20% of the purchase price (you have a degree of control over the royalty percentage). Redbubble is entirely open and free to join. It costs nothing to start an account, upload work, or receive a royalty payment.
When your royalty account reaches $20, Redbubble will send your money to you via Paypal or directly into your bank account. (paid monthly).
FAQs
Can I sell on Redbubble and Amazon Merch?
Yes, even if you are a beginner, anyone can sell in Redbubble and Amazon Merch.
Is Merch by Amazon profitable?
With Merch by Amazon, you can make money, and it is profitable. You earn a royalty for every t-shirt sold with no out-of-pocket cost to you. For each new account, Merch will offer 25 tiers that you can take advantage of to sell your designed T-shirt. The more sales you get, the more tiers Amazon will provide you.
Does Redbubble work with Amazon?
RedBubble uses Amazon EBS to store database files and application code in a master-slave MySQL replication.
Is Redbubble good for Merch?
Yes, Redbubble is good to sell your merchandise.
So here is our article about Redbubble and Merch by Amazon. We hope you liked it. It will be great to have your suggestions in the comments below.
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Keep the conversation going
Hi, i’m Akash shaw creator of Adsvast agency , Hello, I am a perfectionist with deep love for aesthetics,
a graphics designer with expertise in logo design and branding.
My only goal with Notamartwork is try to help others to freelancers to get jobs and learn how to do freelancing.