I’ve sort of been writing these posts in reverse order because getting an account set up with Redbubble was the easy part for me, and then the actual uploading of designs was the difficult part. I did those posts first assuming some poor soul who can’t find the right image sizing for their products would need that information more than instructions on how to actually put in all the information to start an account in the first place. But here it is: How a Redbubble account works.
To sell on Redbubble, you will need a Paypal account or a bank account. I’m not sure if they have any other payment options, and Paypal protects you when you’re online shopping, so it’s worth it to bite the bullet and set up a Paypal account if you don’t already have one (which will require a credit card and/or bank account number also). Redbubble used to pay you any time you made a sale, but now there is a payment threshold of $20, and you get paid on the 15th of each month. This change probably has more to do with their middlemen for money transfer than it does with Redbubble itself though, so don’t judge them too harshly for that (there’s probably a money transfer fee under a certain amount like how some places won’t let you make a purchase under $5 with credit card because the fee would be more than the sale).
Redbubble is also neat because they let you choose your margin. They have a base price that makes them a profit, and then you choose how much extra to charge customers so that you make a profit. I set my margin to about 30% on all products because I think that’s reasonable without making my products prohibitively expensive. That means that if someone buys a $45 product from me, I make about $15 (30% or about 1/3 of the list price). You can change your margin on each individual product under “product pricing” which is one of the links in the list on the left side of your Redbubble dashboard. Redbubble will also ask for a contact email because they send you invoices for your records every time you make a sale. You’ll get the sale email and then an invoice a few days later. To be clear (and it always says this on the invoice), Redbubble pays all the manufacturing fees for you. You make money when they make money, and you’ll never pay Redbubble for anything unless you order something from them for yourself.
During the account set-up process, Redbubble will also let you upload a profile picture and banner, type out a short and a long bio, and link other social media profiles to your your Redbubble homepage. Your uploaded profile picture and banner will likely get cropped in the process, but at least for the banner, no matter what image dimensions you upload, Redbubble will make it fit and cover the banner space (likely cutting off a good bit of your image if it’s a longer than it is wide). The short bio appears under your profile picture and gives people a quick blurb about you and your store. The long bio can also be included on your main page if you have a longer story to tell about your art for those interested.
As for linking other social media to your profile, when you initially do it, Redbubble gives you a few preset sites that you might be on, and if you have profiles there, just copy and paste your link in the given blanks. Once you do that and save, little icons for each profile will show up under your short bio and shop headings (shop, portfolio, followers, following, favorites, and favorites received). I have links for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Dribbble, Behance, Pinterest, DeviantArt, Flickr, and Google Plus.
That’s pretty much it for the main Redbubble set up process. There are miscellaneous other pieces of information that they might ask for or that you might choose to include, but the main things they need are a way to contact you, and a way to pay you.
The World of Print on Demand 