Society6 is another print-on-demand store that I sell on, and it’s second only to Redbubble in the number of “random discoveries” I tend to get (people who don’t know me buying my products). Those are the two big names in print-on-demand that most people know about if they do, so that makes sense.
While Society6 does bring me occasional sales, there are a few things I don’t like about it when compared to Redbubble. The uploaders are similar, but Society6 has three pages you go through: one for the design’s upload; one for the title, description, and tags; and one for the actual enabling of products. Unlike Redbubble, Society6 does not auto-enable all available products that your image fits on. You have to go through and click the on button for every product it will allow you to (if your image doesn’t fit the dimensions of a product, it will be grayed out and unable to be turned on). You can click individual products to adjust your images on them, but it frequently takes forever for the individual product editors to load (also unlike Redbubble, which opens them instantly). The proper image sizing dimensions are also hard to find (which seems to be a commonality with a lot of print-on-demand stores). I tend to use 7000 x 7000 pixels as my image size. It usually enables all products but gym bags, and it’s an absolute mystery to me as how to get those to work. If you’re using a PC and don’t have a good image resizer, I highly recommend downloading Image Resizer for Windows here: https://www.bricelam.net/ImageResizer/ The download will add a “Resize” extension that you’ll see in your gallery anytime you right click an image.
Another thing that mildly irritates me about Society6 is that you cannot set your own margin. You will make a fixed 10% (which isn’t a lot per sale) on all products except your art prints, which you can increase the dollar amount of individually. I want my work to be available many places to make as many sales as possible, and that’s the main reason I have Society6. It also has a few unique products not available on any other sites like its version of wood block wall art and wall hangings. The fixed margin mainly irritates me because it’s one of my most expensive sites, and I make the least percentage of profit from it out of all 18 of my print-on-demand stores.
One last drawback to Society6 is that they don’t send you notifications for anything. This could turn out to be me not hitting the proper buttons to get email notifications, but whereas Redbubble automatically emails me when I make a sale, when I have a new follower, and when I have messages, I have never gotten a notification from Society6 about any of that. I tend to just get random $5.07 or so amounts sent to my Paypal account, and this usually confuses me until I open up my Society6 earnings and see that the amounts sent exactly match my profits from products that I often find I sold months ago.
Besides these three main areas of inconvenience, Society6 is an alright sales platform. It takes my keywords (“oliviahathaway,” “ohartisticoddities,” and “okhismakingart”) properly so that you can search my work on the main site with them even if you don’t have my direct store link. The products look good, the search process is organized, and your best/most recent selling/liked designs automatically get shoved to the front on the main page for your website. I’ll get more into the interworkings of the site in the next post, but this is the brief overview of how Society6 compares to Redbubble and print-on-demand sites in general.
The World of Print on Demand 