October was my worst month ever for passive income. Not at all for the amount I made, but definitely for the mistakes I made. If you’ve read this post, you’ll see that my Redbubble account was suspended on October 9th.
I still got the payments up to then, and also my other, side accounts on Redbubble which were slowly banned over the days following.
Not included in this post are things I am not actively working on. I made some Kindle sales (and I’m looking into this a little more now), and some affiliate income from Amazon from some websites I run, as well as a few quid from some AdSense clicks.
I’ll start to report these things if they pick up or if I start to focus on them, but they’re so inconsequential right now that I don’t even consider them. Maybe £10 total there.
Here’s an overview of my Passive income for 2020, as well as my current, mid November thoughts and feelings on Print on Demand.
October 2020 Passive income report – Overview
| Thing | Amount that thing gave me |
| Redbubble Main Store | £552.96 |
| Redbubble Side Store | £81.66 |
| Merch By Amazon | £17.90 |
| TeePublic | £44.47 |
| Lodger Income | £495 |
| Total | 1191.99 |
So much lower than my previous report. Two months ago, my min Redbubble account brought in over £1300, and I didn’t even update it that month. How times have changed!
Redbubble, Main and Side store – £552.96 + £81.66
Redbubble actually banned every store I’ve ever opened, I had five, three with sales. They likely ban you based on shared details; mine were all linked to the same payment method, but also probably they’ll ban from the same IP.
Losing £800-1000 a month is not something that I’m happy with, obviously. As far as I can tell, my general sales were slightly increasing as usual over this period.
I actually sent an apology to Redbubble, but they never replied after they suspended my account. I am sorry, but I doubt anybody has read my apology.
My side store here was banned just under two weeks after my main account, and it was picking up in popularity and sales as well. I made a few bulk sales there before it was banned, so these will get paid in during November.
Honestly? I’ve considered making another Redbubble account. I’d be silly not to, even though it’s against the rules. I’ll likely use another device completely, and either my mobile data or a public WiFi.
Merch By Amazon – £17.90
I have only just started putting real effort into Merch by Amazon, and that is because I am an idiot. I should have done this ages ago, it’s bloody brilliant. The following is my PrettyMerch snapshot (USA selected)
I’m in tier 100 at the moment, with 76 sales total (75 US and 1 UK) and I’m not making consistent sales at all. In fact the things I posted weeks ago are only just starting to sell. I made a sale as I was typing this, so that’s nice.
I was a little ‘lucky’ with my Merch account, and a bit cheeky really. I had a piece of FanArt make it to around a 30,000BSR, and that was pulling me through the tiers.
I’ve since deleted it and I’m focussing on 100% original work. Maybe I should have let it pull me to tier 500, but I didn’t want to risk any takedowns.
Here’s the current state of affairs on Merch for me. I’ve got my slots filled, but so far, only three designs have sold. That’s 73 sales of the piece Fan art, and 3 from original designs, but it is very early days.
I keep reading that designs take weeks to months to actually rank on Amazon properly.
As I’m only in Tier 100, I am pricing my work very low, the sale just now netted me a cool 70 cents, compared to the few quid I’d get from a T-Shirt sale on Redbubble.
Merch by Amazon feels a lot more competitive, and it’s a lot harder to get your work found.
Moving forward I need to just go over my Merch uploads, whittle out the poor designs and replace them with better ones.
I’ve also uploaded to products other than standard Tees, so I might scrap the fancy products and just get more original designs up on the basic tee.
Still learning this, but great to see validation in the form of sales.
TeePublic – £44.47
That’s an affiliate link there. All my links to Teepublic are. Click it if you like. TeePublic is actually looking to be a nice little gem of an earner.
It’s consistently giving me more every month. Much like my early days of Redbubble, I have completely neglected TeePublic only until now, and by putting a bit of work in, I’m seeing a bit of some results.
Earlier this month, I created, uploaded and sold a design within three hours. I have a smooth workflow with Merch, using the same files I upload to that. It’s very quick to upload to TeePublic, much more so than merch, or even Redbubble.
If you’re uploading to any Print on Demand site, you may as well also upload to TeePublic, it’s just so damn quick to do so. I actually uploaded 48 designs to TeePublic, basically everything I put on Merch. As always it takes a while to rank properly, so I’m happy to wait a while for this.
Lodger Income – £495
More important than ever is my income form my lodger. Consistent, at least I know I’ll get it every month. While it can be a bit of a faff living with somebody in a flat, it’s not that bad overall, especially when rent day comes around. After losing Redbubble, my lodger income has become more important than ever.
There’s not really much to chat about here really! if you have a room spare and feel up to it, consider renting it out. It’s free money.
Goals for next month
I have a daily routine I stick with to ensure I can live on at least a subsistence level of living. This involves earning a certain amount every day self employed, and creating a certain number of designs every day (recently 5, so I could max out my Amazon uploads).
I’m hoping to tier up on Amazon soon, so I want designs ready to go. My only goal moving forward is to make £100 passively, total from all sources not including my lodger income. As always I am researching other ways to do this.