It’s time for another post about tips to improve your existing Redbubble store. Your Redbubble store should be treated as an organism; it’s always growing and changing and hopefully getting better!
As soon as I find enough tips that I personally use to improve my store, I’ll write a post about them on Jeezpod.
There are so many sites that have such basic tips, ones you’ll see everywhere. “Add tags, share on social media”, for example. I want to write Redbubble tips which are actionable. You should be able to look at each tip and be able to put it into action for your own store.
Set proper sticker margins for your Redbubble store
One of the most basic tips you’ll see for Redbubble is to set your stickers to a 100% margin. This can be great, and has worked for me in the past, however you should consider the long term aims of your store.
Are you aiming to sell stickers? If so, by all means jam the prices up as high as you can. If not, you can use lower priced stickers to tempt people in. The effects are threefold;
Someone may buy a cheap sticker, a sale you might not have gotten anyway
Sales from cheap stickers (may) increase your search rankings in Redbubble search for your other products
People may be willing to buy more cheaper stickers from you, as opposed to one expensive one.
I’ve started to treat stickers as my shop window; something to lure people in to make bigger purchases. I’m not 100% sure if a sticker sale may boost a shirt ranking, but it is likely that it would.
You don’t need to worry about stock when it comes to POD, so for you, two sales of 50p is equivalent to one sale of £1. It may be easier to get two smaller sales than one larger sale.
I have noticed the difference since lowering my sticker margins. I am generally making more sales and more money, at a smaller cut per sale.
Group your designs
It can be helpful to design in ‘sets’. So make stickers that are a pair, or part of a set of three or four. If the design is good, it may mean an extra sale.
This can be great for areas like Husband and Wife designs, relationships, hobbies, band members, etc. Anything where a group is involved.
I have a few designs that are part of a set and they regularly sell together. In fact I’ll rarely make a single sale in one go, it’ll be two or more.
Adding these to the same collection will further boost their exposure when a customer is looking to purchase.
Use Pinterest if you aren’t already
I now pin all of my uploads, at this stage it’s silly not to. As well as likely influencing SEO, lots and lots of people use Pinterest to save things they like. Pinterest and Redbubble share similar audiences (people with money to burn who like luxury items).
I have said this before but I really feel the need to reiterate this point; you always need to upload more. If you have 10, 20, 50, 100 products you’ll likely not see many sales unless your designs hit a niche.
Despite what people say about art, Redbubble is a numbers game. I have seen so much success by just adding more products. If there is ever a key lesson to understand about Redbubble, it’s this;
Not earning enough? Upload more products. Boom.
So long as you try different things, you’ll eventually hit on a niche that you can exploit! I’m seeing a lot of people complaining they aren’t making sales, and then you find out they haven’t even got 100 products up!
These things, they take time, so what you upload now might gain traction in months, or even year.s It’s best to start now!
Work your way down the list, optimising your best selling products first. Redbubble is always adding new stuff (most recently pin badges and Face masks), so make sure your best selling designs are available on as many products as possible.
Use this as inspiration too. Are there any spin-offs of your top selling designs? Any trends you notice that you can further exploit?
Once a month or so I go through my designs to check for errors; misspellings, and add any new tags I can think of. You may be able to keep older designs up to date simply by adding a few relevant tags!
Make designs you would actually buy
While uploading more is great, you shouldn’t upload numbers just for the sake of adding more to your portfolio. Create stuff you would actually buy. Nobody is going to buy a recycled text deicing with a slight change.
Redbubble is not effort-free; you need to actually put some work in if you want this to pay off. Creating designs you would actually buy is a good start
In Summary
Hard to summarise what is essentially a summary post anyway, but in the words of Dan Le Sac; Get Better. That’s all you have to remember; apathy is death!
You can see the previous posts specifically about improving your existing Redbubble stores here and here, but lets get into it!
It’s tough to know when to stop when it comes to passive income. Your gratification is so delayed that you won’t even you’ve put in enough effort to reach a goal until a few months later. I’ve decided to write this post because I achieved my goal of £1000 a month passively, and I’m looking for where to go next.
I don’t really expect anybody to read this to be honest, for me it’s just good to write my thoughts down so I can read them later, but feel free to enjoy these ramblings.
Defining an end goal?
Reaching £1000 a month passively happened quicker than I thought, and it’s all down to taking in a lodger. While my online income is growing, I really boosted my income by letting out a room in my house. It’s no effort, I barely know if he’s in or not anyway!
I have an idyllic and hopeful view of my future. At one point I decided I didn’t want to work for somebody else. There seems to be no benefit to it other than security, and even that is a myth. For the most part, you do what somebody else tells you, when they tell you to, until you get promoted and you can boss other people around. You learn skills you don’t want to learn simply so you can be more employable later.
Of course this doesn’t apply to every job, but I would argue that it applies to most. Most people are probably not happy with their job.
Despite this I have worked quite a few jobs, it’s only recently, after being made redundant for the second time, that I think I’m going to fully pack in the idea of being an employee. My last job paid very well, but it just isn’t for me. I’m much happier right now, earning just what I need to get by, and being able to save a little each month.
My end goal is more of an ongoing idea; I want to be able to wake up, work on my own projects and ideas when I want, and not want to worry about an income. I want to be able to travel without having to book time off. I want to just have the freedom to leave my house, get in my car, and literally fuck off to wherever I want, whenever I want. Seems like a dream, but why should you aim for anything less?
Despite my younger years dabbling with work of the likes of Alan Watts, I think it’s important to have a goal to aim towards. If we don’t have a goal, then there’s no push or motivation to move anywhere.
Knowing when to stop
The problem with passive income is that it’s somewhat addictive, and the gratification is delayed. As your work needs time to mature and grow, its tempting to work hard and fast as soon as you can. Any time you spend not working feels like time you’re completely wasting. It’s best to define to yourself what passive income is an what it isn’t.
Passive income is a lot of work and it is difficult. Passive income isn’t free money for doing nothing. Passive income requires a lot of effort to start up, but it shouldn’t take a lot of effort to maintain.
But should there be an end point? Realistically, am I ever going to stop? If I’m not, then what makes this different from any other real job?
One part of passive income is that it gets much less fun as time goes on. The novelty does wear off. I remember getting excited at 50p a day. It was like a milestone. Now £5 a day doesn’t even phase me. As things move on, it’s easy to lose perspective. This is still free money, essentially..
So what next?
It’s quite easy to get lost in the swing of things. “Great, I made £500 this month, can’t wait for next month!”. I think this is something to think about.
Do I want to do this kind of thing forever? Probably not. It’s likely that Redbubble and other platforms will cease to exist, or change in such a way that it’ll be difficult to make a full-time income from. That’s always the danger with other peoples platforms. I should look to take my main niche and turn that into a large store, but not right now, that’ll come in time.
For now I’m quite happy with the upward growth considering everything going on in the world. It’s giving me time to focus on other things and set some real life, non-passive income goals, although I’m considering a new niche site, and a new Redbubble store.
In summary:
It’s good to have an end in sight when it comes to passive income. I’ve previously mentioned having short terms goals and long term goals. I’m not sure if passive income should be an aim, or just something you do to supplement your lifestyle. Both are probably fine, it just depends what you’re after.
A plateau can be good but its important not to stop. Take a look at how far you’ve come.
A few things happened this month. I did a bit of work on a few websites, and I picked up a freelance gig (which I’ve included here despite it not being passive, I’ll explain later)
Largely, not too much has changed generally, apart from the addition of my lodger income and my work from home job. My other streams have remained pretty much steady. It just goes to show; if you don’t put effort in, then nothing is going to change.
Google Adsense
I didn’t add much, but I migrated some websites to a new server. This was a lot of pain but it was long overdue. I’m going over these sites now and refining them once again, but it will be a long time until this pays off. Adsense used to be my main passive income source and there’s no reason why it can’t be this again. As most of the content is already there, it’s simply a waiting game for the most part.
Redbubble
I added many more products this month, and despite the Coronavirus epidemic, March has proven to be my best month on Redbubble. I’m hoping to see this explode soon; I’m expecting at least £500 a month from Redbubble alone when this epidemic all blows over.
I did add some products, but I mainly slashed my margins by a considerable amount. It hasn’t affected income as much as I’d thought,I’ve just made more sales. If a cheap sticker can cheer somebody up right now then that’s worth it.
Amazon Merch
Didn’t add anything; sold one shirt. I’ve only actually sold one design on Merch, out of the ten I’ve uploaded. Now that Merch is offline during the epidemic, I am focusing on other things.
Amazon Associates
It’s only 25p, but I thought to include it because I can’t remember where I have any active affiliate links! Amazon associates can be so powerful when used correctly. I mainly focus on creating sites to provide information, so viewers aren’t really in a buying mood, so I prefer ads over Amazon Associates.
Kindle Direct Publishing
I made £4, but I did write that book years ago and it still sells. Kindle is such a busy marketplace; it’s worth putting effort in if you’re aiming towards eBooks. I did publish a low content paperback on Kindle this month, but it hasn’t made any sales yet. I am not expecting any from it.
I had no income from TeePublic (Affiliate link!) this month. I don’t have a very strong TeePublic game at all. it could be down to me not having many products on there; I just prefer Redbubble. As they’re still operating during the epidemic, I might focus a whole day on getting a bunch of designs up.
Lodger Rent
I took in a lodger at the beginning of the month, just in time! £495 basically pays my mortgage. I barely notice he’s here, so I am happy to include this under passive income. I bought this flat with the aim of renting a room out, and I’m glad I’m doing it, it’s helping me save so much money.
Freelance role
I snapped up a freelance role this month. Now that it feels like the whole world is working from home, I didn’t want to miss out. I’m working for a popular dating app, moderating profiles. I’m getting paid per profile. It isn’t much, but it’s flexible enough that I can fit it around other things.
Spare 20 minutes? That’s around 60 profiles moderated. It depends on how I’m feeling but I am quite enjoying it. The only issue is that everyone else is now working from home; there isn’t enough work to go around!
I found a quiet period the other day and managed to get £9 in half an hour, so this role could potentially net me a slick £20 an hour if there is enough work to get through. For now I’m quite happy; it’s supplementing the lodger income and helping pay the bills.
Goals for April
I did not achieve my last goal (400 designs on Redbubble). The coronavirus epidemic put me off, so I focused on other things. It feels nice to get to £1000 a month generally, but I would like to get that much passively.
My goals for April are:
400 designs on Redbubble
Niche site fully checked and updated on the new server
Hope this post has been inspiring and I look forward to making another in one months time! I also hope you guys did well this month considering what is happening in the world.
You may have seen the news on Merch today; the print centres have been shut to allow for priority deliveries to get through. It’s going to affect a lot of people, but you can’t argue with what Amazon is trying to do. T-Shirts and hoodies are not essential items.
While this may not affect all of us (I’ve only just started on Merch), some may see a sharp decrease in their income because of this. While this may possibly push users towards other services, it’s sensible to think they will start to be affected soon too.
You should plan to have no income from print on demand for the next month or so.
While Redbubble shares (like basically everything else) has plummeted, I am still quite confident it’s going to bounce back. Even if it doesn’t, some other company will rise and offer a similar service.
This post is essentially a part 2 of the previous post; “How to cope with a lack of sales“, so read that for a bunch of ideas as well!
Covid-19 is affecting the entire global economy, and we should all use this time to our advantage; whether that is to be productive, or to focus on survival, or just to take a break. It’s very likely that you, along with 3 billion other people, are currently experiencing some sort of quarantine. So what would be some good things to do during a lockdown?
Chill out
For starters, take some time off! Life is not all about work. I have struggled in the past with a slight addiction to being productive, and feeling guilty for not being so.
Now is a perfect time to chill out and focus on your health and well-being. It should be your priority. While this pandemic may peak in a couple of weeks, it’s going to be a long road.
I haven’t put in any work for my online outlets for a good week now. They’ll still be here when I get back to them.
As well as being productive, opening a new shop will keep you occupied and goal orientated, especially good if you are this type of person.
Slash existing margins
It might seem counter-intuitive, but I have completely slashed my margins on Redbubble for the time being. there are a few reasons for this.
Firstly, nobody is buying anyway, and a cheap sticker might just lure them to a sale. If a cheap sticker can make somebody happy, then I’m happy.
I’ve accepted I’m not going make much of a profit this month, and it’ll likely be the same deal next month, but I might as well try and get some sales.
Margins can always go up later, and they might even benefit from recent interest due to low pricing.
Download your Redbubble sales statistics
Just in case Redbubble does go downhill, it’d be nice to see statistics of your products. These will help when you try to rebuilt your POD business elsewhere. You can focus on the products which actually sold, and ignore those that didn’t.
All of your sale information is now backed up. It’s a good diea to put this into Google Drive and sift through it. You might see some patterns. Which product types sold? Which ones didn’t? I’ve never sold a sleeveless top, for instance! Good to know, now I’ll not bother with those in future.
Learn a new skill
Since we’re all stuck at home, why not learn something new? Is there anything POD related that you just wish you knew? Now really is the perfect time to learn something that can help you out later.
Personally, I’m following a great web design course on Udemy. With the internet, you basically have the entire summit of human knowledge at your fingertips!
Graphic design, SEO, marketing generally, coding, Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, web development, heck, there’s so much to choose from!
Start a website
Finally, I’ll mention this. I have seen an increase in traffic to all of my sites since the lockdown. With people stuck at home, there is a larger audience for them.
If you have a passion, I would strongly consider making a website out of it. even if there are competitors, you cna still carve out a niche for yourself. Website income can be delightfully protected when it comes to something like a lockdown.
Everyone should own a website at least once, just to see what it’s like! It may even grow to be a big part of your life, like it did for me!
In summary
It’s going to be a tough period for anyone involved in print on demand. Hopefully, unlike me, you are not at least somewhat dependent on your POD income, so you’ll get through without much financial worry.
In light of recent events which you are likely aware of (The 2019 Coronavirus Pandemic, if you’re reading this far into the future!), you may be currently in a sticky situation regarding your passive income businesses. Personally, I have seen my sales plummet as the news has grown more and more negative. Simply put, people do not panic buy stickers, T-Shirts or mugs.
I am actually relying on this income now (I was made redundant and Redbubble is one of my main income sources!), but I can tell you I can not panicking. I know we’ll recover in the long term, but it’s all about surviving in the short term.
If Redbubble is just a side gig for you, you may not even have many concerns at all. However if you’re unsure what to do, this article is going to contain some great pointers on how to cope for the next few weeks and months.
Don’t panic
This is just temporary. I am so used to getting about 5 or 6 sales before I wake up. Recently I’ve been getting 1 or two sales a day. I was quite proud of having a no sale day for month but that won’t last forever.
It was a bit of a shock to see my sales tumble so much but we’re all in the same boat; as people creating and selling luxury goods, our products are not comparable to daily life essentials which people are worrying about now.
There’s enough to panic about right now (and enough to not panic about). For some of us, we’re going to be spending a lot more time at home in the near future. Things will recover in time. If you’re worried about your passive income, here are some nice thoughts to get you through:
You don’t have to maintain your stock
All the work you have done so far is not going to be wasted
You know things will pick up in time
Even if you do absolutely nothing, your sales will recover
Continue as normal
One of the great aspects of print on demand is that we can still continue as normal. Potential self-quarantine will not affect how we work. You can still easily upload designs and sell products without leaving your house. Depending on your working situation, now may even be an ideal time to have some time dedicated to improving your stores.
One this to consider is production and postage, but until we know there is nothing we can do. One good thing about Redbubble is that the production facilities are spread apart, so if one is shut temporarily, you’ll still be able to fulfil orders elsewhere.
Things may even recover sooner than you think. It’s a few days after the news of quarantines and lock downs hit us. I have noticed an increase in sales already; people just get used to things and their mental state returns to normal.
Optimise what you have
A break in sales is a great time to go back over your portfolio and optimise what you have. You may have seen that Pins are now being added for sale. Personally I am hoping they’ll be as well-received as stickers are and I’ve been making a point of going over my entire portfolio and enabling pins.
One of my first “business ideas” was to make pins and sell them on Etsy, so I’m happy to see Redbubble are enabling these. They used to be so fashionable!
Going over your old work and optimising it is always a good idea. You never know, you might have accidentally not enabled greetings cards, or perhaps your design would suit some socks!
Think about a Plan B
It can’t hurt to think of other avenues for income. The 2019 Coronavirus really impacted us, but it hasn’t affected every business. Even some passive streams won’t be affected as much by it; a passive website with ads will still attract visitors and generate income.
A hard truth to realise when you’re in the early stages is that you’ll probably not be able to retire on passive income generated by print-on-demand. It’s always best to diversify your income streams as much as you can when you don’t ‘own’ the processes involved.
To start with, take your existing designs and put them on another service! You could easily double your sales or more by exposing your work to a larger audience! Consider the following if you haven’t already:
Owning your own processes is a lot safer in the long run, which is why I used to mainly focus on niche sites for my passive income. Seriously consider a niche site if you find yourself wanting to branch out, and have a hobby or interest you are very passionate about. Check out my post about how I grew and sold my niche site. Hopefully it’ll motivate you!
In Summary
The only thing to think about is that your sales will recover, try not to stress, use this time wisely, and we can all get through this!
Just a short post for the weekend; I’ve talked about the good a lot recently, but there are plenty of downsides to POD as well. This is largely related to Redbubble, but things here can be applied to every POD-service you work with; be it Redbubble, TeePublic, Merch by Amazon, and to a lesser extent services like Printful and Printify.
Now for starters there definitely are clear benefits to print on demand over traditional selling (I’ll write an article about that too!), When you’re facing something new, it’s best to try and see a wide picture, and not to focus on the good or bad specifically.
You don’t want to buy into the hype and rush in, but you also don’t want to be discouraged by all the negatives either. I’ve really enjoyed my print on demand journey so far, but there are so many downsides to consider to see if it is right for you.
Low Margins
Some people do go into print on demand hoping and expecting to get rich quick! The truth is that you really don’t get paid a lot per sale. Some services don’t even let you set your own pricing.
At the start on Redbubble I was making as low as 13p per sale on Redbubble (before I changed things up!), which is one of the reasons I didn’t put much effort in at the start. I didn’t know the potential that Redbubble had.
Low margins are just part and parcel of the print on demand experience. You can’t expect to make a lot per sale if you aren’t handling the production, shipping or returns. The beauty of print on demand; the fact that it is passive, is the biggest part of it giving such low returns per sale.
Low margins still pay off in other ways. Imagine you were printing these T-Shirts yourself; you’d have to design, print, ship and handle returns. If you weren’t doing that yourself, you’d have to manage it and pay somebody else to. That’s a lot of time that could be spent otherwise just designing and uploading.
With any print on demand service, you can just upload, and then be done with it. I’d take low returns and no ongoing effort, over higher returns and continued effort.
Changing rules
You may not have seen this email; but it happens now and then depending on your niche;
“An Important Message About Your Work on Redbubble“, from the Redbubble Marketplace Integrity Team, is usually not an email you want to see first thing in the morning.
Usually this refers to a piece of work you have uploaded, and has now been removed. For me, it was because I uploaded semi-religious content.
Redbubble no longer want to have religious content printed on some items; items which you stand on, or place other things on. So no coasters, floor pillows, socks, bath mats, etc.
This is fair enough, you may offend people by putting a design on one of these items. Redbubble take a strict approach to it. Even if you have made sales, they will remove the design without warning.
It’s up to you to re-upload the design and only list it on allowed products. It’s a pain, and it highlights another aspect of print on demand.
On Print on Demand, you have to play by ever-changing rules which you cannot control.
I’m lucky, for me it was only two products, but the message is the same. You play by their rules, and they can change them suddenly. What if they decide to ‘outlaw’ your main niche? It could happen and it’s something to be aware of.
Other services are likely to do this to. As society changes, as more customers make more requests and complaints, print on demand providers will gradually change to suit their needs.
Quality street
As everything is out of our hands, we never actually see the products we are selling. Imagine a greengrocer never seeing the fruit he sells, how can he be sure of it’s quality? The only way would be to test it ourselves, but we can’t do that for every design we upload.
Usually this isn’t an issue, Redbubble and TeePublic use good quality producers, as does Amazon for Merch. But as above, we are relying on other companies, so they can always change these, and it’ll be up to us to deal with it.
There have been complaints about printing in the past, but as a designer you’re unlikely to be able to solve these. It’s a shame, and it can damage your brand if that’s what you’re trying to build, but it’s something you’ll need to deal with.
I have bought a few of my stickers, both to check the quality and because I wanted them. Once you have seen a selection, you understand the quality they are being produced at.
A little tip; buy your own work through another account to give yourself a sales boost.
Competition
Wouldn’t Redbubble be great if you were the only artist? Sadly you’re always going to have competition. No matter the niche, if you make a sale, then someone else will find out and try to get into your niche. Redbubble just wants a cut of any sale, so they’ll be promoting items which already sell.
Merch is especially notorious. There are tools to track sales of shirts, so if you make a sale you’ll be damn sure somebody else is going to come along and try.
It can be tough to fight your competition. It truly eliminates the passive nature of print on demand sometimes, but this can be a good thing. It forces you to make good designs that people want to buy. If you make a good enough, or the best design, people will buy it over a competitor.
In Summary
Passive income and print on demand is not a one way ticket to easy street. You aren’t guaranteed money at all unless you put some real effort in! Many “gurus” online push that it’s simple to get set up and once you’re done, you’re done. It just isn’t like that. You need to put a lot of effort in at the start!
It’s good to be aware of the downsides, and above all don’t let them deter you! Nothing is easy in life when you start!
I like talking about this story, why wouldn’t I? This is when my shenanigans trying to work out passive income online paid off. It stopped being a joke and it became a serious part of my life; changing it for the better and making me realise that you can make a living online, it’s not just a joke!
This isn’t a how-to or guide, but hopefully an inspiring tale (ramble) about how a somewhat ordinary guy with no particular special skills made passive income work for him. This is going to be a long read, so feel free to take it in chunks!
While this isn’t POD-related at all, there are so many crossover skills; if you do well in print on demand, you can likely do well with an authority site too.
I basically just want money for free without working.
to
I guess I’m going to have to work, but I don’t want to trade my time for money!
The second one is much more realistic than the first. It’s probably been hammered in to us all now, especially if you’ve been reading about passive income. “You need to put the work in at the start for it to pay off later.” It’s true. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to make money from doing nothing at the very beginning.
The chart shows a simple version of the process. You put effort in at the start for no reward at all. The reward is delayed, it can come days, weeks months or sometimes years later. Once you’re getting traction, you put more effort in to increase it even more, or you can just simply leave it and it’ll still grow organically. You’ll eventually reach a point where you aren’t trading effort for reward.
First attempts
I can’t remember when I actually first got into passive income, or how it dawned on me that it wasn’t really a joke or scam. Back in 2013 or so I made my first website with the sole aim of a making money from it. It was a game review site that tanked hard. A good lesson in what not to do.
I must have followed some online guides or read other’s stories later on because later that year I started a new type of site; an evergreen, informational authority site, monetised with ads and affiliate links. I’ll quickly explain the concepts if you aren’t familiar!
“Evergreen” means it relates to content that won’t be out of date. Some hobbies, sports, activities etc, they just don’t change over time. A website about one of these won’t need to be kept up to date all the time. A good example would be a website dedicated to Chess. Chess isn’t going to change. My previous game review site however, needed to be updated weekly or even daily.
“Informational Authority site” refers to a site which becomes the ‘go-to’ place for that niche. Something like MoneySavingExpert for budgeting; it has all the info you need in one place. If you have a question about finances, it will be answered there.
“Ads and Affiliate links” we all know what ads are, but affiliate links refer to a commission based payment. You refer a customer to a website, and you get a cut of a purchase they make. Amazon have a good one. You get a cut of their entire basket at purchase. Great if they click around Christmas, as you can make a lot of money with next to no effort.
My first site was about taxidermy. I know. Apart from helping out with a girlfriend at the time’s taxidermy project a few months prior, I had no experience or interest in the field. I just figured it was a good niche. It probably still is actually, but for me, I learned one big lesson from that site.
You need to have an interest in what you’re doing
If you aren’t interested in taxidermy, how on earth are you going to write thousands of words about it? You really need to have an interest in what you’re doing. It becomes such a chore if you don’t like what you’re working on. You start to question why you’re even doing what you’re doing.
I’m interested in passive income and print on demand, so I am running JeezPod. It doesn’t feel like work at all to write this. I can see why passive income is becoming more talked about, because many many people are very passionate about it (with good reason)!
The taxidermy site soon died, and I worked on another at the start of 2014. This was more like a store; focused on referring to Amazon, and targeted to a specific niche.
Hide your niches
It’s always best to not talk about your niches, so I’ll stop here. You can have the taxidermy one for free. It can be tempting to say you run an online store selling weird specific little things but be wary; people are out to steal from you if they see you are having success.
I see a lot of people posting their designs straight to Redbubble Facebook Groups and they aren’t doing themselves any favours. You won’t get a sale, you’ll just encourage people to copy!
I’ll be honest here. When somebody posts to a Facebook group I’m a part of, I’ll check out their shop, sort by best selling, and see if there is an untapped niche there.
I’ve not actually acted on that yet because I have such a backlog, but so many others will be doing the same. Treat that as a cheeky tip if you haven’t considered that before. It isn’t cheating, it isn’t scummy, this is simply a business tactic; they are a competitor freely giving away information.
The site after the Taxidermy site was much more of a success. To be honest I didn’t earn anything much from it. About £25 on Adsense and maybe £100 from Amazon. Over maybe two years. It was a great learning experience for website design and content creation, but not much a success elsewhere. Ah well, live and learn!
I’ve said it before, but you can’t expect your first attempt at anything to be good. It’s okay to be shit at the start. we aren’t born experts. Remember that quote; “The Master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”
I actually had a few little ideas here and there before I started the site I actually sold. I have no problem starting projects. Looking back now, I started nine sites in total before one actually paid off! These were mainly just small sites with a few pages. I either stopped because I lost interest or because I found out they weren’t worth it in the long run. It’s going to happen.
Fresh start
In January 2015, I started the site I’d eventually sell for £10k. January is a good time to start a project; fresh into the new year and raring to go. I had no job at the time, no prospects and was living at home with my parents. Well, who else is gonna pull me out of this rut?
I’d thought of the idea just after Christmas; a website completely dedicated to a specific hobby, something I already knew a lot about. I did my research, I saw the competition. It was good but not that good. I could write more, better, and have a better domain name, surely?
Putting the work in
What followed was about one year of creating content; writing and images, and then promoting it on Facebook and other places online. The hobby itself was quite easy to write about at the start, but when I ended up getting a job, I had to force myself to finish it. As I mentioned previously, having short term goals is a key to success.
I had a long term goal and a plan for the amount of content I wanted, and each short term goal would work towards it. For me it was a case of doing one chunk a day, every day, until it was done. And I did it. It wasn’t simple, it was tough.
I’d go to work, come home, work on the website until it was done. Every day. And this was only during the first year. I worked on this site for 4 years in total!
Actually creating the content for your site shouldn’t be the hard part. There are so many things to talk about for any given niche;
Talk about what you do which is unique in this niche
Research competitors and write their articles, but better, with more up to date info to a higher quality
Interview experts in your niche and use that as content
Guest post for other people
Conduct a survey and talk about the results
Highlight artists and creators within your niche
Talk about games, films and books within your niche
I did all of these things. I had so much to write about that my main problem was finding the time to talk about it all. You won’t ever run out of ideas for content, believe me.
Content to promotion
Reaching that first milestone was an achievement. I must have written about 80,000 words. It’s time to take a break when you reach a long term goal. It’s easy to want to keep working but you’re not on this planet to work yourself to death.
I’d seen a gentle growth in visitors to the site as I was writing content. In fact it was the most gentle slope; one you’d walk up and not even notice you were walking uphill.
A very gentle increase, almost all organic traffic. It’s basically a straight line with a few bumps up and a few bumps down. I did some paid promotion; boosted posts on Facebook mainly, but in the long run, it’s the organic traffic which was king. Towards the end I was getting 1000 unique users per day, which is more than many well known sites.
It’s great to see organic traffic; somebody has come to your website by choice. It’s a validating metric to see your organic traffic grow; more and more people are choosing your site based on the content you’ve created.
Big redesign!
I did all of my own work. I do the art, writing, promotion, SEO. Everything. I wouldn’t say I’m great at any of these, but I am not terrible. A Jack of all Trades. I find the best approach is to be at least somewhat skilled in every area you’re working in.
Need a new button graphic? OK. Need to fix that issue with the menu? Fine. Dodgy CSS messing it all up? No problem. I had some help on the server side (A good friend hosted my website for me!), but for the most part I was quite independent.
The site design; the logo and layout, were terrible. This was pointed out to me by my girlfriend at the time. Luckily, she was an artist, and she was into the hobby the website was dedicated to as well, so she knew the sort of ‘vibe’ expected from this sort of thing.
Together we redesigned the site, and it looked great. The logo in particular was iconic and pretty. To this day I still like the logo.
Pure laziness!
After I reached that first milestone, and with the site looking great after the redesign, I just let things sit for a while. It was here I learned that great thing about passive income; you still get income when you aren’t working.
It wasn’t much; £5 a day was a good day. I remember getting excited at a 50p Ad-click. 50p a day! “That’s £180 a year!”, I remember saying to a friend.
This above graph shows the ad income over the life of the site. The dropoff at the end there is when I sold it. Compared to the users image, the ads is a completely different story.
As soon as I finished the content, the ad income started to steadily grow. This is how you get lazy; you’re making more and more money with no extra effort. It doesn’t do any wonders for your motivation!
Branching out
Once I had all the content up, I took a few months off. The money was coming in, and I had a full time job now as well; anything I got from the site was a juicy bonus.
It dawned on me some time early in 2017 that I could reuse my content to make even more money. I had all this text and image content sitting there, on one site, and I knew I could reuse it!
Like how on print on demand, you can use the same designs on other services, I could turn my 80,000 words into something else; a video series, an eBook, a podcast, the sky was the limit!
I tried converting some of my articles into audio for Youtube but it didn’t seem worth the effort. Shy in front of a camera generally, I settled on an eBook. I felt it would be easiest to make the transition.
Reusing text
The eBook wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad either. It was just the site content, bundled together, slightly edited and put on Kindle. There were a few bonus articles just for the eBook, but I wasn’t expecting many sales. I was silly not to do this sooner, even sillier to not turn it into a paperback (wow I should do that now!)
The eBook went live to moderate to low success. I never promoted it, I just put it out there and left it. It still sells now (I made sure to retain rights to the eBook when selling the site), which is just another benefit of KDP and passive income. It’s been three years but I’ll get a sale or two a month. A nice bonus but nothing to shout home about, really it was just an excuse to promote my main website.
Reusing images
I started a Redbubble account to reuse the images. They’d make brilliant stickers, I thought. Turns out I was right; my top seller on Redbubble is still a sticker from this site. It just goes to show how simply trying something can work out for the best. There’s no harm in trying.
Redbubble was an afterthought but it soon picked up. When I sold the site in 2019, I was making nearly as much on Redbubble as I was on the Website.
Peak ads
I felt great when I was getting £100 a month from Adsense. It felt like an achievement. I ended up getting a much better job at the end of 2018 so I thought even less about the site. It was purely in the background for me.
At around 1000 unique users a day, the site was doing well with no input from me. It was then I was contacted by somebody wishing to purchase the site.
The email at first just seemed like spam. You’ll get it a lot when you run a website, however it looked like a regular email. I decided to reply and we got a dialogue going. After a few phone calls, I was convinced that they were legitimate.
The company wanted to build a blog network and had recently bought up a lot of similar sites. Mine was identified as a site they wanted.
Sell or keep?
There is generally a rule that you should sell a site for 2-3x the yearly income. I was offered £6k, which was around 4x the yearly income. I couldn’t believe it, but I was still hesitant.
The ad income was only increasing, and my full-time job itself paid £30k, so why rush into selling my site? I’d worked on it for 4 years now, it was worth more than that surely? I replied saying I wouldn’t sell for £6k, and I wasn’t desperate to sell at all.
They replied quickly, the next day if I remember right, upping their offer to £10k. Crazy. There seemed to be no issue with them paying more. A jump of £4000 in one day.
£10k was a good number for me. I always had a silly idea that I wanted to get a house before I was 30 years old. £10k would be a nice addition to my house deposit, and it meant i could move forward with my goal.
I thought about it for a weekend and accepted on the Monday.
I had some demands. I wanted to retain the eBook content, Redbubble store, and I also didn’t want a non-competition clause. This is important. I have a lot of knowledge about this hobby now, and I wanted to be allowed to use after I sold the site.
They accepted. It was a done deal. They even paid me before I transferred the files and domain. £10k in my bank like that. I couldn’t believe it.
Sold!
I didn’t really know what to do when I sold my site. I had got into a habit of waking up, checking my Adsense income, and then commuting to work. Suddenly I couldn’t check my Adsense income, it was weird!
During my time developing the site, I started a few other sites, but they weren’t at the same level yet. I did put a bit of effort into working on them but nothing came of it. I may have just been lucky, but I think it was the hard work and determination that worked. I haven’t put the same energy in on my newer sites.
I took a big break from making websites. I felt I deserved a rest. I bought the house and focused on my job but it always kept coming back to me. I’m not designed for this 9-5 rat race at all. It’s not an exaggeration, but I hate working for other people!
Here’s where the part about the lock-out clause comes in; I was free to start a competitor with my old site.
And that’s exactly what I did.
Taking the same content from the first site, rewriting it to make it better, learning from my old mistakes. I have been building a competitor for a year now and while the competition generally is tougher, it’s slowly improving and getting better. I can see the Ad income increasing every month, the visitors rising.
It turns into a game. Once you learn to treat online income like a game, you start to really want to get better, higher, more.
Conclusion
I’m going to pour more of my time into my competitor site now in the hope that it can surpass my old site, but you never know with how things work on the internet.
I do miss the site, but I’m glad it allowed me to move on with my life; stop renting, and start focusing on bigger projects.
I hope you all enjoyed the read,and I hope this post inspires you to try new things! let me know if it does!
Feel free to follow JeezPod on Facebook for updates when new articles come out. It’s a very relaxed page, and there might be 1-2 posts a week so it won’t spam your timeline.
I’ve spent the past few months now getting obsessed about Print on demand, so I’ve seen my fair share of Passive income ”’gurus”’ around; some with some genuinely good advice, some with terrible advice, and plenty of people regurgitating standard tropes within print on demand. This post may even turn into a light rant!
One of these is the ‘Improvecat’ method. Much like copycatting; you simply take someone elses design, change it enough so that you can’t be sued, and then try to compete with the original.
Search for a design
Remake the design with different fonts / illustrations
????
PROFIT
If you aren’t familiar with it, try it for yourself now. Lets head on over to Amazon and search for something, say, ‘Joke Shirt‘. Take a look at the results.
Heh, I guess some of these are pretty funny. ‘Mmm… π‘. Nice. They all seem to be nice and original, but let’s just take a look at that Pi shirt again. Heck, lets look at all of these shirts again. Search for a shirt of your choice and you’ll see what I mean. I’ll search for the maths one; ‘5 out of 4 people Struggle with maths‘
Oh, right, I see. There are hundreds. 644 to be exact at the time of posting. All basically identical, all telling the same joke, all constantly undercutting each other and trying colour variations and font differences to try and make that sale. This isn’t even a large case, you can find designs with thousands of ‘Improved’ versions.
What I’m trying to highlight here is the Improvecat method is a race to the bottom.
What it does is flood the service, be it Amazon, Redbubble, TeePublic, with absolute junk. And it isn’t passive at all. You’ll always have competition.
What Improvecat is good for
Improvecat is a way that a lot of people get into Print of Demand and there are times when it has it’s benefits.
As I said previously, it’s a great idea to look at your competitors work! You should be researching what other people are doing. If you find a niche that is untapped, or poorly tapped, this is where Improvecat can come into effect with great results.
Improvecat is good when you can actually ‘Improve’ on the piece, not just copy and change it.
You might see a T-Shirt which has a terrible illustration, or badly placed text, or a joke that could be so much funnier. In this case, I think it’s fine to be ‘inspired’ by it and make a better version.
What you should avoid, is making a version that is basically functionally identical. All you’ll do is cut your own potential income in half instead of taking a bigger slice of the pie.
What if people copy my design?
While this isn’t likely to happen if all you’re doing is copying other people, it can be annoying to see people copy your designs. This is just something you need to deal with when you’re selling stuff, online or offline.
It’s just going to happen if you get big enough and focus on Jokes or Pun designs. If you work on your own illustrations, then you’re less likely to be copied. It’s so much easier to just copy text than remake an entire illustration from scratch.
In summary
Nowadays, especially for Amazon, there are so many dedicated tools to help sellers find niches, that you’ll likely always be competing, whatever you do. Success is a case of being first in the niche, or best in the niche.
You just need to keep getting better, uploading more. Print on Demand is largely a game of numbers. You can’t rely on one or two best selling products. Create a design, upload it, forget about it. (Well, maybe return in a few months to optimise tags and things)
I think it might be helpful to post my actual (or near rounded to) statistics every month for everybody to see. I have a bit of a problem with online gurus when it comes to this sort of thing; lots of people talk about their ‘revenue’ over profit, or give general numbers to inflate how good they’re doing.
It’s a bit of a luxury to say I am not a guru. I am just experimenting with things and posting what I found out here, for everybody to see. I don’t think I’m ever going to make a course or charge people for tuition.
Near the end of every month, I’ll try to just summarise that month, what I did, what I’m aiming to do next month. It might even help motivate me for the next month!
All prices will be in GBP, but I’ll convert the total to USD for ease.
Not too bad, this is about a third of what I am aiming for, as my first goal this year is to reach £1000 a month. As it’s the weekend now, some purchases aren’t tallied up so it’s likely just over £300 for February. In USD, that is about $382.
I’ll go over each of the services I use separately,and how I use them below!
Google Adsense
This used to be my big earner, netting around£100-120 a month, before I sold my first main site ( I’ll write about it soon! ), it was my main go-to source for passive income.
Waking up in the morning and seeing I’d made money put me in such a good mood for the day, and it made me realise that passive income wasn’t a joke, it’s so doable.
On a good day I would make £5 before I even woke up! Small numbers compared to others but it’s great to see your hard work paying you. Ads don’t bother me, I can’t expect a creator to not do it nowadays when they provide content for free.
I’ve sold that site now, and I have two others, which are both much smaller. They both need work but they’re also both new and growing slowly in terms of visitors and revenue.
You’ll start seeing Adsense ads on JeezPod soon enough I would imagine. This really is the definition of a niche site, so I’d be silly not to monetise it!
I will talk about niche sites later on in the year. My main income is from Print-on-demand, so that’s where I’m focusing JeezPod for now!
Redbubble
Redbubble’s reporting tools are a few days out so it’s likely a bit more than the £282 written, and as the payment days are the middle of the month, I’m hoping I can tickle into £400+ territory on the next payment day.
February has been a busy month on Redbubble, I’m up to over 300 designs now. My goal was 300 by March so I’m glad I smashed past that. My main sellers are by far stickers, but I am slowly seeing more posters and T-Shirts trickle in.
I managed to find a good niche within a niche and completely dominate it with designs this month too, so I’m waiting to see if the few hours there will pay off. I’m getting sales daily so I’m happy.
Amazon Merch
Two sales! I don’t know if that’s good or bad for my first month on Merch By Amazon. I haven’t looked into it much to be honest. I filled my slots, took loads down, and then refilled them.
Seems to be a good idea to focus on the US market when you’re in the lower tiers; the audience is just so much bigger. I set my prices at their lowest because all I want is sales to tier up. I don’t think I’ll cheat the system by buying my own shirts.
Looking forward to tiering up on Merch, but as platforms go, it isn’t the friendliest to use.
Amazon Associates
£2.42 really isn’t much to talk about, but I didn’t promote any of this at all; it’s all traffic from one or both of my websites. Again, like Adsense, Amazon Associates used to be a main focus. Redbubble has taken most of my time now however. Associates can really pay off if you have a good site.
It’s nice to see any amount for nothing, but £2.42 isn’t anything to brag about.
Kindle Direct Publishing
I published 1 low-content book on KDP this month. I was testing the waters. I haven’t talked about KDP much. I have a few eBooks up, and now one paperback. I may get 1-2 sales of an eBook per month but I rarely remember to check it now.
The strange thing about KDP is that you get paid any amount you make. I usually get £1-2 deposits in my bank every month. It’s odd.
I’ll focus on KDP at some point when I have a good workflow going but I still have some Redbubble goals to work on.
I am not a fan of TeePublic. Their upload process is better than Redbubble, but it seems that only some works are promoted. I haven’t uploaded anything for a while yet. Both the margins and audience are smaller than Redbubble too.
I didn’t upload anything on TeePublic this month (that I can recall)
Other income
I own my own house (I sold my website to pay for the deposit!), and I’m renting my room out in March. Rental income is already going to blow my online passive income away. £495 a month for renting out a room left me with no choice at all.
I’m looking forward to it, as rental income and passive income will cover my mortgage and bills. While my bills will go up a bit, it’s basically just free money otherwise.
I also bought a bunch of stocks (not many, just £50 in total) as the economy is tanking right now due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) scare. I don’t know anything about stocks so I spread my purchases around. This might not even be a good time to buy, who knows! I’m happy to throw £50 in as a learning experience.
I’ve also got £100 of Bitcoin, but that’s going to shit. I’ll be sure to post if it doesn’t!
Goals for March
400 designs on Redbubble.
There’s no need to set lots of goals. I’m going to work on what works for now. Redbubble is my main income source so I’m going to work on it the most.
I have one other project I’ll be working on in March. It’s a book which will eventually be on KDP, but it isn’t a low / no content one. I may post about it later, but no goals as of now for it.
Hope this post has been inspiring and I look forward to making another in one months time!
“Ching ching bling bling cut the chatter, if you ain’t talking money then your talking don’t matter”
As I’ve said previously, we’re mostly out to make some income as our main goal. Some of us (me included!) want to have a full time income passively, some are just happy with an extra little bit per month.
One of the best things about Redbubble compared to other print-on-demand sites is that you can set your own margins for products. It might have a loathsome upload process, but the fact that you can make so much more than on other services on the same products is something to consider.
Just get better
This is something I try to keep in mind for almost anything I do in life. Things won’t be perfect from the start, and this applies to how you set your pricing in Redbubble. Things probably aren’t perfect right now. Just think, you could be earning much more money with a tiny bit of effort.
What I did (which was wrong)
As I’ve mentioned before (and likely will again); I started Redbubble as a related shop to my main Adsense-monetised niche website. Redbubble was such an afterthought that I didn’t even bother to optimise anything. My designs weren’t on all products at the start and I didn’t tinker with pricing; any sale at all was an unexpected bonus.
I was happy to see sales, and I never thought people would pay so much for a sticker. At the start, my margins were as low as 15% for all products. I cringe looking back, thinking about all that money I missed out on over the past 4 years. While I did make a lot of sales, I did not make a lot of money. Check out my payment history:
That’s only back to 2016. I started my main account in 2015 and Redbubble stats don’t even go back that far. With this chart I just wanted to illustrate how little I was making at the start. Sometimes as little as £2 a month, but back then I really didn’t care. It’s only the past few months I’ve actually been putting any effort in. Each grey horizontal bar is £100. I just tickled my way into £300 in February. March is looking to top that.
While it’s nice to see growth with no effort as I started to see in Q4 2018, it declined a bit to January.
Putting in that tiny bit of effort last November has really shot the growth up and I’m glad I did it.
First margins versus current margins
I didn’t toy with my margins at all. 2015 was a different place. My first sale occurred three months after I made my account. Whether I made my account and uploaded nothing for that time, I honestly can’t remember.
My first sale on Redbubble came to a resounding 13p, about 27 cents USD. I recently sold the same product, and with my margins changed, I got 80p, about 7x as much. While 80p doesn’t sound like much in the grand scheme of things, it’s still seven times what I was getting before. The product still sells well, sometimes multiple times a day. What I’m trying to illustrate is that;
By simply upping your margins, you will earn more on products that already sell.
Which leads me onto my actual tips for this post:
Don’t stick to default pricing
There’s no reason to stay on 20%. Either you want to undersell your competition, or you want to maximise your profit. Move things around, see what helps you sell more. In the ‘get rich slow’ ethos, don’t rush this.
What would you pay for this product? Put that as a starting price and work from there. For stickers however, start by setting those to 100%. You might be surprised!
If a product type sells, increase your margins for it.
This is such a powerful way to slowly optimise your sales. There is absolutely no reason not to change your pricing often. When I notice a certain type selling, I increase by a percent.
If you find it not selling a lot, decrease the pricing. You’ll eventually find a sweet spot. I was doing this for some time. Stickers really can sell well for around 100%. Clothing goes well between 25-35%.
You don’t have to stick to integers, you can also do half percents, which have an incremental, but not really noticeable to increase for the customer.
Competitive pricing
We may forget it, but we are competing with others on Redbubble for a sale. Personally, when I buy something, price is a big concern, and this is especially true for print on demand.
People will buy cheaper versions of the same design.
Bad luck if you’re one of those public-domain scrubs, as someone can just come in tomorrow, look at your prices, charge slightly less and take all your sales away. You need to look for similar work and price accordingly. You’ll probably have no luck at all if you’re charging even a dollar more for a similar design.
Don’t stick to x.99/x.49 prices
I haven’t found any benefit in sticking to prices that end in .99. This may be because not enough people do it; Redbubble prices are all over the place and the buyer may be used to it.
It can also be down to currency conversion. If I want something to sell for £1.99, it’ll show as $2.56 for our American friends. There’s no way to win them all, so I have just dropped attempting .99 pricing.
Experiment equal divisions of 10
Something I have done recently, and to great effect, is to make sure my stickers are around or below £2.50. That way, people may be more inclined to buy four of them to round up to £10. I have actually seen an increase in sticker sales this way!
The idea came to me when I was checking out my own store and my stickers were set around £2.60. I changed them to be under £2.50. It was worth losing the extra 10p for a potential bulk buy.
While I like the idea of making £1-£2 per sticker, the thought of making consistent 4x80p sales is much more appealing. I’d imagine more sales = better rankings also so this seems like a ‘best of both worlds’ approach.
I’m looking to work this into other products as well. Lots of my designs work well together, so I’m lucky in a sense that a customer may be more likely to buy multiple products.
If you’re not willing to cut stickers to £2.50, why not try £3.33. I haven’t seen anybody else saying that this is good advice, but I have had some noticeable bulk buys since changing, so I really have to go on my own experience here.
In Summary
As standard, jam your stickers up to 100% if you have left them on default
Consider pricing in such a way to incentivise bulk purchases
Keep up to date with your competitors; frequently search for your own work and see what else pops up
