Redbubble started in 2006 in Melbourne, Australia.
Since the founding of this company, Redbubble’s main objective has been to give independent artists a safe, reliable, and diverse way of selling their art.
Although not everyone is willing to shell out high amounts of cash for original prints, consumers are very likely to purchase something like a sticker or t-shirt with a design they like.
So far, Redbubble has seen over 700,000 artists use the platform to connect with consumers and create the products of their dreams.
Is Redbubble Legit? (10 Reasons They Are)
Yes, Redbubble is a completely legitimate business and is completely safe to use by both customers and artists.
Although there have been concerns about the legitimacy of companies like Redbubble, this Australian company is the leader in its industry and offers some of the best deals for artists and consumers alike.
It can be incredibly difficult for artists to create their products, even if it does come with the added bonus of more potential profit and product control.
Redbubble takes a lot of the risk out of selling your designs online.
This company also allows artists of every level of skill and popularity, making it easier for up-and-coming artists to make money doing what they love.
Redbubble is also a common place for small-to-medium organizations, businesses, YouTubers, Streamers, TikTokers, and other content creators to create their own merchandise.
It’s important to be critical of new online markets to avoid scams, but Redbubble is not one of the sites you need to worry about.
There are plenty of ways to prove that Redbubble is a legitimate website for both consumers and artists alike.
1. Offers Secure Ways To Pay
Redbubble offers multiple secure and trusted ways to pay for your products and receive payment as an artist.
To avoid potential scammers of the company, Redbubble has to link all orders to a billing address that matches whatever type of pay you choose.
The internationally accepted forms of payment on Redbubble include Visa, Mastercard, or American Express cards, Redbubble Digital Gift Cards, PayPal, and Apple Pay.
Those who are located in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia can also use Afterpay or Clearpay, which allows the consumer to purchase the product immediately and pay in four installments.
Customers from the United States are also able to use Amazon Payments.
Sofort can be used by customers located in Italy, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Austria, or the Netherlands.
When purchasing products from Redbubble, it is important to remember that you can only use one form of payment at a time unless you’re using one of Redbubble’s digital gift cards.
If you plan on using a prepaid debit card, you’ll need to make sure that there’s enough on the card to completely cover the purchase because you can’t combine cards.
Luckily, Redbubble offers a variety of discounts on their website, such as the bundle discount and the bulk discounts.
Bundle discounts are automatically added when purchasing a certain number of products from a store, whereas bulk discounts are applied to orders that exceed $1,000 through Redbubble’s Bulk Order Program.
2. Uses Third-Party Printers In Customer’s Region
Redbubble uses third-party print shops located in the same region as the customer who purchased an artist’s design.
Once a customer places an order, it’s Redbubble’s job to decide which third-party printer is best for your location and the type of product you ordered.
Those who order a variety of different product types should expect their products to arrive at different times, despite the order being placed and paid for all at once.
Since the products are being shipped directly from the print shops rather than being curated at a Redbubble warehouse like Amazon, there’s no way of ensuring that your variety of products will arrive all at the same time.
Redbubble currently has its products printed in the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
By using local, third-party printers when possible, Redbubble is normally able to help its customers avoid being charged customs taxes.
The customers most likely to be charged customs taxes are those located in Europe.
Since the United Kingdom leaving the European Union during Brexit, European consumers should expect customs taxes for any products printed and shipped in the United Kingdom.
By using local, third-party printers, Redbubble helps its consumers order products online that help support their local economy.
The union between third-party printers and Redbubble also allows more printshops to survive during a time when physical storefronts have suffered.
3. Proactively Searches Out Website Security Vulnerabilities
If you have a concern about your order or the security of your Redbubble account, Redbubble advises that you reach out to their Customer Success Team immediately.
Redbubble understands that its customers and artists are an excellent way to gain an outside perspective of its products and services.
When Redbubble begins investigating a problem that has arisen, it is important to give its team enough time to investigate the problem properly and solve it effectively.
Although there may be the temptation to publicly criticize the company shortly after a problem has occurred, Redbubble asks that you first address the problem through them before starting an uproar online.
If you find a security vulnerability on Redbubble’s website, you should never exploit the vulnerability, even if you intend to pivot to show additional risk.
You should also never go looking for or change information from another user without their permission.
If you believe that the security vulnerability you have found could disrupt the service provided by Redbubble or potentially eliminate their data, it’s important to leave the vulnerability alone.
You don’t want to do anything that can negatively impact the experience for Redbubble’s customers or artists.
Website security vulnerabilities include broken access control, cryptographic failures, injections, insecure design, security misconfiguration, vulnerable or outdated components, identification or authentication failures, software or data integrity failures, security logging or monitoring failures, forgery of server-side requests, and code execution.
One of the most important ways to keep yourself safe is to ensure that you are only using redbubble.com and its associated services.
4. Has A Strong Social Responsibility Policy
While most companies wait for problems to be called out by the public before they even investigate problems, Redbubble is extremely proactive when it comes to the level of Social Responsibility their consumers expect from them.
Redbubble understands that an important part of being a part of the global marketplace is being conscious of how your business decisions affect your stakeholders.
Not only does an international business need to be mindful of how they’re affecting their customers and employees, but they also need to monitor their effect on their host markets and the planet itself.
One of the most important attributes of the third-party contractors that Redbubble chooses to hire for their orders is how ethical their production is.
Manufacturers are expected to only source high-quality garments and meet certain employee treatment standards.
Every member of Redbubble’s production line is expected to highly value the safety and well-being of their employees.
Those who can not meet Redbubble’s employee standards are barred from working with the company.
To tell which manufacturers are ethical, Redbubble requires that their manufacturers hold current Social Compliance Certifications and be completely committed to following the Fair Labor Associations Guiding Principles.
Redbubble is also heavily committed to helping raise money for global incidents from around the world.
When Redbubble releases products surrounding charity events or organizations, all of the profits go towards that organization and some scenarios may even receive additional donations made directly by Redbubble, which are unrelated to how much a fundraising event makes from sales.
5. Offers Official Fan Art Through The Redbubble Partner Program
One of the most difficult tasks for the modern artist is working around situations that may require licensing or copyright law knowledge.
Luckily, Redbubble is willing to help small artists navigate the difficult world of fan art.
Redbubble is one of the few websites where you can get a variety of officially certified fan art.
With Redbubble, it’s easier than ever for up-and-coming artists to get the proper licensing to sell art of their favorite subjects, from YouTubers to video games.
The Redbubble Partner Program has allowed brands to make licensing agreements with Redbubble, which allows artists in the program to create officially recognized merchandise for a variety of brands.
The current brand partnerships include Alfred Hitchcock, The Last Unicorn, Dune, Jane the Virgin, Schitt’s Creek, Star Trek, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Jaws, Charmed, Chris Farley, and many more pop culture hits.
Each brand that artists will work with through Redbubble will have a unique set of guidelines for what they expect from artists.
Most brands will have a list of dos and don’ts.
For example, if you were to choose to create fan art for the rock band, Kiss, you would be expected to include the band or song titles, and you would be expected to avoid using photos outside of what they provide for you.
Once you have completed a piece of merchandise, you must use the proper tags associated with the brand.
Like the subject matter, brands will have tags that they recommend, require, or ban.
Your product will then need to be reviewed by Redbubble to ensure that the product reflects what the brand actually wants.
6. Has Templates For All Different Products
Just because a design may look good on paper doesn’t mean that it will translate to other products as well.
For that reason, Redbubble recommends and provides its artists with templates for a variety of different products that can be used to estimate what the products will look like in real life.
One of the biggest reasons that newcomers may be wary about using Redbubble is that it is easy to tell that the product photos are just digital images rather than the real product.
Due to the number of designs and types of merchandise that Redbubble has to offer, it would be impossible to take real photos of each of their products, and they have instead decided to use computer-generated product prototype photos.
Those who are interested in Redbubble’s templates can access them through a Google drive.
Some of the templates currently available include A-line dresses, pet bandanas, graphic t-shirts, duffle bags, socks, chiffon shirts, mugs, aprons, jigsaw puzzles, and more.
The one type of product that can be a bit more difficult to create properly on Redbubble is stickers.
If your sticker design needs to be a particular shape, then the PNG file you upload to Redbubble must have a transparent background.
All of the stickers that Redbubble has printed for the artist and consumer are kiss-cut.
This means that all of the edges are cut with either a laser or a sharp, metal die to ensure that the sticker’s backing comes off with ease.
7. Offers Some Protection From Art Theft
Like many printing companies that allow artists to post their designs, Redbubble has dealt with a high amount of art theft.
While traditional artists may not have to worry less about theft, digital artists are constantly having their sales plummet due to art thieves stealing their designs and selling them at as low of a price as possible.
Redbubble has recently introduced a download protection feature that places a transparent image over the top of your art when someone right-clicks on the image.
This tool is labeled “Protect Your Work” on your artist dashboard.
Another way that Redbubble tries to keep their artist safe is by never showing the original, high-resolution image you uploaded to their website.
However, you don’t need to worry about the resolution of your design on your products because the printers are given your high-resolution design.
As an artist, it is important to remember that there still is the chance that an art thief may still be able to post your design as their own.
When this happens, it’s important to send Redbubble a takedown notice.
If you notice that someone has stolen your design on Redbubble, ensure that you check other design marketplaces like TeePublic to see if the art thief has posted your work elsewhere.
Although Redbubble may not be able to help you remove your work from other sites, you can attempt to settle ownership rights with the individual companies yourself.
8. Does The Marketing For The Artist
Although many consumers may consider Redbubble to be a t-shirt or merchandise company, Redbubble acts more like a logistical and marketing service for artists than anything else.
Many beginner artists appreciate that Redbubble handles a hefty amount of the marketing, allowing the artists to focus on their designs.
Redbubble offers simple ways to create your own marketing campaigns, such as giving you a unique URL to give to consumers and allowing you to share a lifestyle template that helps Redbubble market your products to the consumers that are already looking for merchandise on its site.
Not only is Redbubble willing to promote your work on its website, but they are also looking for eager artists who want their products promoted through off-site marketing.
Off-site marketing includes sites such as Google, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Bing, and Google Display Network.
To show Redbubble that you would be willing to allow them to use your designs in advertisements, go to your setting and click Artist Dashboard.
You will then go into your Account Settings, and then you’ll find the “Off-Site Marketing” option under Edit Profile.
You can change your off-site marketing setting at any time, but it takes up to four days before your choice is reflected on third-party sites.
When choosing to allow Redbubble to promote your design off-site, don’t expect to see any of your products in advertisements for yourself or even your loved ones.
The designs chosen for each Redbubble advertisement are based on an algorithm based on the viewer’s profile and online activities with Redbubble or their third-party advertisers.
9. Artist Margin Is 20% by Default
Thanks to the 20% artist margin offered by Redbubble, even rookie artists can make some money from their hobby.
The retail price of a product on Redbubble consists of the base price plus the artist margin.
Although the artist margin is at 20% by default, you as the artist can lower or raise the artist margin as you please.
This allows artists to base the price of their products on the value the artist sees fit.
For example, an artist may choose to raise their artist margin if a design took a long time to create, if there were additional costs involved during the design process outside of Redbubble, if the artist is more experienced and wants to keep an item or design exclusive, or whatever characteristic of a piece of art you believe merits a higher price tag.
An artist may choose to lower their artist margin if the design didn’t take much time or effort, if they want to have a competitive edge over other artists creating similar pieces, or if they believe a design may not sell as well.
In order to receive money from Redbubble for your designs, you must have earned at least $20 during the monthly payment cycle which starts on the 15th of each month.
If you have not earned $20 over the course of a month, the payment amount will accumulate until it reaches $20 and will be paid out to the artist at this point.
10. Artists Aren’t Charged For Returned Products
One of the biggest advantages of using Redbubble as opposed to printing your own products is that you won’t be charged if someone decides to return your product.
Reverse logistics can be what makes or breaks a small artist.
Reverse logistics is the process of sending products inward through the production line, rather than outwardly like usual.
When you return a product to a company, they must figure out how to get the product back to them and give the customer a solution to their problem with the product, such as cash reimbursement, store credit, or a new product of the same variety.
Since Redbubble is in charge of the logistics of their company, they are the ones taking the financial hit when products are returned and customers are dissatisfied.
This is part of the reason that Redbubble is so particular about the standards of its manufacturers and printers.
With logistical problems not affecting you as an artist, Redbubble acts as a shield for many types of dishonest consumers.
In return, you are the one who offers alluring products that bring consumers to their site and convince their regular consumers to purchase more goods from them.
Redbubble can be a helpful service that can boost your career as an independent artist.
NEXT: How Much Money Should A Birthday Gift Cost? (Explained)