Print On Demand, my thoughts...

I've been trying to start this one for over an hour now, the Mrs. is out most of the day and I gave myself three jobs. One, keep the baby alive, so far so good. Two, work on some art, I did. Three... Work on some sort of print on demand...

I don't apologize for any grammatical errors.

I've done print on demand in the past, never with much success or real effort I suppose. I used to just go make prints and sell them when I tattooed or at conventions and now that I wrangled myself down enough to work on a website, I feel it lacks something. Ah, yes. Prints. But I don't want to deal with them.

Now the reason I'm hesitant yet have no alternative from Redbubble (And I'll explain why I'm not using teespring), is the mark up to quality ratio to how complicated it is. I get it, they have to make money. When I used to make prints in the past, I'd go to my local print shop that were accustomed to making art prints, look at a proof, color correct if need be, choose the paper, etc. You could really cut corners, but it cost time. Yadda yadda. Am I complaining? Yes. I guess so, I shouldn't be, it's saving me time. The reason I'm doing it is the convenience. Link it to the website, social media, what have you and most importantly, the biggest piece of the puzzle? They deal with the orders. Now are they good with packaging? I doubt it, I just ordered a couple metal prints from some online place and it came damaged, three of the four metal corners were hooked in from being slammed around. Obviously that was FedEx, but small things like the packaging was flimsy and had no Styrofoam for the corners for this obvious heavy object.

God it just sounds like I'm complaining but I'm just trying to explain the issues I've faced.

Now I'm choosing to go with Redbubble because it's faster to upload, like I said I want convenience. Now-now, I'm not being THAT lazy, but go on, give one image upload a try on Teespring, I'll see you in 45 minutes. I'm not kidding. Just setting everything up is a nightmare, but it lends to you really getting creative if you're starting a clothing brand. Not me though, I'm here for the prints. Now, I'm eventually going to get Teespring, I think... You're allowed to sell the same artwork on both platforms and on Teespring they has digital downloads. For wallpapers and I think phone screens, not sure. But I'm making digital art so it makes sense that it would look better on someone's desktop.

Hold on, the baby...

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Okay... Where was I.

Teespring has more choices as to what to put your stuff on. So there's that, but Redbubble is as easy as; Upload-write description-check off which products are available-DONE. I don't know if Teespring makes it complicated on purpose or what, but it takes forever to upload a handful of pictures. Then on top of that Teespring has some sort of trust score. ..yeah... And what that is is, you won't show up on their website marketplace unitl you drive the traffic (potential buyers) from your social media or wherever. This is frustrating, but I guess it weeds out the undesirables. So, if you don't have any followers like the average person, at least on Redbubble you're thrown into the mix... and what a giant mix it is so don't rely on that. (And for anyone saying that's why Teespring has their trust score, nope, it's just as full on Teespring.) I really hate Teesprings way of doing things, but they're geared towards "Influencers". My retinas nearly detached I eyerolled so hard when I read that. Come on Teespring.... But like I said, you can drive the traffic over, and if I have the "storefront" on my website, links on the Linktree, it doesn't really matter.

God, I'm just having flashbacks uploading onto Teespring during quarantine, I was making extra cash designing dumb T-shirt slogans. Grueling and monotonous are the words that come to mind. Another con about Redbubble, you can't really edit your uploaded picture, you can zoom out, that's about it, because Teespring gives you a lot of control. Did I say that already? Not sure if I did, but it does.

So, all of this to tell you I'm going to have some prints available on Redbubble soon. I do want to find another place that makes metal prints that I am happy with... Not sure where I'd find that.

Also, as I make my art it's hard to think about if it's going to look good on a coaster or not, so I'm just sticking with canvas and prints, if I go through the list and see that the artwork happens to look good on a hat, then sure why not. But my art purist sides thinking that's not a great idea. He's calling me a poser right now.

I know there's other sites like these two out there but I just want ease of use at the end of the day, if anyone has a better suggestion please let me know. Since I'm so busy I'm able to upload here and there, hopefully by the time anyone reads this I'll have a full store. One thing Redbubble let me know RIGHT AWAY, don't upload anything that resembles anything copywritten. I uploaded a picture with Mario peaking around the corner and immediately said Nintendo Ltd. doesn't want you to do that. I knew... I just wanted to see since the Mario was barely peaking out. It's weird though, if you can get past the algorithm, like for example I saw some guy had the X-MENS, "Xavier's school for gifted youngsters" sticker made up like a school logo. ... Redbubble didn't catch that.

Anyways, this took me HOURS to write, babies are hard work, don't ever let anyone tell you different.

Hope you enjoy the prints that will up ASAP.

-Z