anyone have experience with selling on redbubble.com? 

http://cascoly.redbubble.com/

it's easy to set up to sell images as cards, prints, calendars, etc, and their tools for a website subdomain, or calendars

http://www.redbubble.com/people/cascoly/calendars/1932308-2-mountains-majesty

the big question of course is whether anything will sell

I only had one sale in about 6 months and deleted most of my portfolio there.  I couldn't put up with not having a watermark.  It is far too easy for people to take the large unwatermarked preview image and print their own cards.

I prefer zazzle but haven't found the time to upload much there.

I only had one sale in about 6 months and deleted most of my portfolio there.  I couldn't put up with not having a watermark.  It is far too easy for people to take the large unwatermarked preview image and print their own cards.

I prefer zazzle but haven't found the time to upload much there.

sharpshot, is zazzle giving you much sales? i 've been told i should get some of my archive to a place where they make cups, tshirt, cards,etc... but did not know too much about where.
now , as always, through this forum, i find zazzle.
is it the same method as micro, where you just UL your images...
do you ul the same image format like we do with stock?

Quote from: sharpshot on October 27, 2008, 04:52

I only had one sale in about 6 months and deleted most of my portfolio there.  I couldn't put up with not having a watermark.  It is far too easy for people to take the large unwatermarked preview image and print their own cards.

I prefer zazzle but haven't found the time to upload much there.

sharpshot, is zazzle giving you much sales? i 've been told i should get some of my archive to a place where they make cups, tshirt, cards,etc... but did not know too much about where.
now , as always, through this forum, i find zazzle.
is it the same method as micro, where you just UL your images...
do you ul the same image format like we do with stock?

My photography really does not sell on Zazzle. Only a few cards, two posters.  But the stupid stuff I do, which would never be accepted for stock, does. T shirts about beer, politics, and just plain really stupid stuff, do ok. The more idiotic it seems, the better. My revenue there about $500 so far for the year.

Red Bubble is really a site set up for artists who want to show off their work to other artists. Most the sales come from the contributors. The mob that own it are pretty lazy and are not into marketing their site to buyers.

You will never get rich there.

Red Bubble is really a site set up for artists who want to show off their work to other artists. Most the sales come from the contributors. The mob that own it are pretty lazy and are not into marketing their site to buyers.

You will never get rich there.

right, never expected to compete with SS sales -- but a few sales could easily bypass yay, cut, most, featurepics et al which dont seem to be able to get higher prices for what is essentially MS. 

the advantage seems to be an easier way to set up for calendars, cards, etc

s

right, never expected to compete with SS sales -- but a few sales could easily bypass yay, cut, most, featurepics et al which dont seem to be able to get higher prices for what is essentially MS. 

cascoly, that's what i've been thinking. i am wondering about just keeping DST,StockXpert, BigStock,
which are giving me sale ( not much but enough considering my small portfolio in such a short time),
and then forget about the rest esp the ones you mentioned. all big promises with bigger commissions.
but 70 % of nothing is nothing.
i will try zazzle. at least it will be one UL vs 4 or 5 Uls to sites that have not produced any sales.

I was with Red Bubble for a while until about a year ago. I left because the watermarks were inadequate, and totlearnings were not recorded properly. These things may have been corrected since, but Zazzle is a much better site.

Quote from: stormchaser on October 27, 2008, 11:28

My photography really does not sell on Zazzle. Only a few cards, two posters.  But the stupid stuff I do, which would never be accepted for stock, does. T shirts about beer, politics, and just plain really stupid stuff, do ok. The more idiotic it seems, the better. My revenue there about $500 so far for the year.

  i can do idiotic stuff too. if it sells, i wouldn't mind trying 
but like sharpshot says, it's more work than micro.
do you find it so stormchaser?

When I first started Zazzle it was kind of addicting. But I had a lot of silly ideas that would never fly with stock, so it was the ideal arena for it. Funny thing, if I really think about a concept or design, it will just lay there. But then I'll come up with something very stupid at 3 am, post it on a whim, and I'll sell 20 shirts. When Eliot SPitzer, NY governor went through the prostitute mess, I just used the stupid text tool right on Zazzle, slammed something stupid on a black shirt, and sold about 40 in 3 days. I also had a caustic Hillary Clinton Shirt there that did very well.

Zazzle does not support IPTC, so you have to put in keyword,description etc and I find that a huge pain. So yes more work there.

Because Zazzle is such a cess pool, full of teenage kids, copyright infringers etc, it can be tough to sell anything serious. But putting up a blog that relates to your content helps. The Zazzle pages are not search engine friendly, so you really won't be found through search engines.

So I just design some silly stuff maybe once a week, write a little blog thing with a design I like. I haven't worked really hard at it since my addition there has expired.  But the sales do come a few times a week. And if I think of something fun regarding current news, I get it posted really fast before they are flooded with them. If it appeals, I'll get a nice little sales bounce.

In order to sell serious photos there, well Zazzle flooded with the stuff. You would absolutely have to supplement with a blog/website. Stupid shirts, hats, buttons, do much better there. I stopped posting photos on cards and posters long ago.

Sharpshot mentioned calendars - yes those are a lot of work, but the singe image stuff goes up quite easily.

Well I am certainly a RB fan here myself, as far as the watermarks go, they now also have a 1px gif overlay, so anytime u right click on someone's image that has this protection enabled (yes, it is up to the artist if they wish to enable this) it only downloads 1px.[/url]

It still does not protect an image from a thief that uses screen capture (e.g., via the PrintScreen button).

That is why a proper watermark is the only true protection from pirates.

Quote from: GeoPappas on November 10, 2008, 07:12

Quote from: kkart on November 10, 2008, 03:32

Well I am certainly a RB fan here myself, as far as the watermarks go, they now also have a 1px gif overlay, so anytime u right click on someone's image that has this protection enabled (yes, it is up to the artist if they wish to enable this) it only downloads 1px.[/url]

It still does not protect an image from a thief that uses screen capture (e.g., via the PrintScreen button).

That is why a proper watermark is the only true protection from pirates.

And your work there is watermarked. If you are worried about that, why even put your work online to begin with then?

The smaller view of the image (which is about 550 pixels on the longest side) does not have a watermark at all.  This would be considered a blog size or web size image on most stock sites.

The larger view (which is about 650 pixels on the longest side) contains a small watermark in the bottom right of the image.  Someone could just crop this out or remove it with Photoshop in less than 5 minutes.

The watermark there is pathetic.  To even call it a watermark is crazy.

To not protect the intellectual property of the contributors makes absolutely no sense to me.

They will never see any of my stuff (and lots of others on this board) on that site until they fix the watermark (and their attitude).

In Shutterpoint, we can see when a comp download was made.  It's smaller than a screenshot, yet it makes people uncomfortable because seldom this turns into a sale.  Some people get LOTS of comp downloads, and they are concerned images may be misused.  And mind you, in SP you can draw your own watermark, and have several of them to usethe one that best suits your image.

It doesn't matter to me who is the normal public of a site.  I refrained from uploading to Alamy because of their lack of watermark.  Even if a regular customer of them would not steal an image, others who may find it may. 

So even if this is not an absolute security measurement, I value watermarks.

Regards,
Adelaide

Well I am certainly a RB fan here myself, as far as the watermarks go, they now also have a 1px gif overlay, so anytime u right click on someone's image that has this protection enabled (yes, it is up to the artist if they wish to enable this) it only downloads 1px. The BubbleSites ROCK! I honestly tip my head to RB for this, giving artists an actual website that stands on it's own OUTSIDE the community atmosphere, where people can order directly from. My BubbleSite is far from done at the moment, but I am seriously considering pointing my domain to here once it is: http://kkart.redbubble.com/

And your work is awesome too! I actually have you on my dA watch and RB watch, love your HDR work.

The watermark is shoddy but I do two kinds of photography these days, the stock is something that I do watermark heavily but the arty stuff I do which I put on places like RB etc are less of a worry to me as they are primarily for print sales and anyone who does steal the websize image either has an inferior picture to blow up or is advertising for me.