#redbubble is a dumpster fire but it's a USEFUL dumpster fire

[frodo-with-glasses]

Ooh, how exciting!! Well, in that case, I’ll share the pros and cons of my own experience with Redbubble, and maybe will help you make an informed decision.

The Pros:

It's easy. It's not like Etsy, where you have to physically make the thing you're selling; you just upload your art, and they do the hard work of printing it on the stuff and shipping it out.

There are a LOT of products. That was the main selling point for me, and I was actually surprised by how many MORE products there are available that people just aren't advertising! You can get your art on a mug, a water bottle, a throw pillow, a shower curtain, a tote bag, a doggy mat...of course most people just buy stickers, in my experience—understandably so, since that's the most inexpensive thing—but who knows? Somebody just might want a mug with Frodo's face on it. And I wanted that to be an option for them.

You can set your own profit margin. You wanna make 10% of the sales? 20%? 50%? That's in your power to decide. I set mine really low, because I wanted things to be at prices that I'd want to buy them, but if you're hoping to make more money off your art than two bucks a year you can set it higher.

The products are good. They're nothing extraordinary, but they are what it says on the tin. The stickers stick, the pins pin, and the posters look pretty dang sweet. I use bright colors in my art, and those bright colors are still there when the products arrive. So I think that means the printing is pretty dang good.

The Cons:

The interface to design how you want your art to appear on each product, while adequate, isn't terribly detailed, and that can be frustrating if you're a perfectionist like me. Some designs have different sizes—like the phone cases and mugs—and you're not always able to chose how your art looks on the different sizes.

If you, like me, want to sell fandom art, you have to be careful with your titles and not use specific keywords that the bots can recognize as a copyrighted thing, or else they'll quietly wipe your art off the site without even telling you why. For instance, I can use the word "hobbit" in my art, as candles on a cake, but the title can't be "Happy Hobbit Day" or the design will get taken down.

There's something in the terms and conditions that says the art you upload to the website kinda sorta not really belongs to them and they can use it for advertising and stuff. I figure it's worth the risk, since it's astronomically unlikely that a small artist's stuff will be used for anything without their permission, but I would understand if the potential squicks you out.

Not sure if this counts as a con, but it is a warning: I don't have enough experience with the site to know how to garner and grow an audience there. If you, like me, have a following elsewhere that wants to buy your art, you should be just fine; but if you want to get big on Redbubble, you'll probably have to make heavy use of the tag system so that your art shows up in search results.

Truth be told: I'm not an expert! I'm pretty much as hands-off on this thing as one could possibly be. My Redbubble store is like that little potted cactus that you bought and placed on your windowsill and promptly forgot about, and you only water it every two months when a bolt out of the blue (or, in my case, a random email) reminds you that it exists. If you want to make a lot of money on Redbubble, I am not the person to ask; but if you want to print your art on a bunch of random crap and sell it online—and you want to do it in a way that's easy to set up and kinda runs on its own without you—in my experience, this is a good option.

I hope this helps, @butterflies-and-bumble-bees! Good luck with your art and your resolution!

what made you choose redbubble as a platform to sell your art, as opposed to other similar sites?

I dunno. Just seemed convenient, and I wasn’t aware of any other options. But if you’ve got some good alternatives to Redbubble—with the same variety of products and ease of getting things printed—I’d be happy to hear about them!

[bruciewayne]

[3/7] 6 times Steve Rogers met the Avengers

and the one time he got introduced to them

read on ao3

masterpost

part of the shrinkyclinks roommate 'verse

Steve only worked at the coffee shop three days a week, maybe four if someone called in sick, he used to work pretty much every day when he was in college but now, his commissions were picking up, more people were buying stuff from his redbubble and most importantly, he was getting picked up for another comic run.

But he doubted he would ever fully stop coming to the ‘shop, he’d been coming there ever since he was in highschool, when they still had a jukebox (they threw it out after him and his friend John played ‘what’s new pussycat’ seven times), he got hired, fired and then rehired on his first day, halfway into junior year of highschool because Angie was sick of him and John dicking around - she’d written out all the papers for each and every time, Steve had a wall at his mom’s place where he’d stuck up all the papers from the times he’s gotten fired and then rehired over the years.

But maybe his favourite part of working at the ‘shop were the customers, and holy hell, he’s had some strange and outright bizarre customer interactions.

They closed pretty late, midnight on most days, one am on Fridays and Saturdays, which meant that past around 10 pm, the only people who came in were college kids, insomniacs or drunk, or all three of the above.

The college kids stuck out in the way pretty much all college kids stick out - the energy of a ninety-year-old on their deathbed in the body of a millenial, most of them bought whatever had the highest concentration of caffeine and stayed in the ‘shop for a couple hours. They let them use the Comfort Cupboard in the back because most of them were on the verge of tears a lot of the time. The drunks were the loudest and got kicked out the fastest and sent to the diner down the block. The insomniacs were regulars that Steve sometimes chats with for an hour-ish if he gets the graveyard shift. They were his second favourite type of customer.

His absolute favourite type of customer is Clint Barton.

He usually brings his dog, Lucky if Angie’s in a good mood (her good mood levels are inversely proportional to the amount of drunk people they got that day) and sometimes Kate his… protegé? Something like that, the Hawkeye version of Spider-Man.

Clint was his favourite customer because he always had a completely ridiculous story that he told either a) completely unprompted or b) when Steve would say a particular word or move in a specific way that would remind him of something that happened anywhere between five minutes ago to years and years back, even some from his days in the circus.

As a result of this, Steve had so much more information about the Avengers than he could ever need and it was wonderful - apparently Natasha like trashy superhero movies and Thor wore lingerie for Bruce.

Today, he had the afternoon shift on a Saturday so it was relatively quiet, only two college kids - the Arts, judging by the fact that everything they had was slightly paint stained, there had been a couple on a date around half an hour ago that had not ended well, but, thankfully, no drinks were poured on anybody. Steve was all for pouring beverages of more/less-than-optimal temperatures on deserving people, but he hated cleaning it. They’d had to install a ‘please take fights outside’ sign after 13 consecutive days of people pouring drinks very deliberately on others.

Steve was flicking through his emails when Clint Barton burst through the doors, dragging a well dressed, blind, going by the cane and the glasses, behind him. They were both covered in the remnants of trash - as a guy who used to get thrown into dumpsters and trash cans on a fairly regular basis, Steve can recognise the… je ne sais quoi of a person who’s recently taken a dive into a dumpster.

Steve dug around in a drawer under the counter for the deodorant he kept for Clint because that man got thrown into dumpsters an alarming amount, and that was coming from a guy who was openly and outspoken in high school - he still was to be fair.

He tossed the can to Clint, muttering “Show off,” under his breath when he deftly caught it with his left hand - which had Peppa Pig plasters on three out of five fingers, must be a good day. The suit guy turned to Clint and said, “If he keeps deo for you then you’re the bigger mess,” and then he turned to Steve grinned and asked, “two of your biggest coffees please, he’s paying.”

Clint spluttered and looked at the guy in disbelief after leaning over the counter to put the deodorant back, “You’re the one who was trespassing in my dumpster-”

“You’re an Avenger!”

“You’re a lawyer!”

“I get paid in pie!”

“I wanna get paid in pie,” Clint whined, to Steve who decided that now was probably a good time to intervene.

“Clint, you do not need to get paid in pie, it’s the state of New York’s dumpster, not yours-”

“I can’t believe that you’re taking his side in this, he’s a lawyer, Steve, a lawyer,” Clint said, dramatically draping himself over the counter. Steve snorted and shoved him off, wiping down the counter, “People get served food here, I’m half convinced to get Angie to ban you permanently.”

Clint immediately straightened up, “You’re my favourite barista?” he said, hopefully, pressing an obnoxious kiss to his cheek and declaring that he loved him when he handed them their coffees. Steve laughed and vigorously rubbed his cheek with his hand where Clint had kissed him, “I’m taken, you should have left him in the dumpster,” he said, directing the last part to Mr. Lawyer.

“Yeah,” he sighed dejectedly, taking a sip of his coffee, “I have so many regrets.”