Why choose Redbubble? How does it work?
The idea behind choosing a platform like Redbubble, Society6, TeePublic are seemingly a good idea if your’e a designer. They’re sometimes referred to as “upload and done” as you don’t have to deal with any of the administrative business side. They take care of printing, shipping, customer service, payments. You upload designs and just collect the money as people buy products with your designs.
Does it work?
Welll….. like all these platforms, it’s not as easy as it seems. The proliferation of “designers” who are companies that just use Canva to copy other designs or produce variation in bulk of designs means the sites are filled with lots of AI and other products for you to compete with.
I thought it was a no-lose situation with Redbubble, just another avenue to sell designs and a way to experiment with different markets.
Well it turns out there is a way to lose… your account can be suspended!
Can anyone create a Redbubble account?
Yes and no… You submit a request for an account and they check for:
- File quality + resolution
- Uniqueness of designs
- Product formatting
- Appropriate tags, titles, + descriptions
- Social proof (profile info, bio, links to other sites)
I was approved and classified as a “Standard tier” creator. All good so far…
Why was my account suspended?
Now let me be absolutely clear.
- I create all my designs myself on Inkscape
- I use Google and public domain fonts
- I do not copy anything from anywhere!
And then after one design upload I got an alert saying that a design needed to be reviewed and an email saying that my account has been suspended. I presumed the suspension was related to the artwork review.
A transcript of the email:
Hello Adrienne,
We’re writing to let you know that your account has been suspended.
Accounts may be suspended for the following reasons:
- There was fraudulent activity connected to the account.
- The products listed in the shop may not have been originally created by the user, such as mass produced art reproductions, stock images, or vector packs.
- The shop may have contained products that could be misleading to consumers, such as claiming to be products not offered on the Redbubble marketplace or possessing inaccurate qualities or materials not offered on Redbubble.
- The account was created after an associated account was disabled.
- The account was found to be owned or operated by someone under 16 years of age.
Did they do the review?
Yes actually they did and my design passed the review process.
Did they reinstate my account?
They did not. And the review process stated that:
“Thanks for following up on your account reinstatement appeal.
As mentioned in our previous message, we are not able to review all account Suspension appeals. If your request is reviewed by someone from our specialized team, we will let you know in a separate email within two weeks.
Responding to this email may result in an automatic denial, making your account suspension permanent.
Thanks again for understanding.”
So I think that’s done and done.
After I received the email about the positive review process, I replied and asked about my suspended account and heard nothing more.
Not sure what else I can do at this stage. Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions.
Why I state that you have to rethink your relationship with them
Just because you need to be aware that your account can be suspended for… nothing? Then there’s little to no recourse for appealing it.
Maybe that’s always the roll of the dice with any of these platforms but I thought I was playing. by all the rules.
