Maybe I am just too impatient, but I was really not impressed with what was involved in opening a RedBubble store. These will all seem like minor issues but here’s what annoyed me.
1. Their sticker interface is just weird. I wonder if they are even aware that people still buy old-school bumper stickers. I have no problem with what sticker shapes and offerings they did have, but they had absolutely no template for a normal bumper sticker in normal-bumper-sticker dimensions. I like bumper stickers. I want to design some. I couldn’t with them. This was a real bummer.
2. I uploaded one of my photos. That I took thirteen years ago. That I’ve seen no images similar to in the thirteen years since. And no one at RedBubble told me there was a DMCA issue. But RedBubble decided they had to investigate to see if it was REALLY my photograph. Which I did not learn until after they’d figured out that yep, it was probably mine. Assholes.
3. Why do I need to upload five items to go live in the shop? And once I uploaded the five items, why wasn’t the shop live immediately?
So, yeah. Cafe Press it is. I can’t use my old “studiorandom” handle there because they mysteriously made that shop disappear, but I came up with a different one and we’ll go with that for now. The idea is to use this as a stepping-stone to see which of my designs, if any, are successful there so that I might print them myself eventually. I have aspirations of acquiring an Epson tank printer and using it to do sublimation mugs, and at some point I want to teach myself screen-printing too. I don’t yet know what I would do to make bumper stickers, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. It will probably involve vinyl. Wish it wouldn’t, but that seems to be what’s most available to home-based makers.
Irrelevant point right now, at any rate, as I’ve got no home to base my making in. Another reason to use print-on-demand.
Anyway. I’ll link to it in the sidebar. There will be stuff there when there is stuff there. Have fun.