Zizzling Zazzle – Christine aka stine1 blogging

Oh, 2023 was a rather unique year with many ups and even more downs. The aftermath of the covid pandemic is hitting the global print on demand services rather hard, now that people (potential customers) tend to buy less home decor and art. And then we have the sudden but massive rise of AI art, which floods the pod sites with an enormous amount of digital art – I myself am rather guilty of this myself, although I try to not flood the sites.

Anyway, in this blog post I would like to present my naught and nice list meaning the naughty pod websites that I cannot recommend are compared with the nice pod sites that you should try out yourself, in case you are looking to expand your portfolio.

Naughty List – print on demand sites with no sales or that f*cked up too badly in 2023 for me to still like them

1. Shop VIDA has stopped offering their print on demand service around August/September. Honestly, I cannot really remember the date. It was a sudden move and it came as a surprise with no warning. They did send out a newsletter about merging with Threadless and asked for your Threadless email address to merge accounts. Since then I have not heard back from either Vida or Threadless and checking the FAQs is really depressing: NO designs will be migrated. That’s a bummer and a huge BYE-BYE!
2. Threadless brought me zero sales in 2023. They have a similar system to Teepublic where newly uploaded designs are not available on their marketplace right away. They will be put in your own free shop and if they ever deem your design(s) worthy, they will be added to their marketplace. Yeah, thanks for nothing. My test images never generated any sales and never made it to their marketplace, so bye!
3. Society6 follows a similar route with their new artist plans. The free plan (which I chose) allows you a total of 10 designs. I did choose a few that had a few sales in the past but no way will my Society6 sales compensate for any of their monthly plans! Sorry guys, I usually earn less than $5 per month and most months I do not have any sale. Why bother with them? I know that many artists are more than just angry with them and some even deleted all their art. Let’s see where the future will take S6.
4. ArtHeroes is another huge disappointment that is not worth my time. No sales in a year. When they changed their I had a few hopes that maybe that might help but no, never helped. I tried to upload more contemporary art and that did not help either. I will no longer upload any works for now.
5. Pictorem was another experiment I started to upload images to – did not pass the test since I had not one sale in a year.
6. Printler had only accepted ONE of my test image batch and of course, no sales yet. But why bother anyway?
7. Curioos had given me some hopes until I read the really bad reviews they get from both customers and artists. It seems that Curioos tends to “forget” listing sales properly…
8. Le Galeriste does have nice all over print clothes BUT they only sell and ship to Canada and the USA. I had tried them for two Christmas sale seasons and did not manage to generate one single sale 😦
9. Fine Art America / Pixels is also a huge disappointment. I never managed to sell anything in more than 5 years! Why am I still listing them?
10. Arthaus has an easy uploader and it looked so good…. I even got featured on their social media accounts once but…. did not bring any sale.
11. Artgrab is selling album covers and with 51 uploads, I still never managed to sell anything. What a pity…

Nice List – print on demand websites that generated good sales for me

1. Zazzle is the most fun with the most amount of sales although their products and not on the cheap side.
2. Cafepress is a pod website I tend to forget regarding new uploads but I keep getting sales on a monthly basis with one or two cashouts per year.
3. Redbubble almost made it to the naughty list this year with recent changes including shipping fees for artists/sellers BUT one of my older designs suddenly came to the surface and is selling regularly as iPhone cases since last summer. I have no idea why but I like the idea.
4. Teepublic does not bring me many sales but the uploader is easy and fast and I do earn a few bucks per year.
5. Calvendo is a German company focussing on calendars, quality puzzles and art prints. They are very strict and you need high quality photos or images. In the past, I only had one or two selling photo calendars but with my AI art, I have created over 50 calendars (German and English combined) that are nicely selling on their website, online book stores and Amazon 😁 And yes, things like “Zombie Unicorns” and “Zombie Mermaids” DO sell as a calendar!
6. Amazon Merch and KDP combined are an awesome way of selling things. On my author page I have listed many books and Calvendo calendars and you can also find the usual Amazon Merch items under my name Christine aka stine1.

Watch List – undecided – not just pod

1. EyeEm had been bancrupt earlier this year but Freepik has bought them and now we will have to see whether we can still earn something with our stock photos.
2. Wirestock was a good alternative to EyeEm until they introduced an upload limit. I can no longer upload without paying for a pro membership and I doubt that I would earn enough to make up for the pro plan. I might spend some money for the pro membership in the future, maybe I will catch a good deal in 2024.
3. Fy! or IamFy is not very known but I am giving it a try. We will see in one year whether it was worth my time. The uploader is very easy though.
4. ArtWanted is more like a community for artists than a print on demand shop but I have invested into one year of pro membership to test it. Got a good Black Friday deal and let’s see whether I will sell something…
5. 3DRose – The fact that I cannot link to my designs is already annoying. I cannot find any online, although I had the requested 10 images and I can even see 3 tiny sales in my dashboard. But at this time, 3DRose is not worth the effort as adding new designs is annoying. You need squares and fill a document with your text data. Too complicated to do it on a regular basis.
6. Spreadshirt has a few sales, but less than 5 in a year – not worth the effort.
7. Displate brings me a few sales per year. They do not accept every image and I tend to forget them. I am not in the mood of mass uploading to them but hey, I made it to one cashout so far.

Are there any surprises in this blog post that you might not agree with? Please leave me a comment!