In my earlier post about Print on Demand I covered 9 criteria to help artists evaluate potential POD sites.
Today, I want to share some deeper research on the POD industry.
Get my spreadsheet!
As I started to research POD companies, I realized that there’s a GIGANTIC number of providers. So, I made this crazy spreadsheet that includes details on how much each POD site pays their artists, other costs, and the features of each site. We’ve added the spreadsheet to a new section on the website that’s a free members-only resource. You can sign up to get that page at this link.
What’s the best POD site for an artist?
The answer to that question depends on a few questions you’ll need to ask yourself.
- Do you want a simple platform that handles all printing, framing, and shipping for you?
- Do you want a web platform that handles the payments and website, but you’ll handle the prints yourself or work directly with a print shop to fulfill orders?
- Do you want to sell products like t-shirts and mugs as well as fine art prints?
Let’s tackle them each individually.
Simple platform that handles all printing, framing, and shipping for you
Choosing a site that takes care of all of the logistics has its benefits: you can spend less time on the delivery and more on the creation.
There’s a couple of clear winners here.
Both sites have solid traffic, a reputation for making regular sales, and they pay out good commissions.
There are some other sites that you may want to watch out for as well.
Pixels
ArtPal
Society6
Imagekind
“I have used Fine Art America for just over a year now and have netted $787 in sales commissions on prints. I have also sold $3800 of listed originals there to one collector, who first found me via Pinterest.…Adding good tags in the description of the art is imperative. I have found FAA to be good with search engines for my art.” – Sandi Whetzel
“Using the same photos, I ordered “top quality paper for oil paintings” from both FAA and ImageKind. FAA mailed the prints rolled up in a tube. The “travel” paper in which the prints were rolled was crumpled on both ends, presenting a poor image to the recipient. The FAA quality was terrible. ImageKind shipped flat and wrapped the prints in tissue paper, a much better presentation. It took longer to receive the ImageKind prints, but the quality was so much better that I canceled my FAA account immediately. I have since ordered a sample paper kit from ImageKind so I can make more informed recommendations.” – Joan Terrell
Platforms where you work directly with printers
To be clear, these are website platforms and they’re NOT simple to set up.
Instead of simplifying the entire process for you, they focus on the online aspect of your POD business, and refer you to their printing partners for the print fulfillment. This means you set up a website using their complex platform, and they integrate directly with the printers, so the printers can receive orders from your website.
If you want a higher degree of control, the ability to proof your prints, and better customer service, all at the sacrifice of ease of use, then this is your best option.
There are some considerable up-front costs, however. You’ll probably need to spend several hundred dollars to get started.
Print on Demand companies that sell art printed on products
Calendars, t-shirts, mugs, and hundreds of other possibilities. Phone cases, blankets, and shower curtains. Anymore, it seems like the sky’s the limit.
If you want to offer your art on products, there are a handful of companies that offer the ability to do this. Based on their traffic, stories from artists, and my own interactions with these sites, I would take a look at:
RedBubble (they get more than 30 million visits on average/month)
Society6 (about 6 million views per month, on average)
Zazzle (on average, over 17 million visits/month)
I’ve had several artists tell me that they like Zazzle, and the Zazzle team was one of the most responsive companies to my inquiries. That tells me that their team is really making an effort to support their artists. A couple of years ago, they even did a guest blog post here on TAA discussing how to sell art on Zazzle.
Notes on Print on Demand Options
The rest of this section applies to the above spreadsheet. It’s a further explanation of the work that went into the info on the spreadsheet.
Commissions
The commissions to artists vary wildly from site to site, but a common trend that I see is companies allowing the artist to set their own price, and then the POD company adds their margin to the top of the cost. This means that you control your own payout. Some companies make this very clear (Saatchi Art and FineArtAmerica), while others have the same feature but make it very difficult to implement (SmugMug).
Most companies offer monthly payouts; however, some pay quarterly. The minimum sales to get paid each month ranged from $5 – $50. If you’re not regularly making enough money to meet these payout thresholds, you have other problems. This is not a huge concern, in my opinion.
MozRank
MozRank is a number assigned to a website by the SEO Tools company Moz. This number rolls together a number of estimates including site traffic, links to the site, site age, and other factors. The higher the number, the more traffic the site gets in general. The more traffic a site gets, the more sales you’re likely to make.
Yearly costs
Some of the POD companies offer additional resources for a fee. This can be as simple as a personalized page on their website (like FineArtAmerica) or as robust as your own dedicated website (such as Zenfolio).
Fees can be as little as $1 for verification, to as high as $2500/month for the most expensive (which is a Premium option for Threadless). The higher-end fees also usually come with a break in transaction fees and more personalized support. We recommend taking advantage of this support if you are going to make prints a large part of your business.
Companies that give you the buyer’s contact info
Originally, only the platform companies mentioned above like Fotomoto.com and Zenfolio.com offered you the ability to retain the buyer’s contact information.
Now, however, more than a third of the companies on my spreadsheet provide you with some amount of buyer info. This can be a game changer, in my opinion. When you can gather information about your buyers, you can continue to cultivate a long-term relationship with them.
Customer information availability should be a major factor in considering which POD site to use.
If you don’t find an option you like you can also consider building a cheaper ecommerce platform and doing a deal with printers directly. It will lack elegance and require more work from you, but you can build an ecommerce platform for prints using WordPress.
Curation of art by staff
For the most part, POD sites screen for image quality. They want to make sure the image is large enough and high resolution enough to produce a high-quality print. We did not find any sites that screen out certain types of art like nudes or anything else.
Search features
Search is ranked: Poor, Good, or Very good. A Very Good ranking means that a site’s search has the following features: text search, color, medium, style, price, orientation, size, and subject. Good or Poor means that some of these features are missing or are weak.
Integrations on your website
When I initially wrote the first Ultimate Guide to POD, there weren’t many sites (only 2 I could find!) that offered the ability to do POD orders from your own website: FineArtAmerica and FotoMoto. FineArtAmerica gave you the ability to embed your FAA store onto a webpage and FotoMoto allowed you to turn all of the images on certain pages into POD items.
Today, though? The options have more than quintupled. Part of the reason why this has happened is that APIs and integration with various shopping platforms makes it much easier. POD sites might integrate via WooCommerce or via ecommerce widgets, for example.
Of course, with these integrations, you’re not necessarily getting the buyer’s contact info, but you keep the buyer on your site and can hopefully convince them to opt-in to your mailing list.
So, at this point, what questions could you possibly have left? I’d love to read your questions and more success stories in the comments.
Great info, Cory! I really appreciate the effort you put into making that spreadsheet. It makes things really clear.
I have been looking into doing prints on Saatchi. I would love to see you write about how to use keywords, etc to make listings on sites like Saatchi push your paintings to the top of their list. I have originals for sale on Artfinder.com, but have not been able to figure out how to get my listings to the top of their pages (although, they are usually on the first or second page, which is not bad!)
JessicaSanders1 You ask and I deliver: https://theabundantartist.com/how-to-make-images-found-online/ While not specific to Saatchi, the principles apply.
CoryHuff JessicaSanders1 Thank you, Cory!! Going to check it out now 🙂
I’ve been doing $500+ in sales on FAA over the past 10 months but it took me about two years of constant promotion and branding to get to that level. Most people give up before their hard work starts to pay off. Also previous sales count heavily in search listings so newbies have to work even harder to get sales.
This is sooooo helpful! I love your podcast and your articles are an invaluable resource for artists! As an artist just starting to look into POD, this is really helpful for me to narrow down my options. Thank you for the constant value you offer us to “live a creative life according to our own rules” 😉
Awesome. Glad you like it Fay!
I’m looking for a POD company that will print and fulfill my book and also integrates with woocommerce. I know that your research was around fine art printing, but did you come across any printers meeting my needs?
Thanks for the article. Very informative!
Hi Phil. What I’ve seen people do is take the order on their own site via Woocommerce, and then manually enter the order in their POD platform of choice. It’s a clunky workaround.
If you have some web development resources, Fine Art America has an API that could be theoretically used to integrate a call between your ecommerce platform and their POD ordering system.
Hi Cory,
First thanks for the very useful information you provided here (and in other posts!). You mentioned that FAA has an API but i cannot find any info about it anywhere. Any idea how i can find this API?
Thanks again for the great and so useful job.
Chris
You’ll have to reach out to them directly. I’m not sure how to access it.
Phil, you might want to check out vervante.com for your book and they do cards. They integrate and fulfill with nearly every shoppingcart. Plus you do get customer info!!
I don’t believe they do prints, but they are a wonderful small company that is extremely responsive – I bet we could convince them!
Anyone heard of BoomBoom Prints? It seems like the “new kid on the block”. I think the big difference between them and the other ones you mentioned is that they are really kid-focused (it’s a lot of nursery artwork). My current stuff isn’t perfect for that audience, but I was thinking I might try it
I am disappointed that you don’t seem to include in your analysis any comparison of products and quality of printing. It seems more about marketing. However, for an artist looking for the best looking products such as tee shirts, phone cases, pillows, etc., not to mention framed prints, there is really very little in this article that helps.
Example: I am currently wanting to send a T shirt with a special fine art print design on it to someone in my family. I can’t find anything that tells me how the quality of printing and quality of material on which it is printed compare from one site to another. Society6 is truly annoying, in that, unlike CafePress, you have to upload an absolutely square image for many items. This includes T shirts. Since I already had an account with them and heard that others like the quality of their pillows, I wanted to do it, but my image is 4200×3000. This would necessitate cutting it on one side, which as you know does not preserve the original image as it should be. I am still searching, and not finding much. I would appreciate it if you would make another blog post on quality of printing and quality of the items they print.
I once ordered an expensive teapot and mugs from a print on demand site which is one of the top rated ones. I would have liked to have it from FAA because I had seen how well they made an expensive large framed print of the same image, but FAA did not offer houseware items at that time.
It took forever to try to work out how best to position my art, but they did offer a lot of control over this. However, when I received the item, my high quality image, looked really sub standard, and one mug was had the picture very crooked. It appeared that what was pictured was not representative of these items, and I had paid a fortune for postage, which was not refundable, so the whole thing was a loss, as it would have necessitated me paying for return postage, and losing the extra added for currency conversion and taxes, besides!
I have fans around the world, as I am active in some social media websites. It is important that this kind of situation does NOT happen if one of them orders an item with my art on it.
Seriously? You’re disappointed that this FREE resource that took 20+ hours research didn’t include more free research? You’d like me to do another 20 hours research, plus spend the money on ordering sample products, to let you know what’s best?
I’ll tell you what. If you want to foot the bill for ordering sample products, we’ll do some comparisons.
Right on Cory!
I really loved your article and honestly will be using it as my guide. Thanks for helping us all become abundant 😉
Cory, could you please send me some samples from the various PODs so I can compare the quality? I have fans around the world that are waiting for their mugs and pillows.
Great job on the research. I’ve found the quality to be fairly standardized these days and the only major difference is in shipping/presentation, which is easily accessible information on each site.
Keep up the good work! Starving!
I’ll get right on that Cody… 😉
Yeah, my fav, Cory, is to say, “I’ll get right on that.
…IN MY SPARE TIME!!!”
LOL!
You’re awesome and you ROCK!!
Hi Cory, Many thanks for putting all this together, and all your hard work. I’m just at the point of looking into the whole print on demand option, and this article was very helpful indeed! Vincent
Helpful article so far! It would be really convenient way to introduce the audience more about Print on Demand drop shippers such as Printful, Pressera, Print Aura, Merchify and others. The item and print costs are remarkably lower (±50% of the POD platforms – Society6, Zazzle, Redbubble – price). These drop shippers lets you create branded production with custom invoices, packages and labels. The process is extremely simple as API integrations for Shopify, BigCommerce, Woocommerce and others are prepared.
Thanks Mindaugus – updates for Printful, etc are coming!
I was wondering about those, too. I will look into those; thanks Mindaugas!
Cory: I do want to say, this article and the crazy awesome spreadsheet are so, so completely incredible and once again, “the right thing at the right time” from The Abundant Artist! Thanks again for coming to meet with and provide a workshop for us Mosaic artists at the Society of American Mosaic Artists’ conference last year! Your presence there was invaluable to so many of us. Sharing this and hope you’re doing great!!
Hi Cory,
This is so helpful! Thank you so much for all of your time and effort. Have you gotten any feedback from artists or do you have any opinions about the quality of the prints from Society6, Crated, FineArtAmerica? I’m just entering this game and I want to make sure that the site I use is known for quality prints. Again … thank you so much!
Thank you again!
Does anyone have experience with this Print On Demand service for digital publishers, Artists and Photographers?
http://landingpage.peecho.com/pdf-to-book-or-magazine-print/
Sophia, I haven’t used the book service you refer to here. However, I’ve done several books through Blurb and I would definitely recommend them. You can order paper samples to decide which paper type suits your book best. They offer several different options for designing and printing your books, including printing from a PDF. If you use Lightroom, you can design your book there (with RAW files, even!) and then export from LR. The LR export automatically handles color management. Blurb now offers an integration with Amazon to sell your books there, and you can also sell your books as a PDF. I’ve gotten raves on the books I created through them (so far only for private clients, but I’m planning on doing one for general release soon). Oh, you can also publish magazines through Blurb. Haven’t tried that yet, but I may in the future.
Good luck with your publications!
Thank you so much for all of your research and great writing! I happened upon your site just recently and it has already been incredibly helpful, thanks!!
Thank you so much for this very informative information. I’m on the board of a national art association looking to fundraise through our art and your post is soooo informative. Thank you for all your hard work!
Does anyone know if any of these sites provide any statistics?
Where does the traffic to an artists work come from, referral sources and/or keywords in search engines or within the POD itself?
Filtering out of bots and web crawlers and segmentation of people registered as artists vs shoppers on the site?
What items do potential buyers have in their shopping carts at any given time?
Any sort of aggregate data on what tends to sell on the site as far as types of merchandise, the size or material or prints?
What referral sources lead to sales?
A lot of these sites offer nice platforms but it seems like any marketing efforts are just a shot in the dark without any way to determine what marketing efforts are working and where sales come from. I think Zenfolio and Smug offer stats that are at least better than what I’ve seen from the few PODs I’ve looked at but is there any real POD that gives you the info you need to really grow a business if you don’t already have a bunch of customers to send there?
That stats are certainly lacking for the most part. That is a big downside for most of them, and one of the reasons we encourage people to get their own websites up and running.
Hi Cory,
This is a great article and it’s very helpful.I really want to look into the details of each site’s info but I can’t download the spreadsheet. 🙁
Did you go through the sign up process?
Hello!
I’ve been reading a lot of your articles regarding POD services, which i found really helpful.
I’m an artist and graphic designer myself.
But my point is:
I ONLY DO SILKSCREENED HIGH QUALITY PRINTS!
I NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE WEBSITE WHICH OFFERS THIS PRINT SERVICE.
I’m a real maniac of the detail and the quality of my end product, so i cannot permit that the final outcome would not be perfect.
Can you please give me more informations about these kind of sites and how to check on quality?
Hi Francesco – I’m not sure which sites offer silkscreen. You’ll want to check with them, and then order some example prints.
I don’t know graphic design. However, I Photoshopped a number of my original images then uploaded them to Redbubble and Society6 for their products. In order to figure out how items would look to my potential customers, I purchased many of the items (whew!! Is this their scheme?). I had so many quality issues that I am exasperated. It was very, very hard to figure out which problems were mine and which were theirs.
For example – There were numerous issues, but I only want to mention here the tapestry I kept trying to get right – I’m a calligrapher. I put many quotations (which I had calligraphed over time) onto a tapestry-size file which I uploaded to Redbubble and Society 6. (To their credit, they gave me refunds on everything. Only they don’t tell me what went wrong or how to correct the problems.)
I have received four tapestries – two from Society 6 and two from Redbubble. Here are the issues I had with each of the four.
1) The first Society 6 tapestry was pretty good in the middle, but the sides were all blurred and almost unreadable. After I received this, I went in and tried to fine-tune my Photoshop file.
2) The second Society 6 tapestry was a bit better but still the outer areas were blurry and unreadable although I thought I had fixed the file.
3) The calligraphy on the first Redbubble tapestry was thick and heavy. I would never show anyone this piece since a calligrapher’s work is recognized for the elegant thick and thin lines. I hate throwing things away, but I will not show this to anyone.
4) The second Redbubble tapestry was the best of all. However, they apparently lightened it up in such a way that the calligraphy has no dynamism. It looks faint and limpid.
I have probably spent upwards of $1,000 to see if my products are saleable. So far I’m realizing I am not a good graphic artist, but i am a big dope!
Hi Cory,
Thanks so much for this wonderful resource.
Maybe you can help me with a wonder: I’m looking to reward my Patreon (Patreon.com/NathanAardvark …shameless plug!) supporters with a “free” print sent direct to their address. I’m trying to find a POD service that will be cheap enough (less than $5) but reliably mid-range quality.
Just googling image results for “name of POD service + yelp” brings up some awful pics! Like Snapfish for example.
Anyone have any advice?
Who’s the cheapest POD with acceptable standards?
Hopefully, others can gain from an answer or lead on this question!
Many thanks.
Nathan
Great resource! Just one thing, your Excel spreadsheet download does not work, and the sign up link does not work either.
I have been searching high & low, but can’t seem to find information on the supply chain for some of these POD sites, especially ones like Zazzle that create many different kinds of products. I would love to be able to know if the worker conditions are different depending on the company. Puts my mind at ease recommending art from these sites. Thanks for any information you can share!
Thank you so much for this! I’m using it right now to decide on a fitting solution for my website.
This is PERFECT! Thank you SO much for all the time and work you put into this. I have been wanting to research Print on Demand sites but have held off because I didn’t know where to start. This is really going to kick my butt into gear. Thank you!
Thank you so much Cory! So generous of you to take the time to put this out. You’ve assisted me greatly in my decision making:) All the best.
This is a good website. And I can’t promote that you have to promote to make money enough. I do very good work. 3D digital artwork that is oftentimes mistaken as oil paintings, oil paintings, sketches, etc. However, due to the lack of promotion, it is like pulling teeth to get anywhere.
Though some sites are different. You won’t necessarily sell the same subject matter on the more artistic sites [arist rising, fineart, etc.] as you would sell on zazzle, redbubble, etc. which is more for silly catch sayings, etc. For example, even with promotion, by giving away freebies to a friend’s wedding, the wedding invitation designed on zazzle never sold despite been on the upper scale of quality & design & underpriced compared to the others.
Thank you for your wonderful article. Are there POD online sites that will print and ship as reasonable as Costco or Sam’s Club. In an art marketing group here in Portland everyone uses Costco?
Some of the online sites tend to leave little profits for the artist. Thanks
Larry
Hi, Mike. I just joined FAA and am about ready to leave it. The site is unbelievably slow at uploads. Is there anything that can be done about it? I’ll be posthumously famous by the time all my art gets uploaded.
Really wonderful information! Thank you for all your effort and research. I’m looking forward to taking one of your classes in the future!! Wishing you the best:)
FAA I wasn’t too impressed with, but I liked the advice the artists give; I don’t know, I felt a little out of place because I’m younger. The same went with Zazzle, but they kept rejecting some pieces all of a sudden and I had enough; it is overwhelming to get lost on there. I had a lot of success with Redbubble, but I earned like at least $45 (I’m a rich artiste :sarcasm:) on just one item on a pretty young site called Print All Over Me. (paom.com) The site has a few bugs and is pretty expensive for the customer, but if you get the right person with the money to blow, it’s pretty cool and a great commission rate amount.
I really appreciate the work you have done here. It’s really amazing how
Many variations there are in these services. Is there a spreadsheet that’ll download? I’m really interested in the POD services for transferring my glass art to cushions and iPhone covers and such. Thanks in advance
Jenie Yolland
Hi Cory,
Thanks for your great research!
I would like to sell my art in large sizes (47×70″) online via a POD company. Can you please inform us of a global POD company that has professional quality;
in order to save the customer freight, customs expenses and a way to choose which currency you want to pay with.
Thank you so much in advance!
Kind regards from New Zealand,
Petter
I am specifically interested in having my own e-commerce site for my art, and sending out POD orders as they come in to my site. So it’s more like drop shipping in a way. I noticed the article primarily described POD services that host their own shopping store. Until the very end where you mention two – FAA and Fotomoto.
I guess I’m just hesitant to give up such control and revenue to those sites, since none sound absolutely stellar – you mention the weak areas of analytics and customer tracking. Plus I envision my own site with my own design, total control.
So I guess I’m wondering by chance if the author is aware of any other companies that will POD at wholesale prices. Not even really sure this makes any sense since the only difference between that and a regular retail order would be the “wholesale pricing” part.
Any recommendation on which option has the best quality printing and prints? Thanks for the article
I received my first order from my store at Fine Art America – the packaging was pristine and undamaged – the frame inside was completely broken. So it was packed AFTER it had been broken. This is unacceptable. I would be embarrassed if my art work arrived to someone in this condition.
Could you please make a guide for buyers? I’m googling this and only finding guides for artists. As a buyer I would like a site with:
* High quality printing
* Easy to browse for the kind of art that appeals to me
* Reasonable shipping to Europe (preferably ships from Europe)
Hey Cory,
Thanks for your effort to post this review. I have made an additional mini research about “payment methods” since unavailability of PayPal in my country. What I have found is that they all pay artist payments by either Paypal or check. I wish they pay some additional methods like Payoneer or Skrill so that I could join them.
I have just received the hour sales pitch with attached pricing incentive from Art Storefronts. I’ve seen great art sites through word press that have a POD feature. I’m attracted to ASF but only have about 12 paintings to make prints from and I’m not sure if thats enough. They say quantity doesn’t matter. Also, its a 5 year commitment at the premium level and they say they don’t use a contract. Its expensive (though still an attractive product) but I don’t want to get hung out to dry. Anyone using ASF that can speak to any of this?? Trying to decide. Thank you!
Hi, did you ever go through with Art Storefronts?
I’m a photographer wanting to focus on fine art prints and they seem to be the best. I’ve tried various options over the years but the way website display artwork and the print options have always been a negative point for me. Only Fine Art America and Art Storefronts have a robust ‘mockup’ system that is automatic and beautifully displayed. But the cost of ASF though! I can’t afford it. What I don’t like about FAA is that they retain the customer’s contact information.
Hi there,
I am wondering what is generally required in terms of business insurance for print on demand activities. I know people generally have nothing to do with the product but I am guessing you require professional liability insurance in the area of mistaken copyright infringement? Is there anything else that you need covering for print on demand?
We’d love to help anyone that is looking for truly gallery quality printing on demand with automated shipping.
We’ve researched this a lot over the years and are constantly amazed at how so many of these sites still don’t even provide more information about what papers they are using, or what machines they are printing with… Artists are often left to put their trust in two words… ” Art Print ” ..
We don’t think thats enough and artists need many more high quality options.
Here’s a bit more info about what we are doing, for anyone that is interested:
http://fineartprinting.la/on-demand-art-printing/
Which print on demand service do you recommend for Canadians who don’t want to deal with the high cost of the US dollar for my customers.
Paulo, have you looked into Art of Where in Montreal?
I’m using Art of Where integrated into my Shopify site. When a customer orders, the order gets sent straight to AOW and they print and send to my customer. This is brand new for me but so far I’m happy! I have ordered various products from AOW last fall and think the quality is great.
I signed up to get access to the free library and the file referenced in the article, but have not received a the email response I was told to look for. Would love to go over that chart. Any help? Thanks.
Thanks for this helpful guide! Curious what other marketing you did..I can imagine it’s very difficult to get stuff sold just by throwing it up on those sites, where EVERYONE else is trying to do the same thing.
I have Chinese calligraphy products, and am trying to figure out where the best audience would be! Thanks so much!
Also do you have sites that we can help promote?
Where does SUNFROG compere here with you all? Great useful article, thank you for all your wonderful effort
I’ve seen a lot of bad reviews for SunFrog. I would google review plus the name of the site you’re thinking of using. Some of the POD sites that used to be great are not any longer (bad quality, poor customer service, taking months to deliver, etc.) and you’ll easily find out the skinny on the site you’re considering.
Cory has not been active in comments since 2015. Several, including myself, cannot become new members. I keep getting an error message. Is this still an active site?
So I’m looking for a platform that will allow me to create my own POD branded marketplace, with the ability for my artists members to upload their work. So, I need my own Zazzle for my company. Do you know of any templates available to do something like that?
Fabulous article, thank you. Any info on average seller revenues? Are we talking $50, $5,000, or $10,000 per month in sales?
Has anyone here worked with artflakes, and if so, are you getting paid?
I would just like to thank Cory for this useful spreadsheet.
While it did not have EVERYTHING I would have wanted (i.e., discussion of quality, customer service, and the like), it’s also true that that info changes over time and would not likely prove to be as useful or reliable after a few months, so no biggie. Especially as it is so easy to do an online search for reviews of the site one is interested in.
But, as a result of this sheet, I discovered Pixels.com and will be signing up with them now that I’ve finally gotten my stuff together. It looks as if I’ll be able to use them as not only a storefront (along with my website), but also as the printer and fulfiller of the stuff I’ll be putting on Etsy.
So thank you again, Cory! Super appreciated!
AND – also discovered that Printify will be the best way for me to go. I can have shops on Etsy, eBay, and my own website and everything can go through Printify (no longer just a Shopify App).
Also wanted to recommend that people check the reviews of the printers who are associated with Printify. Most come out with top marks, but not all, so it’s important to check the reviews for those, as well.
Printify looks like a great way to get good printing and shipping from providers who would not otherwise be available to individual artists (including 5th Sun) at a decent price and make everything as automated as you want.
But keep in mind that you, as the artist, still have to do your part in checking reviews and making sure quality hasn’t slipped, etc. What might have been a great place to get shirts two years ago, isn’t any longer (Printful comes to mind here).
I also recommend checking reviews for Printify to see the specifics of what is being said, as well as forums on Etsy and the like where you’ll get an honest take on things like quality.
Thanks again, Cory for this awesome resource!
Do you a post about the quality of the different POD sites? I’ve had some issues with my current one and am trying to find a reliable high POD site.
I do very well on FAA but I get nervous having all my eggs in one basket. I looked at Saatchi (per your list) but for a photographer who is looking for someone else to handle the e-commerce side of things (Order, printing, shipping, etc) it doesn’t seem like that is what I’m seeing going on there. They talk more about shipping of your prints and make sure you charge enough.
I may have missed it but do they do what FAA does?
Hey Jeff,
Check out https://finerworks.com
I live in Austin and drove down to San Antonio to check out their offices and see the quality of their work. I was very impressed.
I have an FAA account and don’t market any longer due to the fact the will not share the info of the buyer with you. So that is a big NO-NO in my online world. I want the buyer data to market to. So luckily I have an ecom website on Shopify so I created a hidden page and uploaded all my mask images and the drove the traffic to that site where I got all the customer data and manually placed the orders at FAA and used them as a dropship fulfilment.
Finerworks will drop ship your prints for you.
fyi…..really enjoy your images as you are the only photographer I follow on FAA.
Johnny;
Same problem here with FAA being stealth with my buyer info.
-right now I have a really neat FAA integration page; https://www.heatherart.studio/homestyle
-any idea how to accomplish similar to what you have in your ecomm using my Squarespace site?
Thanks in advance, Johnny.
Hiya;
Are the any POD companies that reveal the identity of who has purchased from you?
– Would also like ability to integrate into my own website.
– FineArtAmerica.com/Pixels.com has a code for this,
-but will not disclose the name of who has purchased from you.
Thx!
YES! We have our own e-commerce capabilities already on our gallery site. We have one print vendor but are looking for others. (This reply to underline the question inhale of finding other sites. BTW – we are using finerworks.com.
It’s 2022 and this info is still so very relevant. Love your site, this post, and all the great info you offer (as well as your book).
I’m looking for POD through my own site that does the following:
– Handles the purchase, fulfillment, and returns for me.
– Surfaces only my work and doesn’t flow the user away to other artists/marketplace. In other words, truly white label.
– Provides buyer info (I’d pay more for this).
– Offers limited editions with signed certificates of authenticity.
– Is great quality and fully archival.
Inprint.com is your website, right?
It is pretty simple, but yes – seems to get the job done quite nicely.
Hi. I tried to join RedBubble and was blocked even before I was finished. I was informed via email because of course there are never phone numbers, that I could appeal and I did and then received an email that it would take between two weeks and never, because sometimes they just didn’t get to the appeal, so see what happened. I hadn’t uploaded anything yet. I am over 16 and I have never had an account before. It’s possible I got caught in software security and that happens on rare occasions. I thought you should know. I don’t care if there’s an answer to my appeal.
Thanks for the new updated information. What I would like to know is which service will get me more sales of prints. If I put the same images on Fine Art America and two other similar websites such as Imagekind or Smugmug will I sell more on one website than another. I am not worried that one is free and another may be $100 a year, if the one that costs more, makes me more money.
I know that this is a vague question, depending on the kind of art, marketing, etc. but it would be helpful to have a guide. I cannot try 3 or 5 companies and give each a year or 6 months. That’s a lot of time and effort.
Perhaps a poll from your members on which ones have made them sales would help.
Thank you.
Hi Allan, we can’t possibly predict which one will get you more sales. That depends on your effort, whether an editor curates your work and promotes it to their audience, and other factors. I’d suggest that for photographers, Smugmug makes more sense. For most painters there’s not going to be a huge difference between FAA or Imagekind, but as I said above, your mileage may vary.
Great resource Cory – thank you. Glancing through the comments section brings to mind a quote “No good deed goes unpunished”, lol.
Everyone’s got an opinion, that’s for sure 😉