The print on Demand industry is changing, here's how to adapt

Once upon a time, there was a new business model emerging where a company would launch a catalog of products, and ask artists to upload their art, open a shop and get paid a royalty made on each sales. It was new, it was exciting and it gave a platform for emerging artists and designer to showcase their work with a chance of making money with zero initial investment of their part. It was free to join, free to upload, and it was, at least in the early days easy to get found in searches. Then the word got out : "There is a new way to make money with passive income out there!" and it attracted a lot of scammers, people stealing images off Google, using free vectors and cliparts and slapping them on t-shirts to capitalize on this new model and it ruined it...FOR EVERYONE! So is the story of the early days of the Print on Demand industry.

And then, AI and it's generated images came to the scene, forcing the PoD platforms to have a hard look at their future, as if Ali Express and Temu weren't enough of a threat already. So they tried to weed out the bad apples by introducing new drastic measures : Platform fees, shipping fees, subscription models, upload limits, membership tiers, and curated artists' base. All with various degrees of success and it keeps on going, and I believe it'll keep on going. The Print on Demand industry is changing, and as artists we all need to learn to adapt. This blog post come after I received yet another email from Society6 announcing changes that include getting rid of even more artists from the already reduced pool back in March. Don't worry, I made the cut once again, but if anything this should teach anyone selling on PoD to be careful and a LOT more mindful about how they interact with the platforms they sell on. Society6's announcement came just a few weeks after Redbubble announcing that platform fees would extend to Premium tier accounts.

Is it all shocking? Yeah a bit! But honestly I don't find it all that surprising. PoD's are in the business of printing designs on fairly standard products that one could get printed anywhere, or buy on Temu. There was no originality in the products at the exception of a few on each platforms : The furnitures and cutting boards on Society6, the A line dress on Redbubble (and the now gone pet bowls), the shoes on Threadless... Their real originality was to offer designs to customers that couldn't be found anywhere else until a few idiots started pairing random stock images with cheesy text like "Live, Laugh, Love" in free cursive fonts that all look the same. Basically trying to make a quick buck off something ANYONE can put together and send to Vistaprint to get printed for cheaper. Those generic designs started propagating like invasive weeds on all platforms, saturating them all and making it harder for genuine artists and designers to be seen. The only talent from those scammers was keyword stuffing in an attempt to crack the SEO code which led to search results being confusing for potential customers.

Sadly, it seems the new measures with fees and curation process seem to have had lukewarm results. PoD companies aren't as profitable as they either once were, or were expecting to be and ALL OF THEM without exceptions have seen changes happening in the background, with downsizing their staff, purging their product catlogs, and reviewing their overall strategy. Society6 is the most drastic in their measures right now, but honestly I expect their stance to influence other platforms in the near future. So as designers and artists, you want to pay attention now. Here is what was in the last paragraph of the email I got from S6 :

I shared that screenshot on Threads already which is why "active artist" is highlighted. But this is the key takeaway for all to remember, not just on Society6 but ALL PoD. Since 2024 Society6 has made a point of organizing 2 trends forecasting webinars a year, one for Autumn/Winter and one for Spring/Summer, all way ahead of the season for people had time to plan their strategy. They share 3-4 trends each time, along with a color palette and mood boards along with the tags they want artists to use so they themselves can see the work and curate it at the appropriate time. I have suspected all along that they keep a log of who registered and attended those webinars, and that email paragraph strongly suggest I was right on the money. And, it's not even new information, years and years ago they had a blog post on their website pointing to the fact they not only curate what is trending but pay attention to which artists are doing more than just the minimum which is to upload art. They always stated in one way or another as far as 2017 when I joined that they want ACTIVE artists.

They aren't the only one with that stipulation, look at Redbubble's criteria to move from Standard to Premium tier :

They want their artists to drive high quality traffic to their shop, which is something they have been wanting long before the tiers kick in (they need your audience to grow) and on top of uploading quality and following trends, they want their artists to positively interact with the platform, which is code for "No uploading 300 designs in a week and then ghosting for months/years". Regular interaction is the key to keep those pesky algorithms happy. And while Redbubble isn't organizing webinars, they do send monthly artist newsletters with upcoming trends, sales and sometimes even lists of low yield search results to tap into.

Time to put in the work!

All those PoD did start with optimistic good intention : giving artists a platform to be seen, but capitalism caught up with them and so did all the hopefuls with dreams of getting rich overnight with no work. The new reality that need to sink in for all is that when you sign up to sell on those platform, you become a commercial artist, and commercial artists need to pay attention to trends, and follow briefs. Unless they build their own e-commerce platform and do all the work, including the heavy dose of marketing. There is, and actually never was a shortcut to making money and getting your name out there. If you read that far and like me, you are a Society6 artists that survived a second cut, you need to step up your game still. It's clear you can get cut at anytime. Attend those webinars whenever they announce one, even if it's the middle of the night where you live. Take note of the trends, and screenshot the key slides because they take a long time sending the recap. And finally start working on those trends as soon as the webinar is over. In the last 2 they did mention they start planning the content for the next few seasons very early as they get their favourites printed way ahead of the season to plan their marketing content. Case in point, a design I uploaded days after they announced the Autumn/Winter trends last April got picked for a campaign :

That cushion on top of the pile? The one with the tulips...that's mine. It's not the first time they ever curated my work for a post or an email campaign, but that is the first time they got it printed for a photoshoot. The reason was that I uploaded it quickly after the webinar and uploading of new artwork resumed, and it was fitting the trend forecasting brief. The new strategy with Society6 is "Less quantity, more quality" they want to keep their platform less cluttered and give their customers an easier time finding what they came to look for. Going forward they are also getting clearer on who their target audience is and what to offer them and I personally think it's a model many other companies in the field will be adopting in a way or another.

I've said it quite a lot in Quora answers over the years too : Not everything you create will be popular on all platforms, and what sells on one might flop miserably on another. The Society6 curated model is in a way making my life easier. I no longer have to upload everything there like I once did.