Sell Art Online Websites

What is Society6?

Society6 is a brother company of Saatchi Art. It belongs to the same group called Leaf Group, formerly Demand Media Inc. Society6 was created in 2009, inspired by one of the three founder’s wives who needed finance to attend Art Basel Miami. It is headquartered in California, United States, and has vendors in many other countries such as Australia, Germany, Italy, the UK, and South Korea. On TrustPilot, it received an incredibly low score of 2.1 stars (out of 5).

What is RedBubble?

RedBubble was born in 2006 in Melbourne, Australia, also maintains offices in San Francisco and Berlin. In 2018, it acquired TeePublic for US$41.0 million in cash. TeePublic was an important player in the POD market, having sold over 1 million products in 2016. This strategic acquisition created synergy for growth. It was rated 3.8 stars on TrustPilot. However, it had received criticism for IPR infringement, including repeated trademark breaches.

RedBubble vs Society6 Reputation (Even)

Society6 and RedBubble are both founded by serial entrepreneurs and publicly traded. We don’t need to doubt that they mean business. Society6 belongs to a group with several subsidiaries, which comes with many pros and cons. While RedBubble Limited is the mother group.

RedBubble for organic traffic (Wins)

Society6 organic traffic

Society6 is an online marketplace of artwork from a community of 300,000 independent artists. Many of its users are also selling on the brother website Saatchi Art. They target more fine artists with contemporary style, who might also sell on its sister platform Saatchi Art. In Nov 2021 it attracted 7.77M total visits (SimilarWeb).

RedBubble organic traffic

Redbubble is helping more than 800,000 independent artists sell their art. They are designers, calligraphers, illustrators, painters, photographers and digital entrepreneurs. It’s hard to pinpoint a specific style across this platform. It has a total visit of 31.84M in Nov 2021, making it the most visited POD site (SimilarWeb).

Society6 product range (Wins)

Currently, Society6 offers over 90 different kinds of products (iPhone case and iPad case are considered one kind, but T-Shirts of different base colors and compositions are considered different products).

Less products on RedBubble

RedBubble offers over 70 products, such as shirts, stickers, phone cases, and pillows. But it doesn’t have many outdoor and household items such as can coolers, yoga mats, cutting boards and acrylic boxes. Society6 has a greater range of products compared to its counterpart. If it is important for you to have your art on a specific item, you might want to consider Society6.

RedBubble artist interface (Wins)

It is not free to sell on Society6. To validate your account in order to sell on this site, you need to pay a non-refundable US$1 fee. Many users complained on forums and in their videos that Society6 had the worst design uploader and mobile App. Just for these two points, it would not win this round against RedBubble.

Easier on RedBubble but be careful

It was very easy to register and start your own POD store on RedBubble. I was able to register and set up my storefront in just 15 minutes. However, the verification process of each individual design was more tedious than I thought. If you have any sensitive words in your title or description, your design will be suspended until further review. It may take anywhere from a couple of days to over a month to process. This is to avoid IPR infringement and inappropriate content.

RedBubble vs Society6 payout (Even)

Artist margin Society6

Society6 artists earn 10% of the retail price on all products except for:

• Art Prints,
• Framed Prints,
• Canvas Prints,
• Framed Canvases,
• Floating Acrylic Prints,
• Recessed Frame Prints.

Those allow artists to set their own markup beyond the default 10%. The markup on these products can be adjusted anytime by the artist. All artist payments from Society6 are paid out via Paypal.

Artist margin RedBubble

On RedBubble, you can set your artist margin. By default, it is 20%, slightly higher than what you receive from Society6. You’ll be paid once your earnings reach our $20 threshold ($20/20€/£20). Payments start processing on the 15th of each month. There are four payment methods: PayPal, USD ACH, AUD EFT, GBP BAC.

Is RedBubble worth it?

Pros:

• Big audience, this platform drives a lot of traffic
• Relatively high royalty for the artist (20%)
• Easy to use interface
• A nice and helpful artist community
• Product variety

Cons:

• Lots of IPR infringements “we steal your art and suspend your account”
• High competition
• Depend on your marketing: You need to actively send people to your shop to make any money.
• Time-consuming

RedBubble tips

• Pinterest friendly: You can easily use Pinterest to create a storefront for your art on RedBubble
• Try to diversify: There are many products to add your art on, and ReBubble algorithms will likely push your art if you use many of them. Just avoid the ones not fitting with your art.

Is Society6 worth it?

Pros:

• Good for the Fine Art niche.
• Quality selection of designs for your art.
• Not many IPR infringements.
• You can get direct sales from the platform traffic
• Very simple interface

Cons:

• Low artist royalty: the artist only gets 10%
• Not good recent customers reviews (Shipping and product quality went down since the pandemic)
• Website slow and buggy
• Second rate customer support

Society6 Tips

• Fighting bots: Add your artist name in your tags so if Bots are scraping your art you can easily identify and make Society6 remove them
• Verticality: This works on every platform, yet very well with Society6: Create vertical artworks so they will be well seen on mobiles.

Saatchi Art

Is Saatchi Art worth it?

Based in Los Angeles, Saatchi Art is probably the most visited online marketplace for original works of art. Every month there are over 1.8 million visits to their site. They bring potential customers to their marketplace and charge a 35% commission.

Saatchi Art pros and cons

Let’s start with some positive things:

#1: No upfront fees

Saatchi Art allows you to access the global art market for free. Artists from anywhere in the world can start selling on Saatchi Art without paying upfront fees. This is especially valuable for artists who do not have art school education or gallery representation. Without Saatchi Art, young artists might not have the same chance of getting their work seen by collectors.

#2: Fair Ranking System

Unlike Amazon or eBay, you don’t need to pay to boost your presence on Saatchi Art. Your artworks will show up when entering relevant search terms (e.g. abstract landscape painting), or when browsing artworks by category. It’s fair for artists who don’t have the money to promote themselves on a platform. It’s a level playing field for everyone.

#3: Easy Interface

You don’t need any IT skills to manage your own artist account. It’s easy to edit the title, tags and descriptions of your listing page. There are some free analytic tools and blogs to help you boost your presence on Saatchi Art. The more time you spend maintaining your page, the more competitive you will get.

Problems with Saatchi Art

#1: Is Saatchi Art legit?

Many artists know Saatchi Art because of the reputed Saatchi Gallery or Saatchi & Saatchi company. However, Saatchi art has nothing to do with the Saatchi Gallery today. Originally Saatchi Art was a part of Charles Saatchi’s business called Saatchi Online. In August 2014, it was sold to Demand Media, a New York-based company. Saatchi Online was later rebranded as Saatchi Art, with a slogan: ‘Be original, buy original’.

Saatchi art might lose its name

However, the name Saatchi Art was not exactly ‘original’. Saatchi Art uses a British accent in its advertising, trying to use the misleading association with Saatchi Gallery as leverage. In November 2014, Charles Saatchi launched a secession of lawsuits against Saatchi Art, trying to stop them from using his own family name. According to the news reporting, Demand Media might have breached an intellectual property agreement by using the name Saatchi Art.

What if Saatchi Art needs to change its name one day? Could it still attract buyers? Would it affect your earnings on Saatchi Art?

#2: Saturated marketplace

According to Wikipedia, there are approximately 110,000 artists from over 100 countries selling on Saatchi Art. It’s a very competitive and saturated marketplace. If you are not getting the likes and shares on Instagram or YouTube, likely you will not get discovered on Saatchi Art. When you come late to a crowded platform, you are not getting an upper hand.

#3: Fixed commission rate

If you bring your collectors to Saatchi Art, you are still charged 35% commissions. It’s not fair for artists who put a lot of effort into bringing traffic to their page. Plus, you are risking losing your collectors to other artists on the same platform. It doesn’t make sense for artists to actively promote their Saatchi Art page.

There are better ways to calculate the commission rate. For example, Udemy only charges you 3% commissions if you bring your own students, instead of the normal 50% rate. It gives you a lot more incentive to bring business leads, far more generous than some affiliate marketing programs.

#4: Not loyal buyers

Saatchi Art is like the Airbnb of selling art. Buyers will browse through hundreds of works upon entering the site. They are constantly being recommended for similar works by Saatchi Art’s algorithm. Even after purchasing some pieces, collectors might not come back to the same artists. It’s possible they don’t even know the names of the artists they have purchased. Saatchi Art gives its buyers a lot of choices, but for the same reason, it’s harder for artists to cultivate a fan base.

#5: Channel conflict with galleries

Some platforms work exclusively with art galleries. Some platforms work with galleries but not exclusively. However, Saatchi Art doesn’t work with art galleries. Sure, it is possible for an art gallery to sell on Saatchi Art, just like an artist. Their 35% commission rate drives most dealers away unless the gallery is willing to take just a 15% cut.

Now you know Saatchi Art and your potential gallery are not friends, you might still wonder why it is an issue for you. The issue you will encounter is called channel conflicts.

Conclusion: Saatchi Art best for emerging artists

To conclude, Saatchi Art is great for emerging artists who are new to the global art market, and who do not yet work with art galleries. It gives you the chance of being in front of collectors without paying any money upfront. However, you are just one of their hundreds of thousands of artists on a saturated platform like this. There are always new artists joining and appearing in front of potential collectors, competing for the spotlight. Are you ready for this modern rat race?

Stamatis Pavlis Saatchi art page

Tip from Stamatis Pavlis

If the painting is a resale, you take an extra 5% commission. in the US, the law regarding artworks resale needs an authentication strictly from the site that was the first sale to validate it and for that reason, 5% will go to the artist

In some countries, copyright laws grant artists 5% of the proceeds on the resale of their works. This artist royalty will be paid by the professional intermediates who sold the artworks, to the artists who created them. Saatchi Art sells original and authentic works, therefore you might qualify for 5% royalty when your works are sold on Saatchi Art as a resale.