Category: Redbubble

10 Beautiful Space & Astronomy Gifts for Budding Astronauts & Space Scientists

Amazing astronomy presents for all ages

Space is fascinating, educational and entertaining! We marvel at the asteroids, comets, moons, planets, stars and galaxies. We wonder about all that is to be discovered across our vast universe. And space science provides us with some of the most gorgeous images ever captured by mankind. Here are some stunning astronomy gift ideas that are perfect for the stargazer, cosmologist, or astronaut in your family … even if that’s yourself!

1. The Horsehead Nebula in Orion Wall Poster

An eye-catching and gorgeous wall poster featuring the Barnard 3 nebula in the constellation of Orion, based on a photograph taken by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope. Perfect for dorms, bedrooms, offices, studios, classrooms, or anywhere blank walls aren’t welcome, Printed on 185gsm semi gloss poster paper. Size 99.3 x 84.3 cm (including a 5mm white boarder). Available in other sizes and on 50 more products.
Available on Redbubble

2. The Crab Nebula Chiffon Top

A bright and beautiful addition to any wardrobe, this stunning image of the Crab Nebula was taken by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope. Available in a wide range of sizes, this garment’s front panel is edge-to-edge custom printed using a sublimation transfer print technique that embeds dye into the fabric allowing it to stay soft and drapey. Option of black or white back panel, sleeves and binding. Slightly sheer 100% Polyester chiffon with silky hand-feel, ideal for wearing as a layering piece. Loose cropped boxy style fit.
Available on Redbubble

3. The Tarantula Nebula iPad Case

A stunning and colorful iPad case featuring the famous Tarantula nebula in Dorado, based on an original Hubble telescope photograph. Slim impact resistant poly-carbonate case with protective lip. Design wraps around the sides of the case and the colors are embedded directly into the case. Case allows full access to device ports. Fits 4th, 3rd, and 2nd iPad models, as well as model numbers A1395, A1396, A1397, A1403, A1416, A1430, A1458, A1459, A1460. Thickness 3/64 inch (1mm), weight 35g. Also available as a form-fitting removable vinyl decal with laminate top coat iPad skin, and on 50 more products.
Available on Redbubble.

4. Galactic Center Throw Blanket

A rich and glorious throw blanket featuring the heart of the Milky Way, based on radio and x-rays images from the Chandra X-ray and MeerKAT observatories. The throw blanket is 100% polyester fleece with soft, fluffy hand-feel. Printed on front with ivory colored back. Edge-to-edge sublimation print. Machine washable. Available in small (101 x 76cm), medium (152 x 127cm) and large (203 x 152cm) sizes. Also available on 75 more products.
Available on Redbubble.

5. Horsehead Nebula Close Up Throw Pillow

An stunning close up photo of the famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion. This vibrant double-sided print floor pillow cover is a versatile seating or lounging option that will update any room. Durable 100% spun polyester cushion cover. 90 x 90cm. Fills must be purchased separately for this floor pillow. Concealed zip opening for a clean look and easy care.
This image is available on 75 other products too.
Available on Redbubble

6. “Pale Blue Dot” Framed Print

“Pale Blue Dot” is a famous photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 from 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) by the Voyager 1 space probe at the request of famous scientist, writer and Cosmos presenter Carl Sagan. The Earth is shown as a tiny blue speck against a ray of sunlight. This image is available as a framed print in three sizes. The print itself measures 23.9 x 20.3cm, 35.9 x 30.5cm or 47.9 x 40.7 cm. Both box and flat frame styles are available and the frame is a high-quality timber frame finishes to suit your decor. Premium perspex completes the frame – clearer and lighter than glass.
Available on Redbubble

7. Earthrise Over the Moon Tote Bag

This elegant tote bag features the image of the Earth rising over the Moon’s horizon that was captured by the crew of the Apollo 8 mission as it orbited the Moon. The tote bag is a durable, easy-to-carry shopping bag with sublimated print on both sides and is available in small, medium and large sizes. It has a super strong 1 inch (2.5cm) wide cotton shoulder strap and is made from soft yet durable 100% spun polyester poplin fabric. Gentle machine wash. This image is also available on a cotton tote bag and 50 other products.
Available on Redbubble

8. BOSS Great Wall Graphic T-Shirt

This wonderful and unique T-shirt features the “Great Wall” imaged by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey mapping project. The front panel is edge-to-edge printed using a sublimation transfer technique for crisp, bold colors. The printed front panel is 96% polyester, 4% spandex. Solid color back panel, sleeves and neck bind are 100% cotton.
This amazing image is also available on 50 other products.
Available on Redbubble

9. The Pillars of Creation Duvet Cover

A fabulous bed covering featuring the “Pillars of Creation”, the amazing clouds of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula in the Serpens constellation, some 6,500–7,000 light years from Earth. This machine-washable duvet cover has a vivid, full color print on the front, white on the back. 100% polyester top, 50% cotton / 50% polyester back. Concealed zipper opening and internal insert ties for easy assembly. Available in multiple sizes from twin to king. Twin size (173 x 224 cm) fits most extra long dorm beds. Duvet insert not included.
Available on Redbubble

10. Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation A-Line Dress

This beautiful dress pattern comes from the CMBR, the electromagnetic radiation remnant from an early stage of the universe. This faint cosmic background radiation fills all space. The dress has a loose swing shape for an easy, flowing fit. Sizes run large, so order a size down from your usual. Print covers entire front and back panel. 97% polyester, 3% elastane woven dress fabric with silky hand-feel. This pattern is available on 50 other products.
Available on Redbubble

These and many many more space and astronomy based products can be found in the Astronomy Collection in the Tiokvadrat store on Redbubble. Available products include colorful astronomy design for tops, t-shirts, skirts, scarves, leggings, socks, bags, phone cases, covers, mugs, notebooks, coasters, cushions, pillows, duvets, mats, blankets, clocks, prints, shower curtains. Perfect gift idea for astronomy and space sciences loving boy, girl, friend, wife, husband, partner, brother, sister, colleague, or the office. Happy shopping!

Filed under: RedbubbleTagged with: ,

Redbubble Tips and Tricks, Part 2

Here are some more random tips and tricks I’ve picked up while creating my Redbubble shop Tiokvadrat. (If you find this post is helpful and want to say “thanks”, follow me on Redbubble and — if they appeal to you — like a few of my designs.)

Tips and Tricks, Part 1 can be found here.

Redbubble Search Understands Common Plurals

In the Redbubble search engine, plural searches will often match singular tags — for example, the search “large dogs” and the search “large dog” return exactly the same number of hits. That’s because Redbubble understands that “dogs” is the plural of “dog”. One quirk, though, is that the results appear in a different order, depending on whether a design is tagged with “dog” or “dogs” or both.

Redbubble Search Doesn’t Understand Rarer Plurals

The tag “bowman” is different from “bowmen”: if you type each term into the Redbubble search engine you will get over a 1000 hits for “bowman” but fewer than 100 hits for “bowmen”. In this case Redbubble does not understand that one is the plural of the other. Therefore, if you want to get your design to be found for both searches, you will need to add both tags to your design.

Redbubble Search Doesn’t Understand Tenses

The Redbubble search engine doesn’t cope with verb tenses either. A search for “work” yields over 200,000 hits, but variations in tense like “worked”, and “working” hit far far fewer designs. In general, its the base form of a verb (or noun) that returns the most hits. (However those tags are well saturated with designs already and you are unlikely to rank well for any of them.)

Not All Designs Work On All Products

It common to hear the advice “Put your design on all products. You never know what will sell.” That’s such a bad idea. Redbubble almost certainly monitors the “click through rate (CTR)” on your designs. If your design is shown often in results but no one ever clicks on it because it’s ugly, your CTR will decrease. (This is also why, over time, designs with irrelevant keywords will start to disappear from keyword results, and explains why keyword stuffing with irrelevant terms is a bad idea.) Just disable the ugly products or upload an alternative image for them.

Add Your Shop Name as a Tag

If you add your shop name as a tag to each of your works you will easily be able to find all your products in the Redbubble search engine. For example I tagged all my sock patterns for the Euro 2020 football tournament (sadly now cancelled) with the tag “euro 2020 tiokvadrat”. Now, if I want to quickly see all those designs I can search for “tiokvadrat euro socks” in the Redbubble search engine and see all 39 sock products on one page. I can even use the URL https://www.redbubble.com/shop/tiokvadrat+2020+socks as a target for promotion purposes if I want.

Which Tags Are Useful?

  • People’s names (essential for fan art).
  • Colors (essential for patterns and abstracts).
  • Locations (essential for photographs).
  • Text (like “ok boomer” – essential for text memes).
  • Style (“hippie, retro, art deco” – essential for patterns).
  • Topic/subject matter (“trees”, “cats”).

What other tags should I consider?

  • Your shop name (helps you to find your stuff).
  • Prepositions and conjunctions (see below).
  • Hobbies and occupations (essential for targeted memes, for example “fisherman, yoga instructor, dentist”.

Choose “Optimized”

When you upload your products to Redbubble the Product selector now allows you to choose “Optimized”. This seems to replace the old “Image only” option. However it seems the algorithm now tries to present the best view for the customer. The jury is out on this one, some of the older Redbubbler’s don’t like it, but it seems likely to help your product stand out in listings.

Got Patterns? They’re Hard to Sell!

Try these tags, they are some of the more popular and may help you hit the long tail:

1920s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, abstract, aesthetic, africa, art deco, art nouveau, artsy, beautiful, black, black and white, blue, bohemian, boho, chic, classic, clean, colorful, contemporary, cool, covers, cute, dark, designer, diamond, doodle, elegant, ethnic, fancy, fantasy, fashion, floral, flowers, fun, geometric, girly, glitter, gold, gothic, gradient, graphic, green, groovy, grunge, happy, hippie, hippie, hippy, hipster, india, indian, indie, interior, lines, mandala, marble, metal, minimalist, modern, navy, orange, pastel, patterns, peach, pink, pop art, popular, pretty, psychedelic, purple, rainbow, red, retro, rose, simple, spiritual, spring, style, stylish, summer, teal, trend, trippy, vintage, white, winter, yellow, zen

That Thing About Prepositions

When it is needed, include “the”, “and”, “on”, and “for” in your title field or tag field. For example, if you search Redbubble for “solar system”, you will find that there are more than 4,700 hits. Now search for “the solar system”. You will find that there are only 705 hits. It’s going to be much easier to rank against 705 rival designs than against 4,700. Therefore, include the “the” somewhere in either the title field or the tags field when you upload. You will still match the search “solar system” anyway. Some other common examples are: “salt and pepper”, “on golden pond”, “an apple for the teacher”.

Which Fan Art Brand Partnerships Are Worth Targeting?

I’ve been crunching some numbers to try to understand which of the Redbubble “Fan Art Brand Partnerships” are actually worth targeting. Looking at the number of designs uploaded for each brand and comparing it with the popularity of each brand in searches, shows that the following brand partnerships are the ones to target, in this order:

These are the six brands with the fewest designs but the most searches, as of the end of March 2020. (Expect this list to change as the underlying shows change in popularity.)

If you find this post is helpful and want to say “thanks”, follow me on Redbubble and like a few of my designs. You can find my shop here: tiokvadrat.redbubble.com.

Filed under: Redbubble

Redbubble Tips and Tricks

Tiokvadrat Redbubble Shop

Here are some random tips and tricks I’ve picked up while creating my Redbubble shop Tiokvadrat. (If you find this post is helpful and want to say “thanks”, follow me on Redbubble and — if they appeal to you — like a few of my designs.)

Redbubble Sells Stickers and Tees

It took me quite a while to work out what products actually sell on Redbubble. The answer is mainly stickers, posters, and T-shirts. More specifically, customers who come to the Redbubble site are searching for, approximately in this order: stickers, posters, T-shirts, sweatshirts, tapestries, greeting cards, prints, art prints, canvas prints, and mugs. As far as I can tell from the search data I have accumulated, sales of other products are minimal (although I will admit myself to selling some socks and notebooks).

Redbubble Sells Memes and Drawings

By talking to successful Redbubble artists I have built an understanding of what type of design sells best. In order of success they are: text memes (think “OK Boomer”), illustrations (including fan art in the Redbubble fan art program), photographs, and (some) fine art. You’ll need to pair these designs with the list above… for example, text memes sell on T-shirts, illustrations on stickers, photographs on posters and prints, and so on. Stickers are by far the biggest seller.

So Many Unsold Pretty Patterns

Pretty patterns don’t sell … or at least they don’t sell for me. I am sure there are several successful artists who are selling patterns on pillows and scarves, but I believe they are very rare. There seems to be two main reasons why patterns don’t sell. The first is that Redbubble is already flooded with them. Patterns are easy for new designers to create following YouTube tutorials, and they are a lot of fun to make, but there are so many of them it is almost impossible to stand out unless you have built a successful brand around them outside of Redbubble. The second is that patterned products aren’t actually very hard to find nor very expensive in normal high street shops. Why would you go online to by a geometric patterned floor pillow when you can buy the same thing in your local high street store at half the price?

There is No Single Correct Tagging Strategy

I’ve seen advice to add 3 to 5 tags, 10 tags, 20 tags, 50 tags … even the advice given by Redbubble themselves isn’t consistent. The truth is that the number of tags you use when uploading your design will have an impact on both the likelihood of being found and on your position in the search results. The fewer tags you use, the higher you will rank in the search results that you match. But the more tags you use, the more possible searches your design can match. Some designs, like common text memes (“OK Boomer”, “Let me Overthink This”, etc.), can get away with a few well-targeted tags. Other designs, like a geometric tiled pattern, will need many tags because you are going to need to match multi-word long-tail searches (like “pretty pillow for my kitchen”).

Title Words Get Indexed

Any word that you include in the title of your work is indexed by the Redbubble search engine. If your title is “Cute Bulldog Drinking Coffee”, all four words will be added to the search index. I strongly recommend that you include your most important tags in both the Title and Tags fields. Repetition helps tags to rank well.

Titles Can Be Long

Very long. Indeed I haven’t yet found the limit. Also there seems to be no penalty for long titles within Redbubble itself. (Note however that very long titles might not be liked by Google…).

Tag Phrases are Great

You can repeat individual tags within phrases for an extra boost. For example: “tower, bridge, tower bridge, tower bridge london” gives you 3 mentions of “tower” and 3 mentions of “bridge” for an overall boost in the search results for “tower bridge”. Furthermore a phrase containing several tags is counted as only one tag towards your 50 tag limit.

Redbubble Doesn’t Like a Lot of Common Tags

Redbubble removes some tags (and the tag phrases that include them!) when you publish your design. It also removes some other tags from a user’s search string before showing results. Removed tags include: apparel, clothes, clothing, tee, tees, t-shirt, tshirt, t shirt, tee-shirt, shirt, leggings, dress, dresses, pillows, sweatshirt, sweats, trendy, trending, sticker, stickers, gift, gifts, present, presents, relevant, home decor, canvas, wall art … there are many more. Every time you use one of these tags you are wasting space in your tag field. After publishing, check your tags. (Note that Redbubble does not remove these “banned” tags from titles.

Descriptions Can Be Useful

If you are pinning your products on Pinterest, having a good description can save you a lot of time. Clicking the Pinterest Save Button while you are on your product page should give you an image with a good pin description already filled in.

Double-Check Your Design Position and Size

After you have saved your design, Redbubble will show you it on all the products you have enabled. It is worth examining this view quite closely to make sure your design is nicely positioned on each product and at the optimum size. For example, it took me several months to understand that the standard placement of my design on greetings cards was way too high, and that my mugs were defaulting to a view that obscured the design.

Why Building Sales Takes Time

Everyone says that you need to have patience with Redbubble. That if you keep uploading sales will come. But why do we need to wait? The obvious reason is that it takes time for the most important search engine of all, Google, to index your designs. When you start with Redbubble you are not going to have that many links in Google so you are not going to get much organic traffic. As you start to post links to your designs on social media and on various websites like Pinterest, Google will start paying more attention to you. But it takes time for your designs to get indexed and to be findable. Be aware that something like 90% of all webpages are NOT indexed by Google. Take steps to make sure at least some of your designs are linked from somewhere outside of Redbubble.

Are Follows and Favorites Important?

Hmm… it depends who you ask. Many people think that followers are dangerous because they can be bad actors who will rip off your best designs! I on the other hand don’t think that is such a problem … it seems to me if someone is going to steal the work others there are easier ways to do it that becoming your followers. It seems likely to me that that the more followers your profile has, and the more favorites your designs have, the better your traffic will be. Having followers internally gives you “link juice” and the more followers you have the more likely your designs are likely to get a good reputation in Google. This is not proven and a lot of Redbubble designers will say that this is wrong, so make your own mind up about this.

Favorites on the other hand are very useful I find because they help me understand which designs are popular even when they have not yet sold.

And if you find this post is helpful and want to say “thanks”, follow me on Redbubble and like (or buy!) a few of my designs. You can find my shop here: tiokvadrat.redbubble.com.

Filed under: Redbubble

Creating a Shopfront for Redbubble Products on Pinterest

I wanted to find out how to use Pinterest to create a “shopfront” for some of the products in my Redbubble store Tiokvadrat. This is how I went about doing that.

I will be applying many of the lessons I learned in my previous post, “Effective Pinterest Pins and Boards“, where I took an in depth look at how one experienced user’s was succeeding with Pinterest. I will be creating pins for my some of my mug designs in my shop on Redbubble. I won’t actually be selling the products here, this is just the shop window. (I think it important to think along the lines of being a shop owner.)

I will be using the Google Chrome browser for this task, with the Pinterest Save Button extension installed. That’s all the tools I need. I’ll be working on desktop because, although all this is possible on mobile, it can all get a little fiddly at the small size. It’s nice to have some big browser windows open when working — but remember, 75% of users view Pinterest and Redbubble through mobile devices.

I start by creating a new board at Pinterest. I want to create the board in my free business account at Pinterest (which is available once you have joined Pinterest as a member). Later, I will be able to later get some helpful visitor statistics. (Alternatively, I could just create a normal user board, but then I won’t get those statistics.) Creating a new board is as simple, I just visit my business profile on Pinterest and click Create board.

Tiokvadrat boards tab
My main board tab

I name the new board Mugs and Cups by Tiokvadrat:

Pinterest create board dialog for Mugs and Cups Tiokvadrat
Create board dialog

That’s two keywords and a brand name. A name that’s short enough to show well later. I leave the Visibility box unchecked because I certainly don’t want to hide this board, that would defeat the whole point of creating it.

As soon as I create the board, Pinterest offers me some random pins to save to it. I ignore this because I’m only going to show pins for my own products on this particular board. (However, building other types of board can also be fun, particularly if you start using Pinterest for research.)

Pinterest board  created
Board created

The new board is just an empty shell at the moment. I’m prepare it by first giving it a good solid description. Pinterest lets you enter up to 500 characters, and I like to make use of as many as I can to feed the search engines.

While I am here I will also set the board category as Home décor. (I am not sure this is the best choice, but it seems to be the closest match in the category list Pinterest provides.)

Tiokvadrat board edit details dialog
Board edit details dialog

OK, now the board is set up and I am ready to start pinning. In a new browser tab I open my Redbubble shop and display the mugs in it.

I have found the easiest way to navigate Redbubble is to tag all my designs with my business name (“tiokvadrat”) and then use the main Redbubble search engine. In this way I can just search for “tiokvadrat mugs” and see all my mug designs:

Tiokvadrat mugs on Redbubble
Tiokvadrat mugs on Redbubble

Redbubble tells me there are nearly 200 designs in my shop. As there are three types of mugs (classic, tall, and travel) that means I have nearly 600 mugs to choose from. Of course, I am not going to pin 600 mugs! Not only do I not have that much patience but I also only want to show my very best mugs on Pinterest. Hopefully, if someone like the mugs I’ve pinned they will then click through to Redbubble and explore more of my designs and on other products.

To start with,  I will narrow down the selection of mugs to just the classic ones using the filters in the left margin. Clicking on the first image takes me through to the product page:

Redbubble product page for the Tiokvadrat Girly Swot mug
Redbubble product page

From here I can click the Pinterest Save Button in my browser toolbar:

Pinterest Save Button

Which will then show me images that it has found on the page. Here are some of them:

Pinterest Save Button choose a pin to save screen
Pinterest Save Button choose a pin to save screen

I like the first image best, so I click (once!) on that. The Pinterest Save Button opens a dialog:

Pinterest choose board dialog
Choose board dialog

Before going any further I want to change the text on the left side under the image. This description has been auto-generated by Redbubble from my work’s title (sometimes you get lucky and get the work’s description here, but in this case not). This text will be used as the description for the pin, so let’s beef it up a bit.

I use a common formula for product titles and descriptions that goes something like this:

[what] – [who] – [where] – [when] – [why] – [how]

I like to use this as a general prompt when writing text, but not slavishly. For this mug I’ll write:

Blue “Girly Swot” classic mug celebrating clever girls! Perfect gift mug for smart women studying at school, college, or university. Make a statement against casual misogyny.

That’s the “sales” text with some meaty keywords. Next I will add my standard “branding” tagline which I add to every product:

Blue “Girly Swot” classic mug celebrating clever girls! Perfect gift for smart women studying at school, college, or university. Make a statement against casual misogyny. Design by Chris Hughes of Tiokvadrat. tiokvadrat.redbubble.com

That should be just the right amount of text for a pin. (If you add too much it will be truncated; if you add too little you will reduce the chance of your pin getting found on Pinterest results.)

Notice that I have included my shop address in the text, but not as a full URL — for some reason, if you include the “https://” in the URL, Pinterest will reject all the text and you will end up with no description at all.

Now I am ready to save the pin to my Pinterest board called “Mugs and Cups by…”. When that’s done, you will get a link to See it now. Clicking that shows you the pin on Pinterest:

Pin
The pinned product on Pinterest

At this point it is worth checking that 1) the pin looks like you expect it to, 2) that the text shows and is correct, and that 3) clicking the pin links you back to the product page on Redbubble.

Did you get back to the main product page on Redbubble? You did? Great! Now you have posted a pin that will lead interested Pinterest straight to one of your products on Redbubble, ready to buy or explore your works and products further!

Now go back to your list of classic mugs. Add another mug. Maybe add some other mug designs too. Pin what you like around the theme of mugs. Just remember that every pin will link back to the product page you got it from.

After you have pinned half a dozen images, go to Pinterest and take a look at your board. Here is what mine looks like after a while:

The completed Mugs and Cups by Tiokvadrat board with pins
Completed board with pins

Notice that as well as pinning mugs I have also been pinning designs. This is my preferred style for now, it may change in a few boards.

After a bit of testing to make sure my pins go to the right place and the pin titles and descriptions show up OK, I am now going to go on and complete this little shopfront in Pinterest. In a later blog post I will talk about how to analyze your shopfront’s visitor statistics.

If you would like to see the finished board on Pinterest, take a look here: Tiokvadrat Mugs and Cups

Filed under: Pinterest, RedbubbleTagged with: , ,