Take the Frustration Out of Uploading Your Artwork to Print on Demand Websites
If you use print on demand (POD) companies to sell your artwork on products, I bet you’re super frustrated with the uploading process. Trust me, we all are. It’s not necessarily hard, but it takes forever because very few POD backends are truly optimized for the user experience.
In this post, I’m going to share my process for uploading to print on demand websites like Society6, Spoonflower, and Redbubble. I’ve been selling my artwork with print on demand since 2014 and in that time, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to optimize the process! If you’re ready to save time and take the frustration out of the upload process, this post is for you!
Pro Tip: Always upload to print on demand when you have a really strong internet connection. Uploading with a slow connection will be more frustrating than rewarding.
Let’s dive into how you can take the frustration out of uploading your artwork to Print-on-Demand websites!
Upload Your Designs By Batch!
Batch Uploading, as the name suggests, means that you take the time to upload your designs on the POD website all at once in one big batch. And that’s exactly what I do – I batch upload my designs all at once so that I’m accomplishing more in less time.
Uploading to print on demand is time consuming, but it doesn’t take a lot of mental effort, so I do this task when I’m feeling low-energy. I usually do it while I’m watching TV or chatting on the phone.
Get Organized with Your File Storage.
I store all my artwork files on an external hard drive so it’s easy to plug it into my computer and upload from there.
One of my drives contains literally ALL of my artwork files in one place. This helps me stay organized while also making sure that I don’t bog down my computer. After all, I work with a lot of large files, and this avoids those “scratch disk full” errors when your computer is too full to function.
So here is what my file organization looks like.
All my artwork files are in one hard drive. I create folders for each design and all of its various color palettes and file formats. I name the folders the same name as the design. And since I usually have between 5-10 color palettes per design, I name my files by the color name, the title, the intended format, and then the extension. So this is how it breaks down.
I start the naming convention with the color to help each folder stay organized alphabetically. This way, I don’t have to create a bunch of sub-folders. Instead, I can clearly see the groupings under each color palette.
This file storage system allows me to easily see which file is which and makes the upload process that much easier.
Let’s talk about my Batch Uploading Process
What I like to do when batch uploading my designs is to open up multiple tabs for each POD site in my browser. Each tab should be opened to the upload page of whatever POD site(s) you’re uploading to.
Since I create multiple color variations for each piece of artwork, each tab is for a different color variation.The reason I do it this way is so that I only have to write the title and keyword tags once and can copy and paste them for every other design after that.
If you want more info about how to strategically create your POD listings so that they’re optimized for SEO, check out this blog post.
What is the Difference Between Drafts vs. Published Designs
The nice thing about the backend of print on demand sites is that you can leave designs unpublished until you’re ready to add them to your shop.
My batch creation process includes multiple color palettes for each design, and I don’t want to upload them all back-to-back. So I publish one color palette at a time, and come back to publish the others after I’ve added other different designs so that my POD portfolio has some variation.
By leaving some designs on draft, you can avoid overwhelming your feed with a ton of the same designs in different color palettes. What you can do is to stagger how you publish everything so your feed can look nice and varied with lots of different types of artwork!
The only thing you need to do to publish a design once it’s set up is click a button, so you’re getting all the hard work out of the way first.
A Note About Time
Selling on Print on demand sites is great because it doesn’t cost you money, but it does cost you time. Be mindful of how much time you’re spending on POD.
My rule of thumb is to spend as much time on POD as the amount of income it brings in. For example, if POD is 5% of my income, spend 5% of my time on it.
The key thing to remember about taking the frustration out of uploading your artwork to POD websites is efficiency!
You can save a lot of time by batching a lot of content at once. This is a low-energy task that can be done in the background while you’re doing something you enjoy like catching up on your favorite Netflix series. This helps you get the most time-consuming task out of the way while also creating the opportunity to have content for your POD website for days (or even months) to come.
You can also make the process much easier by being very organized with your files. I’ve shared how I handle my file storage, but of course, you’re free to try and modify the steps to fit your needs better!
This post was about how to save time uploading to print on demand, but if you want more details about what to include in each product listing, check out this post.