Redbubble Earnings Calculator

Redbubble pays artists a markup added on top of a base price the platform sets per product type, rather than a share of what the customer pays. The default markup is 20% and it can be raised or lowered. That distinction changes the arithmetic: a 20% markup on a 20 base price adds 4 for the artist and puts the retail price at 24, so the artist receives 16.7% of what the buyer actually pays, not 20%. Marketplaces operating in the European Union publish how remuneration is determined and give advance notice before changing it under the Platform-to-Business Regulation, so the base prices and terms in the account are what apply rather than any figure quoted elsewhere.

Base price is what sizes the royalty, and it varies enormously by product. At the same 20% markup, a 3 base-price sticker returns 0.60 a sale while a 20 base-price shirt returns 4.00. Nothing about the markup differs between them. The platform handles printing, shipping, customer service and returns, so there is no upfront cost, but the per-sale figure is small enough that volume across many listings is what makes the total meaningful.

Discovery on the platform runs through its own search, so keywords, product-type coverage and upload consistency all feed sales volume, which is the input this calculator cannot estimate for you. One risk worth naming sits outside the arithmetic entirely: designs referencing existing characters, logos, slogans or brands can be removed on copyright or trademark grounds, and a removed listing earns nothing regardless of what any projection said. Rights in artwork and in brand names are separate things, and both apply to print-on-demand listings.

A worked example

With the loaded figures of 100 monthly sales, a 20 base price and a 20% markup, the royalty is 4.00 a sale, giving 400 a month and 4,800 a year.

Reading the same figures from the buyer’s side is more useful. The 20% markup sits on top of the base, so the item retails at 24 and the 4 the artist keeps is 16.7% of that. Comparisons against platforms that pay a percentage of the list price have to be made on this basis, or the markup number flatters itself by roughly a fifth.

What moves the number most

All three inputs multiply together, so each moves the result proportionally: a 1% change in any of them changes earnings by 1%. That also makes them interchangeable in the arithmetic. Two hundred sales at a 20% markup and one hundred sales at a 40% markup both return 800 a month on a 20 base price, even though one is a distribution problem and the other a pricing decision.

Base price is the input artists control least, because the platform sets it per product type. It is nonetheless the reason a sticker-heavy catalogue and a shirt-heavy one at identical sales volumes produce very different totals: 100 sales at a 3 base returns 60 a month against 400 for the same volume at a 20 base.

The formula behind this

Monthly earnings are sales multiplied by base price multiplied by the markup expressed as a decimal, and annual earnings are twelve times that. The royalty per sale is base price multiplied by the markup.

Two rearrangements are worth having. The retail price is the base price multiplied by one plus the markup, and the artist’s share of that retail price is the markup divided by one plus the markup: 9.1% at a 10% markup, 16.7% at 20%, 23.1% at 30%, 28.6% at 40% and 50% at 100%. The share always sits below the markup figure, and the gap is widest at low markups.

What this doesn't capture

Sales volume is held constant while markup changes, which is the model’s central simplification and the subject of the section below. Beyond that, the figure is gross artist margin: it sits before any tax on the earnings, before platform-side deductions that vary by account type and region, and before refunds and returns, all of which reverse a royalty already counted.

The larger omission is that a listing has to survive to earn. Designs built on existing characters, brands or slogans face removal on copyright or trademark grounds, and no projection here survives a takedown. That risk rises precisely where the discovery advantage is greatest, since recognisable references are what people search for.

How markup sets the margin

Print-on-demand platforms of this kind pay a margin set above a base price rather than a share of the sale, so earnings move with the markup chosen and with the base price of the item. At the defaults, 100 monthly sales of a 20 base-price item at a 20% markup returns 400 a month. Raising the markup raises the per-sale figure and the retail price at the same time, which is where the arithmetic stops and the trade-off begins.

The trade-off the calculator holds fixed

Raising the markup raises the per-sale figure and the retail price together, and the calculator holds sales volume fixed while that happens. In practice a higher price affects how many sell, so the useful question is how much volume a markup rise can afford to lose.

That has a clean answer. Earnings break even when the volume ratio equals the old markup divided by the new one. Moving from 20% to 30% therefore survives a 33.3% fall in sales before earnings drop, and moving from 20% to 40% survives a 50% fall. On the loaded figures, a 40% markup with sales down a fifth, at 80 a month, returns 640 against the 400 at the default: earnings rise by 60% despite selling less. Commentary suggesting a markup rise costs 10 to 20% of volume is describing a change the arithmetic absorbs comfortably, though the elasticity varies by product and by niche and is not something this model measures.