Redbubble Earnings Calculator

Redbubble pays artists a markup on the base price. Default markup is 20% - you can raise or lower it. At 20% markup on a 20 base-price t-shirt, you earn 4 per sale. Redbubble handles everything: printing, shipping, customer service, returns. Zero upfront cost but low per-sale earnings means you need volume.

100 monthly sales × 4 average royalty (20% markup on 20 base) = 400/month, 4,800/year. Modest side income. Most Redbubble artists earn 100-500/month; top 1% earn 5,000-20,000/month through portfolios of 500-5,000+ designs targeting trending niches.

Success on Redbubble requires: keyword optimization (Redbubble search is the primary discovery mechanism), niche targeting (specific fandoms, subcultures, professions), consistent uploads (20-50 new designs/month), and multi-product placement (same design on t-shirt, sticker, phone case, mug - each is a new listing in search).

A worked example

With the defaults: monthly sales of 100, avg base price of 20, markup of 20%. The tool returns 400.00.

What moves the number most

The result responds to Monthly Sales, Avg Base Price, and Markup %.

The formula behind this

Earnings = sales × base price × markup %. Annual = monthly × 12.

What this doesn't capture

The result reflects only the inputs you provide and the assumptions built into the formula. It is a simplified model rather than a complete picture, and factors specific to your situation may matter just as much.

How markup sets the margin

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

The trade-off the calculator holds fixed

That trade-off is what the calculator cannot resolve, because it holds sales volume fixed while markup changes. In reality the two interact: a higher markup lifts the price a buyer sees, which affects how many sell. The figure also sits before any tax on self-employment income and before platform-side deductions that vary by region, so it represents gross artist margin rather than take-home.