It's been about a month now since I joined RedBubble. I have 34 images on there so far including a couple of t-shirts. What is very cool about RebBubble is that certain images get viewed and favourited more than others. If you get featured, which I was lucky enough to have been, then those images also gain in popularity. When you get featured, people tend to look at the first couple pages of your thumbnails and they might click on one or two, and then maybe favourite one of them. At least that's how I do it. A similar thing happens on Flickr, but in Flickr lingo it's called interestingness.
Another thing I noticed is that if you upload only a few images at a time, you have more chance of getting noticed than if you do a bomb-load of all your work. So, I dribble in the shots as I have them ready, a couple a week. At least that's what's working for me so far. Also, joining good RedBubble groups and uploading work to the group sites is another way to get your work noticed. T-shirts seem to sell the most, so I'm working on more t-shirt designs now too.
People's style becomes really noticeable when you see a large group of their images. Strong, similar styled photos, just seem to look better together. I need to watch that aspect in my own RB gallery as well. It's tempting to put everything on there, just to get a sale. In the beginning I guess that's okay, as you're not sure what will sell or get noticed. Once you discover the duds, you can hide them from public view and upload more of the hits.
The work of painters and illustrators who use RebBubble, hangs much better together. I guess that's to be expected, as they tend to develop a signature style and stick with that for long periods of time.
The result of using sites like RebBubble and Flickr is a democratization of your portfolio. The community of viewers decides what images are worthy of praise by favouriting, and interestingness.
