Gearbubble Review

Gearbubble offers two primary ways to make money selling print on demand products online.

The first is called Gearbubble Pro and refers to the side of their platform that is in direct competition with platforms like Shopify, where you can launch an entire website with shopping cart functionality, and you will most likely need to buy paid traffic in order to drive sales.

The second is their ecommerce platform integrations, where you can connect your Amazon, ebay, and Etsy stores via API to have them automatically fulfill your orders to your customers

In this article I'll be reviewing the latter, where we use their integrations to sell print on demand products on some of the worlds largest online marketplaces, because I'm more a fan of appealing to customers where they already shop instead of attempting to coerce them into purchasing from our newly launched online store.

Gearbubble Amazon Integration

In my first year, I used the Gearbubble + Amazon integration to push over 10,000 print on demand coffee mugs, shot glasses, and pillow cases to the Amazon.com marketplace.

It was a perfect fit because already had a professional seller account because I was already selling FBA products, and I had hundreds of design files already made from selling on Amazon Merch - so this seemed like a perfect additional revenue stream!

When you first start out, sales are virtually non-existent. It took me a few months to really understand how to approach selling things like mugs on Amazon really works, which is to focus on uploading as many different products as possible, and not get caught up spending too much time on any one design.

Upon realizing that, I shifted my focus to maximizing my daily uploads and started seeing minor success (although you really see the majority of your sales volume in Q4).

The Design Approach

My design approach was to primarily use text-based designs, and upload them to as many products as possible.

I would also tend to use a templated approach to creating these basic designs.

For instance, I could make a simple design that said "World's #1 Doctor" and render a white text version (for black mugs), as well as a black text version (for white mugs, shot glasses, and pillow cases).

I would follow that up by editing the "Doctor" text to "Physician", "Lawyer", "Dentist", etc.

Each phrase used would be saved as a black version and a white version, and then uploaded to the following products:

• 11oz Mug - White
• 15oz Mug - White
• 11oz Mug - Black
• 15oz Mug - Black
• Shot Glass
• Pillow Case

Connecting Your Account

Step 1: GTIN Exemption

Before uploading products to Amazon, we need to apply for a GTIN exemption (walk through), which allows us to upload products without using expensive UPC codes.

GTIN exemption requests typically take 24 hours to be approved, and upon the approval, seller support recommends waiting 24 hours before creating listings using it.

Here's the Amazon seller page to apply for your GTIN exemption.

Step 2: Linking Gearbubble to Amazon

Linking your accounts by API allows the automated downloading & fulfilling of orders by Gearbubble. Tracking information is also uploaded automatically.

1. From the Gearbubble Dropship stores page, then click the "+ New store" button
2. Connect your Gearbubble to your Amazon account by filling out the required fields & clicking Submit (I strongly suggest using a GTIN exemption & checking the "UPC Exemption Enabled" box)
3. From the stores page, set "auto-fulfill" to ON

With auto-fulfill enabled, your orders will be downloaded once a day around 11PM EST, and you will receive an email for each order that's downloaded to Gearbubble.

I would also recommend that you purchase credit from them (minimum $100) instead of allowing them to charge your credit card once per downloaded order, which could result in a temporary lock on your card.

Uploading Products to Amazon

Before you can upload products to Amazon, you need to create them on the Gearbubble platform:

1. Go to gearbubble.com & click the "Launch Campaign" button, or click here
2. Select your product type and click the "Next Step" button
3. Upload your design, select the base color of the product you're uploading to, and if necessary reposition your design on the product, then click the "Next Step" button
4. Set a campaign title (this will be your Amazon listing title) & find a unique URL, then click the "Launch Campaign" button (these are the only 2 required steps - ignore the rest - upload speed is the highest priority)
   Also, Gearbubble listings are not indexed or do not rank well on Google at all, so don't worry about the URL - I typically just mash random letters on my keyboard.

Amazon will take a referral fee for each sale, you can view the Amazon referral fees page here

Now find your Amazon store on the Gearbubble dropship stores page and click "New Product".

You should see a list of all of your Gearbubble products. Products that have not been uploaded to Amazon yet will have an "Upload" button in the right most column, otherwise it will just have a "Configured" button.

Click the "Upload" button (Only once!) and it will be uploaded to Amazon. The process takes anywhere from 15-30 minutes.

You'll know when it's done when the "Uploading" button turns into a "Configured" button.

* IMPORTANT * Amazon does not want to be flooded with API product pushes, so don't push more than 2-3 at a time (I never do more than 2).

Price Points For Gearbubble Products On Amazon

Amazon's fees will range depending on your price point. The more you charge = the more Amazon takes.

I made this chart that displays the common price points I use per-product, which displays:

• How much I charge
• How much Gearbubble charges
• What's left as profit

* Note: In the chart below, I don't have a column displaying Amazon's fee per price point, but it's manually calculated into each cell. In my dropshipped print on demand course, I will share the actual Google Sheet with you.

* click to expand

The boxes highlighted in green are my recommended starting off price points:

• Mug 11oz White: $10.95
• Mug 11oz Black: $14.95
• Mug 15oz White: $13.95
• Mug 15oz Black: $15.95
• Mug Color Changing: $15.95
• Pillow Case: $14.95
• Poster 10x10: $15.95
• Poster 12x12: $3.78
• Poster 14x14: $17.95
• Poster 16x16: $17.95
• Necklace (Standard, any shape): $14.95
• Shot Glass: $8.95

* Note: Things like state tax can vary & ultimately will effect your bottom line.

In my pricing chart, we try to entice buyers with a low price point, and over time increase the price after building a sales history.

I prefer this strategy while you're initially scaling your Amazon seller account & building feedback.

My Seller account has a lot of great positive feedback from the thousands of FBA sales I do each money, so I typically price my print on demand products at a higher price point because customers are more likely to trust my seller account based on its history.

Gearbubble ebay Integration

The Gearbubble + ebay integration is easier to configure than the Amazon integration:

Follow the same process for creating products in Gearbubble and then adding them to your ebay store.

Here are some of the differences to keep in mind when pushing products to ebay vs Amazon:

• ebay won't throttle you for pushing listings to your store, but they charge you a per-listing insertion fee of around $0.35 (view ebay's seller fees page here). The fee is a recurring monthly fee.
• ebay limits the quantity of listings that sellers can post. If you list a coffee mug with a quantity of "10", that counts as 10, not 1. If you list a t-shirt and it has 10 of size XS, 10 of size M, 10 of size L, & 10 of size XL, that will count as 40. It adds up quickly, but the more you sell, the higher your limits will be.
• Final Value Fees: ebay charges a final value fee on the sale price of something that sells & the shipping cost collected. If your account is in bad standing, they will charge even more. You can view ebay's final value fee page here.

Gearbubble Etsy Integration

The Gearbubble + Etsy integration is similar to both of the aforementioned integrations with a few minor differences:

• With the Etsy integration, the listings will not be published automatically.. You will need to go into your Etsy Shop Manager, Click "Listings", and click "Draft" Under listing status on the right-hand side.
• Creating an Etsy listing will cost you $0.20. You'll have the option of setting it to automatically renew on a quarterly basis (Totaling $0.80/yr).
• I suggest creating categories for your items, and publishing them to those categories to make it easier for customers to browse your inventory. For instance, you could use: Novelty Coffee Mugs, Unisex T-Shirts, & Hats
• I also suggest adding a production partner for your listings: Under Shop Manager, click "Settings" and then click "Production Partners", then "Add New production partner".
  When you publish a listing, associate it with the correct production partner - Etsy is pretty strict about sellers following their rules, and they're quick to shut down shops that don't comply! Here is what I use for Gearbubble:
• Be careful what you list on Etsy, especially when you're first getting started! They want to protect their boutique look & feel, and if you post things that don't fit their image, they will shut down your shop (I know from experience).

I actually don't use the GearBubble/Etsy integration. This is because I don't have the Gearbubble ifetime integrations for Etsy like I do for Amazon + ebay.

instead, I use Printful's Etsy integration, which has no monthly fees.