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Artist Margins

As a selling artist, it’s important to get familiar with the way pricing and payments work in the Redbubble Marketplace. The following article should shed some light on topics like:


Base Price, Artist Margin, & Retail Price

This is how it works.


Let’s break it down.

Base Price

The Base Price covers Redbubble’s service fee and the cost of manufacturing. 

Base prices vary because they rely on delivery address. This is to take advantage of local production, material costs, and taxes relative to various artists’, production, and delivery countries. Changing your delivery address at checkout could very well change the total.

Please note that currency and cost constantly fluctuate, so base prices can alter occasionally.

Artist Margin (& Markup)

The Artist Margin (& Markup) show how much you make off of a sale, the markup being the percentage of the base price and the margin being the actual dollar amount.


This defaults to 20% but you are free to raise or lower that amount any time in the Product Pricing section of your Account Details page.

Retail Price

The base price and artist margin combine to create the retail price, which is the price you see per product across the Redbubble website.

Let’s use an example.


Large framed art prints going to the US have a base price of US$125.00.

You set a 20% markup for large framed art prints. 20% of the $125 base prices means you get an artist margin of $25.00.

$125 base price + $25 artist margin makes for $150 retail price.

Sales and Discounts

So how do sales and discounts fit into the equation?

Remember, your markup is a percentage of the base price, meaning if the base price changes, your artist margin changes. The visual equation looks something like this:


Some of our products have bulk discounts that can affect the base price of items in larger orders. Let’s look at another example to see how this affects your margin.


Let’s say stickers to the US have a base price of US$2.00

You set a markup of 50%, which means your margin is $1.00. The retail price for one sticker is then $3.00.


Now, let’s assume the volume discount for stickers is 50% off the base price for 5+ stickers. This means that if a customer buys 5 or more stickers, then the new base price is $1.00.

If you kept your markup at 50%, then 50% of $1.00 is 50 cents. The new base price ($1.00) plus the new artist margin (50 cents) means the new retail price is $1.50.


At the end of the 5 sticker sale, costs and payments (before taxes) round up to:

Customer pays $1.50 per sticker, meaning they paid $7.50 total.
The total base price after the discount was $5.00.
You receive 50% of the base price, meaning you get $2.50.

Though site-wide discounts might feel like you’re making less profit, it’s good to keep in mind that discounts drive customers to the site and attract them to your work.  

GST, VAT and Taxes

Redbubble is an online marketplace where artists can sell their products to customers using the Redbubble platform. Redbubble collects proceeds on behalf of the artist and deducts Redbubble’s service fee, shipping costs and the supplier’s manufacturing fee, before paying the remaining funds to the artist (Artist Margin).

Tax is included in orders where applicable, and may include sales tax, GST, or VAT. Because taxes vary around the world and based on personal circumstances, it is the responsibility of all artists on Redbubble to make sure they are handling their personal taxes correctly. This is further outlined in our Services Agreement.

Depending on your account settings, base prices may include GST for Australian sales, resulting in your marked-up prices being different. We recommend that you seek professional advice on whether you should or should not register for GST, and update your tax settings accordingly.

United Kingdom VAT is charged for sales in the European Union. Redbubble collects and remits UK VAT for both the base price and shipping costs to the HMRC. If you are registered for VAT then you can provide your VAT number in the tax section of your payment settings and we will include the VAT margin on your Artist Margin. If you are not sure if you need a VAT number we recommend speaking with a tax professional.

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