Adding New Pieces To Redbubble

[kerravonsen]

Well, I've just been timing how long it takes me to add a new piece of art to my Redbubble shop and update the relevant Social Media: a bit over 50 minutes. (First test, 56 minutes; second test, 52 minutes). Why so much time, you ask? Well, it all adds up. It all adds up despite all the scripts I've written to assist me. God only knows how long it would take me without that assistance. This isn't the time it takes to make the art, that varies a lot. This is the time taken from when I have a named, print-ready image available to upload.

So, if you're curious, here is the process:

1. Add the piece to my inventory. This is assisted by a script I wrote which automates what it can, and prompts me for what it cannot do.
   • It displays the image so I can remember what the main colours of it are, and think of a brief description.
   • It fills in a skeleton record (wiki page) for the piece.
   • I then add the colours, the description, piece-specific keywords, and the keyword categories the piece belongs to (for example, Art-Abstract). And whether the piece is digitally embellished or just plain fluid art.
   • It copies the full-resolution image over to the directory for that piece.
   • It makes a smaller, watermarked image of that piece (using yet another script, which I called "fabimages").
   • It makes a Pinterest-specific image for that piece (using "fabimages" again), using the watermarked image, and optionally a mockup image (which, if it needs a mockup image, it will prompt me to add the art to it).
   • It makes and prompts me to make, transformed versions of the art: rotated, square, mirrored. These are needed to use as variations of the art to put on the Redbubble products, as different products need images with different proportions: some landscape, some portrait, some square.
   • It displays these transformed images and prompts me to accept or delete them (for example, some pieces just look horrible when they are rotated).
2. Add keywords to inventory record. This is done with another script, "randtags", which takes the data from the record, grabs keywords from my keyword category lists, and generates a random set of keywords from that, of two types: keywords for Redbubble, and hashtags for Pinterest.
3. Upload the piece to Redbubble.
   • This includes looking at the inventory record (it is actually a page on a personal wiki, but it's basically a record too) and cutting-and-pasting the title, the description, and the tags/keywords (what is the difference? I don't know) into the Redbubble webpage. I can't automate this, unfortunately. Cut-and-paste is the best I can do.
   • Mark the work as "private" and save, then click the Edit button and prepare to edit. Why? This is so that I can find out the URL of the piece before it is actually made public.
   • Save the URL to the inventory record of the piece.
   • Go through each product the art can appear on, and adjust if needed. This may include uploading transformed versions of the work (see above) and adjusting them. This is also where I decide whether or not to offer any given product -- I try to offer as many as possible, but not where it just looks horrible and I can't tweak it to look better. Leggings are the most difficult to make look nice.
   • Mark the work as "public" and add it to different collections.
   • Save!
4. Pin the Primary Pin to Pinterest. This is somewhat convoluted...
   • Add the primary pin to a private board on Pinterest. This is the Pinterest-specific image mentioned above. I wrote a script (yes, another script, "pin_a_pin") to automate this process, taking the pin-image and the data from the inventory record (including the Pinterest hashtags generated above) and creates a pin. This is a Perl script that uses the Selenium engine, and no, I'm not going to give it away because it is far too customised to be of general use, sorry. But I am oh so very pleased that I managed to get this to work, I've only had this script for less than two weeks now, and I have been trying to write a script like this... for years, really.
   • Save the primary pin from Pinterest to Tailwind and delete it from Pinterest. Tailwind is a Pinterest scheduling site, really useful for spreading out your pins rather than having them appear all at once. So why am I saving to Pinterest first rather than directly to Tailwind? Because I found it was easier for Tailwind to get all the correct data by re-pinning an existing pin, rather than creating a new pin from scratch in the Tailwind interface. I could be wrong, but now that I have this automated pin-script, my motivation to upload direct to Tailwind is even less.
   • On Tailwind, select the Primary Pin and post it immediately. So if I'm going to post it immediately, why load it into Tailwind at all? Well, I've found that Tailwind does not reliably notice new pins I've pinned using Pinterest, whereas if I pin it via Tailwind, Tailwind does know about it, and does have a record of it.
   • Look on Tailwind for the most recently published pins (which obviously ought to include the pin I just published) and add the Primary Pin to my Tailwind Tribes. (Tailwind Tribes are groups where people with a common interest re-pin each other's pins to get more coverage).
5. Download Product images from Redbubble. These are on the "Promote" page for the work of art. Redbubble moves you to that page every time you save after editing, so that page is likely to be still around in my browser. I just like to pin the primary pin first, so I don't forget it. This is also where I double-check that the art looks good on the products (if it doesn't, I'll go back and edit) and also checking whether I've remembered to enable all the products I want to (for some reason, Bath Mats are disabled by default, and I don't always remember to enable it).
6. Generate product pin images from the product images I just downloaded. This is done by another script (make_promo_pin) which takes the data from the inventory record, and for each of the product images, deduces from the filename what kind of product it is (for example, all t-shirts have "-tee-" in the name) and uses that to figure out what to say in the words on the pin image, and what description to give that pin image (including extra hashtags which say things like "#Tshirt").
7. Pin all these new product pin images to Pinterest (using "pin_a_pin"), move them to Tailwind, and shuffle the Tailwind schedule.

Whew! That's it.

And that's just pinning to Pinterest. I haven't figured out if/when/how to involve other Social Media as well. Would any of you be interested if I posted here (or on my arty blog, because pictures are easier there) about my most recently uploaded works? I know I've been neglecting y'all with what I've been doing artwise. If I do post, I'll try to say a bit more behind-the-scenes stuff on any given piece, stuff that is too wordy/rambly to put on a shop page. Interested? Probably not for every piece, because, well, writing a blog post would take another hour on top of the 50+ minutes I would have just spent adding it to my shop... darn I wish the Dreamwidth interface for images was better. Oh well.

Comments

[watervole]

I like seeing the pictures, but Dreamwidth is indeed a pain to get pictures onto