You can sell merch on Bandcamp without buying a batch of products in advance. With print on demand, an item is made after a customer orders it. Fanbace helps artists use this approach to sell printed merchandise through their Bandcamp artist account.
You create your products in Fanbace, connect your accounts and add the product listings to Bandcamp. Each size and colour combination needs its matching Fanbace SKU: the code that identifies the product variant. Fanbace handles production and fulfilment for connected products, while you manage your listings, prices and promotion.
You do not need to buy stock upfront, but each sale still involves product costs, shipping and selling fees. This guide walks you through creating your products, connecting Fanbace to Bandcamp and publishing your first merch listings.
Setting up your Fanbace account
To create and save your first products on Fanbace, you’ll first need an account. You can easily create one here. Simply follow the step-by-step instructions and you’re ready to start creating your first products.
Creating and saving these new products on Fanbace couldn’t be any simpler. Intuitive design and uploading options allow you to get your products ready for launch in no time.
Once your account is set up, you’ll be taken to your Fanbace dashboard. Click on the ‘Product Creator’ button in the top left to get started. From here you can create new products, edit existing ones and browse an array of different product types.
Fanbace allows you to experiment with all of these different product types in one place. You can choose anything from t-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts all the way to bags, wall art to things like mugs and drinkware.
TL;DR Check out our video tutorial on how to create your first Fanbace products.
Find a product type you like and choose a blank design to get started. Next, you’re going to upload your artwork design. You’ll need to create a folder in the ‘Artworks’ tab of the Product Creator to do this.
Creating artwork folders allows you to separate your merch designs for different tours, exclusive releases, collaborative merchandise campaigns and keep all of your different designs neatly organised for future use.
Name your new folder, open it and click on the upload image button. You can upload an image straight from your device or even use Facebook or Instagram to find your designs just to make sure that the image matches our minimum quality requirements.
The minimum quality requirements for uploading artworks to Fanbace are the following:
Scale your designs to the largest print size you’ll need, and trim the canvas to the nearest pixel possible.
Once you’ve checked your images meet the minimum requirements, upload them, give them a name and you’re ready to start designing your products.
Print artwork and product photos serve different purposes. Your artwork is the file used to print your design on the product. A product photo or mock-up shows fans what the finished item will look like in your Bandcamp shop.
For print artwork, prepare your file at the intended print size and follow the requirements for your chosen product. Changing a small image’s resolution setting to 300 dpi does not add detail. Check the design’s placement and scale in the Fanbace preview before saving.
For your Bandcamp listing, choose a clear product image and check the crop before publishing. Keep the full design visible and make sure the images match the colours and product options you offer.
Once uploaded, select the images and you’ll see them mocked up on the design of your choice. This will open the ‘Appearance’ section of the Product Creator on the right side of your screen. In this section, you’ll be able to edit the images.
Try to flip, crop and scale them to create the perfect design. With certain products such as t-shirts you’ll be able to add an additional design to the back of your product for an additional fee.
All your changes will be shown live in the mock-up product design in the editor. Once you’re satisfied with your design, hit save in the top right. Try previewing different colour variants to get a better idea of the versatility of your artwork design.
When you’re saving your creation, you’ll have to name your design and set a retail price, i.e. the price your fans will pay for this piece of merch. We recommend a retail price for you, based on the product’s trade base price, but you’re free to pick any retail price you want.
Make sure you write an extensive product description in the ‘Design Description’ field, as well, as this will be reflected live on the sites you want to sell through.
In this overview, you’ll see exactly how much you’ll be charged by Fanbace for the creation and distribution of your product. This allows you to work out your estimated profit by deducting the trade price from the retail price.
Please note that shipping costs are extra and will be added for you at checkout.
Next, choose the colour variants you want to offer for this product. The ones you select will be highlighted in green. Make sure you tick the checkbox of whichever colour variation you’d like to be set as default. This’ll be the first colour fans see when they browse your designs.
All that’s left to do now is save the finished design to one of your merch category folders. This allows you to organise your merch around specific themes or marketing campaigns.
Hit the Fanbace button in the top left-hand corner and you’ll return to the dashboard. Go to the ‘My Products’ section to check out all the products you’ve created so far.
Next, we’ll show you how to connect Fanbace to your Bandcamp account.
P.s. If you want to use Shopify to sell your Fanbace products, have a look at our video tutorial.
TL;DR check out our video tutorial on how to connect Fanbace to your Bandcamp account.
For starters, you’re going to need a Bandcamp artist account. It’s important you’re not using a fan or label account, or the integration with Fanbace won’t work.
Don’t have a Bandcamp account just yet? You can create one by following this link.
From here, you’ll need to invite Fanbace to serve as your distributing partner on the Bandcamp platform. You can do this in your Bandcamp dashboard. Click on your profile picture in the top right-hand corner of your screen and head to the ‘Tools’ section.
This’ll open a new page where you can view all of your Bandcamp tools.
Click on ‘Sales Reports’ and scroll down to the “Physical Orders” section.
Click on the ‘orders page’ button. Click on “To manage physical orders, go to your merch orders page“.
This will allow you to connect Fanbace to your page by clicking “Give a fulfilment partner access to this page.”
Important: you’ll need to enter the email address orders@fanbace.com into the textbox when prompted. This will send an email invitation to our team, allowing us to finalise the connection between Fanbace and Bandcamp.
We’ll then contact Bandcamp to enable the ‘SKU’ option on your account, allowing us to fulfil your orders. This could take up to 48 hours, but we’ll inform you as soon as everything’s connected, so you can start uploading your Fanbace products to Bandcamp.
TL;DR check out our video tutorial on how to add Fanbace products to Bandcamp.
