hey what's up guys thanks for joining me
for this video today i want to talk
about changes that may be coming to
merch by amazon given that
you know we're about a month into the
fourth quarter but november is really in
my mind when we start to see the major
ramp up in holiday related sales
that
in my mind i associate with it being the
fourth quarter all right plus the
weather outside gets a little cold and
now my brain's starting to associate
cold weather with hearing the cha-ching
sound more often in my merch by amazon
account i'm not gonna lie i muted that
thing a while back but anyways guys
there's some things that we should be
aware of based on the last you know four
or five years of experience that i bring
to the table so that's what i'm gonna be
sharing with you in this video let's get
started
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alright so the first thing i wanted to
talk about with regards to merch by
amazon
and it being the fourth quarter
is
in regards to new applicants anybody
who's watching this video that hasn't
gotten their merch by amazon account yet
first and foremost uh condolences i
really hope that you're able to get in i
know it sucks i'm assuming that
everybody that's watching this has
applied for their account there's
probably at least one person that hasn't
please go do it right now
they're using automation to approve the
accounts so if you're thinking like you
want to get your um
online store set up that you can link to
in your application honestly if you
figure out your application a little bit
and say well no i've already been
selling t-shirts online for two years
and i'm my sales are great and i'm going
to bring more traffic to amazon that's
just fine but get your application in
because in the fourth quarter
they tend to either slow down on
accepting new applicants or just
turn everybody away okay and
unfortunately some people
who maybe would have been very
successful selling on merch by amazon
applied only one time
in the fourth quarter when no one was
getting in
and didn't reapply after the fourth
quarter so i wanted to mention that
nothing by the way i don't work for the
merch by amazon team so i don't have any
like insights that um are special to me
you know because i'm a youtuber or
something i don't have those insights
i've just been selling on merch by
amazon for at least four fourth quarters
prior to this year okay so i do have
some experience to speak to that's
really what i wanted to do in this video
but new applicants you really want to
apply immediately uh because they may
stop accepting new people
just because of the massive increase in
volume of traffic to amazon that happens
in this time of year
the second thing i wanted to talk about
are upload limits now those of us that
have been selling on merch by amazon
lately
we know that really this whole year it's
like been a roller coaster of changes to
the daily upload limits and really the
upload system in general it's been kind
of crazy
where they made the designs versus
products each day and um anyways
there may be changes to what we can
upload each day and it would not if i'm
guessing if i'm drawing from previous
experience it's not going to be positive
it's going to be
less daily uploads okay now nobody's
going to have any sympathy for me if i
tell you that my you know my daily
uploads might go from ten thousand a day
to five thousand a day right that's not
that significant i mean fifty percent is
fifty percent but if you're going from
ten uploads a day to five or
four to two
um to me that feels like it's more
significant so
my big recommendation is anybody who's
gotten teared up recently uh like
marielle my girlfriend got teared up
recently to tier 1000 like
just use those upload slots please every
day try to set aside some time to get
those uploads done because they may i
mean this is like a realistic thing
because it's happened multiple times in
the past they may reduce temporarily
your ability to upload daily they can
even freeze it i mean it's happened
before
uh just to probably in my mind they
don't necessarily tell us why they do it
but i'm guessing it's to reduce the
burden on their servers because of the
massive web traffic that occurs in the
fourth quarter all right so upload
limits may change
another thing worth considering
everybody that's advertising ad costs
may go up all right now
amazon's not going to make those ad
costs go up remember
advertising
is a bidding system we're bidding
against everybody else that's competing
for those same keywords they want to be
visible on the same keywords you know
and that's really what advertising is
about right we want to push everybody
else down and we want to jump to the top
of the search results
well advertising costs may go up
just as a function of people trying to
rank products organically
to get ahead of that fourth quarter
sales rush however ad costs may also go
down okay this is also possible i'm just
thinking out loud here i didn't think
about this when i was making the slide
ad costs may go down now does anybody
know why if we were in like a classroom
together it's been a while since i've
taught my college course in person i've
been teaching online but i do miss being
able to like ask a question and see some
hands go up but
they may go down because like when you
set your campaigns up for advertising
you get to specify a daily budget so if
there's an increase in traffic
to amazon and people aren't using the
new budget rules okay budget rules are
something you should utilize if you're
watching this and you're in my merch or
you're in my amazon advertising course
there's a lecture called budget rules
and i talk about how to utilize them for
times of the year like
the fourth quarter
where you can make them kind of dynamic
and flexible to scale up with increased
traffic to the platform but anyways if
people aren't doing that their budgets
the people who are outbidding you they
may run out of their daily budget and
then all of a sudden
you're the next bidder up and you've bid
less so ad costs may actually go down so
that's interesting actually it could go
both ways
and don't forget there could be
inventory issues now last year was
pretty good as far as like i personally
didn't hear any stories or noticed that
um sometimes you know we would go to our
product detail pages like actually
clicking our products going to the front
end um from the merch by amazon back-end
to seeing what the customer sees and you
wouldn't be able to select certain color
plus size combinations
and i think they did pretty good last
year but given the way the global supply
chain has been
going lately and i don't know if this is
something we're allowed to talk about on
youtube i get so lost these days on
what's allowed and what's censored and
what's not what not but like um yeah
like
there's a lot of like ships backed up at
the ports on the west coast and some
crazy stuff going on like
it typically doesn't manifest
immediately i mean it can um but it
would not be a stretch to say that there
could be inventory issues either because
of things unrelated to amazon
specifically and just kind of you know
what do you want to call it like world
trade um not doing so hot lately for one
reason or another or
in the past also like amazon just didn't
project
the um the inventory levels that they
were actually going to need for the
fourth quarter so you we were seeing
like certain again color plus fit plus
size combinations going out of stock all
right there's nothing we can do about
that from a merch by amazon perspective
but
i know at least a few guys know where
i'm going with this but there are things
we can do as sellers to prepare for this
and capitalize on it should it happen
again and that is
yes yes you in the back with your hand
up you i'm calling on you yes the person
that just said
seller central take advantage of seller
central you can
integrate with printful
and post your designs to t-shirts
through printful okay and those are
going to be sold by you as opposed to
merch by amazon listings which are sold
by amazon okay so it's okay
the reason i say is it's okay to have
two different listings of the same
design one's through merch by amazon
amazon owns that and one's through
seller central and that's yours okay now
if
amazon merch goes down like it did last
year in uh may or april whichever month
it was i'm not saying it's gonna happen
but let's just say theoretically it did
or they go out of inventory all of a
sudden your fbm listings through seller
central are going to be on fire okay so
set yourself up for success and even if
there's no inventory issues it never
hurts to occupy more online real estate
with things for sale that's that's
literally the game we're playing to
make money online right so
anyways guys that's what came to mind
for this video oh i had one more the
final one anybody still with me hit that
like button and this a i hear that if
you hit the like button on this video
while i'm talking about sales increasing
for the fourth quarter it's gonna bring
you good luck so of course you guys
already knew this but the fourth quarter
is synonymous with hearing the the
pretty merch cha-ching sound going off
more frequently seeing an increase in
sales uh it's gonna happen okay it's
gonna happen so just get it's crunch
time get as many products up for sale as
you can right now
future you will be happy you did because
future you is gonna reap the benefit of
today you putting in the work all right
guys the sales are gonna go up it
basically scales with customer demand
and we know customer demand just
skyrockets in the fourth quarter all
right guys thanks for watching this
video before i leave just wanted to
remind you in the description i've got a
free seven-day merch by amazon mini
course it'll actually also walk you
through the application so if you
haven't applied yet take advantage of
that i've got a amazon merch facebook
group i'd love to have you there and i
have a full merch by amazon course
walking you through how i went from tier
10 to tier 200 000 it's the most
comprehensive merch course out there so
check that out link in the description
again guys thanks for watching please
like and subscribe and i'll see you
tomorrow
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