hey what's up guys in this video we're
gonna take a look at an article
published on vice.com pretty uh pretty
well recognized pretty large like news
aggregator and uh it's focused
specifically on how well i'm just gonna
quote the title how scammers are making
easy money on amazon's merch store so
instead of saying merch by amazon or
amazon's print on demand uh arm they
said amazon's merch store implying that
they probably whoever wrote it's
probably not familiar with what's really
going on here or how it works but either
way
um let's see what they wrote about i
mean this is kind of merged by amazon
getting some publicity here in the in
the spotlight so even though it's in a
little bit of a negative sense but
anyways why don't we check out this
article
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right let's go check out this vice
article
alright so here we are at vice.com i'll
link to the article in the description
in case you want to check it out
i have not read the full article so
we're going to kind of go through it
together for the first time looks like
this was published not too long ago
september 27 2021 so interesting it's
titled how scammers are making easy
money on amazon's merch store pirates
are downloading designs from merch by
amazon and selling designs as their own
while amazon sorts out the printing and
shipping for them
and by joseph cox all right let's check
it out
merch by amazon the company's platform
for print-on-demand clothing is supposed
to make it easier for artists to
monetize their work the artist uploads a
design to mba and when a customer
decides to buy it say a t-shirt with a
design amazon handles the printing and
shipping
quote we sell your designs as amazon
products reaching millions of customers
worldwide with no upfront investment or
cost to you
amazon's website reads mba is a
ballooning space with youtubers making
guides on how to best use the platform
for maximum side hustle profit and
artists being attracted to the
possibility of tapping into amazon's
massive customer base which is
potentially much larger than other
similar drop shipping print-on-demand
services i can't help but wonder if he
saw my youtube video when he said
youtubers making guides if he ended up
on one of these videos that'd be funny
but streamlined and low-cost process has
a flip side mba is awash with scammers
downloading other people's designs
sometimes from different sites such as
etsy or sometimes just other mba
listings yeah it's honestly most likely
other nba listings since they do make it
very easy to get the actual raw png i
used to think you had to strip out the
background but nope amazon actually
makes the full resolution raw png file
available on the front end unfortunately
and that's why bots are able to do this
all right back to the article
the scammers then sell the designs as if
they are their own and amazon does much
of the rest of the work for them the
problem is so bad that artists are
pooling their efforts in facebook groups
to try and get the offenders banned
whereas illustrators need to create
their own designs and upload them
scammers don't even need to make their
own they can just use the platform to
steal others work in a bid to make very
easy and quick money yes this is correct
and honestly he's almost spot on but
like it's a little bit different i think
a lot of the scammers are selling on fbm
and probably doing like a flat file
upload and just uploading you know 10
000 listings at a time that they stole
and then fulfilling them using you know
p take your pick printful printify
whoever
oh and they're doing it using bots
that's why they're doing it at scale
i have now conclude quote i have now
concluded that merch by amazon is a
platform that makes it easy for others
to steal copyrighted designs from
independent artists amazon knows this
but is not doing enough to protect the
artwork end quote yat yi tam an
illustrator and designer who constantly
has to battle scammers on nba told
motherboard in an email
jonah buckley another nba seller told
motherboard that though he has worked
with various print on demand websites
quote the majority of my stolen designs
evidently come from amazon end quote and
i know why it's because again any
front-end web developer which was my
career for like eight years even though
i've never written a bot to steal
designs disclaimer um you know they're
making it easy they're making it
unfortunately very easy to steal
uh he added he can tell the scammers are
taking his designs because the pirates
images look like they're ripped from
t-shirt mockups that show up on amazon
rather than originally uploaded design
buckley said that he's even caught
scammers taking a specific listing from
one site and porting it over to merch by
amazon quote early in the year i did an
experiment by only uploading a design of
mine to etsy via my printing production
partner it was for juneteenth
celebration in the u.s
after a few weeks i searched amazon and
there it was he said the scammers are
successfully selling the ripped off
items buckley said that the scammers
generated around 20 sales from that
juneteenth design in a facebook post in
a group where artists discussed the
scamming problem tam said that pirates
uploaded her designs for a lower price
than the original
and then parentheses mba sellers earn
royalties on each sale after tax and
amazon
fees uh mba users can leverage
third-party research tools that scrape
amazon and provide insights on what sort
of designs are selling well one called
merchant former promises to let users
quote jump on trending and evergreen
niches before anyone else end quote
according to its website merchant former
offers archives of what sort of design
was popular at the particular time of
year potentially letting artists or
scammers upload designs that may sell
well merch informer also offers a
browser extension to more rapidly upload
designs to merch by amazon quote i
believe these sites may have also
contributed to the piracy however amazon
makes it incredibly easy to steal images
from their site end quote tam said
amazon doesn't watermark images yeah
they don't watermark it and again they
make the raw file available
in the developer console that's not good
that means that any bot can go and strip
it and you can do this all at scale i
keep saying that but i mean that's like
if they can just change that alone it'll
be huge
it's unclear if the scammers themselves
are using automated means to either
download or upload stolen designs in
facebook posts some artists suspect the
use of bots in part due to the speed at
which scammers can rip off their work
though i mean it's almost guaranteed
guys you can have the bot look for bsrs
as your like confirmation and then strip
that design that way you don't steal a
bunch of crappy designs i've never sold
i've done videos in the past obviously
where i talk about how like somebody had
uploaded a completely original design
and it had gotten like cloned in less
than 24 hours and uploaded to 12
different products via fbm and to me fbm
is indicative of probably a you know
scammer or somebody stealing
all right quote merch by amazon is a
platform that makes it easy for others
to steal copyrighted designs from
independent artists yes
both tam and buckley said they have
reported pirated designs to amazon and
the company has eventually removed them
but the revol results can be mixed after
motherboard contacted amazon for a
comment and flagged two pirated listings
of tam's design the company removed them
up until that point tam had not been
successful in getting amazon to take
them down but in response to takedowns
some pirates are then filing their own
counter claims according to a post them
on facebook group yes this is why i
don't honestly
report too many because they can
counterclaim you and there's nobody
that's it's all automated so there's
nobody that's gonna
try to be the arbiter uh at amazon
so an amazon spokesperson told
motherboard in an email that quote we
have a robust vetting procedures in
place for participation in merch by
amazon as well as pre-publishing
moderation to prevent infringing content
from ever being published if we find or
anyone reports an infringement that we
did not identify we move quickly quickly
to take it down investigate and remove
the item from merch and pursue the
appropriate legal action end quote
when making an mba account
quote applicants will be required to
input their contact and bank details
complete a tax interview and submit a
profile for verification before being
accepted into the merch by amazon
program end quote the spokesperson added
all right and that's the end of the
article
um and here's the thing i'm not just
trying to bash merch by amazon guys like
it's still a great opportunity it sucks
that there's any sort of like piracy
going on and um that you know it's
almost like working against us when we
have a successful design because we know
it's gonna get cloned and posted and all
these other places
um but like there is only so much they
can do
you know what i mean because they have
to use automation and algorithms to
police this stuff at scale it's not
feasible even if even though they do
have all the money in the world they
actually could hire a bunch of people
but at the end of the day if they tried
to hire people to like be the arbiters
of these conflicts of when something
gets reported and you know who's right
who's wrong if there's counter claims by
the person that stole them
there's still room for human error so i
don't know what the like actual outcome
should be i don't know how to fix this
truly because every time you implement
more control it also is going to have
a counter effect
inevitably that's gonna you know
work against us in some way um the
biggest thing i can think of drawing
from my eight years
experience as a web developer though the
low hanging fruit that they could do is
take an approach like redbubble anybody
watching for merch by amazon like
take an approach like redbubble
redbubble does not make or to my
knowledge i mean again i'm not like
writing these bots and stealing designs
but to my knowledge like i don't think
redbubble makes the original raw png
file that the artist upload
available anywhere on the front end
whereas we know merged by amazon does
which allows scripts to be written to do
all this you know at scale and then you
know just either upload a flat file or
write another automation to push the
uploads to a seller central account to a
shopify store to etsy um you know i mean
you can't even be mad at the people that
doing this they have to have some
technical chops i mean you can be mad
but like to their credit what they're
doing is pretty impressive from a
technological feat perspective um but
yeah it sucks because for everybody else
the other 99.99999 percent of people
that aren't stealing people's designs
and re-uploading them
it's just taking food off of our plate
right you know it's taking our sales
away but anyways guys let me know your
thoughts in the comments below thank you
for watching this video till the end i
do appreciate you and your time please
do me a quick favor for the youtube
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would love to hear from you in the
comments section what you think amazon
should do here also if you're not
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would be great anyways guys have a great
day i'll see you guys tomorrow
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you