hey what's up guys hope you're having a
great day in this video i'm going to
talk about what you need to know
before starting merch by amazon i'm
going to try to make this
pretty definitive we're going to keep it
high level so the video doesn't go on
too long but i'm also going to tell you
literally the need to know the stuff
that i feel like is a requirement
before you push your first product for
sale
on merch by amazon but i'm even going to
start at the beginning and talk about
when you're applying for your account
because merch by amazon is invite only
so let's get started
[Music]
real quick before we get to the video
just wanted to remind you to enter my
weekly print-on-demand giveaway it's
completely free
two winners are selected every sunday
you can enter in like 10 seconds there's
a link in the description
and you'll have a chance to win a
license to merge titan's upload
automation
merch ninja research tools both of which
are great for merch by amazon by the way
all sunsets premium pre-made designs
also great for merch by amazon
and bubble scout a niche research and
validation tool for redbubble
all right let's get right into it
starting with
applying for merch by amazon this is a
pain point for a lot of people i know
that because i also have a merch by
amazon facebook group
and there is very commonly questions
about how to get accepted
now the first thing i want to say is
that you can apply at
merch.amazon.com or at amazon.com
merch both urls take you to the same
place i'll put a link in the description
that you can click to get there
when you apply to merch by amazon uh and
by the way the only way to really know
this stuff is to work
for their team but i've been paying
close attention for over four years now
so i've got a pretty good idea of how
this works the first thing i want to say
is that i really do think there are bad
times to apply
and good times to apply and i think a
good time to apply is actually anytime
that's not a bad time let's just put it
that way i know that's kind of confusing
but
when it's a bad time to apply it's
during
times like the fourth quarter in the
past merch by amazon would suspend
uploads we couldn't create new products
because it was the fourth quarter and
the server load i guess was so high from
just the customer volume
so that would certainly be a bad time to
apply i know they weren't letting people
in
when they weren't even letting the
people who were already accepted
push new products during the busiest
time of year other bad times to apply
you know might right now might even be
considered a bad time to apply there
hasn't been a tear up
in a long time and tear-ups are where
they
increase the number of products that
you're allowed to sell
based on your success they haven't done
that in a while because they're
currently doing like a massive rollout
of a really big change to merch by
amazon and it's not something we're
going to cover in this video because
this is going to be really high level
and beginner but
when you sign up guys i recommend
answering every question even the
optional ones
and pretend
that you are a true expert when it comes
to selling
merch online selling t-shirts online
selling whatever it is that you sell
online pretend to be you know put
imposter syndrome away for a second
pretend that you are the expert because
on the flip side of this nobody at merch
by amazon
reads it these are all automated yes
that's true
the volume of applications they get
there is a zero percent chance that
they're paying
that jeff bezos is paying people to
field these applications
there's way too many of them and there's
way too many people that get let in
there's way too many people that get
rejected so just do the best you can to
fill it out
and if you are not accepted you can
reapply now you may need to
log out of the amazon account that you
use to apply
start a new account start a new email
start a new account and reapply from
there now i've heard
some people apply as many as six times
before getting in so that was really bad
luck
i've even heard of one person i can't
verify this but they said they had
applied 15 times
before getting let in okay so uh don't
give up but at the same time if you get
to the point where you want to give up
uh you can also shoot me a message
directly because there are alternative
ways of
getting emerged by amazon account that's
all i'm going to say all right day one
this is assuming that you just received
that glorious email
from merch by amazon that you have been
accepted that you can now log
in and begin right and i remember when i
first got my merch by amazon account it
was probably
three no it was probably two months
after i had initially applied now this
is in early 2017. i actually applied
once before that in late 2016.
never heard back so i applied again in
early 2017
and was accepted about two months later
now i sat on my account for almost a
full month without using it fortunately
one day
it like crossed my mind oh yeah i have
that merch by amazon account i should
use it
and i remember not knowing what the heck
to do so that's what i'm gonna kind of
gonna kind of cover for you in this
video now that you have gotten accepted
into merch by amazon
so this is what your dashboard will look
like by default there's actually a
chrome extension called pretty merch
you can get the free version and it'll
make your dashboard look a lot better
and a lot more intuitive
i'll drop a link in the description but
it is not required it's just a nice to
have because it makes it a lot
i don't know it just makes it more fun
let's call it it makes your dashboard
prettier that's why they call it pretty
merch
anyways guys the only thing you need to
do if it's day one
is click that create design link in the
top right
and create your first design speaking of
design let's get started
oh wait never mind guys we got to slow
down a second and i'm sure some of you
saw this coming
before we even get to designing we need
to talk about niche
selection we're not going to talk too
much about this but guys just know that
like
there's a lot to cover between all these
things that i'm kind of breezing through
right now
when it comes to niche selection the
first thing i want to recommend
look at amazon like actually go to
amazon.com and pretend you're a customer
and type in whatever t-shirt you know
funny t-shirt or you know if there's a
holiday coming up type in that holiday
t-shirt
look at what's selling typically the
stuff on page one near the top is
moving quite a few units especially when
you type in generic keywords like
funny t-shirts you type in funny t-shirt
stuff that you see is going to be
uh selling really well the reason i
recommend this is because if your goal
is to make sales and make money
you need to be selling things that
people are actually looking to buy i
know that that's obvious
but we've all been there where we kind
of lose sight of that and we go down
some rabbit hole and then we're like why
isn't this selling oh yeah because
nobody's looking to buy it so
actually sell what people are selling
what people are buying
the second thing you need to do and this
is no fun but you need to go
to tmsearch.uspto of course i'll put a
link in the description
and you need to click basic word mark
search and actually
look up whatever text you want to put on
your t-shirt
and try to verify that it is not
trademarked now i just dropped a video a
couple days ago
going a little bit more in depth into
how to validate that what you want to
sell is safe i will put a link to it
right here in the youtube cards
and that is a good watch i would say
it's definitely something you should
watch all right so now that you're good
to go
oh yeah before i forget i actually just
today
published a mini course this isn't one
of my free mini courses this is a paid
one
but for 49 you can join my ryan's method
niche research course
and it'll walk you through how to
identify the high demand low competition
niches
evergreen niches trends um using free
tools using paid tools it also
shows you how i've hit some really big
trends that have made me thousands of
dollars in a single day
there will be a link in the description
if anybody's interested alright
now let's talk about design now that
we've got a niche that we've settled on
that you want to design in
how the heck do we make a design well
there are
two popular free graphic design
applications that i'm going to recommend
in this video keeping it high level for
beginners
the first one is called canva and while
this is free
in order to actually use it for merch by
amazon you're probably gonna have to pay
like ten dollars a month
or use it for one month and pay ten
bucks whatever and i think if you pay
annual it's like nine dollars or eight
dollars
uh but canva is probably the most
popular and most user-friendly
graphic design application out there and
it runs in your web browser so you don't
need to install anything which i know
keeps it simple people like simplicity
this is a good place to start i'll put a
link in the description
or use photopia this may look like
photoshop if you're familiar with
photoshop however they basically cloned
it
built it into a web browser and i just
realized the link up there is not
updated but
i will put an updated link in the
description for photopia this is
completely free to use you don't need to
start an account you never need to pay
and it's got most of the functionality
that photoshop has except it's built
into your web browser so
this is also a great option now when you
start your design guys you want to set
your canvas to the dimensions
4 500 by 5400 i will also note that in
the description
and i'll put everything in order as i'm
covering it in this video to make your
life easier
now here is an example of a best-selling
t-shirt
that's making about five dollars and 20
cents profit per sale
it's got 234 reviews which means it's
probably sold i don't know a thousand
to maybe even more shirts uh
and look at it look at the design it's
just text
it's just text so if you're not a good
designer guys
don't try to get cute with your design
capabilities
keep it simple especially if you're just
starting off make simple designs like
this one
text only white text against a dark
colored background shirt works great you
don't need to overthink this one
alright that is my recommendation this
is the what to know before you start and
i'm telling you keep it simple
you can get more complicated later but
it's best to give yourself the best
chance to succeed
right out of the gate because when you
make some sales you get that tailwind
you get confidence
and you can ride that all right now
let's talk about
creating your product listing actually
uploading so remember when i said go
back and hit that create design button
well after you hit create design
you will be taken to the um i guess it's
called a wizard
to create a new product on merch by
amazon now in the
top right corner you should be able to
hit a button i forget what the button
says it's probably like select products
or product selection
and it'll hit you with that pop-up that
you see on the left hand side if you are
in tier 10 just starting off
my recommendation is unselect everything
and then manually click where it says
standard t-shirt under
com standard t-shirts are the best
selling products on merch by amazon and
com is the us marketplace which has the
most customers so when you do this
you're giving yourself the highest
earning potential that is my
recommendation then click continue
button down there
and now you are going to upload your
design to your standard t-shirt um the
same design that you exported sorry i
should back up
when you used either canva or photopia
you use the 4500 by 5400
pixel dimensions when you're ready to
save your design you export it as a
png file a transparent png file you
disable the background okay
when you're ready to upload that design
all you have to do is click
into the middle there where it says
upload artwork and then just navigate to
where you saved that design on your
computer
and upload it that's all you got to do
next you need to choose your fit types
by default the youth checkbox will not
be checked if you're going to
offer it in youth sizing you need to
make sure that you adhere to the merch
content policy i can also link that in
the description
and it's worth a read honestly it's up
there
in terms of importance with checking
trademarks so i just want to get that
out there
if you select the youth checkbox it
can't be like about drugs
alcohol anything like that needs to be
very um youth friendly let's say
okay so you choose your fit types then
you need to select colors you can select
up to 10
colors how easy is this by the way
you're now selling a
a t-shirt on the world's largest
ecommerce marketplace and you can offer
up to 10 colors and i think like
six different sizes or actually there's
men's then women's then youth
so you get a bunch of different sizes
this is all taken care of for you
just like that just because you applied
and were accepted to merch by amazon
it's pretty crazy
so you can select up to 10 colors i
typically recommend
optimize your designs to be light in the
foreground that's why i said like white
text
against a dark colored background the
best-selling color is black by the way
all right and then you need to enter a
list price uh the default price is 19.99
and this is honestly not a bad price
point generally speaking but if you want
to increase the likelihood of making
sales in the near term
which will then each sale is going to
help your account scale up we call them
tier ups where merch by amazon initially
when you're accepted you can only list
10 products for sale
well actually they just changed how that
kind of works but i don't want to get
complicated let's just say 10 products
if you're able to make some sales they
will increase that number to 25.
if you make more sales they'll take it
to 100 and then 500 than a thousand
so if you want to increase the
likelihood of making a tier up
through making more sales you can drop
that price the default price from 1999
to 13.07
now this is again standard t-shirts if
you sell on another product type there's
going to be different pricing
1307 is for the standard t-shirts and
when you sell at that price point
you make zero dollars profit but it also
entices customers with the low price
point
next you need to include at a minimum a
title a brand
and actually it's just those two things
the bullets one and two in the
description
are optional my recommendation guys is
put your most valuable keywords in the
title
and the way you describe your shirt
mimic how a customer
would uh search for it so if you create
a
funny father's day t-shirt cause it's
got a dad joke on it the first thing i
would do in your title is type funny
father's day shirt
and then with whatever space you have
left because they do have a 60 character
limit
type the words that are on the shirt
into your title so in your title put
like
funny father's day shirt and then put
the actual joke
in the brand just say something that
mentions father's day because those are
the primary keywords you're targeting
now the bullets i do recommend filling
in but you don't want to get too cute
because if you every word that you type
into the bullets into the description
you're increasing the likelihood of
triggering a rejection
because you might include a word that
the merch by amazon algorithm does not
like
okay this is something you're just going
to need to get a feel for over time
one rejection is not that big of a deal
but if you get a bunch of them you may
lose your account so you just need to be
safe
or a couple minutes ago when i linked to
that video that i dropped earlier this
week that video is seriously worth
watching because it's going to help you
avoid these figuratively speaking
landmines
of words and keep your account safe okay
i do also recommend though put in
additional like sentences about your
shirt that describe like why somebody
would buy them
why somebody would wear them where you
might wear them things like that
but don't don't keyword stuff and the
description is optional because it
doesn't get indexed
i typically just put a generic copy
paste description that applies
anywhere and i just keep it simple all
right then scroll down
under product availability on amazon you
should just leave the default which is
searchable so
no need to do anything here and then you
should see a publish button after you
click publish you should see a pop-up
that says confirm your products you're
submitting a design to the following
products
standard t-shirt these products will be
published as searchable
all customers will be able to search and
find these products on amazon
you will not be able to edit these
products until they are finished
processing so when you submit this guys
when you hit publish
it's going to go into a status and you
can see the status
on your top navigation bar so if you
scroll back up to the top of the page
after you submit
you can click manage and then you will
see your submission and i'm actually
blocking i'll hide myself real quick
under status it says under review
if you're in tier 10 all of your design
submissions i think
i haven't been in tier 10 in four years
but um i think all your submissions go
to review
and they tend not to review any
submissions over the weekend
so if you have something that you
submitted on saturday and saturday
morning you might need to wait till
monday
before you see any movement on it but
don't freak out it's okay if you submit
it on a monday typically in my
experience i think 24 hours you should
see a response
and you typically want to see it shift
from under review to processing
when you see processing that's the green
light you're good to go it's only a
matter of time before it's going to be
live and for sale on amazon
and when it's live and for sale again
under status you will see
live and you'll be able to click a link
where your title was and when you click
that link
it'll take you to the product page on
amazon you can send it to your friends
family you can put on social media
you can buy it yourself yes you can buy
your own products one
distinction before we're done with this
video that i should make is that these
products are sold
by amazon the merch by amazon portal
that i just walked you through
is a paired down version of amazon
it or of how to sell on amazon the
correct like
intended way to sell on amazon where our
listings are owned by us
it's called amazon seller central and
that is a whole nother beast
that would require a much more thorough
and much longer video so i'm not going
to get too in-depth there
but i did want to make that distinction
that these listings are sold by
amazon and amazon pays us a royalty when
we make sales by the way speaking of
getting paid i know that's the last
question that you guys had to ask so
let's get right to it
you will get paid once a month and i'm
not really an expert on payment because
i don't pay that much attention i've got
so much going on in my life that it's
like i just assume that they give me the
money that i'm owed
and life is good but um i will say once
a month you get paid
i get paid via direct deposit i think
you can use payoneer
if you're international to also get paid
out if you don't have a bank account
um there's a weird thing where people
that are international think that
they're losing money
because amazon merch will withhold i
think 30 as taxes
but i just want to clear this up for
everybody that's international like
we all pay taxes yours get automatically
taken out
we just have to pay the government
manually you know what i mean so it's
actually easier if they just take the
taxes out for you
whereas like we have to actually figure
out what we owe and some of us are in a
higher tax bracket than whatever they're
taking out of years so it can actually
be worse
so anyways don't worry about the tax
side of things if that's automatically
taken out
and um when they pay you they may
withhold
some in case there's returns i'm not an
expert on when that happens i think it
happens typically in january because
there's a lot of like post-christmas
returns but again i don't pay that close
attention i just know that they always
make it right like they'll always pay
you what you're owed it just may be on a
little bit more of a delay
so that they don't pay you and taken a
loss if a customer returns something
all right hey guys that was pretty much
all i wanted to cover in this video but
let's finish
up by taking advantage of a free seven
day amazon merch mini course that i
wrote
and it is very thorough i mean it's like
just just sign up for it basically
all i need is your email address i'll
send you one lesson a day
and again it's completely free um again
very thorough it'll include a bunch of
written
content as well as video tutorials and
you can find a link in the description
to take advantage of that also in the
description you can find a link to my
merch by amazon facebook group
which is growing rapidly and there's a
lot of great discussion in there
hopefully i knocked out a lot of
questions in this video that pop up in
that
in that um facebook group last but not
least guys i wrote a full amazon merch
course outlining everything that i
learned over the last four plus years go
taking my account from tier 10 to tier
200 000
um literally everything and in the bonus
module i show you how to use automation
to really like put your foot on the gas
but also
remove the requirement for this to be
like an active every single day thing
that
you have to do um so anyways it's really
good course a lot of great feedback
there
and i'm currently reworking it to update
it for 2021 so there's that
anyways guys thank you so much for
watching make sure you hit that like
button if you learned anything and
subscribe if you're not already
and i'll see you tomorrow
[Music]
you