- Are you thinking about selling shirts
through Merch by Amazon?
Would you like to know the quality
of Merch by Amazon shirts?
Well, get my honest thoughts in this Merch by Amazon
Premium Shirt Review, stay tuned.
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If you've been following me long enough
and you've watched any number of my videos
or seen me on any number of interviews,
you'll notice a similar pattern,
a similar branding about me, and that is
my t-shirts and jeans approach.
Now, this is simple to make t-shirt designs
that you can do through something that's called
Merch by Amazon.
We've talked about this to a certain extent
in some of our live shows, but I thought
we'd go ahead and take a closer and deeper look
at the quality of the shirts that Merch by Amazon provides.
So I went ahead, I put together two new types of shirts
and I ordered it.
Within three days it was shipped to my house
on my doorstep and ready to go
and we're gonna go ahead and unbox it.
So why don't we take a look inside?
Alright, one thing you'll notice.
Any time that you order any shirts
be it Premium or Standard Merch by Amazon shirts,
you're gonna notice this (sniffs) unusual smell,
it's almost like a vinegar, you open it up
and it smells like pickles.
So this is gonna be one of the things
I'm gonna recommend to you is,
when you do get the shirts in,
don't put them on immediately
unless you want to smell like a pickle factory.
With the Premium shirts, they're a little bit
more expensive, and it's got a nicer fabric to it,
and it's also a more snugger fit.
As you can see with the shirt that I'm wearing right now,
it fits a little bit tighter up here,
and it's a little looser down here
and it goes down a little longer.
With the Standard shirts, there's a little bit more room
to breath, and it has a more accurate sizing.
So this is a large shirt, but it probably fits me
more like a medium shirt does.
So for this particular shirt right here,
this is actually the large design
and it looks a little larger than what it normally would,
it's going to shrink a bit in the wash,
and then we got this other one here.
You can see once again it's pretty big,
but as soon as I get inside this,
I'm about roughly six foot two and about 190 pounds,
so I fill out this shirt pretty well.
These two shirts are not too bad.
It's going to end up looking like this
when it's all said and done, and it's gonna shrink
ever so slightly when you put it in the wash.
My biggest complaint abut the Standard shirts
is anytime I've washed those, they've shrunk a lot
and then what ends up happening is
I'm tall, so the shirts go up just a little bit more
and it looks like a, you know,
like a midriff shirt on me and I'm not ready to show off
my belly on videos.
Let's discuss three elements for us to consider
when looking at each one of these shirts
and selling them.
One, quality.
I'm really happy with the quality of the Premium shirts
but there are a lot of customer reviews
that are not so happy.
These shirts tend to fit most people
a little bit more snug.
So if you happen to order a Premium shirt
that's provided through Merch by Amazon,
I recommend that you go a size up or two
and worst case scenario, if you're not happy with it,
you can always return it and get a full refund
or exchange it for the size that's gonna fit you best.
Two, cost.
Let's keep in mind that each one of these shirts
don't come free, so there is a base cost
that you have to fulfill on the Premium shirts.
Right now you typically have to price your shirt
right about $14 or more in order to see any type of profit.
When I'm producing a new design
and launching it through the Merch by Amazon market,
I try to price it low.
Here's the deal.
Right now, if your design doesn't sell within 120 days,
Amazon purges it from your account
and pulls it off of the marketplace.
So there needs to be proof of concept
that your design is actually worthy of being
on the Amazon platform and will be bought.
So what I'll do is, I'll mark them down low
so that way it sells once, and then I'll push them
right on up there to where I can actually
make some type of a profit.
Three, order fulfillment and delivery time.
This is hit or miss.
It just really depends on the time of week
that you're ordering it, and of course
the time of year that you're gonna be ordering
a Merch by Amazon shirt.
These two shirts took about three days
from the time that I put it into my shopping cart on Amazon
to the time it arrived on my doorstep.
So I was really happy.
In other instances, it took a little over
a week and a half on a couple of my orders.
I'm not too disappointed considering that
this is print on demand merchandise.
It's not like someone's waiting patiently by
for your order, they need to make sure
that they're doing all these orders as they come in.
So are you producing Merch by Amazon shirts
for your business?
Is this something that you see working
with your author brand currently?
I definitely would love to hear from you
so just drop your thoughts in the comments.
In the meantime and in between time,
if you enjoyed this video, make sure
that you share it with somebody else
who would enjoy it, too.
'Til later, it's been Self Publishing with Dale,
and I'll see you soon.