hey what's up guys i was feeling
inspired to do this video because
someone reached out to me recently and
said they're in tier 25 uh amazon merch
on demand not merch by amazon of course
but amazon merch on demand
they said i'm in tier 25 i'm not making
sales can you help me and this person
did something i love because not
everybody does this they included links
to some of their listings because
without me being able to see like what
you're putting out there on the
marketplace i would just be guessing
right so they included some links
and normally when i click links i'm
thinking all right well the designs
probably aren't that good maybe it's old
niches who knows turns out though these
are some of the best designs that i've
seen like honestly these designs were
incredible they were really good like
everything about them contrast
font selection
color scheme uh just the graphics like i
don't know exactly what they were doing
if it was from vexels or some place like
that it was on that level though you
know how vexels has a team of
professional designers it was on that
level but they weren't making
sales i guess at the pace that they were
expecting to make sales i didn't
actually ask them like how many sales
they were making on average in a week
but
yeah i was expecting someone with this
type of ability to be making more sales
than they were so in this video i'll try
to keep it brief
i'm going to explore what may have gone
wrong or like at least identify some
areas of improvement because we only
have so many things we control
with
print on demand and in this case even
more refined in scope is amazon merch on
demand we have even less things that we
control so we're going to talk about
that in this video let's get started
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all right so i didn't get permission to
show this person's designs but if i
could i would say like this is like
clinical level designs like they're
doing everything right they were
beautiful designs and there was a lot of
diversity from one to the next to the
next to the next so i know the designs
were not the issue
now the next thing that pops up into my
head and this is what they actually
thought was the case in the email
was they thought their keywords maybe
could be improved upon
when we provide keywords in a listing
guys it's like us assisting the amazon
algorithm in understanding what it is
we're selling right in the scope of
print on demand it's like hey what's the
niche of this product type right but in
the scope of just anything in general
online like if there's no sales history
we really need to provide good keywords
for the algorithm to like put us in
front of the right potential customers
and obviously when we start running ads
we get into that discussion we have more
control over exactly how it works but in
this case they're in tier 25 i'm
assuming they do not have ads so that's
off the table
i did just want to and because i'm not
showing you their listings i won't try
to critique them but i will say their
keywords weren't bad but i just want to
just throw it out there for everybody
watching the amz suggestion expander is
my favorite free resource okay we use a
lot of paid tools uh on this channel but
like not everything needs to be paid the
amz suggestion expander is still free uh
hopefully it stays free if they ever
charge for it i will certainly pay for
it because it's that good
but it expands the amazon autocomplete
when you're searching
and helps you identify additional like
long tail keywords and phrases to target
and when i say target i mean we're not
running ads so what i'm really saying is
like
find some high value
phrases that you can include at a
minimum in your titles with your merch
by amazon you know amazon merch on
demand whatever whatever we want to call
it uh in your titles at a minimum
because titles are where you're going to
have like the highest
priority keywords and like highest value
highest weight assigned
um bullet points though they also had
like some relevant keywords in the
bullet points i typically
not typically i mean i usually use the
bullet points but i get too scared to
like include too many words in the
bullets because every additional word
that you include
is an additional potential problem for
the you know approval rejection
algorithm to you know incorrectly flag
as being trademarked so i'm always a
little bit careful with what i do in the
bullets i try to just hone in on you
know one two even three phrases
in my title that i can um you know that
i think are high value so that's it for
keywords another thing i wanted to
mention that i don't have anything to
show for is
price point so this person in the four
listings was it four yeah four listings
that they sent me
uh the price point of all their products
was 19.99
now if you are in tier 25
i personally think you can defer
profitability
meaning like you don't need to make any
money per sale like why not drop the
prices to 1307 or maybe 13.99 since it
looks a little bit awkward to have a
price of 1307 but either way why not
drop to min price give your customers an
additional incentive to purchase from
you and that they'll save money
and we could all use a little bit extra
savings right now right
and yeah just like the 1999 price point
i think that's one actionable thing you
can consider implementing just dropping
your prices nothing no harm's done there
you know what i mean because you're not
advertising right because you can't
advertise in tier 25 last i heard i mean
unless people are getting access to ads
in tier 25 uh that would be pretty
interesting i don't think they want to
overburden people that are still
relatively new to amazon merch though
the next thing is really about
perspective and this is really good for
everybody that's still with me
check this out right we're recording
this video in july
when i go to google trends
i type in july 4th shirt
they're not showing me the search volume
but they're showing me the volume on
kind of a
relative basis although i guess when
we're only looking at one search query
the relative aspect is kind of broken so
i don't know what it's exactly relative
to but either way obviously google wants
to keep that stuff to themselves so they
do but
you can kind of see here that july 4th
shirt
does generate a lot of interest at one
time of year right and we're in july so
when we have very limited upload slots
for our merch by amazon business
we really want to utilize them to their
fullest extent so we want to be in those
trending niches because we don't need to
list well i was going to say a christmas
shirt in july but there is a you know
christmas in july niche so bad example
but we don't need to be listing like
valentine's day shirts in july because
we know the spike in demand is in
february we're quite a ways away
but for anybody who gets accepted into
merch by amazon at a
let's just say a tougher time of year
and i'm going to show you what i mean by
that i need you to just zoom out and
keep the right perspective at a minimum
so you don't quit on this business model
because you're struggling
right now okay because let me show you
this when you look at july 4th shirt
versus halloween shirt and again we're
not seeing the we don't know the actual
like numeric volume here
but what we do know is on a relative
basis
the peak interest in july 4th shirt
is roughly
it's slightly less than half
the peak interest in terms of search
volume for halloween shirt
so let's say you're in tier 10 or tier
25 in october and you just do halloween
shirts well just based off of what
google's showing us in google trends
you're twice as likely to make a sale
in october
off of something that you're completely
out of control of like we have no
control over the fact that generally
speaking according to google trends
people are way more interested in well
on a double basis basically 2x is
interested in halloween shirts as they
are july 4th shirts so it's much easier
to get out of tier 10 tier 25
in october than it is in july just based
off of what we see here with um
comparing like probably the most obvious
trend in july to the most obvious trend
in october
let's take it a step further now
and i compared july 4th shirt to
halloween shirt to christmas shirt
and you'll notice christmas shirt even
generates more interest
than
halloween shirt does so if you're
getting out of tier 10 tier 25 in the
fourth quarter in december in you know
the time where christmas shirts start
trending
guess what you're in even better shape
and these are things that aren't in our
control like ideally you just want to
get into merch by amazon and worry about
the rest later you know kind of struggle
through it as as it comes to you like
but you want to get in as soon as
possible and just start scaling your
account up as soon as possible like if
you had to choose you would honestly
rather face the
harder difficulty of scaling your
account
in the summer time in you know june july
when the demand on the highest value
niches aren't necessarily as high on a
relative basis because then when you get
to this time of year where halloween
shirt you know christmas shirt q4
everybody's buying everything
you'll have more upload slots
right so it's it's almost better to just
struggle through tier 25 right now
adhere to the best practices knowing
that you're gonna get paid
later on for the work the effort you're
putting in right now okay so i wanted to
just kind of illustrate this i'm happy
that google trends when i because i
didn't know it was going to work out
this way when i like went to google
trends but i was like hoping it would
because i assumed it would look
something like this
and i think it makes for a pretty good
video as far as like perspective goes
right because
this person that emailed me i mean it's
rare that somebody's like doing such
quality
in such a low tier like they're doing a
great job so i just wanted to share this
i'm sure that other people watching that
you are hopefully doing really good work
yourself or at least making it work for
you if you don't have the ability to
create incredible designs at least you
know make a big
text only design in something related to
that niche because text only designs do
still sell and you know do
stick to all the best practices like you
can still make sales doing text only
guys um anyways that's all i wanted to
show for this video i hope you know you
found it useful if you did please let me
know comment let me know if i missed
anything you know tips that you might
have for the low tiers in merch by
amazon uh hit that like button too for
the youtube algorithm subscribe if you
haven't and i will see you tomorrow with
a new video
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