hey what's up guys in today's video
we're gonna have a little fun we're
gonna talk about the origins of merch by
amazon and i'm gonna use the wayback
machine which if you guys aren't
familiar with that it's a website that
basically captures websites at a moment
in time so it's kind of like a time
capsule going backwards uh where you can
plug in a website and kind of see what
it used to look like we're gonna do that
for merch by amazon and kind of look at
the uh well as far as i know i'm not
gonna pretend to know everything but
kind of look at the origin story of
merch by amazon before it kind of
morphed into what we know of it uh as
today so it should be fun uh let's get
started
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you get started and i've got a merch by
amazon facebook group i'd love to have
you there if you're not already a member
all right let's jump on over to the
wayback machine okay so we are looking
at a screenshot in time and it's more
than just a screenshot it's actual like
html of the webpage as you can see here
uh but this represents
march 23rd
2016.
so what is that 16 to 20 20 20 it's like
six years ago almost that's crazy this
is quite a while ago all right and as
you can see here uh merch by amazon
well for one the web page used to look
different than it does today i think i
have it open on a separate tab here yeah
so this is what we're used to seeing
today when we look at merch by amazon
but
back in the day
and i think i was looking at the various
screenshots i think they changed it in
like late 2017 or early 2018 to the new
one
uh but yeah let's take a look let's
explore so the origin story well do you
want to just kind of stop and look and
kind of guess how much by amazon started
and why they chose the name merch by
amazon by the way
so it actually and this is my
understanding disclaimer i don't know
everything i am just a talking head on
youtube disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer
uh
it says take your fans to the next level
all right so they were helping
app developers
sell merchandise
to their fans okay amazon does have
their own app store by the way i mean i
i never got into like app development i
can do like mobile website development
but i never got into like app
development specifically
and it looked to me like
they were targeting um
developers with product on the amazon
app store and helping
offer merchandise to their fan base
basically i mean that's a pretty easy to
understand concept and they called it
merch by amazon when they launched it
and they said take your fans to the next
level they even had a tagline pretty
interesting right
and you can see here it was invite only
even back then of course they call it
invite only but you basically have to
request an invitation i guess if you're
on the app store and big enough they
probably reached out to you and invited
you to take advantage of this
opportunity
so they say you know step one sign in
with the amazon account that you want
associated with merch by amazon two
fill out the invitation request form on
the following screen three will notify
you once your request has been approved
implying that they all get approved
unfortunately for a lot of people that's
not the case uh at least today um
definitely quite a few rejections dished
out uh these days for what it's worth
too guys i mean i applied for merch by
amazon the first time i think it was
like
october or november 2016 and never heard
back
and didn't really know what it was in
the first place anyways
ultimately ended up like seeing it again
on i think a reddit like subreddit for
people wanting to make money online kind
of a communi community dedicated to that
and i was like you know what this is a
sign i'm going to go reapply so i went
back reapplied same email address by the
way after not receiving a rejection
unless it's in my spam somewhere
and i think that was probably like
january 2017 and i got in march 2017
made my first sale uh april 2017.
so you know the rest is history right
you got to start somewhere uh it
definitely helps to have you know
started early of course i i'm not going
to lie and say i dedicated my life to
scaling my merch account ever since
2017. you know i wavered i went in and
out you know from really trying hard to
losing interest to coming back and you
know obviously today i understand the
opportunity it presents and i've been
very dedicated
uh so you can see we scroll down
and some games that have created
t-shirts with merch by amazon so back
then it was just t-shirts by the way
they didn't have like the full catalog
like they do today uh they have you know
dramatically increased or expanded i
should say the scope of what merch by
amazon is today from what it was when
they initially launched back in you know
2015 or 2016. i think somebody told me
2015 but i i don't have a way of proving
that
so they have a game called trivia crack
uh my singing monsters dragon veil cut
the rope deer hunter 24 okay deer hunter
have you guys ever seen those arcade
games i'm assuming that's the same uh
brave frontier
so yeah they've got you know some some
games at least one game i recognize and
i wonder how much merch they actually
moved with the partnerships with these
game and app developers
uh relative to what they make now having
partnerships with like disney you know
what i mean it's gotta be absurdly the
gap between like deer hunter merch and
disney merch is probably so wide
so how it works create and upload your
artwork using templates promote your
t-shirts using our tools analyze your
sales and iterate for best monetization
now i can't help but wonder you see this
part right here promote your t-shirt
using our tools
imagine being like
like this could have been me i mean i'm
just saying like theoretically like you
know i was a developer i wasn't an app
developer but let's say i was and i
worked for maybe one of these companies
or maybe i developed my own app and
amazon invites me
to their merch program to be like one of
the first you know a beta tester
would i even have looked i mean i know
the value of amazon so i probably would
have accepted and clicked around but i
probably wouldn't have done anything
with it but
had i
potentially in this theoretical tangent
i'm going on in my mind
actually used it
pushed a product through the program got
it published and realized
that it's published on amazon.com the
world's largest e-commerce marketplace
and following a sale i get paid a
royalty i don't have to do anything
and imagine if i uploaded uh you know
for whatever my app was
and it got an organic sale
not one that i sent from the app or from
my email list but an organic sale as
soon as that happened i guarantee you
my brain would have been like
ding light bulb uh if i can get organic
sales
for
products i publish through this portal
what if i expand the scope of my t-shirt
line from my stupid app to
literally anything else
like you could have been the first to
sell these prime eligible t-shirts on
amazon through the merch program
having gotten in because you were an app
developer
and my understanding i don't remember
where i read this has been it's been
years at this point was that initially
there was no
uh approval algorithm approval rejection
algorithm
and there was no upload limits now this
was early early days whoever it was it
told me this um early early days but
imagine that understanding the value of
what you're doing and having no upload
limits and no content filter which is
why i think a lot of the shirts that did
get through the content filter initially
that no one could replicate probably got
through before the content filter
existed i don't run into as many of
those these days but like for sure back
in the day when i was you know scaling
my account up tier 10 tier 25 to 100 i
would see shirts and i'd be like how did
they get that up but i can't do it um so
anyways you can see down here they got
the dragonvale shirts you can see some
examples of the old-school amazon merch
t-shirts actually seeing what people are
publishing from dragonvale
dragonville said no risk no upfront pa
no payment up front and this made a big
difference to us the best part is we
don't have to worry about shipping
distribution tax and all that upload
artwork customers buy a cool shirt and i
don't have to do anything else
uh trivia crack they said four
developers who specialize in mobile
games merch by amazon is the ideal
partner to sell merch the process is
very quick we created the t-shirts we
implemented the sdk the software
development kit in our game and amazon
did the rest
and my singing monster said working with
amazon is a dream come true we don't
have to worry about selling the shirts
or holding inventory it's a one-stop
shop allowing us to grow the brand
outside the game
guys what more
is there to say uh merch by amazon has
humble beginnings and it has come very
far since then but hey if you guys
enjoyed this video do me a quick favor
drop a like and subscribe if you haven't
already before you leave i wanted to
remind you i did write a full merch by
amazon course walking you through
exactly how i took my account from tier
10 to tier 200 000 if you guys would
like to learn more about that use the
link in the description all right thank
you so much again for watching i will
drop a link to the archive.org webpage
that we were looking at in this video in
case you want to explore
but guys thank you so much i'll see you
soon
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