what's up guys in today's video i want
to talk about one of the most important
aspects of selling
products online in general and that is
standing out in search results
to me this is probably the hardest part
of
uh succeeding
as an e-commerce seller if we think
about the product life cycle you know
most products start with inception
and from there you know you do any r d
uh some design if it's print on demand
then you would go to production for
physical products or if it's print on
demand we really just skip production
and go straight to creating product
listings
once the product listing's live whether
it's on amazon whether it's on ebay
whether it's on etsy whether it's on
walmart wherever wherever you shop
once the listing exists
how do people find it right i know a lot
of people too by the way isn't it funny
let's just laugh for 10 seconds about
we all probably have like friends and
family that think like oh i'm going to
sell this one day but i got to make sure
everything's perfect before it goes live
and it's like if oh man if only they
knew that once it's live nobody's gonna
know or care right like if it was like
oh i made it live and now the whole
world knows man that would be a great
problem to have right but it's not that
easy uh if it was we'd all be rich right
so anyways
standing out in search results
this is critical whether we are getting
organic placement in page one uh of you
know search terms
or we are
running ads to get paid placement
when people see our product we want that
click-through rate to be high because
you can bet all of the major e-commerce
marketplaces they monitor click-through
rate because it's a good indicator of
relevance on those search terms also if
we don't get clicked in search results
they can't purchase our product it's one
of the required steps in order to get
purchased to convert the customer all
right so this is really important guys
why don't we get started
[Music]
real quick reminder take advantage of
the free weekly print on demand giveaway
the link is at the top of the
description and two winners are gonna be
randomly selected and announced this
sunday also in the description i've got
a seven day merch by amazon mini course
all i need is your email and i'll send
you one lesson a day for seven days and
i've got a great merch by amazon
facebook group if you guys would like to
join
all right let's talk about standing out
in search results and the first thing
that i wanted to suggest
is
when we're talking print on demand we're
going to put a print on demand focus on
this video
we only have so much space to work with
when we are designing all right
especially when we are talking about
like amazon merch for instance we don't
even get to
control how our product is framed like
if we start an etsy shop we can create
custom thumbnails for our products and
we can not only you know upload our own
custom
edited thumbnail to be our primary
product display that shows up in search
results but we can even crop it to show
specific parts of um of that thumbnail
with amazon and amazon merch
specifically we are more or less
only
able to control what we have here in the
canvas space now i just wanted to really
quickly do a quick uh thought experiment
with you now you can see in this demo
design that i've got that i have
basically made this design fill the
vertical
space available in the canvas and by the
way if you're new to merch by amazon
you'll most likely be designing in a
4500 by 5400 pixel canvas however i do
believe that they made that like
flexible these days even though i've
always still just been using the 4500 by
5400
as my design canvas size
but check it out right so i went and i
tried to fill up this space now if i was
really crazy i could even uh stretch it
out horizontally but i don't want like
my design to get skewed and look weird
like i think that looks a little bit
uh like something went wrong in the
design when i stretched it out
horizontally so typically
my design is either going to
fill the width
first or it's going to fill the height
first but my goal generally speaking is
to be at the top and bottom bounds of
the you know of the vertical or the left
and right bounds of the the horizontal
aspects this way my graphic is going to
display
as prominently as it possibly can
in search results when it's rendered on
the uh the t-shirt mock-up on amazon and
i think everybody's familiar with what
i'm referring to right um i used to even
have like in my photoshop layers behind
me i used to have like little uh t-shirt
um
t-shirt like mock-ups basically and i
could i could mess around with it but uh
keep in mind once we publish it to merch
by amazon like they're ultimately
responsible for creating that final
mock-up
so the first recommendation about how to
stand out is to
aim to have big bold easy to read
designs if you have text on the shirt
make sure you've got a font selection
that can easily
be read
and typically that means like if you're
gonna do a script font like a cursive or
handwriting type font um there are
little tricks you can do like
whatever application you like to design
in like i use photoshop because i'm a
creature of habit
you can typically go to the text layer
you can right click and you can do
blending options and you can add a
stroke and that'll make your layer of
text thicker
so little tricks like that um you know
also just like find a list of nice bold
easy to read fonts that you like and
memorize them or write them down
the one that i'm using in this design is
called league gothic i like it because
it's a nice bold font where it's not too
wide so i can generally fit a lot of
text in without having to worry about
like it wrapping to a new layer or
getting to be um you know where i need
to get creative
uh with like manipulating it to not be
too much
um other things using contrast like in
this design here by the way shout out to
all sunsets um i don't really design too
many graphics myself if any i leave that
to the professionals all sunsets is
probably the best bang for your buck if
you're on a budget and you're trying to
start your print-on-demand business
um and you're not a great graphic
designer or even if you are but you're
you know time is money do you have time
to create those graphics uh if not you
know i'll drop a link to all sunsets in
the description because they
it's like three bucks a month maybe
three bucks and change and you can get
access to awesome graphics like this one
but i was gonna say
use good color contrast and what's cool
is if you use like an all sunsets sunset
they actually are putting really nice
well contrasting colors in the designs
for you so i can just pop on over to
like the eyedropper tool and click into
the sunset and it's giving me you know
the hex color codes for the colors that
contrast so well together
um just right there you know what i mean
so i don't have to really guess what
colors to use
i kind of just follow the flow of their
design that's pre-made and generally
speaking you know after doing some niche
research figure out what text to include
with the design uh there's no right or
wrong way like i'm not saying oh you
must color the text i'm not trying to
say that but if you choose to color the
text something other than you know if
you're designing for a black shirt you'd
probably want to make the text white at
a minimum but you can see here that you
can get creative and kind of like color
match the the text to the
um colors of the design so that it flows
nicely together
but make sure that you know easy to read
font
easy to read um color contrast because
if you have like a gray text on a dark
black shirt background that's also going
to be hard to read um so avoid the
script fonts all those little things
guys and then also make your design when
it's done like look i i could make my
design small like this right
like i could do that nothing's stopping
me from doing that and ultimately when
this finished product is sold it's gonna
render smaller on the shirt
in real life some people you know it's
subjective they may say oh well that
looks better right but before a
print-on-demand shirt appears in real
life before it exists it must be
purchased in order to get purchased you
need to get clicked in search results
and you need to get purchased right
so getting clicked in search results a
lot easier to do when it's a nice big
bold easy to read design at least in my
personal opinion now also speaking of
search results
i wanted to kind of just scroll through
easter was recently
so let's scroll through some easter
designs now some of the things that i'm
noticing
is well a lot of repetition
of black shirts do you guys notice that
a lot of repetition of black shirts
now we know that that doesn't
necessarily mean
that the shirt is only available in
black but you know for those of you guys
that are new to merch by amazon
um if you make the color black available
then i'm pretty sure it's like a hundred
percent clip
that the primary thumbnail that shows up
in search results is going to be on a
black shirt
as a result you get a lot of black
shirts now the average amazon customer
probably doesn't know what merch by
amazon is and they don't know all of
these like kind of advanced concepts
that we as the sellers consider when
we're making these decisions
so maybe we just kind of play on human
psychology and say okay if most of my
competition is going to be on black
shirts maybe
i sell a white shirt
and i do that to stand out you know what
i mean like maybe we use that to our
advantage like if we have a row of
shirts like this one behind me it's uh
what is it black shirt black shirt black
shirt white shirt
what's different oh i see what's
different there you know same thing with
this row of shirts white shirt black
shirt black shirt black shirt so maybe
we consider
and by the way in order to accomplish
this guys
uh you that pretty much means you can't
offer the shirt in black
which i'm guessing the people who
designed this shirt did strategically
like they probably created this shirt
knowing that they were not going to um
in fact do that now when it comes to a
holiday like easter
you could even consider only offering it
in like
light blue
light pink and yellow you know it's a
big pasteli
spring time of year and we know that
those colors are very popular and
associated with this time of year in
people's minds you know for one reason
or another
so maybe you could use that to your
advantage and one thing you could do
that almost nobody does
is
the same way that we like optimize
designs like if you're selling a if
you're going to make your design
available on a black shirt
it is going to
behoove you i think that's the right
word to say
it's going to benefit you to make sure
your design looks best of all the colors
you're going to make available you can
have up to 10 colors on a black shirt
because you know that's where it's going
to get seen the most all right and when
i go into my merch by amazon statistics
from the lifetime of me selling on merch
by amazon because pretty merch shout out
to pretty merch pro i can also link to
them in the description
they let me see
my
best selling colors right they let me
see all that data best selling fit type
best selling product type best cell
color um and guess what like my best
selling color is black
it's probably not a coincidence i mean i
design mainly optimized for
uh the dark colored backgrounds although
in some cases you can have a design like
this one that can look good on black and
white and when this is the case
if you have the upload slots you can
even consider uploading two versions of
the design
one where you make the black enabled and
one where you don't because you know if
you enable the black like that's the one
that people are gonna see right so what
i'm really saying is be strategic
be contrarian
leverage this to your advantage the
average customer has no clue what merged
by amazon is they don't know why they're
seeing so many black thumbnails
uh so you can kind of like weaponize the
system to your benefit and just by not
making the black shirt available um you
can really and i think white gets the
the next like dominant spot like i don't
think i've seen where white is available
nevermind there you go i see this is
there's no book on this there's no and i
don't know if this is necessarily a rule
either so don't you know me the fact
that we just clicked and white was
available but asphalt got the primary
thumbnail in this one example
um
you know they could also just write into
the amazon algorithm like okay
asphalt is getting the highest
conversion rate therefore
render it as asphalt in search results
as the primary like i don't know
firsthand how this works like i only
have what i see
so it's very like anecdotal but
um just keep that in mind guys
experiment with this especially if
you're in tier 10. in tier 10 don't be
afraid to only make one color available
and when you're chasing trends like in
tier 10 when you're moving quickly
you're being agile especially and now i
heard they enabled two daily uploads for
tier 10 which is awesome like use this
big time to your advantage because you
need to just stand out you need to chase
the trends defer profitability stand out
in search results and i can think of no
better way than to leverage the shirt
colors to your advantage guys so i think
that's really what i wanted to cover in
this video quick reminder as i wrap up i
have a full merch by amazon course
walking you through how i took my
account from tier 10 to tier 200 000
it's got all the best practices to start
scale and automate your business exactly
as i run mine so if you want to learn
more about that there is a link in the
description you'll find lectures just
like the one we just covered in this
video but often in more depth and very
like linear as far as the tutorials go
guys thank you for watching please like
this video if you found it useful and
subscribe to my channel if you are not
already i'd really appreciate that and
uh thank you i'll see you tomorrow with
a new video
[Music]