Hi and welcome back to the channel.
In this video, I'm going to explain the best strategy to get more sales on Merch by Amazon.
The 5 tips in this video are made for those of you who are new to Merch by Amazon and only have 10 design slots available to upload.
However, these tips will also help you as your account starts to grow.
I've been selling on Merch by Amazon for years and I've definitely learned some big tips that I wish someone told me years ago.
Hopefully this video can do that for you.
If you're new here, make sure you hit the Subscribe button below if you want more videos from me.
And if you're returning to the channel, thank you so much and welcome back to the channel. I really appreciate all of your support.
So without further ado, let's get right into the good stuff. If you're not very familiar with Merch by Amazon, very briefly,
it's a print-on-demand platform
where you as the seller
create and upload designs that you think would be good on a t-shirt and
they essentially make a listing for it on Amazon and
buyers can see it, what it would look like on a t-shirt and actually order one of them.
Amazon will print it and ship it out to them.
The beauty of this is you don't have to do anything else besides upload the t-shirt design file.
They do everything for you. Now Merch by Amazon is the only print-on-demand site where you actually have to request an invitation.
So if you are already accepted to Merch by Amazon, that's excellent.
This video will still be helpful for you if you have not yet applied to Merch by Amazon.
I'll link up a video that'll give you some helpful tips on how to get accepted faster.
Also, I've put together a free step-by-step print-on-demand startup checklist.
This is kind of out of what you guys have been requesting.
I put it all into one downloadable, obviously free pdf. So that's gonna be linked in the description. It has everything you need in chronological order.
So hopefully that makes your print-on-demand
experience a lot easier.
So with all that said, once you've been accepted to Merch by Amazon, you start off by default in what they call Tier 1.
If you're not familiar with their tier system, Merch by Amazon is the only one that uses it
and essentially what it is is it restricts you are uploading maximums until you sell a certain amount of items.
So just so you're familiar with this, the tier system technical numbers are as follows; when you open up your account
you're automatically in Tier 1 where you have ten designs. Tier 2 is 25 designs, Tier 3 is 100, Tier 4 is 500,
and Tier 5 is 8,000 designs. And it keeps going above and beyond that.
So the question you may be asking is how you move up in the tiers and essentially how you do that is by getting sales
In order to move into the next tier you have to sell as many shirts as were allowed in your previous tier.
So a little confusing, but for example to move from tier 1 to tier 2, there's 10 designs allowed in tier 1
So once you make 10 sales, you are automatically moved into tier 2 where you have 25 slots available now.
Obviously once you sell 25 shirts, so then you move into tier 3.
So it keeps going and going depending on how many shirts you sell.
So with that said, the real money on Merch by Amazon is made when you have hundreds or thousands of designs uploaded.
This is why it's so important to know how to sell shirts, so you can continue to rank up in their tiers and have more
slots available. So the ultimate question is, how do you tier up from tier 1,
if you're just starting out on Merch by Amazon, how do you sell those first 10 shirts?
Well
I've got a few big tips that will help you out.
Starting with number 1, make sure that you are uploading your best 10 designs when you're in this first tier.
Your first 10 designs do not need to be in the same niche. They just need to be 10 really good designs.
They'll be added to the marketplace and marketed individually.
So it's not going to be in a specific niche specific storefront like something like Teespring.
Essentially you just want to make sure that you're giving yourself the best chance
of getting sales by uploading your 10 best designs no matter what niches they are in.
So moving right into number 2, make sure that you are choosing your niches wisely.
In the beginning, you want to get your first 10 sales as fast as possible with that said we need to make sure that we're getting some short-term wins
and getting sales quickly so we can start moving up in the tiers and getting more designs out there.
This is why I truly recommend in the beginning and it will help you down the road getting a niche research tool.
The one that I personally recommend is Merch Informer.
They have a three day free trial, you can use a competition checker
I've got a video that I'll link up for that will give you more information.
But when you do that three-day free trial, you don't have to pay for anything and you can make a big list of good niches with low competition.
If you're adding designs that are in a competitive niche, you may still get designs but that'll be long-term down the road.
In the beginning, we need to get these ten sales as fast as possible.
So it benefits us to look into the right niches that have low competition
and using a niche research tool just makes that a lot easier for us.
But like I said
I will link up a helpful video in the top and then also at the end of this video
that I'll give you information on how to use Merch Informer,
which is the niche research tool that I prefer to use and like I said before they have a three day free trial.
So you'll have to pay for their subscription and you can use those three days for unlimited searches,
so you can make quite a big list of low competition niches and then I do recommend down the road when you are profiting from this,
to get a subscription of Merch Informer just so you have that competition tool in the video that I'm gonna link up.
It'll explain why I recommend this so much
but essentially it's going to allow you to scale and put your effort into creating designs that are in good niches that'll sell alot.
Better than just randomly creating designs.
So that's number two, making sure you're going into the right niches. Now, let's move into number three.
This is pricing your items so that they sell. You can change your prices on your items on Merch by Amazon at any time.
But in the beginning, we really need sales more than we need profit.
So let me be clear on this do not sell your items at a price point where you have no profit.
It's simply not fair to other sellers because it kills the market by bringing the expected price
for these items down for everyone across the board and further,
it would be shooting yourself in the foot because down the road when you go and raise these prices back up,
people are going to be expecting that lower price.
Rather what I recommend you do is set your price a few dollars less than usual on your first ten items.
This will help you get those first sales and you'll still make some money in the process and it preserves the overall price point
that customers will be expecting down the road.
I really want to make sure that we're all on the same page on this because it can be easily confused.
And this one is really important. So to further this, I'll give you an example.
Imagine if you went into a store and saw your favorite drink on sale for $1 when it's usually $5
you would definitely buy it, but then the next time you went into the store and saw it for $5,
you would not buy it.
Mentally you'd be waiting for it to go on sale again because you're expecting it at
$1 which is so much lower than the $5 that you're usually paying.
This is the equivalent of you pricing your items at cost with no profit on them,
rather if you went to the store and saw your favorite drink for $4 instead of the usual $5
you probably still buy it because it's on sale now, if you paid the $5 and got it on sale the next time you went
into the store and saw it back up at the full $5
you wouldn't be as opposed to paying $5 again because you only paid for before not all the way down at one.
This is exactly the same reason companies
don't run big sales for extended periods of time because customers get used to that really low price point.
So just make sure that you've got that one right, price your items to sale,
keep a bit of profit on it and don't keep them absolutely low for too long.
My fourth biggest tip I can give you is give it 60 days.
On Merch by Amazon if you do not make a sale on your design within 60 days, they automatically remove it from the marketplace.
This is 100 percent normal and there are no negative consequences to this.
Now when your item does make a sale within 60 days it stays up on the market place as long as you want.
This is ideally what we want because it keeps it passive. It keeps those items on the marketplace forever.
However in the first year,
I recommend leaving your 10 best designs up for the full 60 days to see if they get a sale.
Sometimes – and I'm speaking from experience,
it will take a design 59 days to get that first sale.
And you don't want to be taking your design down too soon before someone finds it and buys it.
With that being said, when you're in the first tier and you don't get a sale on your design in the first 60 days,
it'll be taken down.
And then what I recommend you do is swap it out with a completely different design.
You give it the full 60 days to see if someone was gonna buy it and that is a good amount of time to test it
but when you're in the first tier, you really need to take advantage of the 10 slots that you have available.
So swap it out with a different great design and give that one 60 days.
Essentially in the beginning you want to just keep repeating this process for all your designs if they don't sell in the first 60 days.
Now moving into number five,
this is a really big one and this is buying your own items.
If worst comes to worst,
this is something that's really important to know.
Merch by Amazon allows you to buy your own items and it counts towards their tier system sales if you are familiar with Teespring,
which is another big print-on-demand site.
They do not count your sales towards their TrustScore when you buy your own items.
Merch by Amazon actually encourages it
because then the seller can see what the designs look like in person
and if they need to make any changes to that item they can do it accordingly.
Merch by Amazon essentially encourages it so we can get our own hands on the items and see what we're selling.
With that said, if you are close to tiering up on any of the tiers,
you can buy your own items to meet the sales number and push you into that next tier.
This works in any tier of Merch by Amazon and the cool thing is you will always be getting the item at cost
because if you price it with a profit on it, all of that profit that you paid over the cost of the shirt
will go back in to your earnings on Merch by Amazon.
And yes, if you want, you can change the price to zero profit briefly while you make the purchase.
Just remember that you change the price back up to somewhere with the profit after you buy it for yourself.
As I started saying before, the real money in Merch by Amazon is when you can create and upload a lot of great designs.
You need to be tiered up in this so you have a lot of slots available
and the only way to be able to do this is by getting into those higher tiers.
I recommend aiming to get at least a hundred designs uploaded and then you can start to kind of coast on print-on-demand.
Long term, the more, the better. If you can upload a thousand designs, you will be in really good shape.
Remember you can upload the same designs that you're uploading to Merch by Amazon also on to teespring.com and RedBubble.com
They're all non-exclusive so you can get sales from all of them at the same time.
I'm going to link up to videos that I recommend you watch after this one.
The video up top is the one I was talking about and I'll show you how to find great niches to create designs in.
So you're spending your time wisely and the one below it will explain my entire print-on-demand strategy in detail.
So if you have any questions, I recommend watching that one first, and also don't forget about the print-on-demand startup checklist.
That's linked in the description as well completely free. I hope this video has been helpful to you guys.
If you liked it hit the thumbs up button and Subscribe,
if you want more videos from me. With that said, I'll be seeing you guys all in the next video.