what's up guys in this video i wanted to
tell you the story about how i sold
some pretty uninspiring merch by amazon
t-shirts honestly it was an experiment
but i was also just trying to get my
daily upload slots filled and i remember
sitting there thinking how the heck am i
gonna fill
50 upload slots
sat there thought about it for a little
bit and was like oh yeah deck of cards
what is that 52 uh if you have jokers
maybe 54 uh shirt designs well that
might work also you know is this going
to work can it really be
that easy
and in this i mean i wouldn't waste your
time with this video if i didn't make
quite a few sales from this of course i
did not get rich from this okay i'm not
trying to mislead anybody into thinking
like this is the next big thing this is
the big secret i just want to tell you a
story about how i didn't come up with
any original ideas i didn't do any niche
research all right this decision to sell
in this niche that i didn't even attempt
to validate uh it was made solely based
on wanting to fill those upload slots
that day so i was aiming for quantity
really over quality although i mean it's
pretty straightforward to sell um deck
of card themed shirts and no this was
not even around halloween of course
though i did see an uptick in sales
around halloween as well for people that
were lazy let's be honest here can we
call it a lazy costume if you're dressed
up like a deck of cards i did see an
uptick around halloween as well
but i want to show you how i did it step
by step guys it's pretty straightforward
and i don't think it's going to blow
anybody's mind how i went about making
sales with such an obvious niche but uh
let's get started
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quick reminder i run a free weekly print
on demand giveaway it takes like 10
seconds to enter you can use the link at
the top of the description to do that
also i've got a free seven-day merch by
amazon mini course that you can take
advantage of if you give me your email
address i'll send you one lesson a day
and it's quite thorough and i've got a
great merch by amazon facebook group if
you guys would like to join
all right and all those links are in the
description by the way so this is the
step-by-step how i executed this plan
that i hatched in about two minutes of
thinking about what i was going to do
that day for my merch uploads and guys
as you
sell more shirts in merch by amazon they
increase your tier your tier represents
how many designs how many unique designs
you can post for sale on various
products
to the merch by amazon platform and
ultimately the amazon catalog and the
higher your tier goes the more daily
upload slots you get and if you're like
me and you're kind of you may be
obsessed over these things you see them
as like a like a like almost like a
video game that you want to win um you
may want to fill your daily upload slots
until your maximum designs are full and
that's how i came to the decision to
sell card themed shirts all right so
as far as graphics goes i went to the
public domain for help here because i
figured this is a pretty common um a
pretty common theme i i figured i'd be
able to find something in the public
domain so rather than me trying to
design it myself and this whole process
taking me days or weeks uh i went about
doing it
just in the public domain and i don't
share all my sources publicly this is
one of those that you can get in my
print on demand course there are a
couple places you can go for graphics
like this you know simple ones and you
may be thinking yeah but ryan what if
other people are selling the exact same
graphics like hey what if who cares
right i'm not worried about that
if it's public domain that means that
they're not going to come after me for
copying them i mean they technically can
but you know they didn't fortunately
because it's not their original work and
i'm not going after anybody that may be
copying or not because again they're not
copying they're using the same graphics
it's fine right we're both trying to do
the same thing we're trying to make some
money and ultimately the customer who
buys these shirts from us they don't
know they don't care right they just
want their shirt so
i went to the public domain
i did have to edit each of the graphics
because this is a snapshot it's not all
of the graphics but this is the um and
shout out to the artist who ever made
these and put them available in the
public domain but i had to go in there
and kind of edit out the border that
kind of was supposed to represent the
card outline itself so i had to edit
those out and just kind of strip the
inside for those designs and put those
on the t-shirt because i don't think it
would have looked nearly as good if it
looked like there was like a floating
card in the shirt i mean i could be
wrong maybe people would like that but i
went ahead and i stripped that part out
the you know the outside border and now
i've got my graphics all right and i've
got 52 of them and if there's jokers
which i don't think i see any oh yeah
52.
so now it's like okay i need a design
app what am i going to do here now i'm
not actually really even doing designing
i am just creating a canvas
in the design app i'm going to do 4 500
pixels wide by 5400 pixels tall
and then i'm going to basically go back
to my graphics
and i'm gonna you know what i'm gonna
drag and drop and then i'm gonna save as
well by the way these are um i got them
in resolution independent format right
so svg format in this case so i can
scale them up i can scale them down and
they're not going to lose quality so
basically when i drag and i drop into my
design app
it's going to drop in there
typically uh i think generally speaking
it's just going to be max size like it's
going to either max out width or max out
height
right and because the actual deck of
card kind of mimics the space available
for us to design in on a t-shirt
it's going to look pretty good right
away so it's not even like this is going
to take me a lot of time adjusting and
resizing it's pretty much a
straightforward process drag drop
file save as png give it a good file
name and then move on to the next one
guys turn off that layer
next layer drag drop uh done so you know
you might consider using like photoshop
maybe illustrator you know if you're
into the adobe products like i am i use
photoshop just creature of habit uh
canva another really popular one where
you can do your designing in your web
browser and it wouldn't surprise me if
you guys use canva pro
and i'll draw a link to canva i'll link
to all three of these in the description
in case you want to check them out
wouldn't surprise me if canva also had
graphics that you could probably use on
your designs as well for the pro users
of course you've got to go check the
licenses and do all your due diligence
there
or photopia that's this uh weird graphic
behind me photopia is basically uh they
cloned photoshop and they made it in a
they made it function in a web browser
so photopia basically anybody doesn't
want to pay for a photoshop license
check that out then you know the rest of
the process guys i upload them to merch
by amazon i see a preview of what the
finished product is going to look like
of course these products don't exist
until the customer purchases them then
they receive the order they print them
they ship them out to the customer we
sit back we collect a royalty what is
not to love about this and here's just a
preview of the aces i sold most of the
aces like as far as if i look at all the
sales that i did from these decks of
cards as you'd probably guess the aces
sold really well also a quick note i
don't know why this is but on the german
market because i did enable them on the
european markets the german market i
made not as many sales as the us market
but quite a few all right a lot more
than normal than i normally do on the
german market so maybe you know i don't
know what it is but and i'm not even
trying to tell you guys to sell deck of
cards themed shirts i'm just trying to
tell show you like sometimes things like
this so random uh can work i don't wanna
say they're obvious because i mean how
obvious are they really uh but something
that's just like low-hanging fruit
simple can truly work now
i would be remiss if i didn't tell you
that i also ran ads to them because i
didn't want to compete with every
existing
deck of cards themed shirt in existence
that already has sales history so i went
ahead and i spent a little bit of time
setting up ads for them as a quick test
you know because again i still wasn't
convinced that i wasn't just wasting my
time creating all of these designs
so i went to um you know the ads tab if
you have access to that on merch by
amazon if you don't have access yet i've
heard of people getting it in tier 100
although that sounds extremely rare um
i've heard it sounds like 500 to a
thousand tier 500 tier 5 tier 1000 is
about when you get access to ads and
you'll see it in the
navigation bar
so i went i created well first you got
to sign up for ads
when you get access put a credit card on
file so they can bill you and then you
go to create campaign i clicked
sponsored products
and if i go down to targeting which is
up near the top of the page actually i
selected manual targeting
this way i can provide the keywords that
i would like to pay amazon to show up
and you know advertise on essentially
as far as you know this is not meant to
be a full advertising tutorial but just
kind of giving you the um an insight
into my brain of like how i would go
about setting up a really quick ad
i would go in and add the acins for the
shirts in this case if we're looking at
the um you know the
uh aces here i would go grab the asins
for the aces shirts asyns aces of course
uh then down here under bid i would
actually switch i should have done that
for the screenshot there but i would
switch suggested bid and i would
manually enter the bid uh or like right
above where i took the screenshot you
can actually key in the your own value
for the suggested bid
and i would definitely always come in
low i'd rather start low and go high
over time and like manually increase
them then start with amazon's suggested
bid which is always way too high in my
opinion
so match type i would typically if
you're just trying to set up a quick ad
i don't like to mix broad phrase and
exact into one campaign one ad group i
like to kind of like split them up and
be very
um very like kind of diligent in how
they're all structured so at least as
far as like ad groups goes you know i
can't imagine mixing them like you would
at least create another ad group and say
like broad you know another ad group
exact
uh so in this case
i did phrase match that's my favorite if
i'm only doing one i'm just gonna do
phrase match and then you can see here
that i don't need to give an exact match
of what someone searches i just need to
you know say hey this phrase they
searched for matches these keywords you
know this phrase that i provided so i
would like to bid to show up so i first
want to type is like ace of next one is
ace of spades shirt next one ace of
hearts shirt and you don't need to
over bid you know the point is to make
profit i'm assuming so you don't need to
like bid too much that's why i say start
low and then see if you can get some
impressions you know they'll give you
that metric over time in the uh the
console
by the way as you start to type in
keywords amazon will expand and
autocomplete similar to how they do the
autocomplete for customers searching on
the front end
and they'll kind of give you a preview
of what people are searching for okay
and by the way they also say note not
all of these shoppers queries are
eligible for targeting
i'm not sure exactly why they say that
though because i think generally
speaking like all these look pretty safe
i think sometimes though because they're
pulling from what customers actually
search they maybe put something like
that in there for when you know just in
case you're trying to advertise
something related to politics you know
because they have that policy about
can't advertise things for politics just
guessing here
all right guys and that's pretty much it
ultimately i did make quite a few sales
it didn't make me rich but at this point
i probably made over 100 profit from
when i sat down that day and set up all
of those card themed shirts so i just
wanted to let you know that sometimes
you think a little bit inside the box do
something that's not that complicated uh
and you know while nobody's probably
that impressed that i made a little bit
over a hundred dollars profit selling
those card themed shirts hey sales are
sales guys and i felt good about it i
got my daily upload slots filled so
that's why i wanted to share this story
with you guys here today if you have any
questions or comments let me know in the
comments section below please like and
subscribe by the way as well i really
appreciate that and before i wrap up
wanted to remind you i have a full merch
by amazon course walking you through how
i went from tier 10 to tier 200 000 in
that course you're going to learn about
a lot of my bigger successes than the
one i shared today but you know there
was kind of a point behind me making
this video i wanted to show you that not
everything has to be that flashy and
glamorous sometimes you just kind of
grind through
and you know it works out
thanks again for watching guys i will
see you guys tomorrow with a new video
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