In today's video I'm going to be sharing with you guys
my best tips for how to get accepted to Merch by Amazon.
So if you are a print-on-demand t-shirt seller
or you want to be in the future,
stick around for this video because it's going to be a good one.
Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing well today.
If you're new here,
my name is Greg and I like to talk about online entrepreneurship
and sharing the resources that I wish I had along my journey.
So if you're interested in making money online,
feel free to look around the channel and consider subscribing.
In today's video,
we are going to be talking specifically about Merch by Amazon.
This has been a highly requested topic in the comments,
so, thank you guys for requesting this
and I think it'll make for a great video.
The main thing that I want to talk about in this video is
how to get accepted to Merch by Amazon.
If you are new to print-on-demand
or if you've been in print on demand for a while,
then you know that most print-on-demand websites,
you can just go on create a free account and get started on day one.
However with Merch by Amazon which is Amazon's version of print-on-demand
you have to actually request an invitation,
not everyone gets accepted.
So I want to put together this video to show my best tips
on how to get accepted and how to do it quickly.
So first things first just to make sure we're all on the same page.
Merch by Amazon is simply
a print-on-demand service through Amazon.
So if you go to their Homepage or if you just Google Merch by Amazon,
you will see the landing page
and there's the button for Request Invitation.
But you can read a little bit about Merch by Amazon's program
and how it works on this landing page.
Essentially if you're familiar with Teespring
or Redbubble - the other big players in print-on-demand,
Merch by Amazon works the same way.
You create the designs or the artwork,
you upload it to the website
and then whenever someone purchases that design on a t-shirt,
Amazon will then print it and ship it out to them.
Another cool feature with Merch by Amazon is that
they have prime shipping.
So most people have a prime membership on Amazon,
so they get free two-day shipping on the items that they purchase.
Now very briefly, before we move into the requesting and invitation
and the tips on all of that,
I did want to just note that
Merch by Amazon is a great print-on-demand program
and I always recommend it for the main reason of
Amazon has a huge client base already.
People are very familiar with purchasing things on Amazon
so that works in our favor.
If we create a t-shirt design and we upload it to Amazon,
people are familiar with that environment
and they're not afraid to make a purchase.
So now let's get into the good stuff in this video,
the actual tips on how to get accepted to Merch by Amazon as a side note,
if you guys you enjoy this video
and you've liked the other ones on the channel,
I always appreciate the Thumbs Up.
So if you can click that, thank you so much in advance.
Alright, let's get right into this.
So once you click that Request Invitation button,
it's going to have you log in to Amazon.
So if you already have an Amazon account, you can simply sign in there.
If you do not have an Amazon account
it takes 30 seconds and you can create a new one just like that.
Now if you are creating a new Amazon account
just remember the email address that you're logging in with
because that's going to be what you use in the future
to log into your Merch by Amazon account.
So right after you log in,
you're going to be prompted with the three major things
that you're going to need for the application before you get started.
These are your business contact details, your bank account
and routing numbers and your Social Security or tax identification.
Now I know those sound pretty confusing
but I'll walk through all of these and they are very simple.
First things first, the business contact information.
Just know that you do not need to have a separate business entity
to do Merch by Amazon and as a general statement
for all of print-on-demand on the different websites,
you do not need to have a separate business set up to do it.
Now, if you do have a business set up for this
then you can use that. No problem.
But if you do not, then you just use your first
and last name in the business contact information.
Now if you already have a website set up that's getting traffic,
if that's an affiliate marketing site, a blog, whatever it is,
you can input this in your application,
just showing Amazon that you already do get traffic
and you'll be forwarding that on to your Merch by Amazon listings.
But if you don't have a website, don't sweat it at all.
You don't have to put anything in here
and then moving on to bank account and routing numbers,
This is a really important one.
So what they're looking for is that they can actually pay you,
so you have to select your country or region.
And not all countries and regions are supported yet.
So if your country
or region is already in the list that they support,
then you can just select it and go through the prompts.
That'll be very easy to input your bank and routing number information.
However, if your country or region is not on the supported list yet,
then you have to do one extra step.
What this extra step is is going to payoneer.com
and you can create a free account there.
It's very similar to PayPal if you've heard of PayPal before,
and you can set up a free account
and it's basically made for international payments.
So all you have to do is go to payoneer.com
and apply as an individual
and then wait a couple days until you get accepted
and then once Payoneer accepts your account,
you just have to go to global payment service
and then select the United States
and then you'll have an account number routing number right there.
That's where you can input on your Merch by Amazon application.
So moving on to the third thing here.
This is social security and tax identification.
Now if you are located in the United States,
this will be very straightforward for you.
You just fill out the information that they're asking for.
However, if you're located outside of the United States,
you may not have this specific information.
Just put some type of identification,
whether that's your local taxpaying identification.
It's different for different countries and regions
and they do have more information.
You can click the little eye icon
and it'll give you more information of what's supported and where.
But if you have some kind of specific identification for you
in your country or region,
that's what you want to put in the application.
And if Amazon needs more information, they will contact you for that.
But just put in some type of ID that you have,
so that should cover the three big logistical parts of the application.
But now we're moving into the part that really determines
if someone's going to get accepted or not.
And this is what Amazon is looking at
as long as the logistical things check out.
So what this is is the additional information section.
This is extremely important
and I'm going to go over my top tips
for what you need to put in this section.
So I've got seven things
that you need to focus on for what to put in this section.
First things first, is if you have any type of traffic
that's coming to a website, an Instagram page, a YouTube channel,
anything, you want to note that in this application
and let them know that you already have traffic coming to you
that you are going to be forwarding on to Merch by Amazon.
In Amazon's eyes what this means is
you are going to be bringing additional traffic to Amazon
and that is a huge win for Amazon.
So that's number one.
If you have any type of traffic that is already coming to you,
make sure to put that in the application.
If you don't have any traffic then you can leave this part out,
but if you do have traffic definitely put it in.
Number two, is you want to make clear that in the designs
that you are uploading and the titles and descriptions,
you will not be infringing on anyone's copyrights one of the most tedious
and time-consuming things that Merch by Amazon has to deal with is
filtering and reviewing all the designs that are uploaded.
When someone uploads a design or has words in their titles
or description that uses a company logo
or a brand name or something in it,
Amazon then has to flag it through their system,
go through review and then suspend that listing.
That takes up extra time.
So if you already tell them in this additional information section
that you will not be uploading anything that infringes on copyrights,
they know that this is going to be saving them time down the road.
And you are already aware that you don't want to be putting logos
and things that are copyrighted in the designs, titles and descriptions.
Number three, is you want to be sure to say that
you actually put a lot of time into your designs
and you make quality designs to upload.
This way they know that if they accept you,
you're not going to be uploading designs
that really just flood the Amazon marketplace and don't look good,
no one's going to be buying.
They want to know that you're uploading quality designs,
so make sure to say that in your application.
From all the graphic design tools that I've shown you guys on this channel,
you really are creating and uploading quality designs,
a lot better than most people that don't have access to these tools.
So whether you know it or not,
it's a very true statement
and that's why you want to include it in your application.
Number four is if you already have designs ready to upload
make sure to put that in your application.
If you guys are already using the other print-on-demand platforms,
Teespring, Redbubble,
and you've already used the graphic design tools to create designs,
then you probably have them sitting in a folder ready to upload.
Make sure you tell Merch by Amazon this
and that way they know that if you get accepted,
you're going to be an active user on the platform.
Number five, this is a really big one.
You want to make sure that you let them know that
you have read their Terms of Service and you understand them fully.
It is a big hassle and time-consuming process for Merch by Amazon,
when they see that someone's doing something
that's violating their Terms of Service,
and then they have to ban that account.
So by you telling them in this application
that you've already read the Terms of Service and you understand them
and you're not going to be an issue going forward,
it takes a lot of risk off of them accepting you
and it gives you kind of a leg up in this application.
Number six, this is another big one and kind of an overarching one
and that is make sure that
you do not have grammatical errors in your application.
Look over this additional information section a few times
before you submit it to make sure that everything makes sense,
there's no grammatical errors, and it looks professional
and looks like you put time into this application.
And number seven, this is the biggest tip that I can give you
and that is to not come off as if you are begging for them to accept you.
You want this additional information section
to have the vibe of you are the one bringing value to their marketplace.
You don't want it to be please accept me,
please, I really need this. I need to make money.
I need to make extra income. You don't want that feel.
Rather, you want, Hey, look, I create awesome designs
and people are buying them on other platforms.
But I want to add them to Amazon because I know it's reputable
and I know you have a big customer base that will love designs.
As you can see, there's a very big difference between the two.
So that's my biggest piece of advice.
Try to go with the feel of I'm bringing value to you
and I'd love to be a part of your platform.
So those are the big tips for that and now a couple side notes.
Just know that it can take a couple days to a couple weeks
to hear back from Merch by Amazon on this application.
With that said you don't always get an email right away
and sometimes it goes to the spam folder.
So what I would recommend is just leaving this on a tab
and checking back every day or every couple days
to see if you can log into your account.
If you can log into your account and it'll allow you to upload designs,
then you are in, and that means you've been accepted.
If you still get the request invitation page,
then that means that they are working on your application
and just give them some time to get back to you.
Now once you are accepted to Merch by Amazon,
some really important things to know
when you're getting a brand new account is that
it works on a tier system.
So when you first get accepted, you're going to have ten slots available.
Meaning you can upload ten designs
and that is the maximum until you get ten sales.
Then you'll be moved into tier two, which is twenty five slots.
So you will then have twenty-five available slots to upload designs.
And then once you get twenty-five sales,
then you move into tier three.
It keeps going up and up and up
So the more sales that you get on your account,
the more designs you'll be able to upload.
With that said in the beginning
you kind of have to be strategic about it
you only have ten slots to upload designs in.
So what I recommend doing is uploading your ten very best designs.
These do not have to be related in the same niche.
Just your ten best designs.
And if they don't make a sale within sixty days,
that's kind of the timeframe that I give it to see
if it's going to sell or not in this first tier
when you only have ten slots available,
if those ten designs are not making a sale in the first 60 days,
you can remove them and you can swap them in with ten different designs.
You want to give yourself the best chance to get sales in the beginning
because the whole strategy here is to keep moving up the tiers
so you can upload more and more designs
and you want to get as many designs uploaded as possible
and then you'll have the most lines in the water
and you'll be making the most sales every single day.
So with that said some tips on that are follow the trends.
If you're approaching a holiday,
then you want those ten designs
in the beginning kind of to be geared towards that holiday
and you can always swap out these designs at any time.
Now another huge thing that's specific to Merch by Amazon is
you can actually purchase your own shirts
and that counts towards your sales for the tier system.
So in the beginning if you want to expedite this process,
you can actually buy your own shirts, move right into the next tier
then you have more slots that you can put shirts into.
If you're going to do this
I recommend lowering your prices a little bit.
So it doesn't hurt your wallet as bad
when you're purchasing all these shirts.
Just set a small profit margin on that shirt
and then you can purchase them
and you can actually see the quality which is nice as well.
Now two more really quick things that are important for you to know is that
the way that Merch by Amazon works is when you upload a design
it has 180 days to make a sale.
If it makes a sale, it will be permanently listed on Merch by Amazon.
If it does not make a sale within 180 days,
then it will be automatically removed for Merch by Amazon.
With that said, you can easily just re-upload the same design
and it'll give it another 180 days to get a sale
and then be permanently on there.
But it's just something to be aware of and this 180 days,
recently switched from 60 to 180
and there's rumors that it's going to go to 365 days.
But just know that there is some type of limit
whether that goes longer or it stays that 180,
that's something to be aware of.
And the last really big thing which is commonly asked is that
you cannot buy or sell Merch by Amazon accounts.
So for someone who can't get accepted,
just know that you cannot purchase one off of someone else.
And for someone who has built up a pretty big Merch by Amazon account
that's generating a lot of revenue every month
You cannot then go sell that for a profit.
So guys that's today's video.
I hope you got some value from this.
If you have any questions at all,
feel free to let me know down in the comments.
If you like this video,
I really appreciate the Thumbs Up
and as always I'm going to link up
a couple more useful videos for you guys.
So feel free to check those out.
Alright guys. I will see you all in the next video.