what's up guys in today's video i want
to talk about amazon merch sales slowing
down so i was looking at some various
facebook groups that i'm in with amazon
merch sellers kind of getting a feel for
the sentiment about what's been going on
this past week and i noticed a common
theme that a lot of people have seen a
decline in their sales now again i don't
have any contacts at amazon merch i am
just a youtuber but in this video i want
to kind of speculate at what may be
happening that's resulting in so many of
us seeing uh lower than average sales
i'm not immune to it my sales have been
down lately i do post them to instagram
every single day on my story so if you
guys want to follow me on instagram you
can keep up with my day-to-day sales
there i post my fba sales merch sales
and printful to amazon sales but yeah in
this video i want to talk about what
maybe you know we're going to speculate
a little bit what may be behind the
decline in amazon merch sales and also
talk about you know what can we do about
it so let's get started
[Music]
real quick reminder i run a free weekly
print on demand giveaway you can enter
using the link at the top of the
description it takes like 10 seconds
also down there i've got a link to my
free merch by amazon seven day mini
course all i need is your email i'll
send you one lesson a day and i've got
an amazon merch facebook group if you
would like to join that is one of the
main places i go to keep my finger on
the pulse of the community and of course
the comment section on my videos so if
you guys want to drop me a note you guys
know what to do but you can find links
to everything in the description so i
had mentioned let me hide myself really
quickly that my sales have been on the
decline just a little bit lately uh
right in line with what most people have
been saying on you know the facebook
groups and whatnot you can kind of see
based on the chart behind me and this is
from february 1st
through
today march 14th you can kind of see
that my sales have been on the decline
even yesterday sunday
i did make a decent number of sales but
my royalties still came in at under a
hundred dollars now i have heard
speculation and that is the key word
speculating here i don't know this to be
true
that maybe there is some sort of an
algorithm
that keeps sellers
right around the same number of sales a
day it could either be number of sales a
day or
royalties per day okay but i've i've
heard people speculate about this i've
heard more than one like i've heard
definitely a bunch of people and it's
not that we actually have any reason to
think it's true
but i mean i've noticed it too right if
you if we stay on top of our daily sales
and our daily metrics you may
tend to see
kind of consistencies about this right
and it could just be a function of the
the ebbs and flows of you know real
humans on earth just searching for
things on amazon and finding and you
making the same number of sales each day
i mean it could just be a natural thing
but when you start to see that kind of
repetit uh repetition of numbers
you know it also could be pretty like
easily uh algorithmically driven and the
people who do really really well that
are like
exceptional sellers i think
the ones that i know of tend to
lean very heavily on advertising and
it's not that i don't advertise but a
lot of my ads are
really like general generic auto
campaigns because you can launch them
at scale like kind of very easily you
know you can copy paste a thousand asyns
at a time 999 to be exact and into
different ad groups and you can just let
amazon kind of figure out what keywords
to advertise on which also helps your
listings um helps amazon's algorithm
learn
what keywords to associate with your
listings but i was just going to say
that like the people who tend to like
really thrive and go above and beyond
uh i do think are more or less like
using ads to do that and i'm not trying
to say hey anything bad about ads i love
ads i just wish i had more time in a day
to like set up manual ad campaigns for
all of my listings that are optimized
you know it's just not enough time for
me to do all of them that i'd like to uh
so what can we do like or what may be
the reason behind this i'm thinking that
because this is happening around a big
holiday and you heard me speculate about
st patrick's day in previous videos
st patrick's day is a holiday related to
merch related to clothing right it's a
holiday like
it's not that
holiday shirts sell all the time we know
that but not every holiday is created
equal in the eyes of a print-on-demand
seller not every holiday requires people
to go buy a new article of clothing that
is a certain color right but we know st
patrick's day kind of does that right
you got to wear green so you could have
the black shirt with the green design or
you could have the green shirt with a
design that just looks good on a green
shirt
i pointed out a couple days ago or was
it what day was it i pointed out that
like amazon had been selling out of
some uh skus of their green shirts like
the kelly green shirts were selling out
in certain
fit type and size combinations and what
that's kind of indicative of is
definitely a surge in sales and we had
looked at some of the bsrs just uh
earlier like in the middle of last week
i did a video on what was at the time
the best-selling st patrick's day shirt
and i believe the bsr was in like the
2000s you know so it's not that there's
there isn't always a bsr shirt uh of
2000 selling through merch by amazon so
that's kind of indicative of hey a lot
of people are purchasing a lot of shirts
right now
although they were very concentrated as
well and it is possible hey you know
real life humans have to
perform some manual actions to create
and ship out these products maybe
you know the merch facilities were
getting a little overloaded with sales
i'm not saying that i have any
information to confirm this but at least
that would make a little bit of sense
right if they are struggling to keep up
with the volume of sales well hey you
know
it's a simple you know algorithm tweak
to have maybe a little bit less merch
products showing up
being indexed in search results
temporarily right it doesn't have to be
a permanent thing
we've seen it done in the past around
like the holiday season december season
where
there was a year and this was years ago
too so i i feel bad like bringing up
things that are years ago that may never
happen again but there was it was
probably like december 2019 if i
remember correctly
might have been 2018 uh where really if
you weren't advertising it was like very
hard to make sales everybody had really
high hopes for that christmas uh and
then a lot of people just came in super
super low like fractionally low than
what they were hoping for you know
people plan on making ten thousand a
month we're making like one thousand if
they were lucky because their shirts
just weren't getting shown in search
results so don't think that they can't
algorithmically control that like an on
off switch guys they for sure can i'm
not saying that's what's happening but
when i start seeing lots of people with
similar stories all around the same time
you know my the wheels start to spin in
my head of like oh you know what could
be happening and why might it be
happening so my guess is that either you
know like i said but the world ebbs and
flows by the way like there are times
where people buy a lot of shirts there's
times where people don't buy a lot of
shirts um you can go to google trends by
the way and while they don't give you
the actual search volume they give you
uh relative search volume over a
historical basis when you type in
various
you know keywords and things to search
for so uh you can probably just type in
like buy t-shirt and see like what
months more people are searching for buy
t-shirt uh than other months you know
and it could also just be that maybe
less people are looking to buy t-shirts
this past week but it really seems like
this past week there's been a drop off
in sales so what can we do
if we are seeing a drop-off in our merch
by amazon sales well
fortunately we have a lot of options as
far as being print on-demand sellers
like i'm assuming we're selling on merch
by amazon and we're tracking our sales
daily
because
you know what supersedes the whole merch
ecosystem right why do we even know
about it why we spend our time doing it
it's probably because we want to make
money right we just want to make money
and we want to make passive money and we
are doing a specific business model
called print on demand well
if you're selling print on demand guys
you can also
upload your same designs to very similar
products
via seller central okay so you're still
going to get indexed on amazon's catalog
but i think
you know this this imaginary switch that
may or may not exist again i can't
confirm it exists but i think that they
can kind of turn on turn off the merch
listings from appearing in search
results or at least like you know maybe
not like a hard on off but um a
percentage basis maybe
well we've seen this happen in the past
uh when there was actually a hard off
when that was uh when covet happened in
like april 2020 right the whole month
there were no merch sales everybody had
zero sales well people who had uploaded
to seller central were still making a
ton of sales and a massive increase in
sales myself included
because hey we basically had that
contingency plan we were ready in case
anything you know they turned off the
well for merch by amazon so spend some
of this time if your sales on merch
aren't as high and it's harder to
justify the you know you should still
obviously keep you know a long-term
business perspective on merch by amazon
but also you know if you've been putting
it off
starting that seller central account
consider doing it today there's no
reason not to in my mind you know
occupying more online real estate
doubling the amount of online real
estate in the amazon catalog that you
occupy with your same product your same
product designs right listed on a shirt
through merch listed on shirt through
seller central uh you should see an
increase in sales
most people would agree with that right
you can upload to etsy all right and i'm
putting this in a specific order guys
i think seller central should take
precedence over etsy most of the time at
least in this case if the whole point of
this video is that merge sales are
slowing down well hey maybe seller
central sales will pick up i sold a um
at least one yesterday
of a hoodie through seller central and
i'm pretty sure i offer the same design
on a hoodie in merch just yesterday all
right and for whatever reason someone
paid me more to buy it through seller
central than i was charging on merch
actually it might have been the same
price now that i think about it all
right you can also upload to etsy though
again same concept occupy more online
real estate make it easier for customers
looking to buy what you're selling to
find you
think about what i just said make it
easy for customers looking to buy what
you're selling to find you
okay that could mean google indexes your
link to etsy and sends them from google
to etsy it could mean hey they just go
straight to etsy they do a keyword
search boom you're there because if
you're not there guess what they're not
gonna find you you must be there to be
found you already know that but i'm just
reminding you it's these are like
high-level perspectives that can make a
big difference over time okay so get
your etsy etsy shop started i'll put a
link in the description too if you
haven't opened a shop so that you get 40
free listings if you open your etsy shop
because there's no reason not to take
those 40 free listings and if you don't
use somebody's link you don't get 40
free
so use that link if you haven't uh
upload to ebay okay not a lot of people
take ebay seriously
over time
on ebay if you make sales you will get
to sell uh you'll get to list more
products so it's something you kind of
want to scale up over time similar to
amazon merch but you're going to see way
more sales on merch by amazon in my
experience than you are on ebay but ebay
you can still make a you know good money
i had some months last year on ebay
making you know thousand dollar profit
okay and i mean that's with me just kind
of really not taking ebay too seriously
just very lightly on the sides but if i
have best sellers you better believe i'm
putting them on ebay
upload to redbubble okay uh i do get you
know i read all my emails myself i'm not
asking for everybody to like blow me up
with emails or anything but like when
you email me i read them and i pretty
much respond to most of them too a lot
of the common things i read are why am i
not getting sales on redbubble and it's
like well redbubble i just remind you is
the lowest barrier of entry for all
these major like primary e-commerce
platforms for print on demand so it's
not that you can't make money on
redbubble it's just that it's going to
be tough all right
the last thing i want is for you to say
i'm going to start a print-on-demand
business
i'm going to start on redbubble oh i'm
not successful on redbubble therefore i
won't be successful with print on demand
no i think that happens too often
redbubble makes it easy to start which
means you're gonna have a ton of people
starting and
listing there and there's gonna be a lot
of competition and uh yeah low barrier
of entry equals high competition
definitely diversify that's the whole
point of what i've been talking about in
this video um you can sell digital files
you can sell your merch designs by the
way
and i would recommend these digital
files using my designs software okay
which is by the way still free and i
still have that full playlist from about
a month ago available on my youtube
channel so and it's it's pretty much
what you need in the order you need it i
will link to that in the description to
my designs to get your free account and
to the playlist so that you guys can get
started
i know some people look at me crazy when
i say you can sell your design files
but if you think about it again when we
sell a
design on a insert product name
we're just making money okay we're just
locking in a sale making money now if
you sell your design.png and not not in
on a product on a insert product name
what are you doing
you're just making money right if they
reverse engineer your end goal if you're
doing it to make money then just make
money be happy okay be happy that you
made some money um you don't have to
agree with me too by the way you don't
have to sell your designs as digital
files but like keep in mind that like
half the reason why
the the thieves the thievery is so
rampant is because merch by amazon
still makes our full resolution
transparent pngs available on the front
end yes they still do that and don't be
mad at me for saying it by the way
that's why there are so many you know
ripped off designs it's because you can
write a bot that steals all of them and
reposts them and uh people do it you
know what i mean people with like
they want that profit you know they have
no ethics and it happens you know and
i'm not trying to justify it but it
sucks but at least if you list them for
sale yourself you can get paid you know
uh you might want to start a youtube
channel i'm just throwing it out there
guys if you start a channel you may end
up liking it you know you're it's gonna
get easier and easier you're gonna get
better and better over time and if
you've got a good story to tell you know
and you don't want to start a channel by
the way email me i love having people on
to tell their stories on my channel if
you think it'll be a good fit
you can create a gig on fiverr
creating print-on-demand designs or
maybe your expertise is in like amazon
merch seo or something you know what i
mean there's a whole lot of ways to
monetize what we do think a little bit
outside the box right i'm giving you
like we stayed inside the box and now
we're kind of broadening the scope it's
like oh yeah tell your story on youtube
sell your design files it's the same
thing as selling them on a shirt to me
at least
create a gig on fiverr and get paid to
design right lock in the profits ahead
of time lots of ways to monetize it guys
so just because your sales are down on
merch by amazon
take this time to maybe branch out and
do those other things that have been on
your to-do list that
you know now it's a little bit easier to
justify sidestepping merch by amazon
just for a temporary short period of
time because the sales aren't what they
should be normally okay those are my
thoughts oh yeah i forgot one more this
one's a little bit different than the
previous ones on this list because with
amazon fba it takes money to make money
but you can start your own private label
business i'm expecting a
decent 2022 i have some new products
that i'm currently waiting to be
manufactured i mean they're being
manufactured overseas i cannot wait for
them to be imported and for me to launch
them this year and once you know
honestly once those are shipped out i've
been seeing my inventory restrictions
increase you know slowly but surely on
amazon which has given me some legroom
to launch maybe even another new product
this year so uh if you guys would like
me to do more fba content please let me
know in the comments below it's tough
because
the youtube algorithm doesn't promote it
as well as i would like it definitely
promotes my print on demand content
pretty well so that's why i do a lot of
that here but i still sell fba and i
still strongly believe in this as a
business model but guys um that's it
that's what i wanted to cover in this
video thank you for watching this far
please like and subscribe if you found
this helpful if you have any questions
or feedback or ideas for other ways to
make money while merch sales are down
let me know in the comments below by the
way before i leave 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 if you want to learn
more there's a link in the description
alright guys thank you for watching i'll
see you tomorrow with a new video
you