Amazon FBA, Merch By Amazon..

[turbospartan]

Anyone have a Chase business checking account?

I have a promotion mailer for free $300 if I deposit $1k+ into a new business account but I need to have a registered business / tax ID #

Trying to see if it's even worth the hassle, but I kind of did want a separate acct setup for my Merch royalties

 

[turbospartan]

Tiered up to T500.

Have one of my St. Paddy's designs that has been selling well. 16 sales on that design so far.

Time to start throwing up a ton of designs, now that I have 400 open slots.

 

[Grine]

Haven't sold one St. Patty shirt (I have three of them up)

I sold 10 shirts, without buying one of them...So I'm up a tier.

After St. Patty, I'm going to get back to focusing on designs...

 

[maldonado]

Tiered up to T500.

Have one of my St. Paddy's designs that has been selling well. 16 sales on that design so far.

Time to start throwing up a ton of designs, now that I have 400 open slots.

Dope, congrats g!

Haven't sold one St. Patty shirt (I have three of them up)

I sold 10 shirts, without buying one of them...So I'm up a tier.

After St. Patty, I'm going to get back to focusing on designs...

Yeah St Pats was saturated as hell.

I had around 80 St Pats up. Sold maybe 5 different designs?

The one I sold the most, surprisingly lol, was a St Pats Designated Driver shirt. Sold that like 7 times or so

My homie had the #1 St Pats shirt. At least it was for weeks, not sure if it still is:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079DDCKFC/?tag=niketalk0e-20

The most he sold in a day was a shade over 100 of that design. Overall I think he sold 2,000-ish of that one shirt...

Ive been selling Easter and Cinco De Mayo already. Have almost 100 Cinco up

I need 9 more sales to tier up to 1,000

 

[turbospartan]

Damn, that is a nice design. Does he do the design work himself, or farm it out?

 

[maldonado]

Damn, that is a nice design. Does he do the design work himself, or farm it out?

He designs all of his stuff himself.

Never touched design software until he got approved for Merch lol

He just got tiered to 10,000 yesterday too

He was at like 300 uploads a day or something crazy like that before he tiered up.

And was hitting his uploads pretty much daily too.. Scaling designs as many ways possible, still dont know how he does it.

That said, hope to be there soon myself

Im in a private Merch group of about 20 folks and Im literally the lowest tier/seller out of all of them but its dope because Ive learnt a lot and am doing everything I can to replicate their success.

Check this **** out. This is ONE day (3/7) of the biggest seller in this group

 

[turbospartan]

Crazy. I need to get in on some of these groups I guess. Most of the stuff I follow are just basic ***** questions / answers. I create my own art but I use GIMP and it kinda blows, IMO. Always wanted to go into art / graphic design when I was younger, but I knew the pay was ****. So I chose Engineering instead. Now I kind of wish I would have done at least some Adobe classwork stuff, just to know the basics instead of fumbling through GIMP.

 

[2 RAWW]

St. Pats designs have sold with very average results on my end. I had better success selling BHM items than St. Pat’s last month. I haven’t sold a single Easter design. Still depending on a few of my evergreen designs to keep sales. Inching closer to 500 sales and T1000.

 

[maldonado]

Crazy. I need to get in on some of these groups I guess. Most of the stuff I follow are just basic ***** questions / answers. I create my own art but I use GIMP and it kinda blows, IMO. Always wanted to go into art / graphic design when I was younger, but I knew the pay was ****. So I chose Engineering instead. Now I kind of wish I would have done at least some Adobe classwork stuff, just to know the basics instead of fumbling through GIMP.

Yeah dude actually uses Gimp lol

Ive been learning Adobe Illustrator. Theres a super thorough course on Lynda by Deke McClelland.

Keep grindin bro. Progress can take you as far as you want

St. Pats designs have sold with very average results on my end. I had better success selling BHM items than St. Pat’s last month. I haven’t sold a single Easter design. Still depending on a few of my evergreen designs to keep sales. Inching closer to 500 sales and T1000.

Yeah St Pats was tough.

I hit on some Pi Day and Earth Day sales came in recently too.

Its a numbers game, amd while holidays can hit or suck Im learning its better to be more concentrated in evergreen designs.

Focus on getting to 1k, then 2k, 4k and so on.

Even the biggest seasonal shirt(like my homies) will slow down but evergreen wont do as much volume but will be consistent year round. Build a catalog of like 70% evergreen 30% seasonal/holiday and be straight

The mini group Im in I got lucky and was picked to join them. I didnt even know it existed prior lol

Tbh though, theres no secret sauce. The game is to keep grinding and get to having thousands of shirts up. Thats really it

All my folks that are doing it month in and month out have only one thing in common: thousands of shirts in their catalog

 

[turbospartan]

All my folks that are doing it month in and month out have only one thing in common: thousands of shirts in their catalog

Are these people doing this full time or as a side job?

 

[maldonado]

Are these people doing this full time or as a side job?

I think most started as a side gig and 90% have now moved to full time.

My guy who had that #1 St Pats shirt also works as a respiratory therapist .

He lives out here too, he's up in Castle Rock.

Most of the people are outsourcing designs too, that screenshot of 500+ shirts sold on that one day, are outsourced.

Homie is Castle Rock does his own with Gimp. No outsourcing

Ive been doing all my own designs on my phone. Basically got to tier 1,000 using a free app on my phone.

At 50 uploads a day in tier 1,000 Im gonna hire a full time designer (or 2) finally for 70-80% of the design work and I'll pick up the 20-30% using solely Illustrator from here on out.

No more phone app designs lol

Pretty much going full time myself here at t1k.

 

[smedroc]

Anybody know a work around for designs that are ‘inspired’ by movie’s, TV, Music?? Or is everyone in the thread just messing with novelty/occasion based designs?

Also it’s surprising to hear there are merch groups. With everyone competing for the same dollars and working the similar niches I don’t see the benefit for people who are already having success.

 

[maldonado]

No work arounds.
Merch by Amazon isnt the place for anything trademarked/copyrighted. You can get a Seller Central account and fulfill either yourself or thru a Printful integration to do shirts like that, but then that transfers the responsibility from Amazon to the seller, should any brand, movie studio want to come after you to sue.

The bigger FB groups offer a bunch of help.

My smaller private group is like 20 people. Never underestimate the power of putting a bunch of like minded folks together.. at least half of the people in my group are some of the top sellers in the game. There are a billion ideas out there for t shirts, even for a holiday like St Patrick's Day. My homie who had the top selling St Pats shirt showed it to the group before he ever even uploaded it. We were all too busy implementing our own holiday design ideas. The top shirts arent a secret. I can go check the top selling shirts in any niche right now. Just because you know what they are doesnt mean you can immediately duplicate their success like that. Its about first adopting, sales velocity, do they have reviews, bsr rank, obviously the design, etc. Thats what you're competing with when you see a design and want to make another alternate version of it. We're all doing our own research and having designs made that a design shared doesnt mean its a golden ticket by any means. A group can be huge, my small group has done so much for my growth as one of the lower sellers in it. One guy that we have has a direct line and corresponds with Amazon weekly. He's like tier 16,000 and being privy to the info he gets is worth the price of admission. (Which, at the end of the day, is a free Slack group)

 

[smedroc]

I definitely see the benefit for you and it’s cool that you’re in that circle.

My goal for the month is to get 10 t-shirts accepted without getting my account banned

After that I can think about getting more savvy.

 

[turbospartan]

Just got my February remittance, $92.47. Sales for March are already passed that, but besides one of my St. Paddy's shirts selling well (14) - not much activity. Was hoping some other designs would pick up, but I haven't been going full throttle with uploading. Especially now that I'm at 25 uploads per day.

How are ya'll doing?

 

[maldonado]

Tiered up to 1,000 yesterday

50 uploads a day

In the process of finding me an illustrator on onlinejobs.ph

My March numbers just exceeded February with 11 days to go

Trying to double the previous months profits.

Trying to get to tier 2k by the end of May

Keep grindin

 

[maldonado]

Oh yeah, I think I mentioned it but Ive expanded to Etsy with integration to Printful for fulfillment.

Folks are killin on Etsy too

More leeway on designs, high profit margins on Printful

A great addition to Merch, with Merch still my main grind

Here's how to set it up

https://merchinformer.com/printful-etsy-integration-ultimate-guide/

 

[smedroc]

You guys using merchinformer to conduct research? To find BSR’s, niches etc?

Or are you just taking the time to do it on the Amazon site itself?

 

[maldonado]

You guys using merchinformer to conduct research? To find BSR’s, niches etc?

Or are you just taking the time to do it on the Amazon site itself?

I started with Merch Informer but now mostly just use Amazon with the Chrome extension DS Quick View that shows me the BSR as I scroll down pages without having to click on individual listings.

I still use Merch Informer but not as much as Amazon.com

I use Merchresearch.com, which filters out just Merch shirts, quite a bit too actually.

Its actually under the Merch Informer umbrella but its free.

I also do a lot of design research on Etsy, Pinterest, looking at different retail sites (Target, GAP, etc), out and about, pretty much any and everywhere

 

[smedroc]

I started with Merch Informer but now mostly just use Amazon with the Chrome extension DS Quick View that shows me the BSR as I scroll down pages without having to click on individual listings.

I still use Merch Informer but not as much as Amazon.com

I use Merchresearch.com, which fliters out just Merch shirts quite a bit too actually.

Its actually under the Merch Informer umbrella but its free.

I also do a lot of design research on Etsy, Pinterest, looking at different retail sites (Target, GAP, etc), out and about, pretty much any and everywhere

Thanks for the info man. The extension sounds ideal.

 

[turbospartan]

Man... things are slooooooooooow for me. 0 sales in last 7 days right now - not good. Not sure I've had 0 sales show up on my dashboard since I first started.

Uploading a bunch of random stuff right now, need to get back on track.

 

[maldonado]

Im at 31 past 7 days
81 on the month

I went deep on Cinco. Have like 170 designs up for Cinco, hoping something catches and it pays off next month.

Sold a Cinco this morning actually. Woke up to 3 overall.

My son sold his first shirt yesterday lol

Got him approved for an acct too

 

[AEA18]

Finally got approved.

Gotta get these designs up

 

[turbospartan]

Im at 31 past 7 days
81 on the month

Nice!

I was feeling good after St. Paddy's day, sold 14 of one design and a couple of another. And then everything stopped dead in it's tracks. Obviously St. Paddy's is over now... but my former best sellers are not selling at all anymore. I'm at 19 sales on the month, so far.

Just pumped out a few Mother's Day designs, probably gonna work on Cinco now. Probably too late for Easter

 

[2 RAWW]

I'm on my 4th day of 0 sales...something is definitely up. This is the longest streak I've had of double zeros since I started.