Amazon FBA, Merch By Amazon..

[smedroc]

Tier 500.

My body is not ready

Want to hit 1000 live designs by new year. I think I will have to outsource at that point.

Thanks to everybody for the advice in this thread.

 

[freakydestroyer]

If you submit a design to Amazon, does it become property of Amazon...or can you still use it elsewhere?

 

[2 RAWW]

1000 designs sounded daunting to me once I tiered up also, but once you get in a groove researching you can easily upload 50 designs over the course of an hour or two. I'm actually trying to keep myself from over producing 4th of July designs in preparation for Halloween and Christmas. I want to overkill both of those niches over anything else. Probably going to save 400 slots for those two nitches to split.

 

[maldonado]

If you submit a design to Amazon, does it become property of Amazon...or can you still use it elsewhere?

Does not become property of Amazon, you can use it elsewhere, 100%.

 

[smedroc]

1000 designs sounded daunting to me once I tiered up also, but once you get in a groove researching you can easily upload 50 designs over the course of an hour or two. I'm actually trying to keep myself from over producing 4th of July designs in preparation for Halloween and Christmas. I want to overkill both of those niches over anything else. Probably going to save 400 slots for those two nitches to split.

50 uploads in 2 hrs seems wild.

I’m no Alexander McQueen but I try and make sure the designs are decent which takes up time. I just keep it to 4-5 unique designs a day.

How do you guys approach niches that are oversaturated? Like Father’s Day, Halloween, Xmas etc...

Are there still sales to be had??

 

[2 RAWW]

If you're uploading standard, premium, ls, sweatshirt, and hoodie for each of your designs that 5 slots per one design.

Also, don't sleep on text designs. My highest earning designs are largely just text designs I made in the Over app.

 

[maldonado]

50 uploads in 2 hrs seems wild.

I’m no Alexander McQueen but I try and make sure the designs are decent which takes up time. I just keep it to 4-5 unique designs a day.

How do you guys approach niches that are oversaturated? Like Father’s Day, Halloween, Xmas etc...

Are there still sales to be had??

Best bet on saturated niches is to have something unique, so niching down is a great way of doing it. Instead of just a Fathers Day shirt maybe a Fathers Day shirt for (profession/ hobby/kid ratio/etc). You can also merge 2 niches. I have a Papa Bear shirt with a bear carrying Bigfoot. Custom illustration I had my designer make. The "Papa Bear" and the "Bigfoot" niche are both distinct, popular niches - so putting those 2 together. That particular shirt went up May 20th and Ive sold 18 thus far.

If you're uploading standard, premium, ls, sweatshirt, and hoodie for each of your designs that 5 slots per one design.

Also, don't sleep on text designs. My highest earning designs are largely just text designs I made in the Over app.

This all day.

Put each design on all 5 products.

Simple text designs, that I made quickly on my phone, have brought a huge chunk of my sales as well.

I have a shirt that says only 'Savage' lol in grey scale going down the shirt, made in Pixel Lab on my phone, and uploaded that into a niche that has 20k offerings. Barely uploaded my shirt late April '18. Its currently ranked on first page after selling a bunch off rip.

Its just finding lil pockets of things/ideas/puns/popular culture/etc that folks are passionate about.

Also got a Daddysaurus shirt I made on my phone, barely uploaded mid May and got that thing cranking for Fathers Day too..

 

[maldonado]

.

 

[allout46]

1000 designs sounded daunting to me once I tiered up also, but once you get in a groove researching you can easily upload 50 designs over the course of an hour or two. I'm actually trying to keep myself from over producing 4th of July designs in preparation for Halloween and Christmas. I want to overkill both of those niches over anything else. Probably going to save 400 slots for those two nitches to split.

Can you give me insight on what you use for research?

 

[smedroc]

Just had some shirts removed. Got me shook

Any of you guys had a number of shirts removed before?? I’m tryna guage how thin the ice is...

I’m going to try using the other product types now. I’ve got 100 unique designs so technically I could fill all my slots.

I’m just going to try the ones that are selling though.

maldonado

Yeah with the heavily saturated niches I figured it was best to use a illustrator to make a real stand out design. Good job hitting with that.

 

[maldonado]

Just had some shirts removed. Got me shook

Any of you guys had a number of shirts removed before?? I’m tryna guage how thin the ice is...

I’m going to try using the other product types now. I’ve got 100 unique designs so technically I could fill all my slots.

I’m just going to try the ones that are selling though.

maldonado

Yeah with the heavily saturated niches I figured it was best to use a illustrator to make a real stand out design. Good job hitting with that.

Removed, not rejected, correct?

I think I've had one or two removals, my girl has had one.

I've had wayyy more rejects, mostly when I first started.

how many removals are we talking? Same design or different designs? Do you mind sharing what it said or what was on it?

There really is no set number of rejections/removals that will get you suspended/terminated, and I have seen people with crazy amounts of removals still have an account, whle others with only a few of em, not be so lucky.

What I've heard from a friend that regularly talks to the top people at Merch is, they take blatant infringement the most serious.

So, if you are trying to list Walt Disney or NFL shirts, have the, taken down, then continue to upload stuff like that you probably won't last long.

If you uploaded a shirt that said "Who Wants Smoke" and then later on that phrase was trademarked and subsequently your shirt was taken down, its not nearly as big of a deal.

I wouldnt sweat it too much, just make you sure you are thorough going forward.

I've posted a couple of folks numbers in here that are in my private group, but another dude who was trailing behind them as far sales go has been doing really well lately.

Check this out for motivation - 7 day total:

 

[maldonado]

Can you give me insight on what you use for research?

I'll let 2RAWW chime in on what he uses but here is everything you need to get going:

1. Download the Chrome extension: DS Amazon Quick View
This will allow you to, after doing a search on Amazon, quickly scroll down the page and look at the BSR (best sellers rank) of each shirt without having to click on each indivual design.

If you aren't already, get familiar with BSR. It is the key to understanding how successful a shirt is selling.

Outside of finding ideas on Reddit, Pinterest, Google, Google Trends, Twitter, Instagram, getting out and about, staying up on the latest trends and pop culture news, etc..

2. Amazon.com (which will show you all shirts mashed together) and merchresearch.com (which will only show you Merch by Amazon shirts). Both are free and both are where I do the majority of my research.

Just go to Amazon.com and enter search terms and see whats out there. See where there is a demand. Amazon.com will show you all shirts, not just Merch shirts. Amazon.com sells their own stuff, as well as allows 3rd party sellers to sell stuff too. All of it can be found mashed together when you search for things via the site. You can get an idea of whats selling, based on the BSR. If there is no BSR it has yet to sell. The lower the BSR the better it is selling.

http://www.merchresearch.com is dope, it will only pull the Merch shirts that are on Amazon so you can see the entirety of whats out there.To see every shirt on Merch don't put any search terms, just hit enter. It will show show you, in order, the most successful shirt, on down the line.You can also search for a specific term which will show you, in order of sales, the shirts in that particular niche.

Here is a screenshot of the first page of Merch shirts, after hitting enter on merchresearch, with the DS Amazon Quick View extension showing you the BSR's.

The first couple shirts have BSR's of 82, 93, 208. They are each selling hundreds a day.

 

[smedroc]

Removed, not rejected, correct?

I think I've had one or two removals, my girl has had one.

I've had wayyy more rejects, mostly when I first started.

how many removals are we talking? Same design or different designs? Do you mind sharing what it said or what was on it?

Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah they were removed.

It was like 5-6 variants of the same design for the Capitals playoff run/Stanley cup win.

- ALLCAPS FINALS 2018
- ALLCAPS CHAMPS 2018

No direct use of the team name or branding.

They checked out on TM and there were existing listings so i figured it was cool. Pretty sure they all went live with no rejections. They started doing okay though so i imagine they may have got reported by the official merchandisers.

I'm counting myself lucky though. I imagine people's account's have gotten bodied for less.

After that scare i'm going to be way more careful of course. But i'm also going to get my family to sign up for accounts so if it ever does happen I can get straight back into things.

 

[solewoman]

Finally got approved. How long does it take for individual product reviews to go live?

 

[smedroc]

Finally got approved. How long does it take for individual product reviews to go live?

Congrats! You doing it yourself or are you getting other people to review your shirts?

Any of you guys having success with World Cup shirts??

I wasn't going to bother initially but i realised i can't just rely on obscure niches. Making about 5 sales a day so far with them.

 

[solewoman]

Congrats! You doing it yourself or are you getting other people to review your shirts?

Any of you guys having success with World Cup shirts??

I wasn't going to bother initially but i realised i can't just rely on obscure niches. Making about 5 sales a day so far with them.

So far I’ve done everything myself. Who would I be reaching out to for review My first design was actually rejected and I don’t know why

My second one went live. I have a bunch in draft so I’m just waiting to upload. I can only upload once a day which is kinda weak

 

[smedroc]

So far I’ve done everything myself. Who would I be reaching out to for review My first design was actually rejected and I don’t know why

My second one went live. I have a bunch in draft so I’m just waiting to upload. I can only upload once a day which is kinda weak

Okay so you mean ‘product review’ in the sense of designs getting green lit by Amazon.

I thought you meant customer review after a purchase.

First tier can be slow going but It’s good that you have designs on deck.

What I would recommend is selling the shirts at the lowest possible price until you tier up. Once you move a few you can adjust the price to turn a profit.

 

[solewoman]

Okay so you mean ‘product review’ in the sense of designs getting green lit by Amazon.

I thought you meant customer review after a purchase.

First tier can be slow going but It’s good that you have designs on deck.

What I would recommend is selling the shirts at the lowest possible price until you tier up. Once you move a few you can adjust the price to turn a profit.

Thank you for the advice. Yeah I lowered the prices on the shirts. Are there any tips for getting your store/and or product more visible?

 

[smedroc]

Thank you for the advice. Yeah I lowered the prices on the shirts. Are there any tips for getting your store/and or product more visible?

I’m still fresh in the game myself but i’d take a look at this...

https://merchtitans.com/how-to-rank-your-merch-by-amazon-products-higher/

I’m sure maldonado or one of the other guys have already dropped info regarding this on previous pages.

 

[purpnyellow]

I got accepted finally I think it took around a year lol don’t remember when I applied

 

[mike awesome]

man I got denied again. I provided my website/ebay/social media links and still got denied

Should I keep making a new account and keep applying?

 

[solewoman]

^ keep trying if you really want to do it.

 

[purpnyellow]

Any alternatives to Merch ? Can you uploads Weed shirts on Merch

 

[turbospartan]

Any alternatives to Merch ? Can you uploads Weed shirts on Merch

Etsy, redbubble, Zazzle, teespring.

No weed stuff on Merch

 

[maldonado]

Thank you for the advice. Yeah I lowered the prices on the shirts. Are there any tips for getting your store/and or product more visible?

Visibility all comes down to keywords.

The title holds the most weight, and the beginning of the title is where you want to put your top keywords.

Took me a couple months before I finally realized how to fully optimize my listings with the necessary keywords.

Just walked into the crib and I gotta make dinner for the kids but I will follow up on this in a few. I'll share an example or two. Im sure if you go back thru this thread I have touched in depth about that and many other things too.

I will say those first couple tiers are tough and a really slow grind. Plenty of folks dont see immediate success and throw in the towel before they ever get going.

Stick with it though, keep learning and refining your approach. I have seen folks, in a year to 1.5 years build this up to 2-5X what they were making at their dayjob.

be back in a few..