A lot of people on Reddit, Facebook groups, and various forums are asking is Amazon Merch dead or still a viable income source. I’ve been on the platform since 2017 and have seen the Merch community at some highs and lows, and this question has always come up.
I personally don’t think Amazon Merch is dead. I just think it is changing and we all need to adapt and change with it to continue making money. That is just like any other business.
There were some really good times for everyone on Merch in the early days where we were basically printing cash. Those days are definitely over. That’s not to say Merch by Amazon isn’t worth it though!
My Initial Thoughts
I personally don’t think Amazon Merch is dead. I just think it is changing and we all need to adapt and change with it to continue making money. That is just like any other business.
There were some really good times for everyone on Merch in the early days where we were basically printing cash. Those days are definitely over. That’s not to say Merch by Amazon isn’t worth it though!
I believe that you just have to work harder to make Merch work for you. It isn’t going to be a passive income stream that grows or stays steady for a long time. That doesn’t mean you have to sit at your desk every single day to make money though. I recently went on a two week road trip across the country where I didn’t log in once to Amazon. Did I stop making money then? No. I logged in when I got to New York and saw that I made around $500 during that trip which paid for the gas and meals while I was gallivanting around The United States.
My Amazon Merch Predictions
I predict that Merch will continue to get more saturated. More people are finding out about Amazon Merch and I also think that Amazon has realized the value of this little space in their giant ecosystem of owning the e-commerce world. I think they will continue to pull in new designers to increase the reach that they have.
I also have noticed Amazon’s take no shit approach to dealing with people stealing designs, stealing copyrighted ideas, and taking advantage of catastrophic events. I think they are getting smarter with how to deal with this which means that the bottom feeders aren’t going to have a place to rip off your work which will mean you should have a better shot of competing without getting your hard work trampled on.
Amazon is also investing heavily into this part of their company. They’ve bought more of these incredibly expensive printers to keep up with demand. They have added new product lines over the years and have hinted at new ones. That should mean we’ll all have some great new ways to sell more products. I use other POD sites like Redbubble and surprisingly make some good money off of things like greeting cards and duvet covers that I would never have expected. When Amazon starts offering us more products the sky’s the limit on how much money we can make.
How to Compete in a Crowded MBA Marketplace
Like I said earlier, we are all going to have to work at being competitive on Amazon. That means working harder and working smarter. Here are a few quick tips for standing out to compete with other people in the Merch community.
Create Merch Affiliate Sites
This is something I started doing near the end of 2018 that I’m loving. If you have any knowledge of blog building and SEO then you can drive sales to Amazon from a webpage you own. You can also leverage this into getting email subscribers you can push to regularly and you can also collect extra commission on sales made coming from your site. This was a really nice bonus for me around Christmas last year!
Keep Uploading & Fill Your Slots
Don’t get discouraged if your sales dip. That’s a normal part of any business. If you keep uploading, you’ll always increase the chances of customers finding new products of yours. I wholly stand behind the shotgun approach of putting as much content out there to get as many possible sales as you can.
Always Look for New Ideas
The world is full of new ideas for what you can sell. Look at people’s shirts everywhere you go to see what they are wearing. They spent money on that shirt which means other people would as well. Find new niches and passionate groups of people that would love to advertise their hobbies and things they love in their life with a shirt.
See my post on my best techniques for finding my shirt niche ideas.
Rewrite Old Listings
Odds are that the longer you spend on Merch, the better you’ll get at keyword research and writing descriptions, bullet points, and product titles. Go back to some of your earliest products and tweak or rewrite your listing info to keyword optimize them to get found by new buyers.
Use Amazon AMS Advertising
AMS Advertising does work. It won’t work the same on all of your shirts, but you can make AMS work for you. Just like uploading more designs, I think the shotgun approach works here as well. Set up advertising with a low bid on all of your products. I’ve had everything on my store with bids from 2 cents to 35 cents and I’m consistently making more money then I’m spending.
Make More Sales
Any combination of the above will help your sales increase organically as well. If you help your item sell, they will move up the ranks of searches which will get them to sell more on their own. It’s a machine that rolls over to keep you profiting more. Don’t think of making a single sale from AMS as the single sale. Think of it as a sale that also boosts your presence on the Amazon marketplace. Make Amazon love you and Amazon will make customers love your products.
Sell On Other POD Sites
At a certain point I realized that all of these designs I’ve been creating and collecting have become assets. I’ve realized that almost all of the Amazon Merch designs I have on my hard drive can be repurposed for other POD websites like Redbubble, Teespring, and Cafepress.
If you’re early into the Merch game and don’t have a lot of designs, then I’d say just upload to each of your designs individually to each POD platform starting with your best sellers. At first focus on Redbubble, Cafepress, Society6, and Teepublic…in that order. Those are the best converting ones I’ve dealt with.
If you have a lot of designs or if you don’t have the time or energy to upload to each of them, I HIGHLY recommend using Orbitkit to streamline it. I was lucky enough to start using it when they first released the software and it has literally paid for itself SO many times over.
Check out my post on the best Amazon Merch alternatives.
Create Your Own Store
In addition to using other platforms, you might want to venture out and create your own tee shirt or other POD based store. This isn’t the easiest thing to do, but if you figure the system out then you can make a ton of money.
The main differences that allow you to earn more from your own online shop is that you can (1) set your own prices and (2) collect emails of customers that you can market to later. Look at all of your designs and figure out if you can create a specific niche store for it and use the Shopify and Printful integration to create your own store.
The Ol’ Wrap Up
So, no Amazon Merch is NOT dead. I just like to think of the early days as everyone winning a lottery of fortunes. Now it is a large business letting us minions use their website to make money in our spare time or even fulltime for some of us.
You just have to get a little more serious about Merch now if you really want to turn it into something big for yourself. If you just want to collect some extra money every month, that is still pretty easy to do on there. I can step away from Merch from time to time and still get that monthly payment. I’m greedy though so I like to keep filling my slots and keep expanding to other platforms.
Just keep hustling and working honestly. I can almost guarantee you’ll reap the rewards.
2020 Bonus Info – The Money Niche!
I wrote more about the most profitable Merch niche for 2020 in another post, but I just wanted to point out that another reason Merch isn’t dead right now is that 2020 is going to be a highly profitable year for all you Merchers. The 2020 election in the United States is going to have customers buying an incredible amount of t-shirts, hoodies, etc. to support and/or oppose candidates. This goes for president, Congress, and even local elections.
Thoughts? Comments?
I spent a decent amount of time writing this article hoping to help some people in the print on demand/online side business game try to figure out how to make more money.
I’ll never ask my readers for pay for this content, but if you haven’t yet signed up for any of the Merch resources below and plan to, please do so through my links where I’ll get either an affiliate commission or some other form of payment (ie free Etsy listings) from you signing up.
- Sign up for Printify
- Sign up for Printful
- Sign up for Etsy Sellers – Get your first 20 listings up for free
- Sign up for Orbitkit – Upload all of your merch designs to multiple POD sites all at once
- Sign up for Merch Informer – probably the best print on demand/Amazon Merch research tool available (Use coupon code 2NDSCREENS to save 20%)
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