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Amazon Merch: How to Make Money On Amazon

Many people have heard of selling on Amazon and other ways to make money from home with Amazon. Did you know, however, that Amazon has a program called Amazon Merch where you can design and sell t-shirts? Find out below more about the Merch program and how to make money on Amazon.

How to Make Money on Amazon

How to Make Money on Amazon: What is Amazon Merch?

Amazon Merch is an amazing way to make anywhere from a little extra cash to growing it into a complete business. Basically the program allows you design T-shirts, upload your designs, and Amazon sells them for you. It is a t-shirt print on demand service.

The great thing about it is there is no inventory, nothing you have to ship, and no up-front costs to you. You don’t need to be an expert in graphic design by any means of the imagination, some of the best selling shirts are just text on the shirt. You are getting access to a site that millions of people use and your merchandise is being advertised on there for nothing. When someone buys your shirt you receive a royalty which currently is a little less than half the cost of the shirt.

How do I get started with Amazon Merch?

To find out how to make money on Amazon you can visit the Amazon Merch page. Right now because of demand you have to apply to the waitlist for the program but while you are waiting to be accepted make sure you come up with some designs so you will be ready to go. One tip I was give on how to make money on Amazon when I became interested in applying was that Amazon prefers to accept people who already have design ideas.

It was suggested that if you go set up a free account on one of the other print on demand websites such as Zazzle and Teespring and get some designs up on there. Once you have some quality designs then go here to apply for Merch and use the link to your storefront on the other website as your website link that it asks for when you apply to Merch. This shows Amazon you have design ideas and are ready to go. I can’t verify if this really helps or not but I can tell you that it is what I did and I was accepted pretty quickly.

So if you go this route you need to get some designs together before you even apply. The first thing you need to understand is how to research designs. Start by brainstorming ideas and making a list. Once you have some ideas together start your research with Merch Informer. You can type in keywords or phrases and see what comes up in that niche. Every Merch listing has a product description like the one below.

Product description

  • Package Dimensions: 15 x 12 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • ASIN: B06XSS6WW4
  • Date first available at Amazon.com: September 1, 2015

How to Make Money on Amazon

What you want to pay attention to is the area in the product description about the Amazon Best Seller’s Rank. In general most people would say that if you have a BSR of around 100,000 you are probably selling about 1 shirt a day. The lower the number the more shirts you are selling.

When you come up with an idea you first want to make sure it is not copyrighted. It can not be anything from a song, movie, etc. Research your idea on Merch Informer and then look to see if someone is already selling that same thing. You CAN NOT copy someone else’s idea or you will get kicked out of Merch. If no one has your exact idea you want to look at some of the other ideas within that niche.

If you see a lot of high selling shirts then chances are it is a good niche but you also want to make sure it is not oversaturated with so many shirts that yours will not get seen. If you research and find a bunch of shirts within your idea and none of them are selling well then chances are yours won’t either. Remember, only use research tools to check ideas and viable niches, do not use it to find designs to copy. Once you have done your research you can start designing.

You do not need to be a photoshop expert in order to do this but if you do have Photoshop already and know how to use it then you are ahead of the curve and can get started. if you don’t know Photoshop or don’t have Photoshop you can also use GIMP, Adobe Illustrator, or even Canva.

Once you are accepted into Merch you can find templates to use for GIMP, Illustrator, or Photoshop. This allows you to upload the template and design within that space so your dimensions are always accurate. You can also use other programs like Canva even if they don’t offer a template for it. I use Canva for a couple of reasons- I was not familiar with Photoshop and it seemed a bit overwhelming to me and I already had a Canva account I used for my blog and was very familiar with it. Canva is super easy to use for those that have not done anything like this before. You do need a Canva for Work account which is the paid version of Canva in order to download your designs with a transparent background. This YouTube video does a great job of explaining how to use Canva for Merch.

Once accepted you will want to upload 25 designs. This is considered tier 1. If your designs sell well then they will increase how many designs you can upload and you will get tiered up. below are how the tiers go.

Tier 1 = 25 designs

Tier 2 = 100 designs

Tier 3 = 500 designs

Tier 4 = 1000 designs

Tier 5 = 2000 designs

Tier 6 = 4000 designs

Tier 7 = 8000 designs

How to Make Money on Amazon

One of the great things about Amazon Merch is once you get some good designs up and they take off selling you can be earning money around the clock for just a little time put into designing the shirt, this means you can even earn money while you sleep. If you want to learn more be sure to check out the two Merch experts Chris Green and Jacob Topping.

Both of these guys are talking from experience and are making a lot of money. Chris Green has a great website and has written a very helpful book Merch Life: An Introduction to Using Merch By Amazon to Design Shirts and Make MoneyJacob Topping covers Merch in detail but also talks about a lot of other print on demand sites where you can make money doing the same thing. His new book is Merch and the World of Print on Demand.

Besides researching ideas and creating designs you also need to know how to write good descriptions and then market your designs in order to figure out how to make money on Amazon with Merch. When you go to upload a design to Merch you also have to fill in some other details. You need to make sure you include keywords in your title, product descriptions, and product features or it doesn’t matter how good your design is, nobody will be able to find it. The area labelled “brand” is where you will fill in the name of your brand or store. You can use the same name for all your designs or have different brand names for each niche you sell within. In your title make sure you use keywords that someone shopping for your shirt would enter into their search. In the “key product features” section you want to include keywords related to who would be searching for your product, keywords related to your niche, etc. These are the most important sections to make sure you concentrate on.

Once your design is submitted you will get an email after it has been reviewed and is live. Now you can start marketing it. Feel free to use social media to your advantage. Some people like to set up a Facebook page for their T-shirts and use Facebook ads to get their shirts noticed. If you do it right and are paying very little per lead then it is worthwhile but you don’t want to go blowing money on Facebook ads that don’t end up selling anything. I highly suggest the Moolah Facebook course for anyone that wants to use Facebook to grow their business.

If you are interested in finding out how to make money on Amazon in other ways you can also visit our Make Money From Home With Amazon post.

This post may contain affiliate links but I only recommend products and services that I truly believe in.

As always feel free to email me with any questions you have regarding these positions!

Alaina

(Where I Party)

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12 Amazing Ways to Make Money From Home With Amazon

Tuesday 14th of January 2020

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