(Method & Journey)How To Make A Print On Demand Empire

[lostchoas]

Hey bhw community. This will be my first method post. It has been talked before in this forum but i wanted to show my spin on it.


Here are some great posts where i first learned and inspired me on Merch by Amazon & Print on Demand.

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/merch-by-amazon-new-market-to-tap.827591/

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/selling-merch-on-amazon-my-quick-guide-resources.915004/

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/m...shopify-and-amazon-no-inventory-guide.907395/


I started by applying for merch by amazon, after 2 months i got accepted i uploaded a few random designs that i saw were popular phrases in memes.

Here is my monthly earnings for each month as i grew.


May

I got accepted in merch by amazon. I was at tier 10 and could upload 2 a day.


June

I Tierd to 25 Designs

July

I Tierd to 100 designs.

August

This month, I wanted to push to the 500 tier, so I made the decision to make all my prices 11.99 to where I made less than a dollar. The theory was if they are a super cheap price, then I can make more sales. It worked but was painful watching shirts that would make me $4 a day were giving me practically nothing, also noticed Amazon selling the 14.99 price id still only get the 11.99 royalty, Damn thieves haha.

September

This month I finally Tierd to 500. Im allowed to upload 10 designs a day.

October

I had been lax all of October. i was very busy on my main business which is a marketing firm that does SEO and PPC for local businesses.

November

This month i'm planning to pick it back up so by next year i can have a serious side income that's totally outsourced. Iv got 120 live designs and can do 10 designs a day. So hopefully i get atleast 300 designs up by Decemeber


Total earnings

About tiers and tiering up

The theory states, you need 80% of your max allowed designs to be filled and you need at least the Tier number in sales.

Tier 10 = 10 Sales and 8 Live Designs

And so on


How to do research

I use several Tools that i will leave links to below, I use Merch Informer to find trending designs that are between 100k-600k BSR. The reason behind this is obvious if you've done any selling on amazon.

BSR = Best Sellers Rank
Is a good way to understand what products are capturing interest and actually making sales.

For example, any shirt above 100k BSR makes on average 20+ Sales a month.


While this sounds interesting, alot of guys take the same design and try to piggyback off others. Sometimes this works but from my experience, it isnt that successful as the specific niche becomes flooded with very similar designs.


I look for non branded or plagiarized works, keeping your merch by amazon account safe is priority if you want a long-term business.


Evergreen Niche VS Trending Niche

I have mainly stuck with evergreen, Evergreen is a shirt that's niche sells year round. Most Succesful evergreen shirts will on average get you 2-30 sales a month depending on the Design, BSR, and Price


With Trending Niches, i've had some success, For Example, Kid Rock announced he was running for Senate, so i made a shirt saying “Rock For Senate 2018” with an American flag. I made 8 sales in the first day. The problem is, since then iv made no sales and Kid Rock just said he was joking. I still made $30 for that lie .


How you should break it down is like this

Tier 10: Trends 80% / Evergreen 20%

Tier 25: Trends 60% / Evergreen 40%

Tier 50: Trends 40% / Evergreen 60%

Tier 100: Trends 30% / Evergreen 70%

Tier 500: Trends 30% / Evergreen 70%


The name of the game at lower tiers is just to tier up as fast as you can, If you focus on evergreens it might take you forever with a just few slots. Only one trend shirt could take you way past the tier 10 all the way into tier 100 if you capitalized on it fast enough


How to make designs

Currently how i make designs is that i do them myself in photoshop, I look for Commercial Use Vector Images of whatever niche i use. I add the image and the text design it on 4500 by 5400, which is amazon's required size.


I also use a site called placeit, they use to allow a free easy way to make 100s of shirt designs, but they started charging me and ran out of vectors that interested me.

I have outsourced in the past but until i'm making a enough for a full timer, im stuck making most designs myself.


What colors to choose

You can only pick 5 colors per product currently


Darker colors, from my experience, are the best route. All my designs use white type text instead of black so that they are easier to work with other colors but this is more preference on what design your doing as well.


A general rule for darker colors is to pick black, blue heather, asphalt atleast.


How to do listings


Here's a example

Brand: Your Brand April Fools Day Tees

Title: April Fools Day Tees | (Your Shirt Text)

Bullet 1: This April Fools Day t-shirt is the perfect shirt for April Fools lovers. It would make a great gift idea for any birthday, Christmas, graduation or any gift giving occasion.


Bullet 2: People who love April Fools, April 1st, and April Fool are sure to love this hip short sleeve tee shirt. These are super cool shirts with cool sayings, funny graphics, and sporty theme.


Description: Super Awesome T-Shirt, Great for people who love April Fools Day, April Fools, April 1st, and April 1. Popular shirt designed with cool stylish pattern printed on.


(Tip:add something like “This April Fools Day Shirt is designed and printed to be fitted. For a more loose fit, please order a size up” Adding this will leave less room for keywords, but it will also reduce the amount of returns or negative reviews.)


I use Merch Lister Pro, it allows me to make profiles of a listing, and then auto fill in the details, This tool is not really needed until you get to at least the Tier 100


Avoiding copyrights or trademarks

I use trademarkia to find out if keywords or niches are trademarked. Its built into merch informer, but there are chrome extensions as well.


How to scale

Im scaling by first maximizing my uploads per day on merch by Amazon. Im focused on uploading all my evergreen shirts first and then spending more time researching trends.


After which this is done, I start uploading to all the other popular platforms, to increase exposure and recycle designs i've already made.


I Use Printful + Shipstation, With this we can get our designs into Etsy, Ebay, Amazon Seller, Jet, Walmart and others. I don't use Woocommerce or Shopify with this as i have not figured out or even tested the Paid Marketing side of the business to gain traffic.


I also have designs on Gearbubble, RedBubble, Teepublic, Teespring, Sunfrog


Tools

I will not add links as i don't want to break terms, So just google the names

Merch Informer - Monthly Subscription, Research Tool

Placeit - Free/Monthly Subscription, Quick Designer

Merch Lister Pro - One time Payment, Auto Lister

PrettyMerch - Free, Sales Dashboard, Chrome Ext

Merchtools - Free, Research tool, Chrome Ext

MerchResearch - Free, Research tool, Chrome Ext

Trademarkia - Free, Copyright Checker

In Conclusion

Im still working on this, with print on demand, it's truly a numbers game. Get your designs up and get selling as quick as possible, then focus on different tactics to make more sales. A general rule is most designs won't be a hit, one outta of every 50 evergreen shirts will be where most of your income consistently comes from.

I will update this thread every month with my results every time i remember too lol, just ask so i dont forget .

 

[Rojuhh]

Seems promising! Good luck!

 

[Mike Harry]

Very useful info, all the best!!

 

[Jiung]

Nice information, thanks.

 

[metalhead10]

I have to follow this . Good luck mate!!!

 

[terrycody]

I just checked my account, nearly a year, still in the air.

 

[TheVigilante]

Kepp at it my friend!

 

[thecobbler]

Following OP! Good Luck!

 

[nikhil94]

thanks for the detailed insights

 

[Pinger030]

Nice progress so far. I'll follow this thread!

Just my personal opinion about Merch:
The entry barrier for Merch is extremely low, so there are lots of copycats who are stealing your designs and claiming that you're the copycat. It's hard to compete with people from poor countries who are pushing the prices to a minimum because 50c profit per sale is still a lot of money for them. Or people from countries where no copyright law exists = The work ethic of those people is extremely bad = They try to fuck you in all ways because they honestly thinks that's the way how business works in general. It's the most "antisocial" business I've ever entered. I mean, I had no problem to play this game and elimate such stupid competitors but it's stressful and risky. I for myself found no way to get stability in my sales. It wasn't passive enough for me, so I've stopped with MBA.

 

[Panther28]

Well done, lots of people doing well with merch, it really is a great platform.

 

[Trained Wolf]

Good luck buddy

 

[lostchoas]

Nice progress so far. I'll follow this thread!

Just my personal opinion about Merch:
The entry barrier for Merch is extremely low, so there are lots of copycats who are stealing your designs and claiming that you're the copycat. It's hard to compete with people from poor countries who are pushing the prices to a minimum because 50c profit per sale is still a lot of money for them. Or people from countries where no copyright law exists = The work ethic of those people is extremely bad = They try to fuck you in all ways because they honestly thinks that's the way how business works in general. It's the most "antisocial" business I've ever entered. I mean, I had no problem to play this game and elimate such stupid competitors but it's stressful and risky. I for myself found no way to get stability in my sales. It wasn't passive enough for me, so I've stopped with MBA.

I tottaly agree but i have not had issuses that stopped me. I havint checked but im sure my designs have been copied. Heres how to avoid this.

A good way is make your brand name with your niche keyword

For example, brand: Your brand christmas tees

The reason is, if you add all ur shirts under one brand, you will be easily copied, but just adding the keyword alone in each brand will allow customers to buy other peoples shirts that listed this. For ranking purposes u need a keyword in the brand.

I had a friend whos shirt was taken pixel by pixel within a day, he reported the copycat and the person was banned.

I say dont be discouraged, amazon doesnt care what country your in, they will remove copyrighted stuff if they see it.

It isnt that easy to get amazon accounts as they go by bank accounts and valid tax info, at least in america. I feel most of these people will be stuck in low tiers and never get past a tier thats actually worth it.

I reccommend ignoring the plagarizers and to fine designs yourself that are selling well, a general rule to live by is if u see a design selling well and you believe u can make a better improved design then do it. Do not copy but get insipiration instead XD.

Keep uploading and growing ur account, one day, a year from now, you could be at tier 6k. At that point, u get 120 uploads a day, at that point, it really doesnt matter who copys you. Ull get yours.

 

[NoHypeNeeded]

Random question for you OP; for those looking to potentially try out Merch by Amazon/etc, how many designs should you have lined up for when you're approved/ready to start uploading? I want to try this, but I also think it's beyond saturated (millions of spots to by t-shirts) and that it has to be much more difficult than just uploading designs for shirts?

Thanks for all info!

 

[lostchoas]

Random question for you OP; for those looking to potentially try out Merch by Amazon/etc, how many designs should you have lined up for when you're approved/ready to start uploading? I want to try this, but I also think it's beyond saturated (millions of spots to by t-shirts) and that it has to be much more difficult than just uploading designs for shirts?

Thanks for all info!

My suggestion is to start making as many designs as you can with proper research.

I know this is a lot harder to accomplish than just doing 10 while you wait for Amazon, but you could be uploading your designs right now on all the other platforms with all sorts of products, which will give you great competitive edge once you get in, because you'll know how to make designs quicker, you'll know the research better and you might even have a little cash to make Merch by Amazon even faster.

Take a look at the places i recommend to upload designs to, etsy, for example, is really taking off and they're customers arent afraid to spend. But it goes even further, imagine having 10-20 stores all selling your designs on marketplaces that for the most part, dont require traffic driven to them.

Think ebay, amazon seller, etsy and so on. 10 designs = 100 - 200 spots you could be selling on multiple products, If this is a numbers game, once you have 100 designs, thats 1000-2000 spots for people to see your stuff. Its a crap load of work listing on each platform(theres tools for making each step faster), but once you do the work, its for the most part its hands off, Iv even seen friends hire a full-time designer and a full time uploader, once you make enough money, start outsourcing and think of this as a massive company growing beyond you if you put in the work

(Tip: If your not getting out of tier 10 fast enough, you might consider just spending the cash and buying your own shirts for as cheap as you can make it, Just don't give yourself fake reviews as Amazon is pretty good at finding this and you do not want to risk your account, trust me.)

For saturation concerns, there are millions of shirts already yes, but the thing is, Amazon is a massive market and new designs are getting sales every day. The bonus here is, Amazon just announced they're adding hoodies into merch by Amazon which is a very popular product niche and gives a massive increase in royalties for each sale.

Saturation is definitely a concern of mine for sure, but iv never found something that didn't have competitors working an angle in the same niche.

 

[SOCOM]

Since June you've made $365?

 

[cindyrose888]

Since June you've made $365?

Even though it is not a big money, but OP at least making some money and........making more than many of us here ! lol

 

[NoHypeNeeded]

My suggestion is to start making as many designs as you can with proper research.

I know this is a lot harder to accomplish than just doing 10 while you wait for Amazon, but you could be uploading your designs right now on all the other platforms with all sorts of products, which will give you great competitive edge once you get in, because you'll know how to make designs quicker, you'll know the research better and you might even have a little cash to make Merch by Amazon even faster.

Take a look at the places i recommend to upload designs to, etsy, for example, is really taking off and they're customers arent afraid to spend. But it goes even further, imagine having 10-20 stores all selling your designs on marketplaces that for the most part, dont require traffic driven to them.

Think ebay, amazon seller, etsy and so on. 10 designs = 100 - 200 spots you could be selling on multiple products, If this is a numbers game, once you have 100 designs, thats 1000-2000 spots for people to see your stuff. Its a crap load of work listing on each platform(theres tools for making each step faster), but once you do the work, its for the most part its hands off, Iv even seen friends hire a full-time designer and a full time uploader, once you make enough money, start outsourcing and think of this as a massive company growing beyond you if you put in the work

(Tip: If your not getting out of tier 10 fast enough, you might consider just spending the cash and buying your own shirts for as cheap as you can make it, Just don't give yourself fake reviews as Amazon is pretty good at finding this and you do not want to risk your account, trust me.)

For saturation concerns, there are millions of shirts already yes, but the thing is, Amazon is a massive market and new designs are getting sales every day. The bonus here is, Amazon just announced they're adding hoodies into merch by Amazon which is a very popular product niche and gives a massive increase in royalties for each sale.

Saturation is definitely a concern of mine for sure, but iv never found something that didn't have competitors working an angle in the same niche.

Awesome post and great info man, thanks btw.

Couple things:

-- I already use Etsy, eBay, etc and I see what you're saying about having your designs on as many platforms as possible. How would I work that on etsy though? Just upload a picture of the design? What about fulfilment of the t-shirt, etc? That's awesome though. Even better is when the company grows you can outsource the designing and uploading process, making a full-fledged automated business out of this. Very interesting.

-- That's awesome @ Amazon starting Hoodies. Do you know when that starts?

Thanks again for the info man, much appreciated.

 

[Pinger030]

@lostchoas Not to forget the European marketplaces. It's just a matter of time until they'll open it.


But personally I'm done with Merch. I already have a publishing business and even this business has a low entrance barrier. Okay, the language etc. is keeping some stupid competitors away but it's still full of idiots. Merch has a much much lower entrance barriere. The approval and the "tier levels" are the only barriers. I've discovered Merch in Spring last year but realized quickly that this would be a huuuge step backward for me.

It's a little bit off topic but: I think most of us is interested in a stable/passive income. You're getting better and better with the time (skills, knowledge, income etc.), so you can do more complex businesses with a higher entrance barrier that beginners can't afford. Less competition = More profit for few people who can afford this business + More stability. In the Merch business you're competing with housewives and grandmas (no joke, I'm on some MBA Facebook groups^^)

The point is: The sales are drying out over the time. You have to keep on uploading new shirts to hold your income someday (because other sales are drying out in the same time) and even if you increase the output frequency by outsourcing, there's a limit. You'll step on a spot someday. Plus: The risk that they could ban your account. If you publish a shirt today and someone else is trademarking the phrase that's on your shirt tomorrow, they can fu*k you. And this is a common method which happens every day when you read in FB groups ...because: You compete with people who don't care anything. If these people had the chance to get your address they would destroy you because they can. This is how business works for them. Even in my business it's nothing new that people blackmail each other behind the scene. And again, Merch is even more anti-social.

Additionally, I didn't see much people who are making more than 10k/month with Merch. so, a business with a potential of less than 100k/year isn't good + no stability + risk + stress with competitors. That's why I don't do it anymore. If you would build up a solid brand with a website etc. it would be another topic, but Merch (also Teespring, Printful, CafeExpress etc.) is not mine.

But I'm looking forward to your journey! Really good progress so far and I'm I am excited which way it will continue.

@NoHypeNeeded You can already sell Hoodies (and other stuff) on Amazon via Teespring. It's working in the same way as Merch.

 

[Kai Escalade]

HI guys I have a question regarding merch. Is it any difference if I will make account on Amazon uk or com or de ? Is that one account for all?