Print on Demand

EXTRA EXTRA, read all about it…. Merch by Amazon is coming to European shores, and it’s coming soon.

Yes, we’ve just found out the news we’ve all been waiting for with a few selected accounts who have been given access to UK and DE merch.

It seems like selected accounts (most likely the highest tiers) are having some of their designs migrated to the European Merch Markets.

How Can You Take Advantage of European Merch by Amazon?

My best advice to you would be to start beefing up your accounts with European specific designs so that you can get first movers advantage.

There will be competition out there already, but most of these designs will be Fulfilled by Merchant only, and I’m pretty sure that Merch by Amazon shirts will get an extra boost in the search results ahead of these other shirts.

The market is wide open for anyone who has access to it at the moment and will be a lot less saturated than the US market and there are heaps of design ideas that you could start working on.

Think about:

• European politics
• Funny phrases only common in Europe
• European food and drink
• European Music, Film, Theatre
• Any cultural nuances related to the country

The list is really endless! Just remember to make sure you check everything for trademarks, which in some countries like Germany can be as fierce as in the US.

Why is this such Good News?

As an Englishman it is quite hard to fully understand the cultural intricacies of other countries as far away as the States, which have a unique culture, heritage and humour. Now that the market is a lot closer to home, we have an opportunity to use our knowledge of the market and culture to drive more sales to our accounts.

There is so much negative press with Merch at the moment about how saturated it is, so hopefully this move as long as a move for Amazon to broaden the range of products that it offers, will really level out the playing field and make it a more financially rewarding experience for sellers who are currently struggling.

Local Merch in Europe?

The other thing that should be exploited as soon as possible is the local merch method, which people like Mike Gual have been so successful with in the States.

I’m not 100% sure whether this technique would work in the UK in particular as I would argue that consumers are a lot more sceptical of offers and promotions than they are in the States and would be less willing to wear Tshirts branded with a local Pizza Restaurant than over there, but there is surely an opportunity to do something using this type of approach as well.

 

After waiting nearly 9 months to get my Merch by Amazon account accepted, the next step was to finally start selling some tshirts so how did I go about this and what did I learn over the past few months?

Getting approved

Earlier in the year Merch changed their sign up process somewhat so instead of applying and waiting months to get accepted most people are now getting accepted after about a week of applying. This is actually how I got onto the programme in the end by simply reapplying for my account.

Tiering up

The next thing to mention is that it seems time a lot easier to tier up these days than it used to be as well. Previously you were given 10 tshirt slots to fill and when you sold 10 tshirts you were tiered up to 25.

Sell 25 to get tiered up to 100 and then 100 to move up to tier 500 etc etc.

What happened with me?

I sold one tshirt and bought 2 of my own shirts then was tiered up to 25
I filled up my slots immediately and sold maybe 5 shirts for the Royal Wedding and got tiered up to 100
I quickly filled up all 100 slots and probably sold about another 20 shirts then magically my account was tiered up to 500 … Ding dong!!!

So it seems that Amazon are a little more relaxed about the numbers you need to sell now, which in one way is good news for the newbies but also bad in another way as it means more competition.

The other thing to note with these changes, the daily upload limit has increased.

• Tier 10 = 1 per day
• Tier 25 = 3 per day
• Tier 100 = 10 per day
• Tier 500 = 50 per day

Tips for getting quickly to tier 500

Fill your slots

I think this metric is actually more important than sales because as soon as I had all my slots filled up, they gave me more. If you get stuck filling your slots then do some simple colour variations or upload each design to the 5 different product types. You can always remove these later if you have new designs you want to put up.

Add your designs to other platforms

I added all of my designs to eBay and Etsy as well and used promoted listings to drive traffic, which resulted in a few extra sales. With these sales I would then buy the shirt from Amazon, add the customers delivery address and get it delivered to them using my Amazon Prime account. Even though this meant I was paying two sets of fees it meant I could increase my Best Seller Rank (BSR) and chalk off a few sales on my account.

Price low

As much as I hate doing it, at least in tiers 10 and 25 I would keep your price as low as possible to give yourself that competitive edge. Yes, it sucks when you get a sale and only make 8 cents, but initially you’re not in it for the profit and need to think more about scaling your account instead.

Outsource

I would always recommend doing your own research, creating a few designs and doing your own bullets and descriptions, but as soon as you have got the hang of things I would hop on over to upwork.com and outsource some of these tasks to a Virtual Assistant.

• If you’re not a great designer you can hire someone for less than $5 per design and you can focus on niche research instead.
• If you’re not a good researcher , get someone to do the niche research for you instead.
• You could actually outsource the whole lot and get someone to do your bullets and descriptions as well, depending on whether you are poor in either money or time.

Just remember you aren’t allowed to get anyone to do you uploading for you as that is strictly against Amazon’s Terms of Service

Personally I did everything myself apart from the design work which I outsourced to 3 different designers. I just send them the keywords and a brief and they come back a day or so later with the designs.

For $5 a pop the quality wasn’t bad at all. I mean you’re not going to get a high end complex design for that price, but they were better than about 80% of the shirts I see on Merch!!!

What helped me get to Tier 500?

Learning

Remember you are right at the start of your journey and there is so much to learn out here but try not to get frustrated and take it step by step.
Consume as much information as you can in all mediums and try to soak it up.
The first thing I did was join all of he Facebook groups and listen to as many podcasts as I could on he subject and here are my favourites:

Podcasts

• Jersey Merch – run by a real hustler from New Jersey who is looking to build a massive business from merch
• Merch Minds – run by Yong (a designer) and Glenn who is a full time online hustler
• Merch Lifestyle – Another useful podcast with hosts Spencer and Shannon covering multiple PODs but mainly Merch by Amazon

Facebook Groups

• Merch mastermind – Run by RJ Martinez and friennds… really useful practical advice
• Merch by Amazon – Run by Chris Green, one of the forefathers of the Merch Movement
• Merch Empire – This it the Facebook Group for the Jersey boys

There is a ton of info out there and you’ll find most people in the community more than happy to help.

Tools

Every man and his dog is out there selling an Amazon service, plugin or course at the moment, so be a little careful where you spend your money.

However, there are 2 standout tools that you can not do without:

Merch Momentum

The weekly weekly Merch Momentum newsletter from Michael Essany is a must have accessory for every Merch by Amazon enthusiast out there. At $10 a month this is an absolute bargain as it is packed full of tips on keywords, strategies and general tips to help you build your merch business.

Merch Informer
The final thing that you should purchase is Merch Informer, which you can get for about $20 a month and is full of awesome features. Its main focus is to help you to do keyword research and find which niches are competitive or not, but recently they launched an awesome design tool as well, which is specifically tailored to making merch designs

Summary

Remember at this stage it’s all about building your business up and gaining knowledge, not money, so get your head down and start cracking out those designs.

If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s free and easy to apply for – DO THIS NOW

One week in to my Merch by Amazon adventure and it’s already been a rollercoaster as I’ve had a number of designs rejected for copyright infringment.

Merch By Amazon’s Copyright / Trademark Policy

Merch by Amazon have an extremely tough trademark policy. The reason is because they effectively the vendor of record for the designs that you are uploading so if there is a trademark infringement then the buck will stop with them, which makes them extremely risk averse.

Their Terms of Service state the following:

1.1 Copyright: Designs that incorporate copyrights which you don’t have the rights to use, or copied from someone else. It is your responsibility to ensure that your content doesn’t violate copyright laws. Ask yourself, “did I design this or did I copy someone else’s work to create this?” Designs with the same idea/concept are allowed; the artwork itself, however cannot be copied without the owner’s permission.

1.2 Trademark: Designs that incorporate trademarks which you don’t have the rights to use. It is your responsibility to ensure that your content doesn’t violate trademark or other rights. You can check the USPTO for trademarks here: https://www.uspto.gov/

This may seem fairly clear but you have to remember that this applies not only to the content of your image but also:

• Product Title
• Bullet Points
• Product Description

You will be surprised at some of the terms that are actually copyrighted, so you really need to check everything that goes into your listings on the following site: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/

The other thing to note is that if there is a trademarked phrase such as “Team USA” and you have a combination of those words in your bullets or description eg “Cool Tshirt for USA Sports fans to cheer on their team” then this would be a reason to reject a shirt as well.

It really is a bit of a minefield and you need to be extremely careful what you are listing.

4 Designs Rejected

This week I already had 4 rejections for Tshirts that I was trying to upload, which is really worrying as if you get too many rejections they will quickly close your account.

The other problem I have is that they do not give specific reasons for why they have rejected the submission.

I just received an email with the following information:

“Thank you for your recent design submission on Merch by Amazon – XXXXXX T Shirt. We are contacting you because your submission appears to violate our Content Policy guideline – 1.1 Copyright. You may only use content for which you have documented rights to use. The Content Policy applies to your designs, product names, keywords on the detail page and the “brand” name selected. Submitting designs and/or product information using trademarked material is a violation of the Merch by Amazon Services agreement. “

For one of my shirts I used the phrase ‘Go USA’ somewhere, which is trademarked and a stupid oversight from me, but for the other shirts, I couldn’t find any reason why they should be taken down.

In the end what I did was delete the bullet points and re-submitted and they got approved.

Again, I think this is something to do with a combination of words I used in the bullet points that made up a trademark.​

How to Avoid Getting Designs Rejected on Merch

• Avoid big events – If you wan to play it really safe then don’t go anywhere near any major events like the Olympics or World Cup. Whilst there may be a big market there, there are also plenty of trademark lawyers trying to find infringements so best to stay clear.
• Avoid sports teams – Trying to market to fans who follow a specific sports team, even national team is a bit of a tightrope to tread as well as these areas are heavily trademarked and can lead to rejections and takedowns
• Check everything – Check every word that you are listing on the following link in case there are any live trademarks http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/
• Check other listings – Don’t be a dufus and copy other people’s work. Check other listings on Amazon first in case someone else has already listed the same product
• Check your images – Only use images from sources which give you a commercial use license. For example pixabay.com is a great resource for free commercial use images, but taking images directly from places like Google Images or Flickr should not be done unless you have full commercial use rights
• Check your fonts – Again be very careful that you have the rights to use the font commercially. Even if you are creating your designs in a third party application eg Wordswag sometimes they use fonts which are only for personal use. This is why I prefer to make all my designs in Photoshop with commercial use fonts that I have downloaded.

Summary

At least to start with it would make sense to be a little more cautious with what you are listing on Amazon, especially because when you are on Tier 10, all of your submissions are reviewed manually so you should try to stay whiter than white. It’s probably good to keep this approach moving forward even if you don’t get reviewed manually, just so you can keep your account in good health