MERCH BY AMAZON

Merch by Amazon is a great money-making opportunity that requires no startup capital. It was my 5th attempt at making money online and my 2nd one to actually succeed in doing so. Let me tell you about my journey in the program. I applied sometime in the 3rd quarter of 2015 after hearing about it from some youtuber. When you first get accepted into MBA you are only allowed to upload 25 shirt designs. Once you sell 25 shirts they will upgrade you to 100 designs and once you sell 100 shirts they upgrade you to 500 and so on and so forth. I figured I wasn't going to go for profit on my first 25 designs, I was going to focus on unlocking my 100 tier as fast as possible. I decided to list my best selling designs from my previous venture, Teespring, which is a story for another time, and price them at $13.99 to get quick sales. A week passed and I woke up one morning to realize that my account was unlocked to 100 tier, I was super excited at this point and started cranking up designs left and right to fill up all of my slots as fast as possible. I focused on making a profit, and I listed my designs for $18.99 which would give me about $6.50 in total royalties per shirt sold. Be aware that it's not just about how awesome the shirt design is that matters, but you also have to optimize the shirt's Amazon listing properly to ensure that your buyers will find your design. Amazon does layout rules on how to structure these so make sure you read the guidelines. After 2 or 3 months of being in the program, I was making about 3k a month. I noticed that the designs that were selling the most were designs about trending topics and parodies. I started to focus most of my designs around these two niches. I only had 300 designs live at this point. I was getting comfortable with what the program was bringing in royalties every month that I pretty much set it aside and considered it a passive income stream. I could have continued to make designs to churn in as much as possible, I had 2000 designs unlocked at this point, but I didn't. I got lazy and cocky.

So what happened? Well, the 4th quarter of 2016 came and sales just started going crazy. For businesses that do novelty print on demand products, I can tell you from personal experience that the month of November and December will bring in about 40% - 50% of the year's sales! My November payout for MBA was in the six figures. It was so insane and exciting I just couldn't wait to see what December would bring. The end of December came and with it the sales report. I made even more in that month than the previous one. The cash out is usually every 28th of the month, so the first thing I do is check my account to see if the funds were deposited and to my surprise, they weren't. So I logged into my MBA and then it happened, the fucking "Your account has been suspended" message. I could feel my heart pounding like crazy, all I could think about was what happened to my December payout. I reached out to Amazon to figure out what the hell was going on with my account. I received an answer about a week and 100 emails later stating that my account was removed due to infringing copyrighted designs. I explained to them that I never used copyrighted terms but I did dabble with parodies of movies and tv shows. And they replied that it was actually those designs that got me in trouble. I tried really hard to get my account back for while without any success. And just like that, I lost over $10,000...

MOVING ON...

I just lost my biggest income stream. I had no idea what I was going to do. Weeks after falling off the horse, I decided to finally cut my losses and move on. I put on my thinking cap and got back to the drawing board. Starting from pretty much scratch all over again. In a way, I'm glad this happened because it motivated me to create my new businesses: two Amazon stores, Etsy, and Ebay. It's important to note that if you do join Merch by Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, or Amazon Seller Central, you are under their mercy. This is why I created an alternative, self-managed website where I sell my products as well. I'm focusing on growing my brand so I don't have to worry about Amazon or other selling platforms shutting me down. I would already have an established online presence. That is really my ultimate goal, to have people know and trust my website enough to go and shop directly on it.

I tried to find a way to get back into the Merch by Amazon program. Unfortunately, I was told that I could not apply for another account Fortunately, a family member started with MBA account a few months prior. I approached him to see if he wanted to partner together since he didn't really do much with his account. We compromised at 50/50. I would take care of all of the designs and listings and he sits on his ass and collects the keesh. What a douche, huh? lol, still love him though. This time I made sure to read the guidelines. I'm staying away from copyrighted content, checking and check the uspto.gov before creating the design to make sure I'm not infringing. Also, no more parodies on shows, movies, or people. No more cashing in on politics pretty much. Excited to start again, I went back and reviewed all of my designs to point out the ones that I was suspicious of and the ones that I want to migrate over. So, fast-forward three months to present day and we are at tier 500 with 327 designs up and running. Merch by Amazon has changed quite a bit since I first started. Because of the surge of new sellers joining the program and bringing in a shitload of sales for Amazon, they had a hard time keeping up with the fulfillment, so they created a few rules to help them. One of the rules being designs that haven't had a sale in more than 60 days will be removed and rule two being MBA will cap the number of designs you can upload in a day. Right now, I can only upload 10 designs a day, this is why I only have 327 designs uploaded so far. I'm at tier 500 so I should be able to fill those slots within the next 20 days.

Okay, time for a break. Here is a picture of my wife and dog...

LESSON LEARNED

So, what can you take from this? Shit happens, don't let obstacles keep you away from getting what you want, if you really want it, you'll overcome them. You either adapt or get left behind. You don't gain anything from clinging on to shit that happens in life. And some other cliches.

If you are looking to join Merch by Amazon, be patient, it may take up to 6 months before you get accepted. Don't let that time go to waste though. Focus learning how to work with photoshop, illustrator, or gimp. There are a lot of tutorials on youtube to help you get started. Learn how to find winning designs and start designing. This way you have the designs ready by the time you get accepted.

I hope you learn from my experience. Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback. Upvote, comment, and resteem. Thank you for reading.

Until next time, deuce.