My First Week on Merch by Amazon
I saw all the hype about Merch by Amazon back in early 2017 all over the internet particularly on Youtube from these self-declared "hustler" types. I sat through a few of the videos and the advice I was given was to sign up asap and wait for an account approval. Being a bit reluctant to do so based on my past experiences with Amazon as a publisher and affiliate, I chose to apply for an account anyway. I was approved as a Merch by Amazon designer in April and the process took roughly 1 month for my application to be approved. .
I got the email for the approval and logged in to see the admin panel and what would be required. The panel itself is very sparse and the design options are minimal. I have been a seller on other POD sites like Zazzle and Redbubble for a while now and their platforms are much more impressive to me. I refrained from actually using the program until August due to my real-life experiences with Amazon and them being overly eager to screw you over in any way they can. This seems to be the greedy nature of the organization.
The videos I had watched on Youtube from these "hustlers" seemed to be a bit salesy of the whole Merch by Amazon program. Being an experience marketer, SEO expert, product designer, publisher, etc., (for the past 10 years) I felt the information they were conveying was overly simple and the promises of the stated income were far-fetched. A handful of them claimed that all of their sales came from organic traffic from Amazon's algorithm and marketing and they made no effort themselves to promote their products. I cannot imagine not promoting your products regardless of how good Amazon's promotion is. It is imperative that you spur your product's internet rankings and make an effort to reach out to customers on your own with any product on any site you publish it on. Seriously, don't be lazy and stupid.
I then continued to choose from my list of designs that I have accumulated over the years and I looked through which ones were my bestsellers and received the most views on other POD sites. Being in the lowest tier I am limited to only 10 design uploads until I sell at least 10 shirts and then I get to upload 25 after that. Wow...big whoop. I uploaded the designs, made SEO friendy titles and descriptions, and went the hell to sleep.
The next day the designs were approved, save 1 that was apparently trademarked even though it had fallen into the public domain some years past. Some trademark vulture from Sherman Oaks, CA created a new trademark for it so Amazon wouldn't allow it to be published. 1 strike already...pfft! I then created another design to fill the empty slot created by the rejected design and it would be another 24 hours before I would have that one live as well. So now the other shirts were live so I pinned them on Pnterest and did some other propagation and went to bed that night.
I woke up the next morning surprised to see that I had sold 1 shirt already. Lawdhammercy hallelujah! I'm goin' to Hawaii! It seemed as if it was all true. I was going to be making the big bucks! Not so fast...
The design I had created the day before was rejected due to "International Law". The shirt had a simple pot leaf within the design and apparently that doesn't fly in some foreign country so rather than just not sell it in that dictatorial shithole Amazon opted to reject it altogether. Strike 2 already. I then uploaded a separate design and waited for it to be approved.
It was now day 4 and I had only received 1 sale but had gotten 2 rejections already. I finally got my design opening filled with a shirt they finally approved but not after giving it extra scrutiny because the shirt had an original quote by myself that sounded somewhat similar to something a dead author had written years ago. I never even read the guy's book and it was just a similar quote but not the same at all. Amazon doesn't allow quotes from anyone that's a public figure to be sold on shirts but they won't tell you that beforehand in their guidelines. They also don't detail what defines international law, they just reject your design and threaten to terminate your account.
In going over one of my designs that had gone live I noticed that the brand name in the live product was not the same as the brand name I had input into the listing. Amazon changed it in processing to be the brand name of a trademarked brand. I sent an email to let them know and they did not respond. I posted in their forums and they did not respond. I ultimately went into the edit option and just changed the brand name to something other than the original one I had input out of fear that they would give me another strike for a mistake that they themselves had somehow made.
So that's pretty much it. It has been 1 week since I uploaded my first designs and I have only sold 1 shirt. Beyond the simple Pinterest posts I did the first day, I also tweeted the designs on Twitter to numerous accounts that I have with upwards of 10K+ niche followers and also posted one of the designs on one of my websites right to the front page.
So far the online hype about Merch by Amazon is total bullshit as I expected and I suspect they're cheating me and also attempting to rack up my rejected designs to have an excuse to terminate my account and take my earnings once they accumulate.
All of these fools on Youtube saying they're making thousands of dollars are probably getting paid by Amazon to hype it up and get suckers to use it. Just look at the forums on Merch by Amazon and you'll see that my experience isn't rare. People have their accounts suspended and terminated regularly for no good reason and their profits stolen. I know it has only been 1 week but I'm telling you Amazon is not a good business partner for creators and publishers. That's all I'm saying. If anything changes and I turn out to be wrong, I'll eat my words.
I got the email for the approval and logged in to see the admin panel and what would be required. The panel itself is very sparse and the design options are minimal. I have been a seller on other POD sites like Zazzle and Redbubble for a while now and their platforms are much more impressive to me. I refrained from actually using the program until August due to my real-life experiences with Amazon and them being overly eager to screw you over in any way they can. This seems to be the greedy nature of the organization.
The videos I had watched on Youtube from these "hustlers" seemed to be a bit salesy of the whole Merch by Amazon program. Being an experience marketer, SEO expert, product designer, publisher, etc., (for the past 10 years) I felt the information they were conveying was overly simple and the promises of the stated income were far-fetched. A handful of them claimed that all of their sales came from organic traffic from Amazon's algorithm and marketing and they made no effort themselves to promote their products. I cannot imagine not promoting your products regardless of how good Amazon's promotion is. It is imperative that you spur your product's internet rankings and make an effort to reach out to customers on your own with any product on any site you publish it on. Seriously, don't be lazy and stupid.
I then continued to choose from my list of designs that I have accumulated over the years and I looked through which ones were my bestsellers and received the most views on other POD sites. Being in the lowest tier I am limited to only 10 design uploads until I sell at least 10 shirts and then I get to upload 25 after that. Wow...big whoop. I uploaded the designs, made SEO friendy titles and descriptions, and went the hell to sleep.
The next day the designs were approved, save 1 that was apparently trademarked even though it had fallen into the public domain some years past. Some trademark vulture from Sherman Oaks, CA created a new trademark for it so Amazon wouldn't allow it to be published. 1 strike already...pfft! I then created another design to fill the empty slot created by the rejected design and it would be another 24 hours before I would have that one live as well. So now the other shirts were live so I pinned them on Pnterest and did some other propagation and went to bed that night.
I woke up the next morning surprised to see that I had sold 1 shirt already. Lawdhammercy hallelujah! I'm goin' to Hawaii! It seemed as if it was all true. I was going to be making the big bucks! Not so fast...
The design I had created the day before was rejected due to "International Law". The shirt had a simple pot leaf within the design and apparently that doesn't fly in some foreign country so rather than just not sell it in that dictatorial shithole Amazon opted to reject it altogether. Strike 2 already. I then uploaded a separate design and waited for it to be approved.
It was now day 4 and I had only received 1 sale but had gotten 2 rejections already. I finally got my design opening filled with a shirt they finally approved but not after giving it extra scrutiny because the shirt had an original quote by myself that sounded somewhat similar to something a dead author had written years ago. I never even read the guy's book and it was just a similar quote but not the same at all. Amazon doesn't allow quotes from anyone that's a public figure to be sold on shirts but they won't tell you that beforehand in their guidelines. They also don't detail what defines international law, they just reject your design and threaten to terminate your account.
In going over one of my designs that had gone live I noticed that the brand name in the live product was not the same as the brand name I had input into the listing. Amazon changed it in processing to be the brand name of a trademarked brand. I sent an email to let them know and they did not respond. I posted in their forums and they did not respond. I ultimately went into the edit option and just changed the brand name to something other than the original one I had input out of fear that they would give me another strike for a mistake that they themselves had somehow made.
So that's pretty much it. It has been 1 week since I uploaded my first designs and I have only sold 1 shirt. Beyond the simple Pinterest posts I did the first day, I also tweeted the designs on Twitter to numerous accounts that I have with upwards of 10K+ niche followers and also posted one of the designs on one of my websites right to the front page.
So far the online hype about Merch by Amazon is total bullshit as I expected and I suspect they're cheating me and also attempting to rack up my rejected designs to have an excuse to terminate my account and take my earnings once they accumulate.
All of these fools on Youtube saying they're making thousands of dollars are probably getting paid by Amazon to hype it up and get suckers to use it. Just look at the forums on Merch by Amazon and you'll see that my experience isn't rare. People have their accounts suspended and terminated regularly for no good reason and their profits stolen. I know it has only been 1 week but I'm telling you Amazon is not a good business partner for creators and publishers. That's all I'm saying. If anything changes and I turn out to be wrong, I'll eat my words.
Comments
Post a Comment