AMAZON MERCH AND HOW IT WORKS | SMBELAL.COM

1. HOW DOESMERCH BYAMAZON WORK?

2. WHAT IS MERCH BY AMAZON 01 HOW TO APPLY FOR MERCH BY AMAZON TABLE OF CONTENTS 02 HOW TO GET ACCEPTED INTO MERCH BY AMAZON 03 CREATING DESIGNS/OUTSOURCING 04

3. 01. WHAT IS MERCH BY AMAZON It’s a print on demand (POD) platform that allows anyone to sell Merch on Amazon by simply uploading a design.  The program has expanded from just t-shirts to an entire line of clothing including standard and premium tees, long sleeve shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies. The Merch by Amazon program launched at the end of 2015. This program was originally designed to help App developers monetize their Apps.

4. The way the entire program works is simple. • Once you have an account, you upload your art onto the platform. • From there, you pick what product you want to sell. • Once you have uploaded your design onto the product type, pick which colors look best on that product • Give it a price and a title • Publish it on Amazon

5. From there, your product is now live and searchable on the Amazon platform. Youearn money via a royalty for every product that is purchased on Amazon.Merch by Amazon used to be open to everyone. As the program got more popular, they had to turn the system into invite only where you had to apply for an account.But applications are being approved within a few days up to a week or so. Keep in mind that as the program grows, Amazon needs to build more facilities to store all the printers that run 24/7 to print our designs.

6. 02. HOW TO APPLY FOR MERCH BY AMAZON Signing up for Merch by Amazon is a very easy process. — it should take you no more than 10 minutes to go through the application process.

7. Step 1: Gather the following information to sign up: • Business contact information • Bank account and routing numbers • Social security number or other tax identification number • Step 2: Request an Invitation. • Step 3: Sign in to your Amazon account. It can be your buyers account, your sellers account, or a brand new account that you created specifically for Merch by Amazon. • Step 4: Begin the application. It will ask you to fill out your company profile, banking information, and then take a quick tax survey.

8. Step 5: Take the tax questionnaire. If you’re not from the USA, Merch by Amazon may withhold up to 30% of profits for tax withholding. Step 6: complete the request invitation form. Now that you have all your contact and tax information out of the way, you simply need to complete the request invitation form. If you don’t have a company set up for Merch by Amazon (you probably don’t), then just use your first and last name. Make sure that all the details you put in here are your REAL contact information.

9. How to Complete the Merch by Amazon Request Invitation Form: There are 3 sections you need to fill out for a completed invitation form. Industry Type: The drop down menu has a few options for you to choose from. If you have filled out the application with your personal name, I would recommend picking a novelty T-Shirt business. If you used a company name, simply pick small business in the drop down. Organization Name: This is where you will enter your business name of your personal name. Additional Information: You want to include all the relevant information that helps you stand out from the other applicants 

10. 03. HOW TO GET ACCEPTED INTO MERCH BY AMAZON You want to give Amazon as much information as possible for them to accept your invitation. You don’t need to be a graphic designer. Just be as transparent as possible to help them know you’re a serious seller.

11. Here’s the best way to make sure your application is selected: • If you have print on demand experience, link to other designs you have up on different websites. • Link to your personal website. Amazon loves when people sold on other platforms or have an audience. • Explain how you will promote and sell to Amazon’s audience and customers? • Create 5-10 original designs to show on your application • Include trademarks you may own. • Licenses to art you may have • Remember, none of this is NEEDED to get accepted to the program, it just gives you a head start and a better chance. 

12. For more information about editing slides, please read our FAQs: https://slidesgo.com/faqs Design Outsourcing Companies We Recommend: Redbubble Teespring Zazzle TeePublic Spreadshirt Instructions for use

13. WHAT ARE THE MERCH BY AMAZON TIER LEVELS? Once you have made 10 sales and have filled up the majority of your slots, you get tiered up. Tiering up allows you to upload more designs per day, as well as increase the total number of designs live for sale on Amazon. For example: Tier 1 = 10 designs,Tier 2= 25 designs,Tier 3=100 designs and so on. This means that you can put up 10 designs total on the system before you will not be able to upload any more.

14. CREATING YOUR FIRST T-SHIRT DESIGN • The create page is where you will want to go when you have some designs you want to upload. You can use software like Photoshop, Illustrator or GIMP to create designs. • These are the design requirements for Merch by Amazon: • 15″W x 18″H with transparent background • 300 ppi (i.e. 4500 x 5400 pixels) • Export artboard as an sRGB • File must be less than 25MB

15. MANAGING YOUR MERCH BY AMAZON INVENTORY The manage tab is where you will be able to keep track of all the t-shirts you have up on Amazon. This will tell you which ones are “Live”, as well as what the design is that you have uploaded. It will give you information such as what date you uploaded the design, what price you attached to the product, the status, and then any actions you may want to do such as editing or deleting a product.

16. ANALYZING YOUR SALES STATS Once you have a few products up on Amazon that start selling well, you’ll be navigating to the “Analyze” tab from the Dashboard a lot! This will show you what products sold, on what days, and at what price. It will also let you see what kind of royalty you are getting paid.

17. LEARNING RESOURCES At the very top of the page, you will see the resources tab. This is probably the most important tab out of everything you will see in the dashboard. Why you might ask? Because this is where the content policy and best practices documents can be found! You will want to make sure you read over all the information. It can get pretty dry but it’s VERY important to your long-term success in the program. 

18. Understanding Copyrights/Trademarks There are 2 crucial aspects you must understand.Amazon BSR (Best Sellers Rank), and Copyright/Trademark. Copyright and trademark are terms you may have heard before but have no idea what they are. Both copyright and trademark are intellectual property protection but they protect different types of assets. Copyright protects mostly literary and artistic materials and works, whereas a trademark protects names, slogans, logos and company brands.

19. Understanding Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR) Amazon shows you how well each product on their site is selling through a metric called BSR. A number is assigned to each product relative to the number of sales that item is receiving in a particular category. This number fluctuates based on how other products are selling in that same category, so BSR moves up and down according to sales volume.  Every Merch by Amazon listing is put into the Clothing category. After selling in this category for a number of years, you start to learn how BSR equates to sales.

20. TWO WAYS TO RESEARCH NICHES (INCREASING YOUR CHANCE OF SUCCESS) This is THE most important step for selling on the Merch by Amazon platform. Once you are familiar with BSR and copyright/trademark, it is crucial that you master this. You MUST do your research properly or your chances to succeed are slim to none.

21. METHOD 1: RESEARCHING NICHES BY KEYWORDS Always remember that niches inspired by passion are the absolute best sellers and place you want to be. What might be a passion for you may not be a passion for others though. Always remember that to succeed in this type of business, you need to be providing what a customer wants, NOT what you want. This process is probably one of the most time consuming and boring aspects of research, but it is important that you get a full view of a niche before you make a decision.

22. Creative Process Icons STEPS TO RESEARCH • Come up with 20 different categories or niches that you think people might be interested in. • Open those up category pages up on Amazon. • Start going to each page and navigate to the product description in each of the listings. Look for the qualifying BSR range to make sure the shirts are selling. • Ask yourself is, “Can I do better?”. Do you think you can offer this market a better design? • If Yes, add it to your list of products excel sheet for design and creation. • Rinse and Repeat

23. METHOD 2: RESEARCHING NICHES VIA BRANDS What if you’re having a hard time coming up with some initial keywords to actually search on Amazon? This is where I like to do searches by brands. This leverages the research of other people, to tell you where there is money to be made. The way we do this is by looking at brands that are selling well on the platform, and see where else they branched off into. Follow the two research methods with both keyword and brand research. Go through pages and pages of designs until you have a solid foundation of say 100-200 killer niches. If you can repeat this process over and over again, you can eventually get into a steady 5 figures a month as long as the designs you create are good.

24. 04. CREATING DESIGNS & OUTSOURCING Now that you have an idea of how the entire research process works, you now need to get some designs to upload onto the platform. You can either create them yourself, or you can outsource them.

25. EXPANDING YOUR REACH - SCALING UP Merch by Amazon is one of the most straight forward numbers games out there. The more designs you have up on the platform that are well researched and optimized, the more money you will make. The majority of people are not willing to give it a shot, which is better for everyone that does. To scale as quickly as possible, you need to either be able to design yourself (which takes time if you are not already in the know) or you will need to be able to afford to outsource your designs.  At the very beginning I would recommend you do at least 2-3 designs per DAY. Over the course of a month, this equates to around 60-90 designs.

26. WRAPPING UP! If you take the time to go through everything and start, while remaining dedicated, you can leverage the millions and millions of buyers on Amazon to build up a 6 figure clothing company in an incredibly short time span. It really has never been this easy but with this new print on demand platform that many people are still unaware of, now is the time to take advantage of it. Think of this opportunity as being able to start your own E-commerce brand with the force of Amazon behind you.

27. THANKS FORWATCHING! Does anyone have any questions? hello@smbelal.com smbelal.com / xhubho