Origins of Merch by amazon
Amazon Merch on Demand or Merch by Amazon as it is more commonly known, was launched in 2015. The sheer size of the Amazon customer base was coupled with a straightforward user interface.
The generous royalty based payment system meant MBA became the must have account for merch designers.
Early adopters saw high royalties and bulk discount pricing, and many sellers made a financial killing.
Over time, Amazon have reduced royalties and removed bulk discounts.
Merch by Amazon rules are now far stricter than any other mainstream POD platform.
Merch by Amazon Tier System
Amazon introduced the seller tier system to regulate the number of uploads per user. The video game style levels or tiers, rewarded those designers who made more sales.
In its present form, sellers start at Tier 10 and have 10 design slots. To move to Tier 25, you need to fill all 10 slots and make 10 sales. Amazon will then manually review your account for quality and compliance with its rules.
This is repeated in subsequent tiers, so 25 sales in T25 are needed to move to T100. After T100 it is T500 then T1000 and onward up to T200k.
As with everything related to Merch, Amazon is often flexible on these targets based on supply and demand. Sellers can be moved up early or skip tiers like I did going straight to T10k from T2k…Result!
Applying for merch
Originally, accounts were issued by invitation only, but within a couple of years, MBA opened applications to everyone. Applications were strictly vetted for quality as Amazon did not want a influx of sellers overloading their servers with sub-standard designs.
Writing MBA applications became a skill that people were prepared to pay for, but no more.
Applications are at the mercy of an algorithm which regulates entry via location and system capacity.
Your ability to create wonderful art appears to be secondary to supply and demand and validating your identity.
Read this article to improve your chances of being accepted.
So is Amazon Merch on demand still worth it in 2023?
With all these new rules in place you may be asking yourself whether it is worth making an application at all. I admit that I hesitated before I bit the bullet and applied.
As to whether MBA is still worth the time and effort in 2023 and beyond? I can only share my own experiences and let you decide for yourself.
Frustrating Early Days
I applied in June 2021 and was lucky enough to get accepted just a few weeks later. I had already opened a Redbubble account and practiced making some basic designs which meant I had ten designs ready to upload to Merch.
In T10 I had 10 design slots and I could only upload one design to one product per day. This was extremely frustrating and made choosing which design to upload very stressful. If the design got rejected, then that slot was lost for that day. I did check trademarks as much as possible, but I wish I had found the Productor chrome extension at that point. It certainly helps avoid most rejections…though not all of them.
My first sales were made by designing and buying shirts as gifts for my family, which I bought.
This is 100% allowed under current MBA rules.
The three shirts I bought spawned two organic sales which got me halfway to the ten sales I needed to get out of T10.
Unfortunately, things seemed to hit a brick wall after that.
A Welcome Boost
Things took a turn for the better in mid-July as a couple of generic design shirts suddenly started selling.
The Euros soccer tournament was on, and I had uploaded basic England and Italy shirts. I was very careful not to infringe on any trademarks and priced at the minimum price point.
The teams both got to the final and I had sold over 100 shirts by the time England self-destructed in the penalty shoot-out (again).
However, as August came and went there was no sign of me being tiered up to T25. I had made a little money though, as kid’s shirts in the UK do not have VAT applied. This meant even at the minimum price I was making $2.50 a sale…which was nice!
Stuck in Tier 10 Purgatory
Despite having over a hundred sales in July, I found myself marooned in T10. It was very frustrating watching other sellers moving up during the monthly cycles of tier ups..
August and September came and went and I began to have serious doubts if I’d ever get tiered up.
This was definitely the low point of my Merch journey so far, and it would have been easy to just pack it all in.
Luckily for me, I decided to give it another month.
The Best Feeling!
Early in October I checked my account and found that I’d been tiered up to T25. It is hard to describe how I felt at that point as it was a mixture of elation and sheer relief that I could restart my merch journey again.
Sales were still very slow, but I worked on filling my new upload slots, and started to work on new draft designs just in case I got tiered up again in November…little did I know.
Real Progress at Last
In early November I got another tier up to T100. This meant I had 10 uploads per day, and I quickly filled the remaining 75 design slots…just in case. In mid-November I got a bonus tier up to T500 which felt like winning the lottery! I had 50 uploads per day!
Suddenly, in less than a month, I had gone from the bored despair of T10 to the ecstasy of T500.
I got stuck into making Christmas and New Year designs and I started to make more sales. The last quarter of each year (Q4) is the time when Merch sellers make most money each year.
Though I was late to the party as such, I still made over 100 sales in December.
Steady as She Goes!
The new year saw sales drop off as expected, but I was still averaging a sale a day, which wasn’t bad considering over half my designs were based on Christmas, New Year, Halloween, and Thanksgiving and were not selling. It was time to get more evergreen designs uploaded but I needed a tier up to do that.
Onwards and Upwards?
I got my wish in early March and I was now in T1000. It had taken me 8 months to get there and despite pricing very low I had made around $1200. I hit a couple of trends by accident in April and May and that earned me another tier up to T2000. The rest of the Summer was steady but not spectacular and I reached the start of my second Q4 with over 1600 sales and $2200 in profit.
As 2022 was drawing to an end I was feeling positive for the future of my Amazon Merch on Demand business.
Final Thoughts
So, do I think starting MBA was worth it to me? 100% yes.
It has been a roller coaster ride and there have been days when I seriously thought about throwing my computer at the wall. However, making unexpected sales and getting tier ups made it all worthwhile for me.
Would I recommend you start your merch journey right now? Again, 100% yes.
It costs nothing to start, and you need very little time in the early tiers. In fact, it still only takes me around thirty mins a day in T2000 plus a few hours a week coming up with new designs.
If you need money right now, then I’d say that MBA or any other print on demand platform is not the answer.
However, if you want to earn extra cash to top up your salary, student loan or pension, then just go for it!
You can apply for Amazon Merch on Demand here but please read my article on how to have the best chance of being accepted.
Good Luck!
Update
I tiered up to T10k in December 2022 which was just 18 months after I uploaded my first design.
So don’t get discouraged when things are tough. Your hard work will pay off eventually and keep going!
You can follow my Merch by Amazon journey on YouTube.
