Merch News and My T-Shirt Designs
My Newest Design
I recently added a dog breed design that is made for the holidays, with its wreath and Christmas colors. It is a fun watercolor style that highlights fans of the Vizsla dog breed.
The "Faith" tshirt remains live because it made one sale. This is the criteria for designs to have longevity on Amazon Merch. Then, I bought one for myself- got many compliments on the shirt and people really liked the design. I will say it runs slightly small, so order one size up unless you like a slim fit. The length was really nice, and I liked the overall quality.
Details About Merch by Amazon
we are limiting the number of t-shirts a content creator can make based on tiers of designs.
The Merch by Amazon team will be hand-selecting content creators who have sold the same amount of t-shirts as the number of the tier they are in. For example: to move up from the 10 tier, a content creator will need to sell at least 10 shirts from those they have created to move up to the 25 tier.
Admission to these tiers are based not only on sales, but the quality of the products being sold by the content creator as well.
Tier levels include:
10
25
100
500
Pro (by invitation)
Learning Curve
I have to confess that Merch by Amazon has a big learning curve when it comes to creating on the site. Now that many changes have been made to the system, it is frustrating to have a short timeline to sell designs and then have them removed.
If a design does not sell, it is removed. It cannot be automatically renewed, and there is a limit to the number of designs that can be uploaded each day.
Rules For Merch Designs
Read about the content guidelines, here.
These are not unreasonable restrictions, but quite different from other sites like Zazzle or Redbubble, etc.
Comparing Merch with Other Similar Sites
I have worked on Zazzle since 2011, and that site had a similar slow start for me. It produces regular, if not large, pocket money now. I expect that Redbubble and Merch are similar. From others comments some of them have greater success on Redbubble and all who comment on their stores say that each one differs and it is helpful to diversify.
Producing content for each POD type of store is different. In Amazon Merch each product is produced individually, from the upload to writing the descriptions and tagwords to the publishing. Zazzle, while now similar in that they encourage single rather than batch operations of publishing, have the transfer feature. This helps reduce time. Redbubble and Society6 automate the designs to their products, after which it is wise to size and edit each one to look good on that particular one.
I will report on the comparisons in a more definitive way in about a year. I think that is enough time to observe sales and see the trend.
What are your experiences? Do you like one site better than another for making sales? Which one is best for your designs and style?
