The Basics of Merch by Amazon

© RJ Martinez 2021
Introduction
When it comes to Print on Demand there is a lot of content out there and tons of fancy stuff.
But it really comes down to only a few basics that should be mastered before starting off with
all the crazy stuff. In this E-Book I go through all basics and steps to take to do really well in
the Print on Demand business.
An important rule to consider when starting with the Print on Demand business is to always
be consistent. You won't make tons of sales from the very start. But if you consistently
upload designs, you will get the snowball rolling, start making sales regularly and build up
more and more designs that sell.

Niche Research
The most important choice to make is whether you want to design for evergreen niches or
for trends. An example for an evergreen niche would be hiking. A niche you can sell in all
year no matter what year or season. A classic trend niche would be the 4th of July or Cinco
de Mayo. The designs there can only be sold on a set event or holiday.
When researching niches, the most important part is to not go into niches with insane
competition. Rather go for sub niches or cross different niches. One example for that would
be the anime niche. It is probably one of the biggest niches on amazon merch. So, it’s hard
to get sales in this huge niche because everyone wants a piece of the cake for themselves
so many people upload designs for the niche, so it becomes oversaturated. Instead, you
should look for sub-niches like “anime for teenage girls” or cross-niches such as “girl who
loves anime cats and ice cream”. You will have a much more specific target audience and
less competition.
The second thing that is really important is diving deep into your niche. That's why I also
recommend not working in too many niches at the very start. Start to surround yourself with
the niche you want to work in. Join Facebook groups about the niche. Analyze the niches
meticulously so you get an idea of what's selling and what isn’t selling. And definitely read
posts and comments about your niche on Pinterest and Facebook. There can be some
hidden gems when it comes to design ideas. Whenever you see a funny quote in the
comments of a post check if someone has done it before on merch, if yes and the
competition is not too high also create a design for it and if not it’s even better because you
might be the first to jump onto an upcoming trend. Surrounding yourself with your niche is
the way to create shirts that sell consistently and build a passive income for you.
To kind of skip the last step you can also start off with a niche you already know. So design
for your hobbies and interests. You will know the niches already and have experience in
what customers might like.

Trademark Check

When it comes to Print on Demand you have to make sure you don’t violate any
Trademarks. It’s really important because infringing Trademarks can put your Print on
Demand accounts at risk. When you violate Trademarks too often you can also lose your
merch by amazon account which is probably the worst thing that can happen to you if you’re
serious about the Print on Demand business.
If you are still in Tier 10 amazon tolerates very little mistakes when it comes to trademarks,
so you should be especially careful there.
To check trademarks I recommend downloading the Productor for Merch by Amazon. It’s a
100% free google chrome extension that helps you check trademarks.

In this image you can see the 2 buttons in green and red. When everything is perfectly fine
with the Trademarks the button is colored green. When you have to check some trademarks
It's colored red.
You can see that the chrome extension marked some words in orange and some word
combinations in red. These are words or word combinations that are trademarked, therefore
you should do some more research into whether you can use the words/word combinations
in your listing or not. When clicking on one of the marked words the productor opens up this
window:

By clicking on one of the Serial Numbers you can find more information about the
Trademarks but there are some general rules.
First of all, you have to check if the classes even concern your products. In the bottom left
corner of the pop-up window, you can see which classification applies to which kind of
product.
Also, if there are single words you should be ok as long as they are everyday speech.
When it comes to 2-word combinations you have to assess the situation a little bit more
precisely and look over the actual Trademark, but word combinations like “for a” like in the
example should be no problem because they are just fill words.
All word combinations of 3 words or more should be instantly deleted because amazon
usually rejects them so don’t even try to upload them.
If you are unsure with any trademarks, then always consider to rather be too cautious than
too risk-taking.
Another way to check Trademarks is the Merch by Amazon Trademark Protection by Merch
Informer. For that extension you need a Merch Informer Account. You can get your free trial
>>HERE<< and with my code “RJ20” you’ll get 20% off your subscription. With the
Trademark Checker by Merch Informer, you can also set up trademark alerts to be notified
every time a new Trademark could put some of your listings at risk. So, when you start to
build up a certain number of listings, I would definitely recommend using the Merch Informer
Trademark Check.

Design Creation
When you found your niche and quote you have to create the design itself. There are 2
options for that. You can work with a graphic program like Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop
or with the Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo. The second option is using an online tool like
the one from Merch Informer.
For the design itself there are some general rules you should follow. The most important
thing is that your design style fits your niche. There can be huge differences in design style
in different niches.
Here you can see that the difference in the style of design is really big if you compare the
Anime and the Hunting Niche. When you create your designs for a certain niche then look
what style-elements the top sellers of the niche all have in common, and you should adapt
them for your design. For example, you could use a distressed effect for your design in the
hunting niche if you wanted to create one.
It’s also important that your design truly looks like a unit and a self-contained entity instead
of different elements that were put together.

As you can see in these 2 examples. In the first example you can see you could draw an
imaginary rectangle around the design, and it would fit perfectly within. However, on the
second design there are weird free spaces next to the “Anime”. Things like that you should
avoid.
Another important point is that the most important words are the ones that are the biggest
because the customer will notice them first. So, in the example above it’s done very well.
“Anime” is the biggest word, and the customer will notice it first. It instantly signals who the
design was made for and therefore it catches the customers eye, and they will be more likely
to click on the listing.
Also don’t overcomplicate your designs. Simple sells. As you can see in the example above
there are not many different design elements or fonts. Stick to a few colors, fonts and design
elements.

Keyword Research
When you are researching keywords, your goal should be to find low competition keywords,
so your designs don’t drown in the sheer mass of products. One way to do that is by
implementing long tail keywords into your listings. Long tail keywords are keywords that
consist of more than one or two words. So instead of “dog shirt” a long tail keyword would be
“funny English bulldog shirts for women”. By using long tail keywords, you are able to specify
your target audience for your product and also lower your competition. For example: The
keyword “dog shirts” has 9,000 search results on amazon while “funny english bulldog shirts
for women” has only 3,000 results. So, by this simple strategy you now also are listed on a
keyword with only ⅓ of the competition.
The simplest way to find these long tail keywords is just playing around with the amazon
search bar and checking the number of results. The lower the better. However, there should
also be some products that actually make sales or else the keywords just have 0 traffic.
Another way is to use the Amazon Suggestion Expander, a free google chrome extension
which helps you to find more long tail keywords.

When you type in a keyword into the amazon search bar the extension expands the search
suggestions, and you can see many long tail keywords you can use in your listing to make it
more visible to your target audience. However, you should only use keywords that are
actually relevant to your buyers.

Product Pricing
When it comes to product pricing it’s really up to you. From my experience the lower the
price goes the more sales are made on a product. So I would recommend to start pricing T-
Shirts at around 14.99$ when you are in lower Tiers so you can focus on quantity of sales
and getting yourself through the lower tier levels. When you made sales on your shirts or
reached a higher tier level you can start pricing at 19.99$ to also get money in for your
designs. But it can certainly help to start off with lower prices to get your shirts ranked.

More Content on Print on Demand

If you want more content on Print on Demand from me to get the best knowledge out there
you should check out my Instagram, YouTube and Blog. Also, by getting this E-Book for free
you are automatically subscribed to my exclusive E-Mail Newsletter, so make sure to check
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Demand but also with which mindset the business should be approached.