Hey guys!
Welcome back to another Merch by Amazon income report! If you’ve been following along for any amount of time, you’ll know that I put out merch by Amazon income reports every month to document my journey from the very beginning. My goal is to be as transparent as possible, and to give you a realistic expectation of what you can make if you were to start selling on Merch.
If you’re one of the newest members who signed up to my mailing list (and this month – there was a lot of you!), introduce yourself in the comments below!. if you have any burning questions you want answered, feel free to ask those below too.
I had a great month, making almost $600, and selling just over 100 t-shirts organically on Amazon.
With a little luck, I should have no problem hitting my first $1,000 month in either April or May of this year. The one goal I set for myself on Merch was to have it someday pay my mortgage payment, and I’m getting closer and closer every month. That’s what keeps me going.
Outside of Merch, the last 30 days have been equally as exciting. My son just turned 1 year old, my business Merch Ready Designs had the best month of sales to date, and at my day job, I’ve been promoted to IT Manager! The current IT Manager (my boss), is stepping down and moving out of state after being with the company for 10 years. Not only will I be in a management level position, making critical business decisions on our corporate infrastructure, but I’ll also be managing a small team of IT Support employees. It’s exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time, but mostly exciting.
Despite all that, I’ll still be uploading Merch by Amazon designs every day, I’ll still be writing blog posts here, and I’ll still be running Merch Ready Designs for as long as I can. Exciting stuff all around!
Previous Income Reports
If you haven’t been following along, you should get up to speed by reading the previous income reports first.
Here they are!
Current Month Income Report
Date Range: 3/1/17 – 3/31/2017
Tier Level: 500, 220 live
Shirts Sold: 105
Total Profit: $562.45
Month 7 Recap
As you can see in the screenshot above, I sold almost $2,000 in t-shirt designs this month, and profited $562.45. That’s pretty awesome for a 30-day period.
I went from 96 live designs to 220 designs in the span of one month. While I haven’t quite doubled sales, I’m definitely on the right track to. You also have to remember that the majority of these new designs were uploaded in the last week or two when I could upload 10 per day, and haven’t had a very long time to be active on Amazon.
I can’t think of a single day without sales which is exciting. It’s almost getting to the point where I can log into my merch account and every time I log in – I see a new sale.
I contribute the majority of my success this month to hitting the 500 tier. It’s really had a snowball effect on my sales. I’m no longer rotating out designs or trying to figure out which designs I should upload first. I just upload every single design that I have allocated for that week. Right now, I’m back down to 5 uploads per day,but there was a good two week period where I could upload 10 per day. I was able to upload almost a hundred new designs in that short time.
I love seeing new designs sell. I mean – I love when ANY designs sell, but there’s something special about uploading a design, and a day or two later seeing someone purchase it. That tells me that I did my research correctly, that I wrote quality bullet points, and that I uploaded an awesome design.
Handling Design Removals
A few months ago, Amazon introduced the infamous 60-Day Removal rule. As of March 2017, it’s now a 90-Day removal rule. If I upload a design and it doesn’t sell within 90 days, Amazon will automatically remove the design. They do have a running ticker on your listings, so at the very least you can see which design is pending removal and when.
If looking under your Live tab, here’s what that looks like:
Once a design is removed, it automatically is removed from your Live tab and filtered into your Removed section.
The Removal Rule can be both a blessing and a curse.
One one hand, it’s super useful because it helps reduce the amount of unsold t-shirts on Merch by Amazon. When it comes to doing research on Amazon, this is a blessing in disguise. I no longer have to sift through pages of unsold designs to find a few winners. (Tip: Merch Informer ranks t-shirt designs by lowest BSR first, so you don’t have to sift through page after page to find best-selling designs. Check out my in depth review here!)
On the other hand, I now have a bunch of unsold designs sitting in my inventory.
Don’t forget to create a “Removed Designs” folder on your PC (I’ve got a really great Merch by Amazon organizational guide here, if you haven’t read it!) That way, you can just move the design from your Uploaded folder to your Removed folder and not have it lost in your sea of designs.
I also encourage you to take a more proactive approach and check your Merch reviews when you can too.
Even though Amazon places your design in the Removed tab, it does not preserve any bullet points or descriptions. Some people like to watch their removed designs like a hawk and save any title, bullets, and keywords to a separate spreadsheet, but I don’t. If a design hasn’t sold in 90 days, it’s either a bad design or I need to rewrite my bullets and title.
I take the opportunity to rewrite my listings and a few more targeted keywords into my listings. For instance, instead of saying “fishing t-shirt”, I may say something like “cute deep sea fishing t-shirt”.
Final Thoughts
My plan for April is to max out all 500 slots, which can prove to be challenge as designs are slowly being removed, and Amazon has knocked those of us in the 500 tier down to 5 designs per day. But, I’m staying positive that I’ll get bumped back up to 10 uploads per day.
I apologize for the semi-short post this month, but as you can imagine, transitioning in an IT Manager role at work (and completely taking over in less than 30 days), is no small feat. I’m in charge of finding my replacement, sitting it on meetings, filling my knowledge gaps, and still doing my normal day-to-day tasks and projects.
Merch is a GREAT way to make some passive side income, and I really love everything it’s done for me, but you should never quit your day job for it. Your career should always come first.
So I’ll still be uploading designs as frequently as I can, but I do have to spend the next few months dedicated to this new position. Like I said earlier though, I will always find time to upload designs and keep up with these income reports, and write useful blogs posts. These are things I enjoy doing. Rather than watch TV, I like to fill my time doing something useful such 🙂
Anyway, if you’re new around here, and havea question about anything Merch-related, let me know in the comments below!
Happy merching!
Get some t-shirt idea inspiration below!