I’m back from vacation and ready to finish these income reports and get back to work. Amazon Merch on Demand is the second form of passive income I want to focus on. This one is a little tricky and you’ll see why below.
What is Amazon Merch on Demand?
Amazon Merch on Demand is a way of selling t-shirts and other on-demand products on Amazon. How it works is that you apply to the program through Amazon. Once approved, you can upload your design and place it on t-shirts, bags, pillows, etc. Amazon will do the selling and shipping of the products.
Amazon Merch on Demand is Difficult
The problem with Merch on Demand is that it is not only hard to get approved but you are only allowed to upload a set number of designs at a time. For example, if you can managed to get approved, you’ll get placed in Tier 10. This means that you are only allowed to upload and sell 10 designs. Once you have sold 10 products, then you’ll get moved up to Tier 25 and can now upload 25 designs. After you sell 25 products, you’ll get moved to Tier 50 and can now upload 50 designs. And so on. As you get into the higher tiers, it gets more difficult to move up. I’ve been in Tier 500 for the past year but have only sold 272 products. At my current rate, it will take at least another year to tier up. I’m maxed out on designs uploaded so I can’t upload more designs to try to find a big seller. The only things I can do now are delete older designs and replace them with new ones or do more advertising.
Overall Goal with Amazon Merch on Demand
I would absolutely love to be making tens of thousands of dollars a month with MOD but that’s impossible if you are in a lower tier. My overall, more realistic goal, is to make $1500 a month. In order to do that, I’ll need to get better at niche research, keyword research and marketing. I’ll also need to be at least tier 1,000 or higher.
April 2024 Income Report
In April 2024, I made $50.13 with 11 sales and 2 returns on Amazon Merch on Demand. I have 500 designs uploaded to 7,655 products. I only sold two products in April – Standard T-shirt (10 sales) and V-neck T-shirt (1 sale). Even though many of my designs are uploaded to other countries, I only sold in the USA.
I also spent money on advertising in April. I spent $15.49 on advertising but I made no sales from the ads. That sounds really bad and it is but, overall, I still made a profit in April.
Total Amazon Merch on Demand Income for April 2024: $34.64
Previous Month’s Earnings
March 2024: $62.31
February 2024: $54.95
January 2024: $14.23
What Did I Do In April?
Nothing. I didn’t do anything in April. Since I’m stuck in T500, there’s not much I can do. As you’ll see below, I’m going to start replacing my old designs with new designs to see if that will boost sales.
Goals for May 2024
- Research & create 5 new designs
- Replace 5 old designs with the 5 new designs
- Develop a social media marketing strategy (I’ll make a post on here outlining the new strategy)
I think these three goals are a good start towards building my Merch on Demand income. I need more designs that will sell so I think that replacing the old designs that aren’t selling with newer designs that are in better niches will help a lot. I also need to start marketing my designs in order to get them to sell. Amazon is over-saturated so it’s hard to get new designs in the eyes of the buyers. I can either dramatically increase my advertising budget which will eat into my profits or I can learn to advertise for free on social media. I’m going to focus on the second one for now. As for monetary goals for May, I would love to make more in May than I did in April but, so far, it’s not looking good (as of May 18, advertising spend is up and sales are down). I’m just going to focus on hitting the three goals I set this month and I’m hoping that it will set me up for a big Q4.
