A Guide To Starting a T-shirt business with ‘Merch By Amazon’

If you’re interested in starting an online business, then you may be considering a variety of options. A few popular ways to make an income online include building niche sites, eCommerce stores, CPA Marketing, SEO, online courses, etc.

Out of all of these types of businesses, eCommerce is one of the best models simply because of how quick you can start generating an income. Selling t-shirts online is a fantastic way to make money since you don’t have to make the shirts yourself. All you have to focus on is creating the designs and then marketing them.

There are many businesses that offer this type of service. They create the t-shirt for you, do the printing and then send the shirt to your customer. A few popular businesses that currently do so are Teespring, Gearbubble, Etsy etc. However, Amazon recently entered this space in the last year or two and have become the go-to solution for t-shirt sellers.

What is ‘Merch by Amazon’?

Credit: Jonathan Weiss via Shutterstock

Merch by Amazon was launched in 2015 and was initially intended for game makers to create t-shirts for their apps etc.

But this has greatly changed.

This platform is now used by many marketers to build successful and thriving t-shirt businesses. If you’re thinking about starting a t-shirt business, then choose Amazon because it’s a trusted and popular brand all over the world.

In order to make more sales, your customers need to trust you. Most eCommerce stores don’t have this type of trust and as a result, don’t get as many sales as they could. But with Merch by Amazon, your t-shirts would be on Amazon.com. Since people automatically trust this site, they are more likely to buy here than anywhere else.

Why Amazon?

Another reason to use Merch by Amazon to host your t-shirts is that Amazon has the resources to print and sell millions of shirts. This is a multi-billion dollar company. As a result, your customers will never receive a late shipment or have to wonder when they’re going to get their shirt. If you use other companies to create your shirts, you’ll likely to encounter problems which can mean a huge loss in revenue as well customers.

The fact that your t-shirts is on Amazon means that you will receive a lot of natural traffic. Millions of people shop on Amazon every day and your designs will receive organic traffic, without you having to pay for it. This is priceless because if you create an e-commerce store on your own, you will spend a lot of time and money on advertising.

How to start using Merch by Amazon

Now, with that said, we will take a closer look at exactly how to start this type of business.

First of all, you need to decide on what niche you want to create t-shirts for. It is best that you choose a wide niche so that you can create hundreds of designs. So, for example, you can create t-shirts for fishing lovers, people in the armed services, moms, survivalists etc. Once you have decided on a niche, the next step is to start creating designs.

Video Tutorial: Getting approved, T-Shirt Pro Tips & How To Start A T-shirt business on Amazon

1. Create your design

It is critical that you get beautiful and well-done designs, which means that you will have to hire a graphic designer. There are many places where you can source graphic designers for cheap such as on marketplaces like Fiverr, Konker, Upwork etc. It will take awhile to find a good designer, but once you do, you should be able to find one that can create top quality work for less than $25 per design.

Alternatively, you can source graphic designers from countries such as the Philippines and India. You pay them an hourly rate with a minimum number of designs delivered per week. This may actually be cheaper and is a great way to ensure that you have a designer working full time creating designs for your business.

If you are a creative person yourself, then you can design your shirts, so you won’t have to hire a designer.

Video: Step by Step Merch Shirt Creation and Upload by Margaret at Texas Gal Treasures

2. Upload your design

Once you have created the designs, the next step is to upload them on the Merch by Amazon platform. It is critical that you thoroughly read through all of Amazon’s requirements and ensure that your designs fulfill them. Do note that you should not breach any copyrights with your design. If you do, Amazon will take them down and even suspend your account.

When uploading your designs, you should take time to properly fill out the description and copy on the page. SEO should be done so that your t-shirt is optimized for the keywords in its niche. There are many keyword tools that you can use to find suitable keywords. Once you do, be sure to sprinkle them throughout your copy and in the title for your shirt.

3. Market and promote your shirt designs

Once you have uploaded a few designs, the next step is to market them. One of the quickest ways to do so is through paid advertising. You can use Amazon’s paid advertising platform so that your t-shirt is seen by more people. This will inevitably lead to more sales and reviews, which will cause Amazon to list you higher in their own search engine.

4. Consider paid advertising

In addition to advertising on Amazon, you can also buy advertising on Facebook, Google, YouTube etc. You will have to experiment with different traffic sources to find one that works best and leads to the most conversions. Once you do so, concentrate all your efforts on that one traffic source and optimize your ads so that you always make more money than you’re spending.

Lastly, once you have started making money with a few of your designs, you should start making more. Selling t-shirts online is simply a numbers game, so the more successful designs you have, the more money you will make.

In closing, we have just looked at how you can start a t-shirt business with Merch by Amazon. It will take time and a lot of hard work, but once you are persistent, your efforts will pay off.