- Hey, friends.
So as my subscribers know,
there are two things in life that I am obsessed with.
The first thing is to make sure
that I do not forget to thank everybody
that takes the moment of their very busy day
to give my videos alike and to subscribe,
because seriously, every time you do that,
it genuinely supports me.
So thank you so much to everyone
that takes a moment to do so.
But the second thing, of course,
that I am absolutely obsessed with
is earning money for doing absolutely nothing.
Yes, it is true, as my subscribers know,
I am absolutely obsessed with passive income sources
and creating them, and I myself have several,
and you can learn more about them by watching this video,
"How I Earn $1,000 a Day Passively."
So I thought, why not do a fun little experiment today
and see if I can create a new passive income source,
but this time with Amazon?
Yep, because you see, here's the deal.
If you head on over to Fiverr,
you'll find that there are plenty of gigs out there
promising you that they will make you money with Amazon.
So I decided to do this experiment and put them to the test.
Could I really hire people on Fiverr
to earn me passive income with Amazon?
But, of course,
before I reveal the results of that experiment,
I should probably explain just how
we are gonna be earning money with Amazon,
because you see, here's the thing, right?
Most people think that the only way
to make money with Amazon is to become a seller on here
and sell products through the Amazon FBA program,
but actually, Amazon has tons of ways to make money
through the website and services, too.
So, for example, one way that you can make money on Amazon
is by writing an ebook and listing it
on the Amazon Kindle Marketplace,
and every time someone reads your ebook,
you passively earn Kindle commissions.
And another way that you can make money with Amazon,
actually, is through becoming
what's called an Amazon Mechanical Turk worker.
You register, and then you can complete small, easy tasks,
such as verifying company address information,
rating the search engine results,
and resizing pictures in exchange for cash.
A lot of people use this to make money on the side.
But today, we are gonna be looking at a different way
to make money through Amazon,
and that is with their print-on-demand service,
Merch by Amazon.
Using the Merch by Amazon service,
anyone can sell made-to-order merchandise,
such as T-shirts, hoodies, and even PopSockets,
and make money doing so for free.
The way that it works is super simple.
You simply register for an account,
and once Amazon has approved and accepted it,
you can then upload either a picture or a slogan
and choose which products you'd like to sell it
on with standard T-shirts easily being the biggest sellers.
You pick which color T-shirts you like
and think it looks good on,
and you set a product price,
Amazon will then store a digital copy
of your product in its database, and after that,
you create a product page for your new merch,
you give your item a name, a description with bullet points,
and then you save it.
And Amazon will create a product page for you
with your new T-shirt inside of its website
once they've looked over your T-shirt design
and approved it, which usually takes one to two days.
And so now, when customers are browsing through Amazon
and looking for a T-shirt for their friend
that is a plane and aviation geek,
they can find your new T-shirt
when they're browsing through Amazon
and just searching for an aviation geek T-shirt
for their friend because your product page
has related keywords in it,
so you don't have to market your T-shirt,
because Amazon markets it for you,
which means that you get to take advantage
of the billions of customers
that are coming to Amazon every month,
looking for products to buy.
And the cool thing is that when someone does come and, say,
buy this T-shirt from you, you don't have to do anything.
Nope, because Amazon takes care of everything for you.
Amazon will see the order and go, yep, let's make it.
One of their merchandise-printing factories
will then print the design you uploaded onto a T-shirt
and then package the T-shirt up
and ship it out to the customer,
all automatically, all done on autopilot.
In the industry, we call this service print-on-demand
because that's literally what it is.
Amazon prints T-shirts on-demand as customers order them,
and after they do, they'll pay you a portion
of the profit of the sale as a commission,
which they pay straight to your bank account.
And by the way, if you're watching this video
and you'd like to learn even more
about setting up a print-on-demand business,
you should be sure to download my free ebook,
"The 6 Steps that 6-Figure Online Stores Follow
to Make Over $10,000 a Month,"
and you'll find the link to download my free ebook
in the video description below.
But anyway, back to the video.
And as you can see, if you set up a print-on-demand business
like this, once you've got a popular item selling,
it can make you money passively, hands-off.
And a great example of somebody doing this right now
is this T-shirt here.
This is being sold through Amazon's Merch platform,
and customers love it.
I've installed a Chrome extension called Jungle Scout,
which tracks and estimate sales for products on Amazon,
and using this, we can say that it's getting between 10
to 20 sales a day on average,
with Jungle Scout estimating that it's made 539 sales
in the past 30 days, which is $9,675.
Well, like a T-shirt here has a royalty profit margin of 20%,
that means the creator of this T-shirt
has made roughly $1,935 passively this month,
just from effectively uploading this picture to Amazon
so that they can print it onto T-shirts,
which is pretty neat.
And so, of course,
I can imagine a bunch of you are thinking,
well, gee, Sarah,
why is it that this T-shirt sold so well?
Well, my friend, it is for three major reasons.
The first reason is because of the T-shirt niche.
So you can see that this T-shirt here targets two niches,
the birthday niche, and the video game niche.
Video game birthday parties are popular,
and a lot of mothers like to dress up
in the theme of their children's parties.
Most likely when this T-shirt was first launched,
it was either the first or one of the first
to target the specific, yet popular, cross-niche,
and so it filled a gap in the marketplace
by creating a fun-looking design, which, of course,
leads onto the second major reason why it's sold so well,
because it's a genuinely cool, fun-looking T-shirt design
that fits its purpose very well.
And the third reason is that,
thanks to the optimized choice of title,
bullet points, and description
that the T-shirt creator chose
that contains related keywords to the T-shirt niche
and theme, and so this T-shirt now shows up near the top
of search results for related search phrases,
and so people can easily find it and buy it.
So, as you can see, if you get these three things right,
it's a winning combination.
But, of course, I can imagine
a lot of you are watching at home thinking,
well, gee, Sarah, that's great and all,
but how can I get these three key things right
with minimal effort?
And, ah, my lazy friends, ah,
that is exactly why we are checking out Fiverr today,
because on Fiverr, there are gigs like this
that promise to do all three things of these for you.
They promise to do research and identify good niches
to design T-shirts in, and they promise to then come up
with the design ideas themselves and create them,
and for some, they even promise
to write your product page, title, description,
and bullet points to maximize sales, traffic,
and conversions.
Basically, it's a business in a box.
They give you everything,
and you just plug it into Amazon, and then you make money,
or at least that's how it's supposed to work.
So let's find out if it does actually work.
For this experiment, I have ordered 100 different designs,
and I've uploaded them to Amazon
following the instructions as closely as I can
that the Fiverr sellers gave me.
And I'm gonna see if it actually makes us money.
So I'll also be showing you how Merch by Amazon works
and how you can use it
if you'd like to start your own Amazon Merch business, too.
But yes, to start off the experiment,
I came to Fiverr and I did a search
for highly-rated Fiverr gigs
with at least a 4.9 out of 5-star rating
that create T-shirts for the Merch by Amazon program,
and I made sure to only select gigs
where they did the product research for you
to find those important gaps in the market,
that as I've said,
are key to making money on Amazon, and also where possible,
I made sure to purchase any additional add-ons to my gigs,
where the Fiverr seller would create the product title,
description, and bullet points for me.
The first gig I ordered had over 150 reviews
and an average five-star rating.
It costs $50 and I got these 10 T-shirts here,
with no optimized listing included.
The next gig I ordered had over 100 reviews
and average five-star rating.
It cost $60 US, and I got these five T-shirts here,
with no optimized listing included.
The third gig I ordered had over 100 reviews
and an average 4.9-star rating.
It cost me $80, and I got these 10 T-shirts here,
along with an optimized product listing
to use for each of the different T-shirts
that included a product title, page bullet points,
and description.
After that, I ordered this gig here
that had nearly 300 reviews with an average 4.9-star rating.
It costs me $50, and it came with these 20 T-shirts
and no optimized listings.
I then ordered this gig,
which this time had over 400 reviews and a 4.9-star rating.
For $100, I got these 20 different T-shirt designs
and their optimized listings.
And then after that, I ordered from a gig
that this time had over 1,000 reviews...
Wow...
with an average five-out-of-five-star rating as well.
I paid $60, and I got these 10 T-shirts.
Included in the order was also a spreadsheet
that had optimized listings for each T-shirt.
And I also ordered these 10 T-shirts for $45
from a gig with over 300 reviews and a 4.9-star rating.
He didn't include mock-up photos,
and so these were the basic design files,
and something that was actually especially helpful
with this gig
was that he gave me a generic optimized Amazon listing
that you could just plug different keywords into.
So I actually ended up using a slightly modified version
of this when I was uploading T-shirts
that didn't come with an optimized description
or bullet points.
But in addition to this,
I decided to shake things up a little bit,
because while by far the most popular items with customers
are the standard T-shirts,
they do have other products you can make, too.
So I thought, why not make this experiment
a bit more interesting by selling something else?
And I spent $25 to order 25 different PopSocket designs
from a gig with over 100 reviews
and an average five-star rating.
In total, I spent $460 on all of my Fiverr products,
which when you add in Fiverr processing fees,
came to just over $500 US.
Now, you see, here's the thing you have to understand
about the Merch by Amazon program.
When you first register and create an account with them,
you can't just come in
and upload 100 different T-shirts or products.
Nope.
Amazon places two limits on your account.
First, they limit how many products you can upload each day.
They started me off with just two products a day.
In addition to that,
they also limit how many products you can sell in total.
Everyone right now starts off with a limit of 10.
In time, as you sell more and more products,
your limits will increase.
So you will go from tier one to tier two,
which lets you upload 25 products,
and then you'll go from tier two to tier three,
which lets you upload 100 products,
and then you'll go from tier three to tier four,
which lets you upload 500 products,
and then you go from tier four to tier five,
which leads to upload 1,000 products,
and then you'll go from tier five to tier six,
which leads to upload 2,000 products,
and then you'll go from tier six to tier seven,
which will let you upload 4,000 products,
and then you can go from tier seven to tier eight,
which will let you upload a maximum of 8,000 products.
But here's the thing, right?
To move between the tiers,
you have to sell an equal number of products to your tier.
So if you want to move from tier seven to tier eight,
you have to sell 4,000 products.
Getting to tier eight in time for this video to be filmed
and edited seemed a little daunting,
but to give this experiment a fair go,
I decided I had to do everything I could to hit tier three
and upload at least 100 different products
to see how many I could sell.
And here's how you go through and upload a product.
You start off by uploading a picture,
and then you go and select which product you'd like to sell.
Each of these counts as a single product,
including each international marketplace,
so if you've selected to upload a standard T-shirt
on both amazon.com USA
and amazon.co.uk for the United Kingdom,
that'll be two products, not one.
So when most people start out,
they only upload their designs
onto standard T-shirts in the USA,
as these are the most popular item overall
and sell the best.
And after that, you then just go into each one
and choose which product colors you would like for it
and choose your price.
Now, when I uploaded mine, I stuck to a very low price,
and that's because most Merch by Amazon coaches
will tell you to start with a very low price
to encourage as many sales as possible
so that you can move up the tiers faster.
I also selected dark T-shirt colors,
and here are the colors.
You can choose up to 10 colors.
When you do, prioritize the heather colors
like dark heather, heather navy, and heather gray,
and darker colors such as black.
That's because heather colors and dark colors such as black
and dark heather sells the best.
I know that through my own experience of selling clothing
in my print-on-demand business
and also because marketing studies are done,
showing which color clothing sells the best.
By far, black T-shirts are easily the biggest seller
and make up the majority of sales,
and that is why by default,
Amazon actually selects black as the standard default color.
They do this to encourage you to create a design
that will look good on a black T-shirt
since they know that it sells the best.
And so once you've gone in and edited
and uploaded the design that you want to sell,
you create a product listing for it by giving it a title,
a brand name, bullet points, and a description.
The bullet points and description are optional to add,
but it's highly recommended that you do create one.
The brand name can be anything.
Amazon will just create a page for your brand name,
listing all the products you upload and sell under it.
Now, for this experiment, as I said, wherever I could,
I just used the information that the Fiverr gig gave me.
So for this shirt here, they provided me
with what they believed to be an optimized page title,
bullet points, and description.
I found it very interesting
that they used a string of keywords for the title
rather than use a T-shirt slogan or something like that.
Some Fiverr sellers used a slogan.
Others used a string of related keywords instead
to maximize the chance of my T-shirts showing up
for as many search phrases as possible.
I also found that some Fiverr sellers made their titles
way too long and I had to shorten them myself
because they didn't fit, which is something to keep in mind
if you do choose to use one of these services.
But, yeah, this seller just had a spreadsheet
that contained a title and two bullet points per design,
so I just copied and pasted them.
But yeah, because I was just plugging in information
that the Fiverr seller gave me
and I was just copying and pasting it,
uploading this T-shirt was super duper quick.
So I uploaded my first two designs,
and I hit my daily upload limit.
And then I came back each day
and just uploaded more and more designs
until I had hit my 10 overall product limit.
And the result?
Well, I made no sales.
Bummer.
And actually, it was even more of a bummer,
because for me to be able to carry on with this experiment,
I needed to move from tier one to tier two,
which meant that I needed to sell 20 T-shirts,
but I didn't have time to wait around for that to happen,
and so I had to cheat and just go-ahead
and buy 10 of my own T-shirts and donate them.
And, you know what? It worked.
The day after I bought my 10 T-shirts,
my account instantly moved from tier one to tier two,
and I had a higher daily upload.
I could now add up to five products a day.
And so I decided to shake things up a bit,
and since the T-shirts didn't work out for me,
this time, upload the PopSocket designs
until I hit my 25-product limit.
And the result?
Well, one of my PopSockets got banned.
Yep, I got this lovely letter telling me
that this PopSocket I uploaded
was breaking copyright and trademark laws.
When I saw this, I suspected it got rejected
because the phrase "Cowgirl,"
which was being used in the title
tripped the trademark filter.
So I resubmitted the PopSocket,
but this time removed the phrase "Cowgirl"
from the title.
And the result?
Well, it actually got accepted.
So yeah, the next day, Amazon looked over my submission
and they accepted it, and it went live.
Sadly, though, this really didn't help me,
because still, nobody bought anything I had uploaded.
And that was a real problem, because again,
I'd hit my product limit
and I had promised that for this experiment,
I would upload at least 100 different designs
to give it a fair shot, and so I just cheated again
and bought more of my own T-shirt and donated them.
And it worked.
The next day, I woke up and saw that I had moved
from tier two to tier three with a shiny new product limit
of 100 products.
And so each day,
I came back and uploaded another five products
until I hit my 100-product limit.
And the result?
Well, while I was finishing uploading
the rest of my designs,
another four items got banned for copyright
and trademark infringement and they were these designs.
Some of these, I could try and get the reason
why they got banned.
For others, I genuinely had no idea why they got banned.
But you know what?
It never seemed to impact my account.
Amazon never penalized me or punished me
or banned my account.
They just rejected the designs.
And this was actually a big reason
why I had purchased a bit more than 100 designs
because I did expect some to probably get banned.
But yes, I eventually got to 100 products uploaded
and accepted by Amazon,
and so after that, after all that, what was the result after all that?
Did I make any money?
Well, I actually did make a sale.
Seeing the sale coming through
while I was doing this experiment was so fun.
It was one of those, ah, look,
it does actually work for a tenner.
People do indeed buy Amazon Merch T-shirts.
It was this design here that sold.
It was for a black two-weeks-out T-shirt.
And because I know a lot of people will ask
in the comment section
about which Fiverr gig made this, it was this gig here.
So I'll have a link to it in the video description below
if you'd like to go take a look and check it out.
The gig didn't include an optimized product page,
just the design, and so the title, description,
and bullet points that you can see that I included
were based on the generic template
that this gig here gave me.
So I'll include the link to this as well.
So obviously, when you compare the amount of money
that I spent on Fiverr gigs
versus the money that I made from selling a T-shirt,
I did not make my money back on this experiment.
But I still consider it extremely valuable
because I learned a lot
about why some Amazon T-shirts sell super well
and others don't sell as well.
The product page was clearly optimized enough
to pull in traffic and buyers,
and the design of the T-shirt was engaging and cool enough
that somebody actually handed over their money
and bought it.
But the truth is, is that it was just a copy of a design
that's already popular and has already been copied
by other designers multiple times.
So I think that the way that these Fiverr gigs
can pump out 20 designs in four days
are they just copy a lot of previously popular designs
to minimize product research time.
However, as T-shirts like this show,
the key to true success isn't in copying;
it's an innovating by finding gaps in the marketplace
and filling them with new shirt designs,
either through your own skills
or by hiring proven artists that create designs
that customers love,
so I highly recommend that if you plan to do this,
to come up with those unique ideas yourself
and use freelancers to help turn your ideas into a reality,
if like me, you aren't an artist or graphic designer
to create these cool, engaging designs that sell,
just like this shirt did.
So, did my video teach you something new?
If it did, please hit Subscribe,
click that little notification bell,
so you don't miss out on any of my videos,
and if you'd like to learn more
about how I run my print-on-demand business,
you should be sure to watch my video,
"Five Income Sources that I Built-in My Twenties
that Makes Me Over $1,000 a Day."
So go ahead, watch my next video,
and I'll see you over there.
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