PoD 1.2

So now I’m setting up Amazon Merch, I’ve created a few new designs in the correct size and saved them out as PNGs with transparent backgrounds. One thing I have noticed is that the interface to Merch is very simple and offers no editing facilities at all unlike Cafepress etc. The 4500px x 5400px is large and so is the area on the T-shirt so you often need to make small designs on a large template, this is where the transparency of PNG comes in handy. You can leave a lot of the area not needed as transparent and place the main design where you like in that area, so it takes a little experimentation sometimes and a bit more time but it works in the end

This is one area where I hope the the POD sites will improve, its often very hard to tell if your design fit well on the object, especially the larger ones like the shower curtains I do on CafePress, I also do a few clocks and again as these are in the upper price range I’d like to know they look good when printed, the better they look the less likely you are to have returns, as the returns are to CafePress it doesn’t cost you directly, but you do lose the commission and that’s especially annoying to have it occur 28 days later when you’ve celebrated the sale and have it taken away from you

So I’ve picked 10 simple designs that I already have that might suit Amazon Merch, I created myself a Merch template and made all the designs fit the template. As discussed the large square area of the Merch template doesn’t suit every design, I’ve therefore saved out many of the designs with the unused area as transparent. This not only means you can make the design fit and suit the T-shirt a lot better but also makes it compatible with many more colours. I painstakingly uploaded 1 design per day until I reached my 10 T-shirt limit for the first tier of Merch seller

Now this is where I found Merch much more restrictive and frustrating. Every design you upload is subject to approval, not a bad idea per se but as each approval takes a day or sometimes 3 the delay is annoying. What makes this worse is that every little tweak you make to the design, even a price change, is resubmitted for approval again, causing even more delay. Now as I was keen to get the designs up on the marketplace I didn’t notice that the default Amazon price for a basic T-shirt is $19.99, looking into other sellers offerings it seems that many have reduced theirs to around $15/$16. This makes the T-shirts more affordable and realistic, it reduces your commission but some commission is better than none!. I therefore edited my designs and re-submitted them for approval again, meaning more delay, I wanted my designs up there to get some sales so I could progress to the next tier. Another annoying aspect of Merch is that when you submit a design for approval it is not the one design you are submitting but the one product, so if you want your design on a premium T-shirt or hoodie then that’s another submittal for approval and another design from your initial 10 products for that variation

So after a 2 week upload process I now have 10 designs, all re-priced at a more affordable $16 that still generates me a $3 commission per item should it sell. Now at this point I’m not sure whether to leave the sales to fate and Amazons huge buyer base or whether I need to employ social media or some other device to drive buyers towards my designs. For now I’ll leave it to Amazon and see how it goes while researching how others generate sales. I’ve read a few articles on people using Reddit to generate sales, they interact with the users in various threads and then start to push their wares. This seems a little underhand to me, gain a strangers confidence and then push their designs on them unwittingly, not for me. So time for more internet research on best practices or the Merch style of selling. I did take a peek at the Analysis tab on the Merch portal but it seems that nothing appears here until a sale is made, I’d expected a little more, page or product views maybe to at least see where potential buyers were looking but there’s nothing there so little to analyse as yet

While Merch was sat there idling, setup and online but still idling I needed to concentrate on another stream. With my annual leave due it’s not a good time to start listing other items unless they’re on a passive stream. Although not great timing the Project 1.5 idea is that I use spare time, time in a morning mostly that I am not doing anything else to be productive and earn, this also includes bending around weekends, annual leave and other family commitments that shouldn’t be affected by the project. So I need to either start creating products for my yet-to-be Etsy store or other physical stream of income, or to create another passive income stream that can progress while I’m on annual leave etc