If you’re an online entrepreneur, then you have likely heard about Merch by Amazon. In short, Merch by Amazon is a service through Amazon that allows you to sell your graphic designs as Amazon products, reaching millions of customers worldwide with no upfront investment or costs to you. Some entrepreneurs in the past have been able to build up some pretty large businesses using this service, while others didn’t have any success at all. So, how do you make money with Merch by Amazon, and can you buy a profitable existing Merch by Amazon business?
In short, Merch by Amazon takes a lot of hard work upfront; finding hidden niches, creating graphics, uploading and optimizing your listings, but once the hard work is done, Merch by Amazon is a very passive income business. For business investors, buying a Merch by Amazon business is a good choice because it requires no active management, has no overhead, and it’s listings are diversified throughout Amazon’s marketplace for stability.
Read on if you’re interested in starting your own Merch by Amazon business, or buying an existing one that’s already profitable.
Starting a Merch by Amazon Business
Merch by Amazon is a fantastic business model, potentially one of the best online business models for passive income. This is why I’ve personally been in the Merch by Amazon business for over 5 years!
When it comes to starting any business however, it’s not always smooth sailing from the start. In order to get your Merch by Amazon business off the ground, and start making money, you need to understand the 3 steps:
- Niche Research
- Design Creation
- Listing Optimization
If you have the right strategy for each step, you will have more success than others, but these steps are by no means ‘easy’.
1. Niche Research
It took me two good years before I learned how important niche research was. The process of investigating certain topics before spending hours creating designs, to determine if it’s profitable or over-saturated already, is what’s called niche research.
You can do this step manually, by browsing the Amazon marketplace and making assumptions on how ‘open’ or how ‘competitive’ a certain topic is. This is what I’ve done in the past, and it can work, but it takes hours and hours to do each time.
I started using a tool for niche research, called Merch Informer, about three years ago and now consider it a must-have. All you have to do is type in the topic you’re considering, and it will analyze Amazon’s marketplace and give you a letter grade A through F to tell you how profitable it thinks that niche is. Highly, highly, highly recommend using this tool for this step.
2. Design Creation
Once you’ve found some good niches to go into, it’s time to actually make the designs that you will sell! This is a fun step, because you get to be creative, but can also be a time consuming step if you don’t stay focused.
If you are a graphic designer, then you can go right into your preferred graphic design software and create designs for the niche. Just be sure to size them to Merch by Amazon’s requirements (4500px x 5400px) before uploading, and be sure they are PNG with transparent background.
If you’re not an expert graphic designer, I highly recommend using a graphic design tool that has t-shirt templates to customize. This is essentially how I built my entire business because it allowed me to customize great design layouts and create finished designs in just a few minutes. Prior to this, it would take me 1 hour or more to make each design, which makes growing the business difficult without hiring help.
My best advice for this step is to find the sweet spot between quality designs and time efficiency. The quicker you can make great designs, the faster you can grow your Merch by Amazon business. My preferred t-shirt design tool is Placeit.net because they have the most templates and are copyright-free with full commercial usage rights.
3. Listing Optimization
The third and final step is to upload your designs to your Merch by Amazon account. You’ll be creating Amazon listings for each design, and it will allow you to choose what items (shirts, hoodies, etc.) your design could be purchased on.
Keep in mind, all you have to do is upload the designs and Amazon does all of the actual printing, shipping, and customer service. Our sole role is to create the virtual listings, and Amazon does the rest, which is why this business model is so passive.
When uploading your designs to create listings, the two main tips I can offer are: efficiency and keywords.
First, keep an eye on how long it takes you to create a listing from start to finish. This can become a bottleneck and slow your business down if you aren’t efficient.
Second, be sure to use the keywords you found in the niche research step in your listing title (most important) and your listing description.
Where to Buy Merch by Amazon Business?
So, you now know what it takes to start a Merch by Amazon business, but maybe you are an investor and want to buy an already profitable Merch by Amazon business. Fortunately, this is actually an option!
Merch by Amazon businesses typically sell for 30-60x monthly net profit, but they are hard to find for sale.
The beauty of the Merch by Amazon business model is that it requires very little interaction from the owner because it’s fueled by organic Amazon traffic, and Amazon themselves does all the printing, shipping, and customer service.
The best place to buy a Merch by Amazon business is , which is a marketplace to buy and sell online businesses that individually vets each new business before offering it for sale. I’ve dealt with Empire Flippers before, and they are the real deal, so I can definitely recommend them.
The challenge will be to find a Merch by Amazon business for sale. Getting in touch with a representative at Empire Flippers is my best advice if there are none currently for sale, as they can notify you as soon as one becomes available.
If you can get your hands on a profitable existing Merch by Amazon business, I think you’d be making a great investment in one of the best online business models to date.
Conclusion
Merch by Amazon is a fantastic online business model that offers truly passive income to the business owner. The startup phase of the business can be time consuming, and niche research and design creation are vital to generating income.
However, once the business is generating income it becomes a hands-off business that is fueled by Amazon’s organic traffic and managed by Amazon themselves.
For investors, I recommend browsing to find a Merch by Amazon business for sale because all businesses listing on Empire Flippers are individually vetted before being available for sale.
