A-to-Z Guideline on How to Start A Print on Demand Business on Amazon – Merchize

How to promote and advertise your Amazon print on demand products?

As an individual seller, you have full control over the promotion of your products. On the other hand, Merch by Amazon sellers have their advertising activities restricted by the tier system. Only people from third-tier (over 100 listings) can run Amazon Sponsored Product ads. But if you have a professional account for your Amazon store, you can plan your advertising campaigns anytime.

Amazon is a large marketplace where people with clear and serious buying intentions go to. It is also the number one option to run your ads. Amazon is now offering a few advertising options, including:

• Sponsored Products for individual product listings
• Sponsored Brands for showing your brands and product portfolio
• Sponsored Display for displaying ads across buyer journey, on and off Amazon

Amazon Sponsored Products is the most common option for print on demand sellers on Amazon. First, let’s make sure you meet the requirements to run Sponsored Products ads:

• Owner of a professional Amazon account
• Your products should be listed under an eligible category
• Your products must have the buy box

With Amazon Sponsored Products ads, your products will be shown at the top positions on the result pages. It is a pay-per-click form of advertising, which means you only have to pay if the customers click on your ads. You can decide the products to promote, the keywords you can target, and how much you want to bid for a keyword.

In order to run successful Amazon advertising campaigns, finding the right set of keywords to target is the key.

Running ads can take up a huge part of your budget. Therefore, you should be strategic with your advertising activities, focus on keywords with high returns, and cut off keywords that do not add to your profits. Or else, a huge amount of your budget will go wasted on ineffective promotional attempts.

How much can you make from selling Amazon print on demand?

Print on demand is a low-profit business. But still, there is actually no limit to the number of your income when selling print on demand. In fact, there are many success stories where people can earn a six-figure income with Amazon print on demand.

To have a realistic expectation of how much you can earn from Amazon print on demand, let’s go through Amazon print on demand pricing:

• Monthly fee for maintaining a professional store: $39.9
• Referral fees: Depending on the categories of your products, Amazon will charge you a referral fee for each item sold. The fee usually ranges from 8% to 15%.
• Advertising cost: To generate profitable sales on Amazon, a budget for advertising is necessary. If you can master the art of Amazon PPC, you can earn enough to make up for the advertising budget. However, if your advertising campaigns are not efficiently set, it might hurt your return on investment.

It means that if you are selling a T-shirt for $14 and the print on demand company takes $10 for their part. It will leave you with a profit of $4 per sale. But you will not have this whole $4 as the final profit. Always subtract the other fees for store maintenance, referral fee, and advertising, if you are using any.

Tips for selling Amazon POD

• Simple is the best: One of the beginner mistakes is to invest too much time and money on overly complex designs. While these kinds of designs might be very visually attractive, and highly original, it has a small chance of becoming winning designs. With print on demand, simple is the best. Sometimes, simple artworks with funny quotes are the things that sell.
• Quantity over quality: Here is another rule that should be applied to print-on-demand businesses. In print on demand, sellers are not in the position to control the quality of their products. In order to maximize profits, the best thing to do is to increase the number of products. This rule has been proven effective in the realm of print on demand. Instead of introducing ten beautiful, unique products, you should try to make 100 designs with simpler designs that address a specific interest of target customers.
• Cross-niche: Some niches are very competitive to the point that it makes little sense to create designs that fit just that one niche. To increase your chance of standing out and reaching untapped but profitable niches, you can combine two more niches. For example, “engineer” and “pet lover” might be too broad and competitive niches, “engineer who loves pets” can be more specific niches with lower competition.

5. What are resources to learn about Amazon print on demand?

Youtube channels to learn about Amazon POD

Youtube is a free and resourceful place for you to learn about anything. The great news is that Youtube has a large community of creators making educational content about Print on demand and Amazon Print on demand in particular. Here are some useful Youtube print on demand channels for you to check.

1. Ryan Hogue Passive Income

Ryan Hogue’s channel is focusing on content about making money online and creating passive income. On his channel, he constantly updates and shares about this experience and journey with both print on demand and selling on Amazon. Last year, he reported making over 175K from passive income. You can check his channel for more tips on how to make money online with print on demand on Amazon.

2. Shimmy Morris

Shimmy Morris has over 54K subscribers on his Youtube channel. London-based Youtuber is currently doing both print on demand and Amazon FBA. On his Youtube channel, he frequently shares his comprehensive insights and tips on how to make and sell print on demand products.

3. Wholesale Ted

Wholesale Ted is one of the top Youtube channels on print on demand. At the time of this writing, this channel has attracted 894K subscribers. Sarah, the person behind this channel, has created various content that is easy to understand, and beginner-friendly.

Podcasts about Amazon POD

If you are a fan of podcasts and want to hear more success stories and insightful discussions about print on demand as well as print on demand with Amazon, here are some useful sources for you:

The Side Hustle Show

The Side Hustle Show explores all business ideas, models, and plans that can help people create money and income outside their 9-to-5 job. It also means that the show has a broader focus than just print on demand.

Here are some episodes where they discuss print on demand in-depth:

You can listen and gain valuable lessons from successful people from different industries and businesses. After all, it is never a bad idea to keep learning new things and sharpen your business skills and mindset.

Print on demand Cast

Print on demand Cast is a podcast show dedicated to print on demand. At the time of this writing, the show has released about 70 episodes. In each episode, two hosts, Travis and Joshiah talk and discuss in detail print on demand strategy and ideas. They also invite guests who also work with print on demand to the show.

Courses and blogs

If you want to understand the basics of print on demand and learn industry knowledge in a systematic way, doing courses or reading books, articles can be very helpful. Check out these resources, courses:

Final Thought

Selling print on demand on Amazon can be challenging but it also comes with huge opportunities. Hopefully, with all the information we have mentioned above, you can feel confident on your journey to create a successful Amazon print on demand business in the near future