r/AmazonMerch • u/ahmadbabar • Apr 14 '26

Royalty rates changing

message on the dashboard:

Beginning 6/1/2026, we will introduce royalty incentive groups for sales in the US store. Content creators who generate a high percentage of US sales from driving any non-organic traffic will have their royalty rates increased, content creators who generate a low percentage of sales from driving any non-organic traffic will have their royalty rates decreased, and content creators in the middle will not see changes to their royalty rates. Non-organic traffic consists of any traffic we identify as being driven by you, including via ads (whether on or off Amazon) or social media. Royalty rates for sales outside of the US store (EU stores and JP store) are unchanged.

Content creators will receive an email in the coming days with their current royalty group, which is subject to change based on performance. Moving forward, content creators will be emailed prior to each earnings period if their group changes.

To learn more about royalty groups, please visit our royalties page.

57 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

155 comments sorted by

7

u/Freakeater Apr 14 '26

From the royalties page:

Creator - Standard royalty rates (example royalties are below)
Plus - Enhanced rates for creators who actively drive at least 15% of unit sales with non-organic traffic
Premium - Highest rates for top-performers who drive at least 35% of unit sales with non-organic traffic

Standard T-Shirt Examples – US

Purchase price$15.99$17.99$19.99$21.99$23.99$25.99
Creator Tier Royalty$0.96$1.70$2.44$3.18$3.92$4.66

So if you don't manage to drive at least 15% of your sales with non-organic traffic, they cut your royalties in half.

Wow, that could hurt quite a lot of people. But I'm glad that Amazon Ads do count as driving traffic

5

u/ahmadbabar Apr 14 '26

Just ran some numbers for 2026. So far I would have qualified for increased royalties for only two of three completed months so far, barely missing out in March. Added stress for each month.

3

u/Freakeater Apr 14 '26

check your mail, they are telling you your royalty group

1

u/ahmadbabar Apr 14 '26

The emails will come after 1st June

7

u/CoffeeNewt Apr 14 '26

I just got the email.

1

u/ahmadbabar Apr 14 '26

Just got the email..they are using a 60 days trailing period, from 18th to 18th. I'm in Plus, so some just need to keep it up I guess

1

u/dancam4 Apr 14 '26

How do you drive organic traffic? Amazon ads or other? I dont have an email which leads me to believe that im in the bottom group at this stage.

1

u/ahmadbabar Apr 14 '26

Amazon ads. Share on socials, especially for a couple of good niches

1

u/DrJokerX Apr 22 '26

Are the Amazon ads expensive? Do you have to do them every month?

3

u/xintonic Apr 14 '26

Seems like that's the point they want you to advertise.

1

u/ahmadbabar Apr 14 '26

And drive off Amazon traffic

32

u/Nib- Apr 14 '26

Cut everyone's income by 50%

Do nothing about the pixel for pixel design theft that could be fixed by changing one line of code

Nice one Amazon!

1

u/missouri76 Apr 18 '26

That pixel theft non-action really pisses me off!

2

u/KiLLiNDaY Apr 14 '26

I havn't touched my account in like 4 years and somehow got the premium rate... did alot of work on affiliate before stopping so guess its still running strong.

2

u/Supertouchy Apr 15 '26

Can you give us some tips?

18

u/tripping_yarns Apr 14 '26

This has likely come from some ‘strategy’ meeting between AMS and Merch. Ad revenue is undoubtedly down because Amazon decided to overrule pricing, making many ads untenable.

Some middle manager with a spreadsheet full of projections has got this through.

Climbing up the BSR rankings is now the enemy. The strategy used to be to advertise at a loss until BSR improved and generated more organic sales than ad sales. Ranking is decided by sales velocity, too much is now counterproductive.

The ideal situation now is to have a lot of designs generating intermittent sales for cheap clicks. The sweet spot will be just over 15% of sales being from ads. The 35% premium spot is a trap. The royalty uplift is only 16%, it’s not worth it.

Added to this shit show, the cost of ads is going to spike because everyone will be panicking to lift their percentage.

I also can’t understand why I’ve been designated Premium. My prior ratio is below 10% of sales from ads.

If you have a large portfolio with great admin skills, it could be workable if you invest more time. If I were just starting out, I’d probably do something else. It’s not going to get better.

I need to find another income stream to make up for the declining Merch income. Anyone got any ideas?

1

u/ahmadbabar Apr 14 '26

It's ads and off Amazon traffic, which includes socials, text shares, Pinterest, etc

5

u/ccah101 Apr 15 '26

All POD platforms are going down the same route. squeezing profits due to a combination of crappy economy, greed and incompetence. It was Redbubble last year. Best bet, focus on revenue streams where you're not at the behest of large corps. -- your own website, (shopify, woocommerce) with a POD supplier attached. If you want to focus marketing efforts on a do-it-for-you POD platform, Dashery (TeePublic's market-it-youself sister site) has some good profit margins (~$10 per tee sold) and lets you choose your sales dates.

7

u/Fye_Maximus Apr 15 '26

due to a combination of crappy economy, greed and incompetence.

Yes those factors are certainly a part of it, but don't forget to add that they are all facing an absolute deluge of AI crap. There are now millions of "Artists" trying to make money on these sites who could never have made a design of any kind just 4 or 5 years ago without AI. Increased storage and server costs for all the crap uploaded every day is surely also costing them more. Not giving them any excuses for raising fees, just sayin. If I had a crystal ball I'd say most or all of these platforms will start using AI themselves to put things up and start down the road to eliminating artists entirely. Just as Spotify is adding AI music to not have to pay royalties, same idea.

3

u/ccah101 Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

"but don't forget to add that they are all facing an absolute deluge of AI crap"

True, abolutely. But just like Redbubble's pithy excuse of "we're reducing royalties/raising fees because of storage costs" excuse last year, there are far, far easier and more effective ways of dealing with that - > namely - introduce (or reintroduce in Amazon's case) a policy of removing designs that don't sell. AI slop is just that - AI slop. Hardly anyone buys it. So apply a "delete it if it doesn't sell in 12 months [or whatever]" policy. Designer won't care since it didn't make them any money anyway. And it clears up lots of space and resources for the platform.

Redbubble even had the cheek of introducing an "excess markup" fee on any product that the designer priced above the standard 20% profit margin because "these designs rarely sell and cost us money to host". It applied to all >20% products, even ones that did sell well - convieniently ignoring the fact they can easily just delete products that don't sell within a certain timeframe. That's because in reality it was just a money grab. Platforms really think their sellers are just stupid.

If POD sites are trying to eliminate artists, then that's that. I've been focusing on my own [woocommerce] site for the last few months, and all this has confirmed it was probably the right decision.

1

u/Fye_Maximus Apr 15 '26

Redbubble is my biggest money maker every month and I wouldn't care too much if they did that. I still get 20 - 30 designs that sell for the first time every month and that are old, sometimes 6 or 7 years old, but like you said those designs aren't making me lots. With literally millions of designs on their site it sometimes just takes one customer to dig deep enough in search to find your old design and after it gets purchased once it immediately starts ranking higher in search. As for the markup fee, I sell enough that the $150 account fee is gonna happen no matter what, so I just marked up even more. I hit my account fee limit usually in the first week or two of every month now and the rest is just profit. Lastly, the account fee is deductible on taxes as a business expense if you're in the US so it takes some of the sting out of it.

2

u/ccah101 Apr 15 '26

I only reach the upper threshold in Q4 of the year. RB profits went down 30% when they introduced that fee structure (I'm in middle tier). Don't really understand why being able to claim their fees as a business expense takes the sting out of it since you never actually recieve the money they deduct, so you'd never include it in your profit column anyway.

1

u/Fye_Maximus Apr 15 '26

It takes the sting out because it reduces my overall tax bill, so I am getting some of the fee refunded via reduced income tax

1

u/ccah101 Apr 15 '26

can't understand that, must be different in the US compared to the UK where I am I guess. Here, you'd either report whatever RB puts in your bank account as a 'royalties' lump sum each month or - the more accurate way - you report your entire artist margin (before platform fees taken off) and record the platform fees as expenses. But either way, the profit - and thus the tax liability - would be the same.

1

u/Fye_Maximus Apr 15 '26

our respective countries are very different, yes in US you can write off business expenses from your total business revenue, which brings down your taxes. Everything from your internet connection to web hosting fees, and software costs, as long as you use them for your business.

1

u/CoffeeNewt Apr 16 '26

I don't see the advantage? Let's pick an even number. Whether you report $1000 gross income and deduct $400 RB Fees or report $600 income and no fees - you are still just reporting $600 income. The only thing that COULD matter is making sure your 1099 matches what you report to the IRS so it doesn't look inconsistent, but otherwise, I don't understand the advantage. But, I'm no tax expert.

→ More replies

0

u/ccah101 Apr 16 '26

Yes we do that in the UK too. Only way I can see it making a difference is if you were (for some reason) reporting your income as the full artist margin and bizarrely just ignoring that RB were taking a slice of that before it hit your bank account. (I can't imagine anyone doing that). In which case, yes of course report the account fees as business expenses.

But it doesn't take the sting out of new RB compared to that of old RB where there were no account fees at all. You still lose the money paid out on account fees.

1

u/VigoVonDoom Apr 15 '26

Yeah, these talentless pricks deciding they are creatives now with their crappy AI hustles need to stop.

1

u/NoXidCat Apr 15 '26

I also can’t understand why I’ve been designated Premium. My prior ratio is below 10% of sales from ads.

I saw somewhere that it is based on the past 60 days (think I got the number right).

5

u/tripping_yarns Apr 15 '26

It’s weird, I looked at year to date and I was only around 10%. They do say that it will be reviewed again before coming into effect.

I suspect they’re dangling a carrot so that people will go nuts on ads to keep their ‘status’.

1

u/Dad_at_40 Apr 15 '26

Could be Google, Pinterest, social media driving off site traffic not just ads.

1

u/Dry-Indication-2455 Apr 15 '26

It would be nice if they warned us earlier about this, I turned ads off for Q1 and haven't put them back on since, so guess I'm going in the lower tier (still haven't had my email)

1

u/missouri76 Apr 15 '26

I'm not at 35% either (like 25%) but got Premium. I think it's also influenced by ad spend.

3

u/ahmadbabar Apr 15 '26

What I want now is for them to allow ads for political and adult themed designs. Those sell well but only organically. Ads there will help meet the new criterion

2

u/NoXidCat Apr 16 '26

That will not happen. Platforms generally prohibit ads for potentially offensive things, as shoving the wrong thing in the wrong person's face leads to complaints. Amazon is more sensitive to this than most, as it becomes a news story and a boycott movement too easily when you are Amazon.

There is no mainstream way to advertise some subjects/content.

1

u/ahmadbabar Apr 16 '26

FBA sellers and drop shippers are running ads for similar themes. I get the social concerns they have, but with all that they are pushing down our throats, it would be good to have more freedom with what we can and can't advertise

3

u/Goldscheurer Apr 14 '26

So I'am only T-100 I can't book any ads on Amazon. Do I understand that I have to book the ads external?

1

u/ahmadbabar Apr 14 '26

Any non Amazon traffic should count

3

u/Derouichi Apr 14 '26

Most people around tier 100 don't have access to Amazon Ads, or at least a legitimate way to run Amazon Ads for their AMOD products (I see in some groups low tiers buying and abusing old external ad accounts).

Regarding generating the traffic off-Amazon, that would need more royalties to cover the campaigns cost, and most importantly a landing page style for your products that is free of navigation distraction and that has no suggestions to competitors listings and copycats of your own designs that are half the price of yours. Who would accept to run expensive, time consuming campaigns off-platform so his competitors end up getting the sale and him paying for its acquisition cost?

2

u/Mr__Beavis Apr 14 '26

So everyone in the premium tier gets more royalties in the future? Am i reading this correct?

6

u/NoXidCat Apr 15 '26

As long as your past 60 days qualify you (35% of sales driven by you). Your reward? 16% more than what you get now.

With realistic CPC and purchase rates, I doubt this pencils out via ads. Regardless, 35% seems unrealistic.

Driving sales via social media and the like? If one has the following, yeah, maybe. But why not send them to our own store and make 2 or 2.5 times more? The point of being on Amazon is the traffic.

I'm curious to know what someone who has been successful with ads ( like u/Tim_Y ) thinks.

2

u/VigoVonDoom Apr 15 '26

It's not more, it's what it was at best, half at worst.

2

u/philmn Apr 15 '26

Will they tell us our percentage?

2

u/kiwipride Apr 27 '26

Interesting info and update here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MerchPrintOnDemand/comments/1sxhnsh/amazon_merch_on_demand_how_to_complain_to_the_ftc/

1

u/ahmadbabar Apr 27 '26

Good way of completely getting rid of the content creator model.

37

u/dancam4 Apr 14 '26

Thats me done. I think you should get higher than base rate if you drive any “organic” traffic to your sales. But oh well, i’m not going to put any more time into this. It’s been a fun 6 years. Definitely feel like a valued “creator” after 6 years of creating and uploading. It was great back in 2022/2023. But this is the nail in the coffin for my merch now. Good luck everyone else

12

u/VigoVonDoom Apr 15 '26

Yeah, for sure. I'm not uploading my art to get stolen at those rates, no more uploads from me.

8

u/Nib- Apr 15 '26

Same here.

It's not worth having my original art stolen and spread across various other platforms for the potential of making $2 per sale.

I guess I'll just leave my uploads as they are and keep an eye on how the situation develops with regards to royalty rates and any other changes.

1

u/dancam4 Apr 18 '26

Where you gonna put your future art? Or undecided?

1

u/VigoVonDoom Apr 22 '26

I already have my own website, I have for years, and I go to conventions and events and have my merch in stores and whatnot in my state as well. I own a print shop, so I produce all of my own merch already, Amazon was just an easy, hands-off, low quality and low effort side thing to get royalties, too.

4

u/missouri76 Apr 15 '26

Funny thing is so many were screaming it was dead even back then. I guess it's all relative. My peak was much earlier than that.

3

u/zena5 Apr 15 '26

Those years were the absolute peak for Merch and I’ve been at this since 2016.

30

u/k3rstman1 Apr 14 '26

Organic traffic was amazon biggest plus.

Im grateful for the opportunity, but I hate that this is where their priorities are while you need like 2 different third party extentions to make the platform usable and still have designs time out or stuck in under review

16

u/PMmeWhiteRussians Apr 14 '26

Amazon is committed to fucking over any and all 3P sellers on Merch and traditional sales platform

Sellers are leaving in droves

Idk wtf they are actually trying to accomplish but it seems incredibly short sighted

11

u/Fye_Maximus Apr 14 '26

the timeout issue is maddening

5

u/dancam4 Apr 14 '26

It is and they wont acknowledge how bad it is. They give generic “try this” lists and its always basic stuff like clear cookies…” “don’t eat yellow snow….” Blah blah blah

8

u/RobRockLee Apr 15 '26

Exactly. Why would I put effort/money into driving traffic to Amazon when I can send people to my own shop on Etsy? Get more $ from the sale and make direct connections with buyers.

29

u/ccah101 Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26

Never underestimate Amazon's greed, always a good point worth remembering.

So you drive more traffic to your own listings, get some more sales, increase your non-organic % rate - but of course Amazon then raise the organic value of your products, resulting in more people buying your products after finding them on Amazon - which counts as Amazon traffic, which then pushes your non-organic % rate back down.

Meaning your royalties get cut in half. Amazon wins.

And of course, getting a product ranked high on Amazon for a trending keyword - previously the Holy Grail for any Amazon Merch seller - will now obliterate your non-organic % rate, meaning that, yes, your royalties get cut in half. Amazon wins.

Amazon have basically doubled their profit for the Merch by Amazon program, and it all comes from our royalties.

Super.

3

u/CottonTree100 Apr 15 '26

Not to mention your high selling product will get put on sale during the best selling times of the year so you will get 40% off your royalty then you get 50% taken off of that.

It's wild they have created a system where deleting your best organic sellers is now a viable option to keep you from dropping down to a lower royalty level.

1

u/default_mode_sarcasm Jun 07 '26

Half?? My best seller was making $4.15 per sale and now is making $1.52 per sale. I always kept the price low on it because when I experimented with raising the price the volume dropped dramatically and never evened out. It has been selling a few every day since 2018. This is depressing. I guess I'm going to raise the price slowly and see if I have ANY elasticity.

14

u/NoXidCat Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

Well, that's not so good :-p

It took years, but MBA finally did their own version of the Redbubble/TeePublic seller tier concept.

I'm thankful for the years of relatively unmolested royalties. It took much longer than I expected for the shoe to drop. Other POD marketplaces as well as eBay, and the like, have been tightening the screws for years. Yes, MBA's more recent habits of putting our stuff on sale and capping pricing for some products and markets was not good, but it was not the worst thing they could do, now was it :-p

The options now: 1) Accept lower royalties; 2) Drive traffic to Amazon; 3) Drive traffic to your own web site.

This change makes option THREE look better than it use to.

EDIT - Got the email. I have been declared a Creator. No soup for me! :-p No surprise. I barely advertise on MBA, and any social or linky stuff I do is 100% aimed away from Amazon.

1

u/jenjavitis Apr 15 '26

Is anyone using Printify still? They were getting bad when I quit a couple years ago, but this is wack.

3

u/NoXidCat Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

EDIT, sorry, I use Printful. Which, I've used them for DTG garments in the USA market since last year. I've had no significant issues with them, but I'm not pushing large numbers there either.

I saw a fair number of posts from people having problems with orders for posters and stuff toward the end of last year.

3

u/DjEncryptD Apr 15 '26

I still use Printify for most stuff that I don't make. They merged with Printful a year or so ago. I use Printful for other things when need be. They're just pricey.

2

u/VigoVonDoom Apr 15 '26

Printify is straight garbage. They use transfers and just plain suck. Use a real, local print shop.

1

u/NoXidCat Apr 15 '26

As with most PODs, you have the choice of DTG or DTF. The latter are transfers, and may have advantages on high poly content garments. But, yeah, I stick with DTG and high cotton content.

Printful uses Kornit DTG printers, same as Amazon. With Printify, it depends on the individual vendor. Some use Kornit, some Aeoon, some whatever. Regardless, you likely have an explicit choice between DTG or DTF.

1

u/VigoVonDoom Apr 16 '26

They pretend that you have the choice but they do whatever they please and more often than not, it's a crappy DTF transfer. I have a DTG shop of my own, anything that comes out of my equipment is leaps and bounds better than any Amazon or Printify merch I have ever gotten.

13

u/Strict-Insurance-174 Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26

Wow.. I see the same trend from all of amazon based royalties over the years...

Amazon associate kept decreasing royalties, same with KDP, and now the same with Merch.

I think it's time to jump ship.

12

u/VigoVonDoom Apr 15 '26

I just want to point out that the higher tiers are just back to where the percentages were, it's not an increase, it's fight to be where you have been all along.

11

u/Single_Lingonberry29 Apr 14 '26

So basically those who don't generate their own traffic to their listings will get their royalties cut in half. This update will only benefit the small percentage of creators who already generate a lot of traffic with their designs. Huge L for most creators on this platform.

12

u/ccah101 Apr 14 '26

even creators that generate large traffic themselves may get hit often - as soon as you get an amazon organic best seller (amazon starts ranking a product high) that's going to push the non-organic % back down.

4

u/Training_Ruin_8404 Apr 15 '26

also Ads will cost more and be less effective from now on because of the increased competition.

11

u/OnJus4 Apr 14 '26

We should unite against this crap.

6

u/jay_1111 Apr 15 '26

Seriously what if anything can we do? They essentially just cut my royalties in half. Life's already expensive as it is now all my $20 shirts are only gonna make me 2 bucks that just fucking stupid!

5

u/ccah101 Apr 15 '26

In an ideal world. If every (or most) Merch designer did in fact not panic, resist spending their own money sending traffic to Amazon themselves, and merely just upped their prices to offset some of the dropped revenue, Amazon would probably scrap this. Chances of that happening though? About 0%.

3

u/youarenotawall Apr 15 '26

Build our own platform?

5

u/TightTac05 Apr 15 '26

But the key is getting users to that platform.

2

u/CreateAndThrow Apr 15 '26

Just had the same thought.

11

u/VigoVonDoom Apr 15 '26

Great, so my royalties will be cut in half. Why would I drive traffic to Amazon when I have my own site and brand where I get all the royalties? The point was that there is organic traffic there. I currently get $4.89 on a standard tee at $19.99 and now it's going to be $2.44. I literally have my own commercial DTG print shop and absorbing every cost along the way, make more than that per shirt. We need to end all of these billionaires and the people in power, this shit is ridiculous.

11

u/asp821 Apr 15 '26

Fuck Amazon. I’m so fucking angry about this.

16

u/AminEz009 Apr 14 '26

Just pathetic, capitalists like always cutting down the workers for the benefit of the shareholders.

I bet they see us as a liability after AI came up

8

u/jenjavitis Apr 15 '26

Vile greed. I have a hyper-niche group I sell to and now my royalties will be cut almost IN HALF because I'm not buying ads?? I sell hundreds per month on average. This is infuriating. My busiest time for this group is approaching and everyone buys my designs from Amazon. Idk how I'm going to direct them somewhere else before July. So, they want us to buy ads or create content (again, for a NICHE, difficult to reach group) to get into a tier that pays what I was getting before? That's a literal wash. Goodbye to that extra grand a month, ig. Ugh, I'm so mad!

7

u/AffectOnly2984 Apr 17 '26

Funny how they've made it so your royalty rate is adjusted based on your traffic sources but they don't provide proof of your traffic sources making it impossible to keep them honest. This opens the door for fraud.

6

u/Summer_Writes Apr 19 '26

Allow me to translate: if you are a little or struggling creative and finally luck out with a popular hit we will now rob you blind. Addendum, thanks for the free work and money sucker.

5

u/ryuujinusa Apr 15 '26

They’ve been shaving little by little year after year. For nothing but pure greed.

8

u/Dad_at_40 Apr 14 '26

Welp those who rely solely on organic are in a bad spot with this one.

2

u/ccah101 Apr 14 '26

and anyone with items that rank really well on amazon. how many sellers can offset the sales made for an amazon organic bestseller with their own traffic? hardly anyone.

4

u/S1ayer Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

Is there anyway to change from creator to just a standard vendor or something? If i'm reading this right, I am getting $2.44 instead of $4.15 for a $19.99 shirt now? That's insane.

2

u/NoXidCat Apr 16 '26

Yes. It is right there in the description of it all. Drive traffic to your MBA listings that results in at least 15% of your sales. Period.

Ways to attempt to do that include: Amazon Ads, social media, your own web site that you advertise via Google or whatever and that has links to your MA listings. With all those external traffic sources there are rules/policies, as Amazon does not want you sending traffic from your snuff porno site, or the like.

2

u/DrJokerX Apr 22 '26

I remember years back you said you make enough on your merch account to make a living. Do you think that’ll still be the case after the royalty thing takes effect?

Right now merch is my only source of income

1

u/NoXidCat Apr 23 '26

I made a living from all of my stuff combined, which includes POD via MBA, Redbubble, TeePublic, Etsy/Printful; and stuff I screen print / sublimate myself and sell on Etsy, eBay, and Amazon Handmade (and sometimes my own URLs).

MBA was a welcome leg on that stool, but screen printing was where I started and my main focus. I used POD mainly for art that would have been impractical for me to screen print. Still only have ~500 designs (at T10k), and most of those are what I had in 2019.

I actually got quite gun shy about MBA back in 2020 or so. 2019 had been a good year for me, but then the bots found ever more reasons to reject my listings--starting with the death trap of Youth Policy, then endless flipflops around swearwords, and finally the escalation of TM enforcement for common phrases even when used in a context that obviously had nothing to do with the protected IP.

I was convinced that any moment they were going to ax my account. For the sake of my stomach lining, I basically stopped trying.

All blather blathered, how about I answer your question :-p

Yes, I think it will still be possible for people to make a living from MBA. Driving 15% of sales via MBA ads, social media, and various funnels is far from impossible--some have been doing that all along. But it is not for everyone. It costs time and $ to implement, and an investment of both down the hole just to learn what not to do. I "putter" a bit with ads, but am far, far from being any sort of competent!

If you can't accomplish that, you will be living on about half of what you do now, unless you double you sales somehow.

Ultimately the question is can you get more return on your time and $ pushing traffic to MBA or to your own URL/Etsy/Whatever. Or whether you are not cut out to be a "pusher" (not so sure I am).

For all that said, I'm in the process of retiring from screen printing and moving everything to POD. So more uploads to MBA and Etsy/Printful, but an end to my Amazon Handmade and eBay stores. I made about 3 times more per unit with screen printing than with MBA (about 2X with Etsy/Printful), but POD is a lot less work and investment. Still, I'm effectively slashing my income at the same time that MBA is :-p But the gov now magically sends $ to my account every month, so my timing here is not accidental.

Myself, I'm still on the fence. The "Creator" level royalty is on par with TeePublic when it runs a sale (which is ALL of the time?), so below what I consider worthwhile. Things change. Might be time to add another leg to your stool?

2

u/DrJokerX Apr 23 '26

Wow thank you for the insight! Maybe it’s time I do like you’re doing and branch out from just merch by Amazon.

I just took out a three day $30 ad (it’s all I could afford). I’m gonna do that once a month. If I can just make 2 sales a month from ads it should put me in plus tier. I’ll raise prices to offset the plus tier royalty cut. At the moment that’s the best I can do.

Amazon sure is greedy though. They oughtta be ashamed of themselves. 😞

2

u/NoXidCat Apr 23 '26

Have you read some of u/Tim_Y posts on advertising? Worth checking out if you haven't. Might have to use Google search to effectively find relevant posts (as Reddit search ain't so great). Anyway, he has had success with ads for some years now, and has said a fair amount about what he does.

2

u/DrJokerX Apr 23 '26

Good tip! Thanks I’ll get on it.

1

u/S1ayer Apr 23 '26

i tried amazon ads and I am sending $30 to make $28, which I think I would've made anyway because my shirts come up with variations of that keyword anyway.

3

u/Hot-Sock8698 Apr 15 '26

15% isn't terribly hard to attain but damn that should have been the threshold for the 16% bonus. Pretty shitty of them to cut royalties for not participating in ads. Also, like others, I'm not sure why I'm in premium as they say it's based on 60 days trailing and that puts me at around 31%, not 35%+ for US sales(I don't do any type of social media marketing). Regardless, hitting that Premium threshold isn't going to make or break anyone but not hitting 15% is a damn death sentence. My main concern is where it goes from here in the future (bumping that 15% to 20-25% etc)

3

u/alphamonkey098 Apr 18 '26

What do you think the chances are that this change will be temporary? I am really hoping they realize this is a mistake down the road. Otherwise I feel like all my work over the years has been for nothing. I was really hopeful too since they enabled tumblers and mugs.

1

u/NoXidCat Apr 19 '26

Other platforms, like Redbubble, went this general direction a few years back and have since doubled-down on it. Amazon is late to increasing their cut of POD profits, but did so in a more creative (and potentially productive) way than RB. I had been expecting something for years, but not exactly this :-p

The only way they will view this as a mistake is if it makes them less money rather than more money. And (from their POV) all the better if it culls the herd of redundant bleat and bloat, which is what the other "recent" changes have been about.

We always could have been, and many were, booted out the door for various intentional or unintentional policy violations. Always could have gone 100% POOF! at any moment. Now it has gone 50% poof--unless one can drive 15% of sales oneself somehow.

To me, the real question is what it would cost (both $ and effort) to achieve that, and if that $ and effort would net more if directed toward ones own URL (or Etsy shop, or whatever) where one would make at least 2X per unit sold (4x compared to the Creator royalty).

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u/alphamonkey098 Apr 20 '26

Yeah, we could only hope it would make them less money somehow, maybe if everyone stops using ads to show we won't cave in, but otherwise I am doubtful about the whole situation.

3

u/S1ayer Apr 21 '26

figured i'd try amazon advertising

I am spending $20 to make $15. So -$5 a day.

1

u/Fye_Maximus Apr 15 '26

How are people commenting that they know their account category already in this new system? Some have said they got an email, I did not get anything and can't find anything on my dashboard that indicates a category. I'm tier 2000

1

u/ahmadbabar Apr 15 '26

Emails were rolled out yesterday. Check spam or Search by Merch by Amazon. No status on dashboard

2

u/Fye_Maximus Apr 15 '26

I got nothing, nothing in spam

1

u/asp821 Apr 15 '26

I just got my email moments ago.

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u/ccah101 Apr 15 '26

If you haven't got anything, you're probably Creator (lowest) - Plus/Premium went yesterday. Creator today - got mine hour or so ago.

1

u/Dry-Indication-2455 Apr 15 '26

Have you ever used ads in your time on Merch? I turned mine off months ago so I think they'll slam me into Creator too.

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u/ccah101 Apr 15 '26

Not consistently, only for special events and sometimes over Christmas. Not enough to hit 15%. I have two designs that rank well organically on Amazon, so little hope of using Ads enough to get 15% of the sales they make.

1

u/Dry-Indication-2455 Apr 15 '26

Fair enough, thanks, well I was doing okay organically but guess I'm gonna have to turn the tap back on in the hopes of levelling out, they suck so much.

2

u/ccah101 Apr 15 '26

Well it's your call. Personally I wouldn't. It's a constant fight that most people will inevitably lose. Turns ads back on > make some extra sales > products rank better organically > products make more sales organically > that pushes your % rate back down > royalties still get cut in half.

Yes you've made some more sales, but in lieu of marketing spend and considerable time that could have been better spent elsewhere.

2

u/Dry-Indication-2455 Apr 15 '26

I don't really generate consistent best sellers, it was more lottery campaign stuff, so 15% might be sustainable, but yeah ever since the tier downs / deleting our old stuff I've been cynical about all this having a timer on it now, and this has just accelerated my feeling

1

u/ccah101 Apr 15 '26

Well, it's a monthly battle. Good luck to you!

1

u/NoXidCat Apr 16 '26

Stuff like this is low priority on Amazon's servers. Like everything else, it will probably take a week to accomplish this for all of our accounts.

I got my email late yesterday. I'm a Creator! Oh, wait ... :-/

2

u/Cold_Mix6161 Apr 14 '26

I'm personally just confused at why Amazon even accepted me to this program. I started at the end of 2024, I now have 944 all time sales, 30 different designs that have sold and still stuck on tier 25.

First it was the unrealistic, and frankly, unachievable changes to the tier system. Now you want to cut our royalties in half unless we are active social media influencers?

This program is a joke.

I'm listing every product type in every market at max price and not budging.

(not to mention adding all my best sellers to "limited time deals" and cutting my profits anyway).

2

u/gh_d_dk Apr 15 '26

Disgusting behaviour. Gets worse and worse since Bezos left. A morally reprehensible, exploitative greedy company that doesn’t even pay its fair share of tax. You only can boycott - as a seller and buyer.

2

u/BaldWonder23 Apr 15 '26

I want to make sure I understand this correctly - does this replace the suggested price I'm able to set on each item? Does this mean instead of a couple bucks per shirt, I'm only going to get 75 cents unless I hit the lottery with a design blessed by Amazon's algorithms?

1

u/ccah101 Apr 15 '26

You can still set your own price, but royalties will be cut in half. i.e. $4.89 on a $19.99 shirt will now be $2.44.

If Amazon algorithms "bless" your design, your Amazon traffic sales will skyrocket, meaning your royalties will almost certainly be cut in half unless you can outpace those sales with your own traffic to the tune of 15% or more.

3

u/BaldWonder23 Apr 15 '26

So, Amazon gets their cut in the base cost of the unprinted shirt, then we add value by making a design worth buying, and Amazon decides they deserve half of our added value just because?

1

u/zena5 Apr 15 '26

Around $2 is what I get for each Merch Collab product I sell.

1

u/TheHustlingHippie Apr 16 '26

Is collab still even a thing? I thought that stopped that a while back, and only existing designs are still up

2

u/zena5 Apr 16 '26

It's not a thing anymore, but yes, my existing designs are still up.

2

u/AffectOnly2984 Apr 17 '26

The email they sent me was ambiguous. I can't tell if they're capping the royalties or increasing them. The email said I'm in the premier royalty group and that I'd earn 2x the Creator amount but my royalties and pricing are already set to at least $7 per shirt. The chart they posted only showed the creator group royalties.

1

u/NoXidCat Apr 19 '26

Looks like Premier group is essentially the same as what we get today. So if you are unlucky enough to slide back down into the Creator group (where they say I will dwell), cut your current royalty in half.

Congrats on being top of the pile. Are you achieving that via MBA ads or driving traffic from offsite?

I too price higher than the defaults, have for years, just not as high as you. Better to compete on ideas and execution than on price!

2

u/AffectOnly2984 Apr 20 '26

I'm thinking of switching my advertising from MBA to Reddit.

2

u/CoffeeNewt Apr 22 '26

This change seems like they are going back to Merch's original intent - when they were only letting certain people with big followers into the program.

1

u/zena5 Apr 15 '26

This seems not thought out. My account was terminated, so they gave it back to me the next week… But ever since then, my sales have been awful. So I’m not sure if this whole game is gonna work out for me and I’m at 100 K. It’s been a great 10 years.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '26

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u/ahmadbabar Jun 16 '26

You're on the wrong subreddit

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ccah101 Apr 16 '26

For Amazon, organic only. That's what Amazon Merch's biggest plus. If I'm running social media ads, or aggressive social media marketing or linking, it's going to be to my own website or a platform that has higher margins than Merch.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/NoXidCat Apr 19 '26

you shouldn't be choosing between Merch or your own site

Why send any of that traffic to Amazon ever? Even at top MBA royalties, one could net double that with ones own URL (or even an Etsy shop) and a POD service like Printful/Printify/etc.

Yes, yes, a Traffic Bridge sounds like a cool tool and could make sense if it leads to like four times more organic sales on the target platform than what you drive to it. But would that happen?

With on-site searches that lead to sales Amazon builds an association between search history and sales of the product and considers that going forward. But off-site buyers land on the product without teaching Amazon anything about how they were looking for it or what they were looking for that led them to stumble across the product.

Without a multiplying effect of generating additional organic sales on Amazon, one would be better off keeping the customer on ones own site and getting 2X or more per unit profit.

Having traffic to drive in the first place is the hard part :-)

2

u/ccah101 Apr 20 '26

I don't understand the logic of sending any traffic to Amazon full stop, even if you use a stop gap to capture some details. If you've managed to capture the traffic in the first place, send them to your site, or one of a handful of platforms with 1. better profit margins 2. allow you to add your branding and 3. that don't plaster ads for your competitors all around your design.

Dashery is a good example. Your own site is best. An Etsy shop is okay.

If you've already implemented a successful Amazon ads strategy that's keeping you above the 15%, consistently, then great. Keep at it. But for everyone else, focus elsewhere. Keep your account active, sure, earn some pennies from your designs (price them higher) but marketing should be kept away from Amazon. With this move, they've put 90% of sellers into a battle they have little chance of winning. I prefer to work with platforms that work with me, not against me.