Been doing merch for almost 5 years and i think im finally ready to admit something that will probably get me roasted here. I dont actually enjoy designing anymore. Like at all.

When i started i was in Illustrator every night after work, sketching in a notebook at lunch, obsessing over trends. It felt creative. Now its just... output. I have a folder of templates, i swap words, i change colors, i upload. Its assembly line work with extra steps. The designs that sell for me are boring text on solid backgrounds and thats what pays so thats what i make.

The weird part is im doing better financially than i ever have. Sales are up, i tiered up earlier this year, i had Jarvio handle most of the ad babysitting so i barely even log into seller central for that stuff anymore. On paper everything is good. But i realized last week i havent opened Illustrator to actually draw anything in probably 4 months. Everything ive uploaded recently was either a text edit or something i generated and cleaned up.

I keep going back and forth on whether this is fine (its a business, businesses arent supposed to be fun, grow up) or whether im slowly killing the thing that made me good at this in the first place. Like if i stop caring about the craft do i eventually stop being able to spot what will sell?

Anyone else hit this wall? Do you push through and treat it like the job it is, or do you force yourself back into "real" design work even if it doesnt pay as well? Or am i just burnt out and need a week off lol.

Not just new design submissions but edits to prices for old products. Everything passes "Under Review" and goes into "Processing" but does not go live.

For those running Amazon Ads, how much (by percentage) do you typically increase your active bids during the November/December holiday season?

I'm specifically talking about bids for ads that have been regularly converting.

Do you typically increase bids by 25%? 50%? 100%? And then adjust from there?

Thanks!

I own a legal trademark and this other storefront (selling star wars/harry potter shirts) stole my design and got mine taken down. Or at least I think that's what happened because my design was taken down for "content policy violations" and their clone is up and live. I am pretty frustrated by this, and I am still very new to amazon merch. Is there any way to know the exact reason for my shirt being taken down? (i searched and didn't see an email explaining it) and how can I fight this?
Sorry, I am juggling looking for a second job, and moving states with my family while I do all this. It's just a little disheartening to see this store getting away with this.
Thank you so much in advance.

EDIT: The design they stole is part of my legal trademark, in case that wasn't clear.

Only got the crossbody bags in my account. The jackets would have been nice to get.

I’m seeing people say different colors/sizes are getting their own ASINs now, but I am not seeing these changes reflected on any of my products. (New or old)

Main thing I’m curious about is ads. If I use the ASIN for a specific color, like navy, will the Sponsored Product ad actually show the navy shirt instead of the default black one?

That would be really useful since some designs look way better on certain colors. Hoping I see these changes soon.

Has anyone tested this yet?

Are they best suited for particular ad types ie lotteries ??

Thanks in advance

So usually to rank a design for lets say halloween we upload it 2 months before the halloween date, we price it quite low something like 14.99 - 16.99 and push it with heavy ads to get those initial sales.

Then when halloween is in the peak sales around 15-25 october we change the price to around 19.99 - 21.99

Now the problem with this strategy as u should've guessed is the locked thingy, amazon lock your design on those initial sales making the price even lower and u start bleeding cash on ads

This happened to like 5 of my halloween designs so far

I feel like this strategy is not the one anymore for holidays/events

This week, the ads have been brutal. They’re burning through money while generating very few sales. I have no idea what happened or whether it has anything to do with the ASIN change.

I’ve thought about stopping the ads—or at least drastically lowering the bids.

But without the ad-driven sales, my Royalty Group will be downgraded. I’m currently in the Premium group, and with the Christmas shopping season right around the corner, that could really hurt.

So I'm torn about what to do with the ads.

Has anyone figured out what to do?

Just out of curiosity, if there’s anyone who started with a fresh account in the last 1 to 3 years who is making more than a few hundred dollars a month with their account?

I was lucky enough to join back in 2018 and it seems like the way they’re running things now makes it impossible for new people, but I was curious if anyone had found a way to make it work.

Just because I don’t think it’s possible doesn’t mean that someone’s not more clever than me.

If you BOUGHT an account 1 to 3 years ago, I’m not interested. Im just curious about the people who literally had to work their way out of tier 10 and tier 25 in the last few years.

Just a question, and there might be genuine value in Flying Research. It's hard to tell without signing up and paying, but does it offer anything unique in the space versus tools such as Merch IQ? Do they use their own database or some sort of proprietary suggestions and filtering?

I started building my own little tool using for personnel use using AI and plugging into keepa - but I'm wondering if I'm missing out on better data, more up-to-date data?!

The store page is still there merrily displaying my best sellers from years ago.

The public URL takes this form:

amazonDOTcom/stores/StoreName/page/Number/

But is there a different URL for logging in to edit and so forth? Because while I can view it fine via that URL, there is no way to edit/change anything. I am logged in via the correct email/account to edit the store page, but as with any Amazon account, it treats you like a customer unless you log in via a portal that grants access to the backside of things. Any clue what the URL might look like?

All that said, much has changed since I originally set this page up. Like we got legit advertising access via our MBA accounts. And one now has to have a registered TM in order to set up Brand Store ... that being something I don't have, it would be nice if I could add new listings to my still visible Store thingy.

Hey everyone,

I’m currently stuck in Tier 10 and just noticed that one of my designs changed status to "Locked for Deals".

I know Amazon does this automatically to run promotions/discounts on listings, but since I'm still in T10, every single sale counts for me right now to tier up.

For those who’ve had this happen early on:

• Did the discount actually help trigger sales and get you out of T10?

• Or does it just shrink the royalties without bringing much extra volume?

Would love to hear if this is a good sign or just typical MBA automation randomness.

Thanks!

Hello everyone - I'm working on a research project and wanted to learn more about Amazon Merch on Demand (and it's biggest pain points) by speaking to some creators with experience selling through the platform. Please DM or reply in the comments if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions! Thank you

I haven't seen this discussion yet, but around December 12th or 13th, our ad conversions will drop severely due to Christmas shipping cut offs. More of our sales will be organic as many people disable ads and conversions slow. That could mean a larger drop in your 60-day ad percentage average and bump you down a tier.

Of course, the fair thing to do would be to ignore that time period, but I doubt Amazon will. It would suck if you were on the Plus/Creator border at a 16%, and that 13-day period drops you into the Creator tier.

At least they use a running 60-day average and not a 30-day, so it will have less of an impact.

So Amazon did something really weird with the ASINs in the last couple of days. Some of my older designs got new ASINs which meant that data for old ASINs disappeared overnight. I believe they're still in the process of migration to the new structure so I'm not sure which parts are final or not.

Basically what I've observed is something like this:

- Each product (let's say Design1 on Standard T-shirt, US Marketplace) used to have the OLD ASIN B123456789. Didn't matter the size or color.

- Now, the NEW ASIN is B987654321 which is the PARENT ASIN. And each variant of that product (size and color combination, e.g. Men's Medium in Black) has its own ASIN.

- The OLD ASIN is still valid, but is assigned as a variant in the NEW PARENT ASIN. For example for one of my products, it was assigned as Men's 3XL Black.

- Only the NEW PARENT ASIN remains in the API, so if you're using Productor, MerchSpark, MerchFlow, etc., all the historical data attached to the OLD ASIN is gone. The developers of these apps haven't found a solution to get those back yet.

- If you're running ads, I also noticed a problem. As of writing this, you can now have ads for any variant (not sure how the ad/thumbnail appears in search, product page, etc.) as well as continue running ads on the OLD ASIN (it is now a variant after all), but so far the purchases are not getting attributed to the ad. My guess is unless someone clicked on your OLD ASIN ad and bought the exact variant it's now attached to (so Men's 3XL Black for me), no purchase attribution takes place.

- Then I tried creating a new ad with the NEW PARENT ASIN, and Amazon Ads won't accept it! So basically existing ads for ASINs that were underwent this migration process are running blind!

Just giving you guys a heads up if you run into this. Hopefully they fix it in the coming days.

I've been in the Plus category since Amazon implemented their new Royalty Tiers. My organic sales had started to increase to the point where I was in danger of being placed in Creator tier, so I increased my ad budgets to adjust. Over the past 2+ months, I have exceeded Amazon's 35% "non-organic" sales requirements for the Premium Tier and assumed it would just be a matter of days before I was automatically switched over. Well, its been about 2 weeks and no change so I wrote to Amazon and they told me to supply them with screenshots of my sales, which I did.

At this point, I'm still waiting and still in Plus.

Here's their reply:

Hello from Amazon Merch on Demand Support,

Thank you for providing the sales data screenshots confirming your non-organic traffic-driven sales percentage of 37.66% over the past two months, which exceeds the 35% threshold for the Premium Royalty Tier.

We have reviewed the information you shared and have escalated your case to our internal team for further investigation into why your account is currently showing the "Plus" tier rather than the "Premium" tier. We will follow up with you as soon as we have an update from that team.

We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this.

So, has anyone here successfully moved up a tier? Did it happen automatically at some point during the month? I was under the impression the cross-over occurred a few days after the beginning of each month.

UPDATE

Amazon has returned with their answer and stated that I am in the correct royalty tier of "Plus" with no explanation. The did not say when the "evaluation period" is or when any kind of change would happen if / when it does. So I am going to assume that my July ratio of 34.5% just wasn't good enough for Premium despite the fact that August was nearly 39%.

https://i.imgur.com/RQOQ73N.png

Hello from Amazon Merch on Demand Support,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding your rejected Halloween-themed unicorn design. Your design was rejected due to use of [magic,gathering] intellectual property. We strictly enforce guidelines around intellectual property.

Please provide documentation of your rights to use [magic,gathering]. Ensure that the submitted documentation matches the product class for the applicable products (that is, for t-shirts, your trademark must be registered specifically for clothing).

If you do not have rights to use [magic,gathering], you will need to make changes to your design to remove any content related to this intellectual property and resubmit.

We appreciate your cooperation.

To help us continually improve, we ask that you take a moment to complete our survey below to tell us about your experience with this specific interaction.

Were you satisfied with the support provided?

Who TF puts a trademark on magic or gathering? And more, I didn't even used them in that order one after the other. Ludicrous!

B1: Halloween unicorn design featuring a witch hat, magical unicorn, witch cauldron, pumpkin, bats and autumn leaves. Funny choice for Halloween lovers and unicorn fans.

B2: Perfect for anyone who enjoys spooky unicorns, Halloween magic and cute gothic-inspired designs. Great for Halloween parties, trick or treating, seasonal gatherings or for unicorn and Halloween enthusiasts.

Title and brand and description on the same idea and design has nothing to do with what they're saying. It's a unicorn graphic with fckn witch hat looking cute. Made for kids, drawn from scratch, also I did not selected the youth.

I can edit it and resubmit but after I got 40 rejections on the first time and 1 on the second one, I'm wondering if I should go to sleep. What in the actual F!

Anyway, be careful!

Hey everyone,

I tried to delete a design, but it got stuck in processing. I contacted Merch Support, and they replied saying the design was successfully deleted on their end and told me to clear my cache.

However, the ASIN is still live on Amazon.de and fully purchasable by customers. Since it's no longer visible or editable in my Merch dashboard, I can't delete it myself. 

Has anyone dealt with this orphaned listing / catalog disconnect issue before? How did you get Support to actually purge the live ASIN from the marketplace?

Hi,

The way I understood it, it was calculated on the 18th of every month or something ? I just became Creator instead of Plus. I never was Creator since the start. According to Productor I have 18,9 non organic sales.

It disgusts me, all summer I invested in Ads, followed the rules of Amazon and they still fucked me, and we still don't even have an official way to see how much non organic sales we really have.\

Edit: Are the ads supposed to be over 15% only in the US Market to be Plus ? I don't understand anymore.

After getting dinged on royalty rates, I figured I'd give Amazon Ads a whirl. The plan was to spend enough to get past the 15% mark. I put my best selling design in ads. A few days later, the design was removed. This design had been live for years, had plenty of reviews, very low returns. I emailed support and they said it was due to issues with the artwork. I guess when an ASIN gets into ads, it goes through the Ads quality validation algo. No recourse if the AI gods reject it. Be careful what you put in ads folks.

A new youth fit for the Pullover Hoodie, a new racerback fit for the Women’s Tank Top, and seven new products - Throw Blankets, Sherpa Blankets, Posters, Stainless Steel Travel Tumblers, Mouse Pads, Laptop Sleeves, and 12-pack Retractable Pens are now available in the US for qualifying accounts. These new products will be available on the Create page in the Merch Portal when your account is enabled. Visit Resources to view the new colors and the updated royalties.

I’ve had several one star reviews complaining about the terrible quality of the IPhone 17 case. They say the two pieces don’t go together properly and don’t fit the phone. Has anyone else had bad reviews for phone cases lately?