Amazon JUST Destroyed Everyones Print on Demand Income 

that's so annoying! But yes, it's good you've got a job

it's a shame, especially to see a huge company like Amazon doing this. I guess their bottom line is the most important at the end of the day... (to them)

AGREE 💯!!!! It’s Scary

They did 5his previously to the Amazon sellers who’d helped them flesh out their platform. Once they saw a better opportunity, they abandoned those 3rd party sellers and trained chines factories to sell directly on their platform. Now they’re mainly an online Chinese discount store with no care for patents or copyright.

@@shimmymorris1 I just read an article that Amazon is doing this because they've updated their systems and hope to be able to deliver in 5 days instead of 7! In my 'work' industry, every vendor has raised their prices. I guess it's the new normal. Probably a main reason everyone on this page is trying to build a side hustle.

it's a shame, but annoyingly they are the biggest and people want to sell where the customers are

yup, unless you push back

thank you! Definitely not a surprise, just a shame

I've done videos on Zyro, Woocommerce and Wordpress, they would be low cost alternatives to shopify. It's also the marketing you have to think about if going down that route

hahaha, i wonder if they're connected! Shame they couldn't get that right either!

@@shimmymorris1 haha I know right! Thanks for your videos as always Shimmy

hopefully, at some point there might not be profit but hopefully we're far off that

I agree, I really wish people would stop using amazon so much

Modern slavery..such nonsense.. Its pretty much the opposite of that..More like modern greed on the sellers part.. Free platform,free listings,free production,free delivery. One simply chooses how much profit they want.. Times change,prices change ..

@@quemalcy Read what exactly I wrote, and if you have a different opinion or experiemce, fine. But calling my situation and experience „nonsense“ is just ignorant.

I think a lot of it is luck. Have you ever tried sharing or linking out to your design portfolio or your potential audience so they know you’d be bringing something to the table?

Mine was 1 line and was accepted in a week. Don't be discouraged. When I applied, I didn't even know what merch was and had not seen any video. Maybe it's timing. Don't apply during the Holidays or at the start of the year. Maybe they are receiving thousands of applications with similar text that all of you got from the same videos. Just get to the point. Why should they accept you? How are your designs? Do you have a portfolio? Good luck!

@@lina...... Thank you so much for the help. Congratulations.

I made a mistake and it uploaded without my products. It was an error and of course it was rejected and they came back and said once you apply if it is rejected you can never apply again.

@@lori-leecraig2138 Keep trying. Many people have applied many many times after being rejected and then got accepted. Good luck!

Yes exactly. That’s the best option I think for getting out of tier 10 Any drop is annoying but this one coming now when cost of living is going up is just not nice news

I've bought some of my own stuff on Redbubble but it doesn't count as a "sale" but you don't pay profit margin either.

@@judywall576 It will count for Amazon ;)

Greed. TBH as a consumer makes me not want to buy a tshirt from Amazon. Lol As a seller, I applied but didn’t get accepted.

lol smart

I’m not saying this is the worst thing they’ve done. I’m sure they’ve done many worse things. The reason why this is a big deal is because it comes at a time when people have less disposable income yet the cost for Amazon pod products will go up. The quality will stay the same (which is crappy) and overall it will make it harder for people to sell. All the while Amazon is still profiting an insane amount of money as the base cost for a basic black T-shirt should not be $14+

That's why I price shop between Amazon and eBay. 😁 Both places have my business. Sometimes Amazon is cheaper. Sometimes ebay is.

Not sad, just a business tactic. What's the difference between buying on ebay and selling on amazon and buying from china and selling on amazon (which pretty much every big company does)

Do you recommend Printify or Printful for t-shirts

that's super annoying! Quality is a huge issue with print on demand!

Both are good, Printify connects you to printing partners whilst printful is a printing partner themselves

yup, it's a shame but you're very right! Things will only get more and more expensive

sorry to hear! Hopefully you figure out a way to increase your income sources

100%%%

nope

ye they definitely have their negatives! You could try sell it privately

gosh that's awful!!! I hope it worked out in the end for you.

@@shimmymorris1 oh, yes, leaving was the best decision I could have made ☺️ It freed me up to much better possibilities, as I’m getting my e-commerce business going now and I live in a much healthier environment in another State ☺️

yes, that too!

They are pretty big, it's mad

haha thanks!! I liked this thumbnail a lot! lol... Yes we could technically increase our selling price but then we could scare off a lot of potential customers

@@shimmymorris1 definitely. Rather still make a profit then no profit. Hope though these sites do consider the creators in future tough.

yes it's annoying they do that. Technically price isn't the issue but not everyone can just raise the price and continue getting sales. Some people are still trying to get their first few sales

yikes those costs are insane! $16.99!! I used to sell with FBA and it was bad but never that bad

They do that with their Amazon Basics brand as well. They are copying successful products from their own sellers and will break them because they have a 1000x more leverage

It's hard there's no doubt about that, but there are people making a lot of money with Amazon. Once you get out of tier 10 and you have a few designs bringing in a little it can make a difference

I still think selling on amazon can be a good idea to tap into another market, but i do agree you should have your designs on many sites too to make sure you are making the most out of your pod business

That’s true as well!

I do agree, however, amazon are paying very very little for these things. Merch is one of their biggest profit makers.

That may be true, but it's still more than I'm paying to make our sell the stuff

thank you! Totally agree

Yup! You just have to hope people can still afford to buy

ye it really is crazy. years ago it really was easy, like a money printing machine. It's a lot harder now, but still doable

@Shimmy Morris Yeh, the only way is to sell HUGE numbers of stock to make up the loss in profits..... thanks for another great vid BTW! 👍

That doesn’t mean it’s ok… there are literally laws preventing this kind of thing. The law of unfair competition comes to mind as Amazon and it sounds like Walmart too are using other peoples products and sales to determine what they should sell and undercut the competition

@@shimmymorris1 It's extremely common in the US. There's loads of grocery chains and dollar stores that do it. Kroger, Dollar General, Albertsons, Tomb Thumb, Whole Foods, HEB, Brookshire Brothers, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, Sam's Club, Costco, Target. --Even retail clothing department chains do it by copying popular clothing, shoes and accessories for their own brands like JC Penny, Kohl's, Beal's, Men's Warehouse, Dillard's, etc.

ye, i found that the designs need little tweaking for amazon but it's worth it!

@@shimmymorris1 honestly though, have you made any sales?.. And how long did it take you to increase your tier level?

Amazon run out of stock too but not nearly as frequently. The main benefit of Amazon is it's audience and reputation

that doesn't include free shipping and it was using companies like printful, awkard styles, gelato, they're generally cheaper for base prices

You'll make profits, i'm not so sure on redbubble though so branch out and try other platforms too... redbubble has many issues and I have a video coming out about them soon

@@shimmymorris1 Yep, I'm going to try other platforms for sure. I enjoy designing so it's a win-win situation for me no matter what. Looking forward to your video on Redbubble!

totally, if you can get past that then that would be amazing

100%

That’s the plan for next weeks video. Stay tuned ☺️☺️

that's such a shame!

@@shimmymorris1 Yep and when I tried to get them to reconsider the answer was nope, not even going to look at it.

sorry about that, your the first to say anything after 50k views...

could be, redbubble is notoriously low, but there are others where the royalty is higher.

Yes! eBay has great potential, I will add it to my list to make that video

You’d pay them when purchasing

@@shimmymorris1 do collect sales tax on the item you sell ?

hmmm, that would be interesting to see

oh 100%

because they're shitty quality and quite honestly, They shouldn't be sold for more than $10 from an ethical standpoint.

haha

it's awful!

I have literally done this business with a print for less than $4 per shirt. I appreciate your comment and your experience. But there is absolutely no way Amazon (one of the biggest companies in the world) are paying $10 for the shitty T-shirts they produce. It’s well known that they make an absolute killing from print on demand. Their margins are insane.

eventually yes, however, for now I'd recommend raising prices slightly and still using their platform as their reach is still unmatched by anyone else

technically yes, but for a new seller they will struggle to make anything as ususally people sell for breakeven when starting to get themselves going, however break even is now a bit more making it a harder sell

You could do but there's no scalability there. Amazon is still worth it especially when you start getting to the higher tiers

@@shimmymorris1 I'm stuck tier 25. Although have built my own woo comm using printfy.

wow thank you! really appreciate that

oh I'm aware, it's not easy at all! These days I'd recommend leverging social media but even then, it's still hard

@@shimmymorris1 I don't know. Seems FB adshas lost it's luster. Ads are super expensive and conversion rates are low. I'm going down the content creation/blog route to see if that will work. Pinterest might be the only good Social Media for retail/online stores. And the T-shirt course ads on Facebook are just blowing up my feed....I wonder who's bankrolling them?

Yes. This is print on demand. It’s very different. Once making a design you can upload to various platforms. Those company’s will handle everything you’ve just said. It makes this business very attractive as it takes out 99% of the headache

That is the difference you are doing hand made and they upped the anny to digital. Upload and print. Which is what circuit designers were doing. Digitally creating an image buying some shirts and printing designs on shirts. This is what is happening. Yeah you can make handmade stuff all day long, and people will buy but these days people have zero patience and zero attention span. They don’t want to wait 2-4 weeks for something they can get digital created and printed in a matter of minutes and shipped that day.

you're welcome! thank you for watching and commenting

not really... you could trademark but i don't think it's worth the hassle

Because there's really nothing we can do. We have to charge more to make profit. Amazon have to charge more to make profit too. It sucks, but that's life.

@@shimmymorris1 It's not a profit issue for Amazon, it's greed... Both sellers and buyers are condoning it.

this is very true, the only thing is, it's not just upfront cost, it's on going cost and it's all the marketing you need to do to get traffic to the site. But I agree it's the ultimate plan

But If Your SEO Game Is On Point & You Got A Winning Design/Product Your Getting Free Marketing Regardless. As You Will Get Indexed Better & Pushed To Top On Search Engines. I Started On These POD Sites But After Time I Realized Your Own Site Is The Best Way To Go Plus Nobody Can't Shut You Down, Banned You Or Censor You.

@@H.O.T.Merchandise that is true! With your own website it's all about how good you are with marketing.

i'm sure everyone will

yes of course, the issue is, people have less disposable income these days and increasing your prices doesn't always work

It’s on their platform. You log in with your Amazon account and it takes you through the set up

@@shimmymorris1 I want to start with a friend in the Christmas holidays we already have designs do you think it will be worth it? And how to market it with cheap marketing and how to make the videos really cheap

Amazon has not allowed me to sell in their store, always rejecting me (I have been trying to do it for years) IDK why. I have a RedBubble store (n21b designs) and I have no problems with them, maybe it happens because I am from Chile (South America)? Maybe I guess so.

@@shimmymorris1Thanks. I'll give it a try.

@@Nostradamus21b Sorry to hear about rejection, it's a common story with Amazon. I think Redbubble rejects some countries' applicants routinely. Not sure why, nothing personal, maybe legal or banking systems are not compatible. I see you have a lot of great art and music videos on your site. Hope you don't mind if I visit them.

totally!

hmmm

all part of the vibe... glad you liked the content

Yup I’ve had that happen to me

@@shimmymorris1same with FBA.

I wouldn’t use Teespring anymore. To many problems

That's true, it's not the biggest increase and it was to be expected especially as most other companies have increased. It's just annoying because we all know how crap their quality is, and to be paying $14+ base price for a t-shirt just seems ludicrous

@@shimmymorris1 👋🏻 Shimmy, The lack of quality products is why I haven’t been in a hurry to even try to list on Amazon. One of the things I’d hoped you’d address in your quality reviews was fabric content-which does make all of the difference in garment life. Poly-cotton will always pill (which means form little balls on the fabric) and the pilling makes the fabric look old & worn out. 100% cotton or 100% polyester will not pill- which is caused by the different types of fibers separating, because polyesters are one long fiber around which the shorter cotton fibers are wrapped. The newer fabrics which add a third fiber for a silkier feel are adding more problems-quicker pilling and continuous shrinkage as used by adding rayon (using different names for it but having the same qualities including even shorter fibers.) I bought one triple fiber content tee because I liked the design and it was pilling in the underarm area after one wash-only good for wearing around the house now. I wouldn’t want to sell anything but 100%cotton for a shirt to be worn next to the body. 100% polyester is good for outerwear maybe a windbreaker or to move sweat away from the body like for bike riders like the polyester Sock worn under woolly Sock. But polyester is made of oil and so is oil loving meaning body oils will eventually stain the fabric-which is why generally it’s better used as outerwear. Manufacturers know this but polyester is cheap and the general public just think their clothes wear out fast.

yet you didn't make a video about seeing it coming 🤡

@@hiddenintheshadows530 Why would I?

@Marius Popa why would you need to take credit for, after the fact. Something you have zero proof off. You had big news yet kept it to yourself. 😅🤣

it's really not. Their profit wouldn't be 14.58... obvs not, but their costs are insanely low because of how these products are produced. It's definitely not 50/50

most companies only care about money

Aw that’s such a shame

Cool

yes that is the ideal but it's 10x harder and more expensive for most

@@shimmymorris1 Not really. All it requires is a basic heat press and one color silk screen set up. Produce one color designs and allow the profits from those sales to fund upgrades. Or get a heat press and order full color heat transfers of your work and do the printing yourself. Websites are inexpensive. Etsy, SquareSpace, etc.

That’s true

hardly, if you're selling volume on amazon, it's going to cost you hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars a month

@@shimmymorris1 your title is "Amazon just destroyed everyone's print on demand income". That's a clickbait title Shimmy and you know it. I clicked on it because I needed to see if there was something important for print on demand in general. There wasn't. Amazon merch is not even a significant income source for most doing print on demand. If your title was Amazon just destroyed everyone's Amazon merch income, sure, it would still be overly dramatic but atleast wouldn't be complete clickbait. It's clearly a clickbait title. I will not be watching any of your videos again and no longer believe anything you say is trustworthy.

yup!

That's the bit that annoys me most, the print quality.

Oh gosh, I've never met anyone who'd never used or disliked amazons site. People use it because it's easy, and everything is so accessible. Most of their items are third-party sellers or brand names...

You’re welcome. Thanks for watching!

@@shimmymorris1 Hi Shimmy! Thanks so much for the video. Yes, it's been disheartening especially after spending so much on ads and BORN and others get superior placement without ad spend. Issue we are having is to change prices we have to go in one by one to update and with thousands to edit it seems like it will take all year with TM checks having to go through processing again. It would be wonderful if they would offer us sellers a way to just change the price and be done with it! Bulk edits are seen as such so we are stuck doing one at a time!

yup, this is the scariest part of P.o.d, and any business to be honest

would take a lot of people to get on board to make a difference

It's a shame, i've been doing less and less shopping on Amazon recently, I'm finding a lot cheaper prices if I look around a bit more

course! The rich only have one goal. To be richer

i'm not sure how those niches relate to that product but you can certainly try and see how it goes

@@shimmymorris1 Thank you

Years ago? But this only happened weeks ago…

@shimmymorris1 she spoke about this. How online seller companies will see what's doing well, then snag that spot from under the seller and sell their version of that product. I'm pretty sure it was amazon she was talking about.

oh, i totally considered that. Amazon are absolutely raking it in. A standard black t-shirt costing over $15 is ludicrous... they are paying no more than a dollar for them. Their margins are absolutely insane with their Merch business

@@shimmymorris1 there's so costs associated with warehousing, printing, packaging and delivery... But yeah, they're raking in the dough... Have you seen bezos new yacht?

@@retxab84 I took into account those other costs too, it's still insane. Yea I saw it... looks nice haha, it's huge!

i've already replied to you... another keyboard warrior it seems. have a nice day

Indeed

yup...

interesting... Bit risky though if the companies have crazy radical ideas that effect people negatively

Yup! Totally agree

time... time is the most valuable resource we have... It's not free money, we spend time, a lot of time making this work... profits are low... when those profits get even lower, our time becomes even less valuable... so no. it's not free, and people aren't greedy because a giant monopoly wants to control even more and suck their sellers of any little profit they have remaining

well eventually it would be ideal for everyone to have their own site but that's unlikely