Merch By Amazon - A Case Study Part 1

I recently wrote about why I prefer small niches over larger niches. I thought it might be more helpful to give you an example and do a case study. So here it is.

Passions sell shirts on Amazon. This can be things like hobbies and sports. Think of anything that people spend money on, there are forums for, conventions, etc. One of the things that people are passionate about is their pets. Most people think about them as an extension of their family.

They spend a ton of money on them and will gladly wear a shirt showing their love and pride. Just do a search and you will see a bunch of shirts for pets. Look at this search using MerchResearch just for "pug" dog shirts:

Here is the search volume from Merchant Words:

Almost 4300 pug shirts are just too damn many for me. Now there are ways around this by niching down within the "pug" niche but I prefer to go a whole different route and look for pets that aren't as popular and therefore not as saturated of a niche.

So for this case study, I've decided to go with "ball pythons". Why? First, it's something I know a little bit about because I have a few. Second, it's not an oversaturated niche. Looking at the MerchResearch for "ball python" Merch shirts we see this:

And the Merchant Words search for ball python shirts:

Now I don't know about you but competing with 55 shirts seems a lot better to me than competing with over 4K. Yes, it won't get the traffic that pug shirts get but I just want to sell 1-2 shirts of each design per month and fly under the radar. This is just my strategy.

I'm not saying it's the optimal strategy and if you can create a top 5 selling "pug" shirt you are going to make a hell of lot more money than me. Using baseball terminology, I'm looking to play small ball. Singles and double for me and I will let the rest of the crowd strike out swinging for the fences.

When I first go into a new niche, I start with 5-10 designs. If they sell, then I come back and create more. With a niche like this "ball pythons" I don't have a problem with having 30-50 designs in such a small niche. I will totally dominate this niche and competition won't be that great with my shirts only ranking anywhere from 300k to 2 million.

To get ideas I will look at what is already on Amazon but most of the time I look to Pinterest and Google image for ideas. I will search for "funny ball python sayings" and make a list. I will come up with 5 designs to start and test the waters. Here is one of those:

As you can see, it's no masterpiece but these can and do sell on Amazon. I make light colored designs to go on dark shirts. The dark shirts are the best sellers on Amazon so always go with Black, Navy, and Dark Heather. Fill in other dark colors that you think look good with your design.

Always select Mens, Women, and Youth sizes regardless of the shirt. You never know when a woman might wear a man's size or an adult wears a youth size. Unless you have a good reason for not selecting one of these (like inappropriate for youth), always select all three.

Likewise with colors. Always select 5 even though Amazon's tips tell you to only select 3. Amazon is notorious for running out of colors and you don't want to have a listing that has no shirt colors available.

For the brand, I choose to incorporate 1-2 keywords. So for this particular shirt I chose: "Funny Pet Ball Python Tee Shirts". I will use the same brand name on all of these 5 shirts.

Likewise for the title, I use the same keywords and add anymore that I can fit into the 60 character limit. For this shirt I chose: "Funny Pet Love Ball Python T-Shirt - Snake Lovers Gift".

For the first bullet, I use the the title again plus anything else that might help sell the shirt or get it found in search. The title is the most important part of the listing so focus on it before worrying about the bullets. Some people are successful without even using the bullets.

On the second bullet, I like to talk about the shirt being fitted and if you want a looser fit, then order a size larger. This cuts down on the negative reviews where someone gets the shirt and it's too small. I also list what the shirt actually says on this second bullet.

The description really does nothing in the Amazon search and you can leave this blank if you want. However, Google does use the description so there is a chance you can rank in their search. So what I do is just copy both of my bullets into the description.

I also price my shirts low to start. Normally this is $13.95 to start. One reason is to get a sale so I tier up quicker. But it's also because once a shirt sells it's on Amazon forever. Otherwise if it doesn't sell in 90 days, Amazon takes it down. Once it sells once I will raise the price to $16 - $20.

So now I have 5 designs up and I will wait for a sale or two. Once that happens, I will add more designs and keep going from there. I will be back with an update to this case study in 2-3 weeks when these hopefully start selling. Let me know what else you would like to see.