Hey, what’s up?
Today, I wanted to share why I closed my Amazon Seller Central Account for Merch by Amazon. I’m mostly going to talk about selling merch and not necessarily about FBA.
If you’re currently selling or trying to sell merch on Amazon, then this could be for you. If you’re doing FBA, it might not be exactly for you but could still be relevant.
HISTORY
Before we start, I just wanted to talk a little about a little bit of my history with Amazon Seller Central.
When I started my Print-on-Demand journey in 2019, one of the first thing that I tried was opening an Amazon Seller Central because that meant that I could sell anything on the Amazon marketplaces. It was actually my second time opening an Amazon Seller Central account.
In my case, I mostly used Printful, MugLaunch and CustomCat to sell merch on Amazon. I decided to close my account a few months ago, in the end of 2023.
1 – COMPLEXITY
AMAZON SELLER CENTRAL
Amazon Seller Central is probably one of the most complex and confusing place to be. It is so packed with different information and things to know and learn.
I’m not going to go into big details. That being said, I understand that anybody that is selling on Amazon but go through all of this. I simply can’t recommend it.
MERCH BY AMAZON
In Merch by Amazon, I can easily manage my designs and listings. I don’t feel like I have to deal with useless and superfluous information. There’s only the things that I actually need.
2 – BRAND & GTIN EXEMPTION
AMAZON SELLER CENTRAL
If you want to sell merch on Amazon Seller Central, you usually have 2 options:
- Use your own registered brand.
- Use generic products using a GTIN exemption.
To be completely honest, I never really understood this concept. I just wanted to sell merch on Amazon and I didn’t have a registered brand, so I simply did a GTIN exemption in order to start selling generic merch immediately.
I found that step very annoying and time-consuming because I had to fill a form and send proof with pictures of my merch, and it took a few weeks for Amazon to accept my request. Because I was using third party, that didn’t make sense. I had to make an order for my provider just to take a real picture of it so that Amazon accepts it as real.
MERCH BY AMAZON
In Merch by Amazon, I don’t have to deal with brand registrations or GTIN. I simply upload my designs and fill the different descriptions. I only have to worry about not infringing copyrights and trademarks.
3 – MARKETPLACES
AMAZON SELLER CENTRAL
One of the very attractive thing about Amazon is that you’re able to sell merch all around the world. They call it Amazon Global Selling. From my experience, Amazon Seller Central makes it quite hard to actually enter new marketplaces. You have to register, consider and manage each marketplace individually.
I had a hard time registering for new marketplaces, and that just led me to stop trying and focusing only in America. Which can be limiting.
MERCH BY AMAZON
In Merch by Amazon, you’re still able to sell in different marketplaces, but the process is much easier. You simply select the marketplaces that you want to push your listing straight inside your listing. You don’t have to deal with registration or anything.
4 – PUSHING, SYNCH & UPDATES
AMAZON SELLER CENTRAL
If you’re trying to sell on merch on Amazon Seller Central, then you have to use third party providers.
In my case, I was using Printful, MugLaunch and CustomCat. To make it happen, you usually have to link some API to link your Amazon stores. Once this is done, you have to synchronize products from the providers and Amazon. That can be a painful process because you have to manage the products in different places. Both on Amazon and third party providers.
When you make a sale, you have to make sure that everything is working properly and that the provider is actually sending the right products. In my case, that led me to many problems. Mostly related to synchronization issues. Sometimes, the API wasn’t able to do its job automatically, so I had to make and ship the order manually to the customer directly from the provider. I was only using Amazon to get my products seen.
Ultimately, I felt like that was a huge waste of my time.
MERCH BY AMAZON
In Merch by Amazon, everything is provided and managed by Amazon. You only have to upload the products and Amazon takes care of everything. That means making the sale, making and shipping the products.
5 – CUSTOMER SERVICE
AMAZON SELLER CENTRAL
Which leads me to my next point: customer service. When you have an Amazon Seller Central store, you have to do all the customer service by yourself. Whenever a customer has a question or a problem, they are contacting you, and you obviously have to answer. You have to do it right because Amazon is monitoring you.
Most of the problems that I had with customers were related to
- Shipping time
- Products not received and their refunds.
- Wrong products received and their refunds.
I don’t mind that much doing the customer service, but my problem was that none of these issues were within my control.
MERCH BY AMAZON
In Merch by Amazon, you don’t have to deal with customer and refunds. Everything is managed by Amazon, and they even give Prime Shipping to customers. You’re still impacted by refunds, they simply subtract the balance from your account.
6 – EXPENSES, RECEIPTS & TAXES
AMAZON SELLER CENTRAL
As a business owner, another important thing to consider is everything related to expenses, receipts and taxes, you have to manage, track and calculate everything.
When using Amazon Seller Central seriously, you first have to pay the monthly subscriptions to have access to Amazon. You also have to pay fees every time that you make a sale. That’s only related to Amazon.
Since you’re using third party providers, you also have to purchase the product and also the shipping from the third party providers. Some of them also require monthly subscriptions.
Over time, it is really hard to know, track, manage and calculate everything. Am I actually making a profit? I really had no idea because there were too many expenses to actually consider.
Also, at the end of the year, I had to collect the receipts and calculate all the expenses to file my taxes. It was very time-consuming and yes you can use an accountant, but you obviously have to pay his time.
Ultimately, managing expenses and taxes end up both time-consuming and expensive.
MERCH BY AMAZON
In Merch by Amazon, unless you’re paying for advertisements, you don’t really have any expenses or subscriptions. They send you the money that you made at the end of the next month. Making it easy to track and manage everything.
7 – MERCH BY AMAZON
All of these points finally lead me to the solution: Merch by Amazon. It fixes all the previous issues that I had with Amazon Seller Central.
To make something available on Merch by Amazon:
- Upload your design
- Select the products and marketplaces that you want.
- Enter the titles and descriptions.
Ultimately, you avoid:
- Registering brands.
- Registering to many marketplaces.
- Synchronization issues from third party providers.
- Monthly subscriptions and expenses. Both from Amazon and other marketplaces.
- Crazy amount of receipts to file your taxes.
- Having to do customer service.
The only thing that you really have to be careful is making sure that you’not infringing any trademark or copyright. Usually, you can find extensions like Productor and Podly for that.
That being said, in the last years, I think it is becoming more and more difficult to make money on Amazon because everybody is trying to sell on Amazon. I think it is becoming quite over-saturated, your listings have to stand out more and more.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I decided to close my Amazon Seller Central account because of its complexities and many problems that I encountered. There are so many things to do and learn manually. It is time-consuming and always leads to some synchronization issues and problems out of my control. If you’re trying to sell merch, I think the best and easier solution is to use Merch by Amazon. Amazon Seller Central is probably still very useful if you’re selling anything other than merch.
That being said, by using Merch by Amazon, you rely very much on Amazon, which already has a big monopoly. That can be pretty risky because Amazon can ultimately close your account at any moment.
Also, when you’re using only Amazon, you’re not using and promoting smaller companies that might need the help and attention. I do believe healthy competition to be good and important.
Maybe I’ll reopen an Amazon Seller Central in the future. Who knows? But for now, I think I will stick with Merch by Amazon.
So that’s pretty much it, I hope this was helpful to you. If this blog was valuable to you, you could consider following me on social media and if you have any thoughts or comments, you can leave them below.
I hope this helps, peace!
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