Hey, what’s up?
Today, I wanted to share my 2023 sale report for Amazon Merch and just overall talk about the events that took place in 2023.
It’s been a year with full of different challenges for me, so you could learn a few things about my journey and gain inspiration/motivation from it.
All the income and money that you’ll see today is in CANADIAN DOLLAR. Not in USD. Because I live in Canada and having my interfaces in Canadian dollars is easier for me
Let’s ago right in!
1- YEARLY AMAZON MERCH SALES
In 2023, I made 70K with Amazon Merch. That being said, that does not include other print-on-demand websites.
I also made money on Etsy, Amazon Seller Central, Redbubble, TeePublic, Spreadshirt, Displate, etc. I also did food delivery in my free time as some sort of side hustle. That also made me a bunch of money.
2- SUPER BOWL – JANUARY + FEBRUARY
A very interesting thing happened in the end of January and in the beginning of February: I made between 30-40k in under 2 weeks, just before.
So for some reason that I did not expect at all, one of my old design that I uploaded 2 or 3 years ago completely blew out for the Super Bowl. I was completely amazed, I made some days when I made 3-4-5k every day for 2 weeks.
Looking back, I would not recommend doing this intentionally to keep your account safe. For me, it happened unintentionally, it was basically some 2–3 years old designs that blew off.
I don’t recommend this because ultimately, Amazon Merch silently removed these designs. I’m not sure if this was completely legal. When Amazon removed it, the event was pretty much over anyway, so I deleted these designs.
But just knowing that every design that you upload has that potential, I find it pretty funny.
If you guys want, I can make a video specifically about it. I deleted the design, so I don’t care about it anymore. If you want the full story, comment down below so that I know that you want the story.
3- ACCOUNTS BANNED – MARCH
Around March 2023, I lost many of my print-on-demand accounts out of no-where. Redbubble, TeePublic, Society6 FineArtAmerica, etc. without notice.
I was astonished, I didn’t know what was happening and to be completely honest, I still don’t. I tried to reach to support and customer service, I never got any response. At that point, I kinda just stopped uploading print-on-demand designs. I still had Amazon Merch which is my main source of revenue, Spreadshirt accounts, Etsy, Amazon Seller Central and Displate.
I stopped because I didn’t know what was happening, and I didn’t want to mess up the things that I had left. I noticed that I wasn’t alone with these events, it was happening to many people.
Ultimately, I think that I lost these accounts for 2 main reasons:
- I was uploading many non-unique, low quality designs. Meaning they were usually variants
- I wasn’t paying much attention to trademarks.
I took this time to learn about AI and new tools. Looking back, it was a good idea because AI was basically popping off.
Redbubble, Teepublic introduced new tier systems. Society6 introduced their pricing plans, which I do not recommend.
4- COMING BACK TO POD – OCTOBER
In October 2023, I decided to come back into POD. Lots of things calmed down. AI was getting pretty normal.
So I came back with 2 new mindsets:
- I would focus much more on higher quality designs and let upload automation go to actually be aware of what I’m going. Meaning that I started using AI to create good-looking designs instead of cheap automation. And now, one of my goal is to literally learn graphic design.
- I would take trademarks much more seriously. I learned about it and also deleted many designs that I thought could potentially be trademarked, mostly on Amazon Merch. My revenues took a massive hit because I deleted many designs that were actually making sales. But I didn’t care, I simply wanted to keep doing POD knowing that my accounts were safe.
I haven’t made a video about it.
5- MY GOALS FOR 2024
- Focus on my YouTube channel, I want to do awesome YouTube videos every one or 2 days journaling my journey.
- I want to focus on higher quality designs for print-on-demand using AI and graphic design.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I think 2023 was full of different challenges. From making a bunch of money with a few weeks to getting some of my accounts banned. The lessons that I learned is that we have to be very careful about trademarks and the quality of content that we upload to print-on-demand marketplaces. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to take a step back to assimilate the events that recently took place.
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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