Unless you live on another planet, most people who sell on Merch on Demand have already heard the big news. In this post, I’ll go through the MOD dashboard update and tell you my thoughts. Then I’ll let you know if my plans have changed or not based this new information.
Merch on Demand Dashboard Update
Account Tiers
“We’re updating our tier system to make sure we’re managing our catalog effectively, focusing on the best designs for our customers. Previously, tier levels were based on lifetime account sales. Going forward, tiers will be calculated based on both the number and percentage of products and designs sold in the last 12 months. Your tier level will adjust based on recent performance across our stores, helping maintain a fresh and relevant catalog.”
I think this is going to make it extremely difficult to get tiered up, especially to higher tiers. As you know, I’m currently T500. I’m 3 sales away from getting to 500 lifetime sales. I was really looking forward to getting tiered up in the next few months. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon. According to the above paragraph, Amazon says that they will be no longer using lifetime sales for tier ups. They say they are going to use both number and percentage of products sold in the last twelve months, however, they don’t give specifics. I have no idea what percentage or number of products I need to sell. I’ve currently sold around 19% of my designs in the past year and 1.9% of my products. I sold 194 products this year. Is that enough or do I need to sell 500 products in a year? There’s a rumor going around that you need to sell 80% of your designs. That would be almost impossible unless you were in T50 or less or you spent thousands of dollars on advertising. I wish Amazon would say exactly how many and what percentage of products/designs you need to sell to tier up.
Variation Selection
To help focus efforts on the most successful listing options, we will optimize the number of variations (fits and colors) per product listing as it launches and gains in sales. We will continue to add additional variations to products when we see a potential customer benefit.
I kind of thought they already did this since I’m always seeing them auto uploading my designs to other products and countries. I think product optimization is good thing unless they only show your item on colors that it looks bad on. I’m not even sure how this will work. I guess we’ll see when they start rolling it out.
Product Deletion
We’re resuming our policy of removing products that haven’t sold in a while. To start, we’ll keep products live for sale if they’ve received at least one order in the trailing 18 months. This policy helps maintain a fresh catalog focused on products customers want.
I think I’m the most excited about this change. I’ve been wanting to delete my old non-selling designs for a while now but it is such a pain. I’m also terrified of deleting a design and missing out on a sale. Having Amazon do the dirty work and deleting my old designs for me will open up slots for new, fresh designs. If I were in tiers 10k or beyond, I probably wouldn’t like this change as Merch is a numbers game in those higher tiers. But at my T500 level, I have to take advantage of every slot. I’m looking forward to being able to create new designs and, hopefully, bring in more sales. This should also help bump up the percentage of designs sold which I will need to get tiered up.
Pricing and Royalties
We’re dedicated to growing earnings for our content creators while delivering value to customers. While Amazon determines final list pricing to ensure competitiveness, we welcome content creator input through suggested list prices. As customer shopping trends change, we will regularly review and adjust pricing and royalties to maintain a sustainable program.
This is another change that I thought they already did. Whenever I list a new product, it shows me the suggested price and I adjust the price to what I prefer. Will they be automatically changing our prices? I definitely wouldn’t like that unless they increase the royalties. I’m not too happy about this change but I’m also not stressing too much over it yet.
Deals
To improve our customers’ experiences, we will conduct promotional deals. During these events all content creators may be included to maximize potential benefits. Design and suggested list price updates will be temporarily paused during deal events and royalty rates will continue applying to the prices customers pay.
They already started implementing this change and I hate it (although it appears none of my products have been affected yet). I like the idea of Amazon offering sales for our products as long as 1.) they increase the royalties we receive during the promotion so we don’t lose out and 2.) they give us proper warning about when the promotion is going to start and when it will end so we can adjust our ad spending during that time.
My Plans Going Forward
My plans going forward haven’t changed much. I’m still going to implement my marketing plan that I came up with last summer. Only now, instead of waiting to get tiered up in order to get more slots for the new designs, I’m going to delete my old non-selling designs and use those slots for the new designs.
Something else that I’m going to be doing is more individual product campaigns on Amazon Ads. I think I’m going to advertise each product on Amazon Ads until it sells at least 5 times and then I’ll stop the ads to that product. That should give it a push in the algorithm to help with organic sales and will help my percentage of designs sold within a year. I’ll still advertise that product in a lottery campaign so it will still get some advertising exposure.
My main goal has changed from uploading as many designs and products as possible to hopefully get tiered up quickly to slowly but steadily uploading well-researched, high quality designs that I can market on my Instagram merch page. I’m going to try my hardest to get to that 80% of designs sold mark. I would need to sell 400 of my 500 designs – in one year. I still think it’s an impossible task but if that’s what Amazon wants, I’m going to have to try to get there. I would love to be able to get to my ultimate goal of $1500 a month within the next 2-3 years. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, I think I can get there.
