I Suck At Designing - $200,000 In Royalties All-Time With Merch By Amazon

About this video

The creator says he has earned over $200,000 in royalties all-time on Merch by Amazon despite, by his own account, sucking at designing. He says he outsourced design from the very beginning, started mostly with simple text-based sayings with or without a small graphic, and built systems by vetting helpers through trial and error so he could focus on growth rather than tasks he is weak at. He frames time management as his biggest ongoing challenge, especially balancing the business itself against creating content about it. Looking at his Pretty Merch analytics, he says his account shows about 63,000 products sold all-time with an average royalty of $3.34, sales beginning in earnest around 2017, a pandemic-period shutdown dip, a month over $10,000 in mid-2020, and a top design that he says has earned over $20,000 all-time. About 90% of his sales, he notes, are in the US. His central lesson is to let data tell the story: when one design in a niche sells — for example an English bulldog shirt in the dog niche — dominate that niche instead of chasing shiny trends, spend time where that target audience gathers, and stay ahead of competitors there. He also explains his product focus: standard t-shirts dominate his sales, black is his top color at nearly half of sales in his figures, and he has been repricing toward $19.99 to aim for about a $5 royalty per sale.

Key takeaways

• You do not need to be a skilled designer: start with simple text-based designs and outsource artwork, vetting helpers as a deliberate system
• Treat time management as a business skill — put people in place for tasks that drain time so you can focus on growth decisions
• When a design sells, read it as niche data and dominate that niche with more related designs instead of chasing unrelated trends
• Go where the niche audience already gathers, in groups and forums, to understand buyers and stay ahead of competitors
• Focus on the product and colors your data supports — for this creator, standard t-shirts and black — and reprice toward a higher target royalty per sale

Episode details: published March 26, 2021 · 11:33 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are RJ Martinez’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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