Early this morning I was going about my daily office routine and checked my email. To my amazement I saw an email from Merch by Amazon. I grabbed my coffee and clicked the email to open it. Kudos to the people, bots, or whatever the case may be on such a timely response. I was impressed that they were actually six days early on replying to my invitation request. I had a smile on my face as I opened it. However, my smile unfortunately turned into a frown after I realized that this was not an acceptance letter and I was actually declined. After reading it I had so many questions. The main question was why? There was absolutely no reason given as to what in my application gave them the idea that I was not a good fit for Merch by Amazon. The email that I received is below.

Dear Content Creator,

We appreciate your interest, but we are unable to extend an invitation to you to join Merch by Amazon.

We thank you for taking the time to introduce yourself to us and encourage you to check out other selling options on Amazon.

Sincerely,
Merch by Amazon

After the initial shock wore off I did a little research. Some of the things I was looking into were as follows:

1. How often does this happen?
2. Does this happen to people with 15+ years of professional graphic design experience?
3. What are some of the reasons this happens?
4. Can I apply again?
5. If I can’t apply again, what are some of my options?

Let’s take a look at what I found.

How often does this happen?

It appears that this is happening a lot. In order to find information that was relevant to my situation I hopped onto the Amazon Forum to see what people were saying there. Needless to say, I wasn’t the only one. I’m not normally a big fan of forums due to the trolling and crying that takes place on them, but these people were legit. Most, if not all of the comments were from designers with similar design experience as me.

Does this happen to people with 15+ years of professional graphic design experience?

The answer is yes. As I scrolled through the comments on the Amazon Forum page there were a large amount of people that had several years of graphic design experience and the same thing happened to them. Several of them raised very valid points as to why they are blown away by the idea of their declined invitation. One of those reasons is the HUGE amount of people that have been accepted and have minimal graphic design experience. These people have been accepted within a matter of weeks, if not days. Many of the people that are currently in the program are creating material that is borderline plagiarism and infringes on copyright. Experienced graphic designers are familiar with the rules and regulations and would know what is acceptable and what is not. It seems to me that catering to professionals in the graphic design field would only benefit them by reducing the amount of time on their end checking posted creative content.

What are some of the reasons this happens?

To be honest, I’m not really sure anyone knows. I haven’t been able to find a concrete reason as to how people are accepted or declined. I realize that there may be an influx of people applying, but then why are you not able to be put on a list to be considered in the future? It would be very unfortunate if bots are making these decisions based on Merch by Amazon’s content creators volume. All it would take is an email alert notifying you that the process will just take a while longer to complete? The “once or nothing” mentality about the approval process just seems a bit too permanent. The fact that the Merch by Amazon email didn’t give any reason as to why I was declined ruffles my feathers a bit.

Can I apply again?

Simply put, the answer is no.

OK, I got declined… what are my options?

For the answer to this question I jumped onto YouTube. I found a channel called Rules For Rebels that explained the options fairly well. He goes over several things, but you can find the answers to this particular question at around 4:00/9:27 of the video.

• Contact the Amazon Merch Team and beg, plead or do whatever you can to get them to change their minds. It might even be possible to write a letter to the CEO and convince them that you are a great fit for the program.
• Get your shirts printed on some other platform and still sell through Amazon on the normal e-commerce site. This requires several extra steps and it is not all that appealing to me.
• Reapply. Since you cannot apply under the information you first provided you would have to apply under a spouse or significant other’s name and with a different IP.

Conclusion

I will be honest, I am disappointed that I did not get accepted. That being said, I am not quite ready to give up yet. I do not plan on getting the shirts printed on another platform and selling on Amazon. This just seams like a huge time investment as far as shipping, UPC’s, etc… I also do not agree with trying to find loopholes in the system to get my way, so applying under a different IP or another person’s name is out of the question. I plan on persistently writing letters to the team. If that does not work… They aren’t the only POD service available. I may attempt to join another POD service altogether. It is really unfortunate that this has happened, but it’s not the end of the world.

Thanks for reading!

I will continue to post my experiences and thank you for reading!

For several years now I have been trying to find some sort of a creative outlet that would allow me to create fun illustrations just for the heck of it, while still making some sort of a financial return on them. I considered purchasing, or possibly even making, a DIY screen-printing station, but to be honest, they take up so much room and after seriously considering it, it became out of the question (our house is on the smaller size). Then I found Merch by Amazon. This is a service provided by Amazon that allows anyone to design and/or illustrate their own designs and get them printed on a POD or Print-on-Demand basis. This means that Amazon will take care of the printing, delivery, and even returns if necessary. There is no upfront financial investment to get started. I figured what the heck! I’ll give it a try and if nothing comes out of it… I’m out nothing except the fun time I had creating the designs. So this blog post series is going to be about my future Creative Adventure with Merch by Amazon. My plan is to post monthly about my experiences, both good and bad. Hopefully I am able to post tips that I run across along the way that will help anyone reading this.

Steps Taken This Week

This week I began the process by “Requesting an Invitation.” Amazon works on an invitation system that you apply for. The process was very straightforward and literally took only minutes to complete. So now I sit and wait. Amazon sent a response when I was done registering and notified me that it may take up to 14 days to hear back from them. Assuming I am accepted, I should be able to start uploading designs immediately.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I am very optimistic about Merch by Amazon. After researching it a bit it sounds like a simple and fun way keep my creative juices flowing. I am really excited to get started. I have read that this waiting period is a great time to get started designing some graphics so that I have something to post immediately after getting accepted. Merch by Amazon works on a tier system so I will only be able to initially upload 10 designs. Once I sell 10 shirts I will move up to a higher tier, which will allow me to upload more designs. You don’t have to sell 10 different designs, just 10 total shirts. For example I could sell 1 of each of the 10 designs, or 10 of one design. Either way I will get moved to a higher tier allowing me to increase the amount of designs I can upload.

Hopefully in my next post I can describe the upload process and share my experiences with that.

Interested in Merch by Amazon?

If you are interested in creating designs for shirts head on over to Merch by Amazon.