At the end of September I attended Chris Green’s 2018 Merch by Amazon conference in Seattle, Washington and had an absolute blast. The conference was conducted in the beautiful Grand Hyatt hotel, located in downtown Seattle. This article is going to share some of the lessons learned and give future attendees some insight on what this conference is all about.
I missed the Seattle conference last year, but I heard great things about it from other attendees. This year I was determined to not miss it. The conference was held September 25-27, 2018. There were over a dozen speakers with expertise both in print-on-demand, as well as e-commerce in general.
The biggest theme of the conference was branding. People making apparel on Merch by Amazon (MBA) are slowly realizing that branding is going to become increasingly important for long-term success. Branding is vital for competing on a variety of platforms (including your own site) instead of being solely reliant on Amazon. Brand building should be in the forefront of every e-commerce sellers mind if they want to build a sustainable business.
There is a lot of frustration in the MBA world right now. Royalties were cut in early 2018. Sales have been slow for many people, including myself. Competition has increased tremendously in the one year I have been on the platform. Aside from branding, the conference discussed how other print-on-demand platforms can help us scale our businesses.
Etsy seems to be everyone’s 2nd favorite platform for selling print-on-demand graphic work. There are a couple reasons for this. The first is that the profits tend to be greater than MBA. The second is that Etsy stores lend themselves to building brands. I wholeheartedly agree with both these points and am working on building my Etsy store in addition to MBA. Some people I spoke with have taken this a step further and even bought their own garment printers in order to increase margins further.
Etsy is great, but I should make it clear that MBA is still my favorite. Any frustration people feel needs to be balanced against the age of the platform, which just turned 3 years old. Amazon is the biggest e-commerce platform in existence and they hold the most credit card numbers on file. They drive unparalleled levels of organic traffic to listings. Organic traffic refers to non-paid leads.
The conference made it clear that Amazon is taking the development of this platform seriously and wants it to succeed just as much as sellers do. Anyone who thinks Merch is dead or is a bad deal needs to step back for a moment to consider the value proposition we’re being offered. We get access to some of the most sophisticated printing technology in the world for free. We get access to the most elaborate fulfillment network for free. We get access to the most recognizable online store for free. I think we all need to show some gratitude for that!
The platform is going to get better over time and the people who have the resilience to stick with it are going to be successful. One quote that stuck with me was, “Optimism + Persistence + Patience = Success.” This quote sums up my Merch strategy pretty well and is one that you should adopt if you’re serious about e-commerce.
Creative marketing was another big topic of discussion. We all love organic traffic, but we need to be willing to market our products independently. One seller remarked to me a cold truth worth sharing: “The majority of products you upload to Merch by Amazon will never be seen by customers.” If you don’t want to accept this status quo, then you need to take active steps to put your products in front of the customer.
How do you market Merch by Amazon products? Easy… the same way you would any other product. Paid traffic is the most obvious example. I was a little surprised that Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) ads did not get discussed much by any of the presenters. That is probably the easiest way to market your products on the MBA platform.
Video is the most innovative way to market your products. Video strategies were discussed in depth. I won’t go into all the details, because you can go buy the replay videos if you want to see all the conference material. Suffice to say that basic videos on Facebook or YouTube are one way to use video marketing. Those videos need either good search engine optimization in the case of YouTube or need to be targeted at the right people in the case of Facebook.
You don’t have to make videos yourself. Other social media strategies include approaching influencers in the niche you’re targeting. Influencers are more than willing to promote your products for a negotiable fee. If you’re working on a shoestring budget, then try offering them a partnership and cut of the profits. If you don’t want to build your own audience, leveraging someone else’s can be a great way to reach customers.
Branding and marketing are important, but it doesn’t really matter if you have subpar designs. The two most useful presentations for me were given by RJ Martinez and the Merch Minds podcast duo (Glen & Yong).
RJ discussed the differences between good designs and bad designs. I think we all know the difference when we see it, but prior to his presentation I couldn’t articulate it. Good designs pay attention to the details, sharpness, and contrast of the artwork. Bad designs look basic and flat. This is such a simple concept, but not having a design background, it was a point that escaped me until now.
Glen and Yong presented some great stuff on the framework of a good design. They talked about building balanced layouts and the importance of typography. Yong has written a book on typography that I plan to read, because I don’t know much about the subject and I have a lot of room for improvement in that area. He illustrated his point with a cool video about expressive typography.
Like any conference, the real value was the networking. Most of the big players in Merch were in attendance. During lunch, dinner, and night time socializing, I heard so many success stories and the struggles that led up to them. People have an infinite variety of approaches to print-on-demand ecommerce. There are literally 100+ online platforms aside from MBA that you might leverage to sell your merchandise. While I’m sure the video replay of the event will be great, it’s no substitute for actually showing up and hanging out.
Make no mistake about it, the event was expensive for me. Seattle is super pricey and a lot of people grouped up in AirBNBs to cut down on lodging costs. Coming from across the country is not cheap. The ticket price to the event was about $500. It was all worth it though and I feel like I certainly got more than $500 worth of value out of the presentations. Chris Green did a phenomenal job organizing and hosting this event. I loved the gift bags he put together for us, which were Amazon backpacks filled with mystery prizes. They included everything from beef jerky and funny sunglasses to business books and Merch related courses/tools.
My only criticism, if you can even call it that, is that I would have liked more networking time between sessions. This is a point Chris has already acknowledged himself. There were so many great speakers that he just didn’t really have the space in the schedule to give breaks. Taking breaks would have meant extending the general session into the evening hours, which would have cut down on the night-time networking we were all doing. I’m sure next year, he’ll structure the schedule a little differently.
If you missed Seattle this year and want to see the presentations, I know Chris is selling the replay videos at MerchConference.com . If you’re reading this as we get closer to the 2019 Merch by Amazon conference, then strongly consider coming it. It’s a smaller, intimate event where you’re going to make a lot of new friends and learn a ton of information that is going to help you succeed in this business. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is serious about print-on-demand e-commerce and wants to connect with others who share this interest.
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