The other day I was updating a website that a friend and I run, related to electronic dance music (EDM) and live shows in our area.
A promoter reached out to us and hooked us up with free tickets to an event we'd already planned on going to, offering them up in exchange for a promotional blog post.
Naturally, we accepted. The thing is, our website was way out of date (content-wise), but it looked legit so it was good enough to convince them to send us the tickets.
I shared that because in my attempt to make the website look as "legit" as possible, I decided to add a Merch page.
In doing so I realized just how powerful having an Amazon Merch account really is.
I was able to launch a LEGIT looking, fully functional merchandise page in about 30 minutes.
Here's how I pulled it off.
Sell Your Own Branded Merchandise Online
My friend and I's website is called dcedm.com. "DC" for Washington DC, and "EDM" for electronic dance music.
We already had the logo settled:
So I opened up my Amazon Merch Photoshop template (free download), placed the logo, and saved a t-shirt design.
Then I leveraged Merch Resize to easily transform that shirt design into a hoodie & popsocket design.
I also saved white + black version to expand the catalog - because, why not?
Then, I started uploading to Amazon Merch.
If you use PrettyMerch or PrettyMerch Pro, you have an option to quickly open multiple tabs and speed up the upload process (I'm all about efficiency!)
I uploaded the following:
- Hoodie (dark) (view)
- Hoodie (light) (view)
- Longsleeve Shirt (dark) (view)
- Longsleeve Shirt (light) (view)
- Premium Shirt (dark) (view)
- Premium Shirt (light) (view)
- Standard Shirt (dark) (view)
- Standard Shirt (light) (view)
- PopSocket (view)
Once the products were live, I saved the primary thumbnail images from the Amazon listings and uploaded them to my website.
Then I flashed a bit of my web developer magic (nothing too complicated) to create this beautiful "faux" online store that actually links to Amazon listings for checkout, production, delivery, & customer support:
One really important thing to leverage is the fact that Amazon offers free shipping on orders over $25 (even for non-Prime members).
Use this to your advantage! you can consider increasing prices to meet that $25 price point to activate the free shipping, or consider doing what I did & display one of the following on the products:
- * FREE SHIPPING * (for products $25 or higher)
- * FREE SHIPPING with Amazon Prime *
Over half of US households have Amazon Prime, so your loyal visitors may feel compelled to capitalize on this opportunity!
It also looks more "official" to have Amazon.com carrying your website's Merch - especially as Prime - so take advantage!
