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Two Accounts On Merch By Amazon

Heres a pretty common question, though I really wonder if it's not for nefarious reasons coming from a few.

Can you have two accounts, yes, you can have several accounts.

Huh? What? Are You kidding?

No, your wife, your kids even uncles aunts or anyone who lives under the same roof can have their own accounts.

My wife also has an account, so we have two.

Some families have several, Ken Riel`s (Merch Watch Dawgs) does, kids and wife I think it was like 5 accounts in all.

How Can I Have Two Accounts

You actually can`t, so don't, it's not worth it, and that's a major factor in many accounts being banned, then they cry, but that's another story.

You can have one and whoever else in your house can have separate accounts.

You need to have, of course, different names last can be the same and usually is.

Set up with different bank accounts. That means the money from the accounts must be redirected to another account in the creator's name (no not that CREATOR) the artist or designer!

If its the same bank account, it will be flagged for termination.

Why Two Merch Accounts                 

Well, they are free, and you do make a pretty passive income from designs that sell. If your spouse or kids like to be creative or do it as a hobby, even a part-time job, and who knows Full time.

If it's just you and your wife, in our case, it is, our daughter has been on her own for a few years now.

We both have accounts, mine has become as mentioned in earlier articles a side hustle while I build the FBA business.

My wife is an artist, but after looking over the stuff decided not to put a lot of time into things, her account is around 1-year old+. 

She puts a few hours a month into it, checking in to see what's selling and how much. Her Tier is still at 100. Pretty good considering I put a ton more work into mine and I'm still in Tier 500, though could be higher.

Split Testing Merch By Amazon

This is where it is pretty advantageous to have two LEGAL accounts.

We decided that since it is like a hobby (but honestly I want more out of it later)

we would start split testing.

In a strange way its kind of become a fun competition. 

I still enjoy doing T-shirts and some Hoodies, the wife started to do 90% PopSsockets.

So my account is reversed, 90% tshirts 10% PopSockets.

This experiment started around 2 months ago.

The wife is winning here, making a few more sales than I am.

SEO and Merch Split Test

This has been interesting.                                 

My account I will check the Amazon drop down method, Google, Auto suggest, Bing, Keyword expander is a good tool that helps a lot. And a couple a few free KW tools, nothing I'm loyal to.

My wife will check every once in a while too see if her idea is selling or might sell, keywords are not super important to her.

Her titles are off the cuff, and rarely researched for KW. Like if its a buttercup say, then that's her thing all through the listing. Buttercup that's it ;)

Again I have to say, shes still making more sales than I.

Pricing

This is as usual hotly contested. The camp that says price bare minimum then move up as sales come.

The camp that says price high from the start.

Heres our take, we have tried high to low pricing, both at different ranges, in the same time period. And Everything in between.

That means from $11.99 (PopSockets) and $12.99 (now changed to $13.08) for T-shirts

$14.99 to $18.99 on the higher ends.

There actually is no formula here, I know a few designers think that the lowball (till it gets a rating)

is the be all and end all of sales on merch. 

I Respectfully disagree.

This may work for you, with high ad spends ;)

Pricing Strategy That Works For US

We go in now at $14.99 for tees and $12.99 for PopSockets.

My Experience...

• I sold more starting at $14.99 and raising up to so far, $16.99 for tee shirts that sell well.
• $15.99 seems to be a real winner as far as price goes for us after 2-3 sales
• PopSockets, we sold as many at $12.99 as we did at $11.99
• Testing on $13.99-$14.99 for Popsockets that have sold multiple times (starting now)
• Hoodies,(Long Sleeve and sweats we don't sell)  Not many. Priced $29.99 to $33.00

In a nutshell, you have to find what works for you. Our designs now are mostly text based on tee shirts and photos on PopSockets. 

Though a lot of the PopSockets we do some patterned artwork, that we create together.

Testing With PPC          

This is pretty interesting. I was running a test for about 2 weeks. I changed the configurations ( bids) several times, several combos.

The conclusion I came to, if you don't put a fairly high bid in, you won't get impressions or sales.

My end was 15 cents per click and medium bids on the different choices such as "close match" "loose match" etc. I didn't get that many impressions and just 1 click, on a tee shirt that sells well organically for me as an evergreen.

If this is your main and you want to scale at super speed it would work, but cost you a lot.

My wife made more sales with less up, 70 or so, hardly logging in, and not even "researching" KW or niches. And NOT running any type of PPC.

Do Designs Matter

This is another area of contestability. 

NO, they don't, Text sells as well or better than awesome design unless your one of the very few super designers, and they are awesome.

Can the text be set up with the wrong font or with the wrong colours, most definitely.

But that can be figured out by looking at other designs. 

The message of the text is probably a lot more important, my designs are not top notch, maybe the middle of the road, but I sell more text-based stuff than designs anyway.

 I can hear ya, maybe because the designs suck, well, no as I mention in other articles just take a look at what is for sale By Merchers.

Anyone talking Quality, yes its nice, but I call BS.

So Key Words Are Not Important

Yes KW, in my opinion, are super important, how my wife does things I'm not sure.

Maybe she is tied in with the super un-conscious universal searcher terms ;) or just getting close to an already selling item.

I know when I do off the cuff, I normally see that shirt come down in the 180 days, or less if I decide to re-do a bunch of non-sellers, this is time dependent for me.

 Good Niche choices and keywords will sell a pretty bad design faster than a super design that is never seen, in my opinion.

So at the end of the day, if you have two or more accounts per household (great way for kids to learn business)  It can or could be pretty rewarding.

Make sure everything conforms to MBA TOS (terms of service) or its curtains.  It is probably one of the truest forms (pod in general) of passive income there is.

Even if its a hobby, you could make a few hundred USD every month, for very little work, and its kind of fun.

It is the perfect way to split test all the crap you throw at the wall, and even all the advice or tips you pick up.

Don't spend a ton of time obsessing (my wife says for a side hustle I spend a lot of time, and she is right) and don't get bent out of shape if its slow for you, do what my wife does and you will do ok I think.

The account (as it stands today) is yours, free for life, so what's the hurry?

Don't get sucked into too much FB time, look for nuggets stay cool ignore the numbers posters, that's never a full story and some maybe, wink wink, photoshopped. Mostly tey may be trying to influence;)

Well hope you got a few ideas out of this article and hopefully it helps you in your POD journey

All the Best and The Very best in achieving your dreams

EJ