POD Catch-UP

I thought I would bang this out for any people that were reading my POD articles.

I have been so busy with FBA and other projects plus working full time to write anything.
The pod world has changed and I admit I have not had the time to follow the rabbit holes.

I am still involved in Merch, Redbubble and Tee Public.

Competition in all levels of eCommerce including Amazon Fba and POD is growing, everything is moving online, and more people from around the globe are joining the spree so it's gotten a lot more competitive (and Dirty) out there.

2020 should be an interesting year.

Changes                               

There are so many changes in Merch and other POD platforms this year I would have a hard time trying to go back and recount them all.

From Merch outwards design choices. More product choices.

A little better but still disappointing USPTO response to frivolous trademarks for common words and phrases.

Better marketplace exposure and product choice in other countries.

Finally, popsockets are available on the big 3 USA, UK and De.

But no more products on Merch by Amazon.

 I no longer frequent the groups as they started to become a time suck and demoralizer. Hard to hear that some guy just started with bad designs but still tiered to 5000 in a month!

And way to "I'm a GURU" ish.

The bad point, you miss out on a few new things.

Journals

This started to be the big craze last time I noticed. KDP and a few other POD`s are offering to publish  Blank Journals.

Basically, people were using designs from shirts or making new ones on the covers and maybe inner pages as the design.

Presto Publish.. make money...Doubtful it's that easy!

BUT like everything ...when I first saw last year at some point the people in that end coming out and selling the idea,, GURU`s in the making, I figured things were not as rosy and it was becoming saturated as well.

I still get a few spam emails from the group's sites etc, so can gauge the success of things from those,, the more they try to sell you, the less likely it is as good as it was.

Items On Other PODS

Redbubble and Teepublic (same owner now) have added many products including shower curtains, bath mats, and socks as well as all the usual mugs, apparel, artboards, posters, etc.

Merch is still lagging badly in this area, not even phone cases, mugs or hats are available yet.

RB and TP have the best options for me for product range, mainly stickers on RB are a pretty good source of sales.

A few other  PODS have pretty good Fan Art contracts that can be utilized for sales.

Passive Income For Real                    

Both  RB and TP  still bring in sales as well as Merch by Amazon does, not boatloads but its ok for a few bucks a month.

Redbubble puts a lot into advertising so you know you will make sales there and Teepublic has picked up since the buyout.

All of these platforms can be connected to any PPC programs, Merch being platform-specific, or you could use an affiliate site for those as well, so you can sell other top-selling shirts ;)

You can legally by Amazons TOS make affiliate earnings on your shirts as well! Because you are just selling the design to Amazon, the product is theirs.

All my sales are organic, though I have not put any energy into any of these platforms since last January (2019)

My returns between the accounts would total maybe $100 USD per month. Not bad for doing super minimal work on it for a year!

My wife who does Merch half heartily still brings home around $30 USD per month. For around 300 designs active.

Is PPC Still Worth It

If you are into POD in a big way, I mean joining all the POD`s you can (I wouldn't touch paid ones, up to you though) and pushing a ton of designs YES.

If you're on Merch and you have some great sellers, YES.

If you have a company or are branded (in process or not) YES.

PPC for me includes and is not limited to Amazon, Google or Bing, but Facebook ads, Pinterest and the big one Instagram.

Keywords VS  Design                   

The debate rages but there is a clear front runner starting to widen the gap.

If you guessed Keywords you are a winner, but no chicken dinner :)

I put a super dumb shirt out there about 4 months ago, not having time to do any design I have reverted to text only. 

That shirt is one word, not a great one, I did something interesting with the font and font colour, has become a pretty good seller. Accounting for at least 35% of my sales on Merch every month.

I tripped over the word one day looking at an item on Amazon and took it from there.

The keyword is actually the shirt and the rest are from Amazons search bar.

Research

Look for top keywords in the usual way, Google search bar, Amazon search bar Bing there are literally a ton of places to look.

Find a popular word or two words etc phrase or item and find a play on the words.

Burnt orange lettering seems to be in style this year, and clear not totally faded distressed as much, though it depends.

Make the word or phrase to what the subject is IE fish make lettering (word, phrase) in fish style.

Don't spend a ton of time, a lot of people (GURU) say the research word like its some huge science project, it's not even close, just look for keywords in the search bars etc.

Look everywhere you go, you would be surprised what you find. I use a lot of these same techniques writing Amazon FBA listings for products I sell.

So this turned into a longer thought than I intended. 

I will not write about PODs, for now, (unless something Really Cool happens) I am going to start writing about my FBA nightmare..err journey..it should be interesting to some, though I will not be super transparent about some things I will be very honest about my experiences.

Tune In!!

Well hope this was a help or an interesting bit for you and see you again

All the Very Best Luck in any directions you may go

EJ