Make Extra Money Using Merch by Amazon

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Hey, hey, what's up? Welcome back. This is Side Hustle School, the only show bringing you a daily story of someone who starts an income generating project without quitting their day job. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau, and we have talked about the program "Merch by Amazon" on a couple other episodes, most famously with episode 55. T-shirts on Amazon make $17,000 in a month.

"Merch by Amazon" or "MBA" is a print-on-demand program where Amazon allows independent sellers (also known as regular people) to upload t-shirt designs, and then if their customers purchase them, Amazon pays a portion of that sale to those sellers. It's an interesting model because you can get started without spending any money whatsoever, and also without taking any kind of risk. That doesn't mean it's easy. There are a lot of people out there doing this, so it's hard to stand out. Well, today I have a story of someone who's not making $17,000 a month, but has just started this on the side to make extra cash.

And this is a listener success story, someone who got the idea after listening to the show, so if you're out there trying to figure out what side hustle is best for you, well, before we go on, I want to share part of her advice to you. She says, "Awareness is important, but not to the point of hesitation. Don't get overwhelmed trying to understand exactly how everyone else is doing it. Do a couple experiments and then trust yourself." I think that's great advice. You'll hear more about it in the story, which is coming up after this shoutout to our sponsor.

In Los Angeles, California, Lisa Sansussi has several day jobs. She's a promotional model, a stand-in actor for TV shows, including NCIS, and a production assistant for live events. She also makes money live streaming on the social network Periscope. Today we'll talk about how she also uses a model called Merch by Amazon to bring in extra cash with minimal work. She does this by designing t-shirts without being a designer and then selling them without any inventory.

As busy as she is, when Lisa listened to Side Hustle School, she realized that even though she was excited about a lot of different ideas, she didn't really have the time or energy to start something big. She needed something she could work on wherever she had spare time, and hopefully that something would have the potential to provide passive income. After hearing a previous episode, she signed up for Merch by Amazon because it sounded fun. She thought, why not, and it took three minutes to apply. While Amazon was a little slower on their end, it took them two months to get back to her.

So we'll fast-forward to that time, and when they finally accepted her application, the next step was for Lisa to upload her initial designs. The program allows you to upload 10 designs at first. Once you sell 10 shirts, you can then upload 25 designs. Once you sell 25, you can upload 100, and so on. Your goal as a seller is to have as many possible designs in the listings as possible because the more listings, the more sales you'll have.

Lisa thought of it like a game or a puzzle of some kind to be figured out, and she likes puzzles. How did she create her t-shirt designs without being a designer? Well, she got creative about that. She first went to the website Fiverr.com and put up an ad that said, "I need 10 original popular niche t-shirt designs that can be uploaded to Merch by Amazon." She got a ton of offers right away, all less than $100. The problem was, there wasn't any way to know if they were actually giving her original designs.

She tried it for a while with someone and then found out he was sending her designs that had already been uploaded to the platform, which was not just unethical, it was also dangerous because it could get her account banned. Next, she went to Upwork, Upwork.com, and there you can pay someone per project or by the hour. The interesting thing about Upwork is that when you hire somebody, you have the option to see exactly what's on their screen when they're on the clock for you, so you can monitor how much work is actually being done. She found someone in Morocco who offered to start on her project for $5 an hour. She would send him ideas for designs, but he would also search popular culture references to come up with some of his own.

Lisa got her first batch of 10 designs up, then she was allowed to do 25, and then she got to 100 designs. They weren't selling a ton, but they were selling, and once the designs were uploaded, she didn't have to do anything else for it at all. Her first month's profit was just $84, but the second month was $300, and then it continued to rise. And now her goal is to sell 500 shirts to get to the next tier of 1,000 designs where the profit potential is twice as high. Not only that, but Amazon allows sellers to control the price of their shirts.

So once Lisa gets the ability to sell 1,000 designs, she's planning to raise the prices of some of the current shirts to increase her profits further. As part of this, she's been marketing directly to her Periscope viewers. If you're not familiar, Periscope is a social network that features live streaming. Lisa had a 100-day streak of broadcasting every day, and on many of those days, she'd wear one of the t-shirts she'd designed. Since there is no inventory, she has to purchase those shirts herself.

The platform is interactive with lots of question and answer going back and forth between the broadcaster and the viewers, so when people would ask her about her shirt, she'd post a link to the Amazon listing. So how's it working out for her? What's the best part and the worst part of this project? Well, the best part has been the ability to be creative and to make money with almost no risk. She says, "I'm not sure that I'm supposed to run a business.

The idea is exciting, but it's certainly not the right time for me. This way, I can still watch something grow that I've created without worrying about losing lots of money or negatively affecting anybody else if it doesn't work." Isn't that awesome? Well, I also always ask people what's not so great or what's challenging about the project. Lisa says that the worst part of the experience has probably been the unpredictability of the platform. At different times, Amazon has removed or limited her ability to upload new designs or edit prices of existing designs.

They don't provide any explanation when they do this, and you have to just kind of hope and pray that the restrictions get removed. This is just a factor of being dependent on somebody else's platform. Amazon is all-powerful and can reach millions of potential customers, but they do play by their own rules, and they also don't hesitate to change them. Now, as I alluded to in the introduction, Lisa has some advice for you. She says, "Having been through the process of starting this new side hustle, my advice is don't get overwhelmed trying to understand exactly how everyone else is doing it.

I got caught up in a lot of Facebook groups and YouTube videos early on. I ended up making some unnecessary mistakes trying to do things in a way that didn't seem authentic to me." Awareness is important, but not to the point of hesitation. Do a couple experiments and then trust yourself. That's one thing I wish I had done more of in the beginning. Lisa has the situation that many of our listeners are looking for.

She can go about her day, work her regular job, or in her case, her jobs, and whenever she has time, work on her side hustle. But even when she doesn't have much time to work on it, she can still log into her seller account and see how much money she's made over the past week without doing anything for it at all. Isn't that worth working for? What are you going to do this year to make that happen for you? Awareness is important, but not to the point of hesitation.

I love that quote. There's a fine line between research and taking action. You know, sometimes it's good to do your homework to prepare. Other times you just need to kind of step out there. This is the kind of model where it's very easy to experiment since the cost is so low and the risk almost nonexistent.

If you think you might be interested in it at some point, you might as well apply and see what happens. Now just a quick note, as I mentioned in the episode, sometimes Amazon can take a long time to approve people. For Lisa, it took two months. I applied for myself last year and it was something like six weeks. So basically if the idea interests you at all, go ahead and apply since there's no cost to do so.

But then keep thinking about other ideas in case it takes them a while before they get back to you. My friends, I hope you enjoyed this story. I enjoyed bringing it to you. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes, including links to several Merch by Amazon resources and also the application page for that program, which is managed by Amazon, no affiliation with us, are at sidehustleschool.com/371.

That is for episode 371. If you have a comment or question for this show, I'd love to hear from you. Give me a call on the Hustle Hotline at 8449 Hustle. That's also 844-948-7853. You're a rock star.

Here's to your hustle. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.