Merch By Amazon – How Long Does it Take To Get Approved?

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I’ve been seeing a lot of talk online lately about how long it takes to get approved for Merch By Amazon. I should preface this by saying that I am still waiting to get approved myself.

From what friends have told me and what I have read online the approval process takes between 4 and 12 weeks (at the time of writing). This will surely drop in the future. You might be reading this and be saying “I can’t wait that long!”.

What can you be doing in the meantime?

What you can be doing in the meantime while you wait to be approved is getting designs done and uploading them to sites like Teespring, Redbubble, and Teepublic like I’ve done. Doing this means I’m already making money while I wait to be approved by Amazon. It’s been 4 weeks since I started uploading designs and I’ve already had 10 sales on Redbubble and Teespring.

Where can you get T-Shirt designs created?

Fiverr.com has a lot of good T-shirt designers that will work for $5-10. This is a good place to start. Eventually you will want to hire a freelance T-Shirt designer from a freelancer website like Upwork.com. I’ve just done this and it is working out well so far.

Finally

I know you are probably excited to get starting making money online with Amazon Merch. I am too but understand there are 10+ other print on demand T-Shirt platfoms that you could be making money with on top of Amazon. If you have any questions let me know in the comments.

57 thoughts on “Merch By Amazon – How Long Does it Take To Get Approved?”

  1. You’ve got a great website. I came across it while googling Amazon Merch. I’ve been waiting for a couple months now for word on if I get to sell on Merch. I’m curious if you ever got into the program, and if so, how long did it take to get accepted. Thanks!

    Reply

    • Hi Debbie,

      Thank you for the comment and the kind words. I’m not in yet unfortunately but I do sell my tshirts on Redbubble, Teespring, and Teepublic. I applied for Merch By Amazon about 4 months ago, I’ve heard it can take up to 7 months to get approved. I tried emailed them to ask approximately how long the delay was and got stonewalled by Amazon.

      So if I were you I’d get some designs done and start selling them on other print on demand websites.

      Hope that helps!

      Reply

      • Hey, I just saw that you had responded. Sorry about that! Not sure if you got in yet, but I did. I watched a webinar that Amazon put on about the program, and at the end they gave out a tip to get fast-tracked for acceptance. Part of it was actually logging in and watching the webinar. So if you’re still waiting, look for the next webinar and hopefully they will offer the same deal. Now I’m working on getting designs uploaded and figuring out how to drive traffic to them.

        Reply

        • Hi Debbie,

          That’s good glad to hear you got in! I’m still not in yet but I’m making about $350 per month from selling my designs on Redbubble, Teespring and Teepublic so I’m not too worried.

          Thanks for the tip next time there is a webinar I will make sure to look out for it.

          The most import thing I’ve found for getting sales on Amazon from selling Kindle books, Paperbacks and Audiobooks is to make sure you mention your main keyword in the title.

          So for example if you are selling Golf T-shirts make sure you mention Golf in the title. Even if it is in brackets at the end e.g Hole in One! (Golf)

          That will help massively in getting you more organic sales.

          Hope that helps!

          Reply

        • Hi Brendan,

          Thanks for your sharing. Are you still waiting for an answer from Amazon or your application has been approved?

          Hi Debbie,

          How do you know about the webinar? How do I get info about this?

          Thanks.

          Reply

          • Thanks Brendan for your reply. If you do not mind, may I know the amount of design that you have entered into RedBubble? Is it just a niche or multi-niche? All sales come from organic reach without paid advertising? It’s amazing Brendan.

          • No problem and thank you! I have around 35 designs published to RedBubble but about 10 of them do not get any sales at all. I publish in 2 different niches that I am interested in (which I think gives you a better chance of being successful). I don’t know how to do paid advertising so it is all organic through customers searching for shirts on Redbubble, Teespring and Teepublic.

          • Thank you for your very sincere reply. I really appreciated it. It’s hard for me to see people who are willing to share their successful experiences as you.

            Only 35 designs and you’ve got a very favorable returns, for me. Congrats Brendan. I’ve made nearly 100 designs, but the results are not as expected. Perhaps my designs less interesting and I have yet to find the right way to do research.

            In your opinion, do customers use Google to search first? Or they continue to use the search function in the Redbubble, Teespring, and Teepublic marketplace to find their favorite designs?

          • Hi KamaHus, no problem at all 🙂

            I think it is a combination of both. I’ve noticed that Redbubble have a very strong presence on Google Shopping (the shopping tab of the google search). So I think this definitely contributes to sales but I also think there are some from searching on the websites themselves as well. I was earning about $50 per month until I hired a graphic designer who specialised in designing t-shirts. That is when my income really started to take off.

          • Thanks, Brendan.

            I hope you don’t get tired of answering questions. 🙂

            Have you hired the designers from Fiver? I actually still wondering why your income is not encouraging at Zazzle.I see they are also competitive on the first page of google for a variety of niche for t-shirt sales.

          • It’s OK 🙂

            To be honest I’ve not put much effort into zazzle. I just threw my designs up on the website in about 2 hours one night when I had nothing to do. If I go back and edit description, tags and titles I’ll probably be able to grow that as well.

            I have used designers on fiverr. Some are good, some are terrible.

          • It seems that not all the designers in the Fiver can provide the designs that we want. I hope I can get your advice when I want to hire a designer at Fiver later.

            Anyway, thanks Brendan for taking your precious time.

          • You might want to look at hiring a designer from a site like Upwork.com then. You can get designs for as little as $10 and the designs are a lot better in my experience.

  2. Howdy! I know this is kind of off topic but I was wondering which blog
    platform are you using for this website? I’m getting tired
    of WordPress because I’ve had issues with hackers and I’m looking at alternatives for another platform.
    I would be fantastic if you could point me in the direction of a
    good platform.

    Reply

    • Hi, I use WordPress but my friend uses Squarespace for his website and really likes it. So maybe think about trying that. I think they offer a 30 day free trial.

      Reply

  3. Been waiting 14 long months and counting. Contacted Amazon numerous times and they only say I’m on the wait list. Yes……..14……MONTHS!!!!!

    Reply

    • Hi Dan,

      That’s unbelievable! There doesn’t seem to be any logical reason for who gets approved and who doesn’t. I know people who haven’t been waiting as long as I have and have already been approved and let in.

      Have you tried making money with Redbubble, Teepublic, Teespring and the other sites? That’s what I’ve been doing while I wait.

      Also what have Amazon said whenever you’ve contacted them?

      Reply

    • Hi Alin,

      Firstly all of my sales come organically through customers finding my shirts while doing a search on those websites.

      To do this I make sure I mention whatever keyword I’m trying to rank in the Title, Keywords and 2 or three times in the description.

      So say I was making a golf related T-Shirt, I’d obviously want to rank for golf as that would be my main keyword. So I make sure to mention Golf in the title. If this is not possible to make it look natural I add it to the end in brackets (e.g ‘Hole In One (Golf)’). Then I make sure I add gold as a keyword and related golf terms as keywords as well. Finally, I make sure to mention Golf two or three times in the description.

      Doing this really helps to give me a boost in the ranking for all three sites.

      Hope that helps 🙂

      Reply

        • A bit of both really. I’ve found when the design has an image as well as the text they normally sell better than just text. But some of my designs are just text.

          If you have any other questions feel free to ask 🙂

          Reply

          • I get ideas from other designs but I definitely don’t steal them. I then pay a graphic designer to make my new design.

            So if you see a design you like think “how could I make that better” and then get your graphic designer to do that.

  6. Hi Brendan. I have read your comments, just to say I have only been waiting a few weeks.
    I have tried teespring and teechip but with no luck.
    So you don’t do any advertising what so ever? No Facebook posts, tweets, Instagram?
    How many shirts do you have up at any 1 time? I tried a charity tshirt and didn’t get a sniff. I think my keyword naming could be better mind but I am really surprised by your success.

    Reply

    • Hi Colin,

      No, I don’t do any advertising what so ever. If I were you I would try redbubble instead. I only make between $15-$30 per month on Teespring. The bulk of my income is made from From Redbubble and TeePublic. Teespring relies on driving traffic to the t-shirts from Facebook ads and other social media. They don’t seem to get too many organic sales. Whereas Rebubble and TeePublic actually have customers searching on the site.

      Hope that helps!

      Reply

      • Thanks Brendan.
        Just out of interest, what do you write about? You seem to have wrote quite a few. Do you write about anything in particular or are there specific subjects you stick to?
        I’ve never thought about writing books but I have a few skills that I could write things about!

        Reply

        • Hi Colin,

          I stick to non-fiction mostly as fiction doesn’t seem to sell as well for me.

          So to pick a topic I go to Amazon.com and look to see if a similar book has a best seller rank of under 100,000 (which means it will sell at least one book a day). If I can find 1-3 similar books that have a best seller rank of under 100,000 then I know it should sell well so I get a book ghost written on that subject.

          If you search for Kindle Publishing on YouTube you will find 100s of videos on what to do. Hope that helps

          Reply

    • Hi Antonio, have you thought about trying to sign up using a second email address? It seems to be random for who gets in.

      Also log in periodically (say once a week) to see if you have been approved because they did not email me to tell me that I had been approved. I just happened to check one day and I had been approved.

      Reply

  16. Hi Brendan thank you for the info and encouragement. What do you mean by log in? Just go to the amazon account you signed up with?

    Reply

    • Yes, you sign in with the amazon log in details you use to buy things on amazon. Or you can create a brand new account if you would like to keep them separate.

      Reply

  17. I’ve been waiting a year, and yes I have tried redbubble, threadless, teespring, sunfrog, printful, cafe press-my account got hacked and info stolen, most of the companies suck. I don’t understand why these companies think its okay to take your ideas put them on shirts and pay you a whopping 2-3 bucks, while they make 15-20 for a shirt profit. After 3 months of being with these different compaines someone hacked my computer and took every folder of my designs. I’m at the point now of getting my own domain and website. I finally found a good dropshipper for my stuff, one I can trust and hasnt ripped me off yet and I contacted amazon about why is it taking so long and asked a chat person there and they had no idea what merch was and didn’t know what i was talking about. Go figure. Not to sound negative I was just a person who nothing about this and found out the hard way. Have a good day dude.

    Reply

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