Amazon Destroys its Merch on Demand Program

Amazon announced its Merch on Demand program will cut artist royalties by 50% in the US – unless one pays Amazon for ads that bring in at least 15% of your sales, even though artists are not the seller – meaning the bottom line is still going to be about a 50% loss in revenue.

Sales in the Rest of the world to soon follow.

My take …

Amazon’s affiliate program pays a 4% commission for bringing a customer to Amazon who buys a product. That is the value Amazon has long placed on traffic generation.

New US Royalty Rates in Merch for base creator level at initial price points:

Tshirt – 6%
Comfort Colors Tshirt – 4%
Sweatshirt – 6%
Phone Case – 2.6% (ouch)

Amazon is devaluing the value of the creative artwork by 50%.

Current royalty rates can be made up by essentially becoming an affiliate to drive traffic to Amazon – the rates are similar to what Amazon pays affiliates.

But the valuation of the artist itself is clear – not much.

Prediction: Non-IP protected artist valuation will approach zero when Amazon is comfortable from a legal perspective putting AI front and center for customers to use.

Merch is already using AI to scan submissions for what it believes are IP violations.

Disney will have value because Amazon’s AI won’t allow Mickey Mouse designs.

Generic sellers with non-IP protected designs, such as text designs, will be wiped out.

I’m guessing Disney and other large corps have their own deals and are not impacted by the change.

Congrats to the Merch artists who got on board in 2017 when it was new and made a lot of money as there was no competition. That gravy train has long been over, and now the end of the program is in sight for those without protected artwork.

—–

I think Amazon’s message is little different than it just wants traffic generation – as it spends $200 billion a year on AI with the CEO demanding AI be incorporated into every aspect of the business.

** Amazon no longer values artists.**

Unless designs are brand protected, such as Disney (which I highly suspect has its own deal with Amazon), royalties will head even closer to zero, if not eliminated, when Amazon rolls out its AI.

Text designs will be the first to go.

Customer searches for: Go Team Tshirt

Amazon’s AI will generate and show a variety of Go Team tshirts.

Why pay an artist?

Maybe artists’ designs will show below the AI generated designs. Maybe not. But artist sales will be hammered.

Graphic designs will be next when Amazon’s legal department is comfortable the AI is not generating infringing designs. It will be paid designs first, Amazon’s AI designs second, and then artists designs last.

Just like the general marketplace is generally paid listings first, Amazon FBA second, and then everything else.

Customer searches for: Funny Santa as a Golfer Tshirt

Amazon’s AI will generate a show a variety of Funny Santa as a Golfer designs.

There will be an option for buyers to request a tweak/change to an AI listing so they get exactly what they want.

Why pay an artist?

Maybe an artist has a cool take that Amazon’s AI will not ripoff, but they will not get many sales unless they pay for Amazon ads to show their cool listing ahead of the AI versions.

Another problem with Amazon’s course of action, and a Simple Shirt site intended to get Google traffic which is then sent to Amazon (and somehow Amazon is able to track that to you), is that as sales of a design on Amazon increase and reviews are generated, Google will start showing the Amazon listing ahead of the Simple Shirt site.

In other words, by using external traffic from Google to Amazon to avoid a 50% pay cut, in the long run that SEO traffic will start shifting to Amazon and artists will lose their earnings anyway.

IMHO the tact may be the opposite of a Simple Shirt Site – create a Deep Shirt Site including related articles that are not about selling a tshirt. Merch pages suck. Graphics are terrible. If they weren’t on Amazon which has a 20+ year history and billions of sales – Merch listings would be ignored by Google and the public as crap spam pages.

That’s the opportunity.

And … tshirt designers may decide to make the sales on their own site, building their own customer base with repeat buyers, instead of sending people to Amazon.

Hostgator Upgrades Breaking Websites

Hostgator has been “upgrading” to new servers, but what it is really doing is forcing the latest php 8 version on users and that is causing websites to break.

8.1, then 8.2, now 8.3 – each new version forced by Hostgator, without any ability to rollback to a more stable php 7 (even php 5 would be preferable) breaks more and more sites.

If your website is down – anything using php such as WordPress or html sites that incorporate php – it is because of the new php version Hostgator is cramming down your throat. Either try to roll it back and save your site, try to figure out what new code is needed, or look at a new provider.

PHP 8 is terrible.

Billionaires Working With Billionaires to Service Billionaires

Amazon has been trying to nudge its sellers to sell more to businesses and to give businesses price discounts and better shipping compared to run of the mill people customers.

At this point a “nudge”. Likely soon to be a “force”.

A recent post by Amazon is noteworthy – telling its sellers NOT to use the post office for business deliveries. See https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/228197c9-185b-48c7-879a-c6fc01bb9cbd

Amazon’s contract with USPS ends in October 2026. Search the news about USPS Amazon negotiations, breakup, etc.

Amazon is looking at paying USPS billions more, with a remote possibility of losing USPS delivery access, which is a reason why Amazon is spending billions to increase its rural delivery – unprofitable deliveries that Amazon has leaned on USPS for many years to service.

Trying to “leverage” the postal service during contract negotiations by recommending other services is not surprising.

UPS is also significantly reducing its relationship with Amazon.

Who else is moving away from Amazon?

Besides UPS and the postal service, it is reported a whopping 1/3 of active sellers have walked away the past few years and the number of new seller registrations is at a decade low. The number of new US seller registrations has basically collapsed. – See https://www.ecomcrew.com/amazon-sellers-registration-plunges-to-decade-low/

There are currently no AI deals like Walmart, Etsy, Shopify and other marketplaces have.

Amazon is having to run expensive TV ads to try and attract employees.

I’m not suggesting Amazon is in trouble, but major changes are happening and IMHO one is Amazon moving away from smaller sellers while also making a play toward larger buyers.

Think of it as billionaires working with billionaires to service billionaires.

That is why Amazon’s sellers forum is filled with posts about product categories basically ending, product gating and opportunities disappearing.

Remember when IBM was the #1 consumer computer seller? Then it shifted to all business.

Again, not saying Amazon will go 100% business, but it is rapidly tracking in the direction of being like Macy’s where if you want to sell on Macy’s you basically need to be a billion dollar supplier. Macy’s has a surprisingly few suppliers it relies on – unlike the millions of sellers on Amazon. But those millions of Amazon sellers are quickly dwindling and only a few now constitute the bulk of Amazon’s marketplace sales. A mere 7760 sellers do HALF of Amazon’s sales. See https://www.billiondollarsellers.com/p/bdsn-do-you-make-these-selling-mistakes-in-english

Will Amazon Use the Melania Movie to Teach Sellers How to Advertise and Make Money

The $75 million Amazon has reportedly plunked down for the Melania Movie is a bit outside my budget this week, so I’m hoping for a detailed, in-depth analysis showing where the money went, advertising techniques with AWS quality detailed statistical results, and how Amazon sellers can apply this to video ads and other types of advertising.

For instance, I just saw a paid commercial on CNN for Melania and it is SHOWING NOW.

I rushed to Fandango to see if there were tickets still available at my local movie theater. Whew! Only 2 tickets had been sold.

Maybe I’m just an amateur, but I don’t see the ROI or bandwagon effect from 2 tickets.

How to Change Image Raw Data in Photoshop for AI Created Graphics

When an AI created graphic is opened in Photoshop, the File Info Raw Data may show the AI software was used to create the image.

For example, Amazon’s Creative Agent in Creative Studio will show as Creative Agent.

Amazon also places a small watermark in the bottom left corner of the image which is easily and quickly removed using the Spot Healing Brush Tool – but the Raw Data cannot be edited in Photoshop. Re-saving the file as a psd and then to another format maintains the raw data.

Solution: Open the image, then File | Export | Quick Export Image as PNG – and save the file with its existing name or give it a new name.

Either way, the Raw Data is now changed to only show Photoshop without any reference to the original software used to create the image, whether it is AI or something else.

Prediction Market Fees Compared

Prediction Markets are red hot – everyone is now trying to jump on board. Although federally regulated as trading financial futures lets call it for what it is – betting. Gambling. And with federal law superseding state law it is breaking the gambling monopoly held by states, Indian Tribes, and the well known Vegas type casinos.

I think it’s great.

In California the Indian Tribes have held-up sports betting and fun for the masses for years to protect their own casino profits and now they’re going to get run over. No tears here.

So let’s look at a few prediction markets:

Summary

Lowest to Highest Fees for Sports Prediction Markets

1. Polymarket (When it re-enters the US)
2. Kalshi
3. Crypto
4. Robinhood

Polymarket – The largest in the world is just re-entering the US market after taking care of regulatory issues. My current understanding is trading fees will be near zero at .01 percent. No fees for deposit or withdrawals.

I don’t know if there will additional ‘exchange fees’ or ‘gas fees’ for tracking on a crypto blockchain. But Polymarket will likely destroy much of the competition in the US with its almost free trading – assuming it can be as user friendly as alternatives.

Kalshi – Already available in the US Kalshi offers a wide range of predictive trades.

The fee structure, though, is a convoluted financial equation resulting in significantly different rates depending on the likelihood of the trade. Consider fees to be somewhere between 1 and 2 cents, but can be substantially higher for since contracts. Basically, 50/50 trades are very expensive and trades with 85/15 or higher odds are very cheap. HOWEVER, if you trade a lot of contracts at once, such as 100, then Kalshi’s fees become a substantially smaller percentage.

I signed up but the identity verification process was broken. But even if that gets resolved, I’m not sure due to the weird fee structure, and Polymarket almost being free, if there is a strong future for Kalshi. It may be big now – because Polymarket has not been in the US – but it may not last.

Robinhood – Easy to use but fees are 2 cents for $1 contract, which makes trading high/low risk events impossible, and can take a high percentage of winnings. It results in weird events where a 99%/1% trade is offered, but it can’t be made use of because one would lose money by paying a 2 cent fee where the max payout is 1 cent.

The 2 cents is 1 cent to Robinhood and 1 cent to Kalshi which is used for trades.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Robinhood reduce fees in the future. It has a larger business enabling it to be more competitive for prediction markets.

Crypto – Crypto has $1 and $10 trading contracts. Crypto’s fees are hidden from easy access – they can be found here. The fee for a $1 contract is 2 cents. The fee for a $10 contract is 10 cents if you lose and 20 cents if you win.

Note that Crypto currently talks about “waiving” other fees, meaning it is setup to impose additional higher fees in the future.

The Crypto website says sports trading is only allowed before an event starts. But looking at individual games it shows in game fluctuating odds and suggests one can trade until the end of the game. I think part of their website may be outdated as only allowing sports trades before a game starts would be a huge negative. Other markets like Robinhood let you trade until the game ends thus enabling you to better target the odds you want and to make additional in-game trades to reduce risk or reduce a loss by creating a second trade for the other team.

The number of events shown on Crypto is small – which is a huge problem.

Crypto fees are cheaper than Robinhood because it has a 50% lower fee when you lose. Fees for winning are the same for Crypto and Robinhood

PredictIt – No sports trading it is mainly for political events.

Maximum trade amount is $3500. No fee to create a trade, but if you win PredictIt takes 10 percent of your winnings. It then takes another 5 percent as a withdrawal fee.

The fees are very high. And unlike sports events which are quickly over, it can take years to know the outcome for a political bet. PredictIt only makes sense if you get incredible odds and wait on the outcome and afford a 15% fee. But you’re also up against a $3500 limit so no big payouts. Personally – no.

Coming Soon …

Fanatics, Fanduel, DraftKings, Truth Social and more

Amazon Sues Perplexity to Stop Buyer Purchases Using AI Agents

I thought the big idea behind Amazon’s marketplace was to encourage product purchases so sellers make money from sales and Amazon makes money from referral fees (and a ton of other fees).

I thought another big idea was consumer first – whatever consumers want they get.

I thought a third big idea was to have a huge affiliate program driving sales from third parties recommending purchases.

Enter AI. Buyers can use Perplexity’s Comet AI Browser to make purchases on their behalf. For example, I need X please purchase the best product for my needs on Amazon – and the browser makes the purchase.

Amazon has sued to stop these sales. Sued to reduce sales. Sued to reduce sellers income – money used to put food on the table and a roof overhead.

Bottom line: IMHO it appears Amazon doesn’t want agentic browsers bypassing the zillion ads making the marketplace a craphole for buyers because it is apparently more profitable to make money from ad clicks than actual sales.

Example: My friend could ask me, Hey Brian, can you buy X for me on Amazon. But she can’t tell her AI assistant to make the same purchase.

Prediction: Every reason Amazon gives for its stance disappears if Amazon can get an additional payment from Perplexity for each sale its AI participates in.

eBay vs Amazon as a Seller

There was an interesting post in an Amazon forum about whether eBay or Amazon is better for sellers and their opinion was eBay is the Gold Standard and Amazon is the Black Standard.

eBay is far from perfect and I can point to a few things where it is a piss terrible company: charging sellers fees for sales tax paid by buyers and the upcoming ad “cookie” stuffing of charging sellers ad fees for sales if anyone in the world sees an ad even if the person making the purchase did not. It’s just plain fraud in my view.

And it will lead to more fraud as every seller will have an incentive to click on competitors’ ads every 30 days to force their competitors to pay the ad referral fee to eBay for every sale they make.

Something tells me eBay will be looking down the barrel of lawsuits and government action in the future.

But beyond that … eBay stock is up 35% Year to Date. Amazon up 10% and that’s only because it just got a 10% bump from the AWS AI deal.

Step back farther – 5 years or about Andy Jassy’s tenure as Amazon CEO: eBay up 75% Amazon up 50% – and Amazon is largely due to AWS and a massive income jump in seller ads.

eBay also thanks its investors with some dividends. So does Google, Microsoft, etc. Amazon has never paid a penny in dividends to the investors who were necessary to build the company.

If you sell on both platforms there is a definite “vibe” growing significantly more disparate the last few years.

Amazon? Many sellers wonder why Amazon hates them so much and why it is even in the marketplace business and doesn’t just split the company.

Maybe some sellers feel like eBay is the “gold standard” for sellers because it understands it needs sellers; while it can feel like sellers on Amazon are are just fodder while Amazon focuses on AWS and pivots Prime to being a Disneylike media company.

Personally, I think Amazon needs to be split into at least 3 companies: AWS, Media, and Marketplace.

That might force Amazon to be better for sellers.

Right now too many parts of the Amazon marketplace are atrocious. Products are shadow banned until the seller pays for ads. Consumers just see ad after ad after ad. Many of the products are just Chinese companies buying cheap stuff on Alibaba and then selling the same product under different – unintelligible trash “brands”. It can be a horrible experience. So bad I believe eBay is reaping the benefits.

Amazon has exited the used toys business. A huge percentage of booksellers are gone. Numerous other product categories are under strain to even be sold as bots run amok and Amazon limits sales of non-Chinese bombarded categories to billion dollar brands. Amazon merch is squeezing out sellers of additional product categories. For many sellers and their products they are going to eBay and I expect that trend will accelerate.

Custom Print on Demand Product Options

Several services offer the ability to automate customization for print on demand products.

Here is a brief overview of current pricing and integrations:

Customily

Broad marketplace integrations with Shopify, Woocommerce, Amazon, Etsy and others.

Print on Demand integrations – Customily works with a large number of major POD providers.

Pricing: $49 per month PER MARKETPLACE INTEGRATION plus $1 per order, which drops to .50 per order after 100 orders are sent in a month, .25 per order after 1000 orders are sent and .10 per order after 10,000 orders – per month.

Bottom line: Customily is realistically targeting only those with high volumes of sales. the top 1 percent of the market. For the other 99% of online sellers the pricing may consume a significant amount of your profits, although perhaps customization is your path to higher sales volume.

Customily appears to be the market leader and has priced itself knowing it is the leader and can maximize its profits.

Hello Custom

Marketplace integrations are Amazon and Etsy.

Print on Demand integration is Printify.

Cost per month is $30 plus .29 per order.

Many sellers are doing the Printify / Etsy get rich scam so the limited number of integrations will still work for them

Anywhere POD

Marketplace Integrations are Etsy and Shopify.

Print on Demand integrations are Printify, Teelaunch, and a few others – notable including Order Desk. It was unclear from my limited review, though, whether Order Desk can be used as a gateway connection to potentially dozens of POD companies that Order Desk works with; as well as many marketplaces.

Pricing paid monthly is $10 flat fee with no per order cost. The limitation is one Etsy or Shopify store and one POD provider. If you’re limited to doing the Printify – Etsy thing this is a no-brainer to use.

$25 per month for two POD providers and up to two Etsy stores, and then $49 per month for unlimited POD providers and unlimited Etsy stores. Again, there is no per order fee.

Conclusion

Decisions. Decisions. I haven’t attempted to evaluate how the customization works with each company and any limitations.

For sellers using numerous POD providers with lots of sales Customily seems built for your business.

Anywhere POD, though, may be an option, especially depending on how broad the Order Desk integration can be used. However, Customily offers POD integrations that Order Desk does not, such as Completeful.

The problem with Anywhere POD is that it is OK if you only use one POD provider such as Printify. But once you expand to other providers you’re suddenly looking at the same monthly cost as Customily – although not having a per order fee is a significant savings.

There is not much of a reason to use Hello Custom – except it has Amazon – which can be a huge reason. Order Desk integrates with Amazon so if you sell on Amazon you will want to find out if Anywhere POD working with Order Desk can handle customized Amazon orders.

Collars and Co Shirt Review

I tried the Collars and Co shirt that was promoted on Shark Tank and invested in by Mark Cuban.

The claim to fame for the shirt is that it has a rigid collar but instead of a dress shirt it is a polo shirt. Stay put collar on a more casual shirt.

I decided to give it a try and ordered the Red Houndstooth.

Ordering

The shirts are expensive!

During ordering Collars and Co wanted to know if I wanted to pay extra to insure the order for delivery. Otherwise, if it was not delivered it was my loss.

Hmmm. I was so put off by that – are they using some shady delivery service? – I put away my credit card and used PayPal to maximize my protection if the order was not delivered.

Then I saw shipping. It should have been free given the hefty price of the shirt but no. Even worse, Collars and Co was padding the amount as an extra profit item. That is, customers are paying one price for shipping and Collars and Co is actually paying a lower amount and pocketing the difference.

Once the order was placed this happened …

Nothing.

IT TOOK A WEEK FOR SOMEONE TO GRAB THE SHIRT OFF THE WAREHOUSE SHELF AND SHIP IT.

Bad. Very bad service.

Even worse … during that week I started getting spam messages from the company and finally had to unsubscribe and remove myself from their spam lists. Come on. Ship the order instead of sending spam.

The Shirt

The collar is very rigid. I’m not sure how the shirt is supposed to be washed and have the collar hold up, even on a delicate cycle. But overall the shirt is what it claims to be.

Size though is a different story.

The shirts are long. Longer than a regular polo shirt and not something to be worn untucked.

Actually, the shirts are intended for bean poles. I had to go back and get the info on the model shown for my shirt – 5’10” wearing a small. How many 5’10” men do you know who wear a size small? With a 14 inch neck?

I don’t know anyone like this and certainly wouldn’t design a shirt with this in mind.

Men if they workout have at least a few pounds of muscle. Or, if they don’t work out have a few pounds of fat. Either way, this shirt won’t be a good fit. It is like a straw intended for someone very thin.

So for sizing the shirt was a disaster. An almost impossibly small neck, with a narrow shirt, that is long. Looked terrible.

Even worse, in real life the Red Houndstooth looked like a brighter red shirt with bright white buttons – a clown shirt if there ever was one. Bad choice on my end. Could have been a cool design but “clown shirt” was my immediate thought upon seeing it.

There is a label sewn on the back of the inside back of the shirt below the collar, and the stitching comes through the back of the shirt and is visible. Even $20 shirts from Target look better than this $100 shirt intended for the professionals.

Overall

Had to return it. If it was just the idiot looking color combination I would have tried a different color, but the sizing of the shirt was impossible.

The collar would take some getting used to but seems to be exactly as advertised.

Oddly, the company seems to be adding and promoting everything except its shirt. There’s jackets, sweaters, hoodies, socks, belts, etc.

Finally, get this, as I write this the home page as big picture of sports announcer Joe Buck and welcoming him to the team.

He is wearing what looks to be just a regular polo shirt. NOT a Collars and Co shirt with its rigid collar that is the reason for buying these shirts.

OMG. What a fail. Can you imagine paying someone to promote your shirt and their picture appears to show them not wearing what you are famous for?

Collars and Co Review