Practical Example

Now for a practical example. Say I type the keyword “tennis” into the Merch Informer search box. With the DS Amazon Quick View extension, I can quickly see what rankings the suggested t-shirts are for the “tennis” keyword I typed. I get over 7000+ results and going through all the pages to find designs which are below my suggested 300,000 ranking will take forever. Luckily, Amazon somewhat ranks these shirts based on how popular they are and/or how much they sell (their relevancy). I would recommend scrolling through the first ~5 or so pages and selecting each shirt which is below the 300,000 ranking to open them up in a new tab. If you don’t plan on hiring a t-shirt designer, (which I don’t recommend early) stick with designs which you think you can improve upon or at least recreate in a similar manner.

Create a spreadsheet with your preferred program and begin pasting the links to these t-shirts in there. Create a column for the title of the t-shirt, the Amazon link to the t-shirt, and the BSR. Start from the lowest ranked Merch design and search the main phrase or set of keywords the shirt uses. For example, after searching “tennis” into the Merch Informer search box and searching for t-shirts, I notice a t-shirt with the title of “Life is Good Tennis Black T-Shirt Gift.” Luckily for me, the shirt is priced at a low $13.99 and has a ranking of about 90,000. The shirt design also has an average looking design which can be improved upon and altered to create a competitive t-shirt design. After locating a winning phrase and design, I went back to the Merch Informer research tool and searched for “life is good tennis” into the search bar and searched for t-shirts. I only got about 20 results and I found that at least 1/3 of the 20 Merch designs are selling or have sold in the past. This is perfect for me as it demonstrates that this phrase is not saturated and that it is selling well for various shirt designs. These designs can easily be improved on and if the proper keywords are used, at the minimum, one sale is basically guaranteed.

Note that Merch’s BSR for a shirt often changes drastically from week to week due to the millions of other t-shirt designs on Amazon which are competing for the top spot in the “Novelty and More” section. Therefore, when you read this section and search for “Life is Good Tennis Black T-Shirt Gift” the shirt may be removed, the phrase “Life is Good Tennis” may be oversaturated and not selling well anymore, and although unlikely, this niche phrase may be still an unsaturated and noncompetitive option. However, the phrase “Life is Good Tennis” should still bring up other selling t-shirt designs. Hopefully through this “practical example” you can see how a very general keyword such as “tennis” can lead me to find a non-competitive and “hot-selling” phrase which Amazon customers are attracted towards. After spending a couple of hours at the minimum doing this process repeatedly, with different niches, you should have a spreadsheet full of phrases, quotes, and more of which you can then begin to create or outsource to professional designers.