The world is going nuts in so many ways, which makes it even more interesting to keep track of everything and to document the development of my efforts in the print on demand business.
Welcome to the fifth edition of my monthly print on demand income report!
Let’s analyze how May was going in that regard.
Merch by Amazon
Overview of my sales on Merch by Amazon in May 2020
On the first day of the month, Amazon announced that they will slowly restore product listings for MBA products in the US. That was a good first sign for the situation to go back to normal again.
However, it really seems that this will be a slow process, as now one month later still most of my designs on the US marketplace are currently not buyable.
The German marketplace wasn’t hit that hard and continues to deliver sales on a daily basis.
Combined this allowed me to have some growth in both sales and royalties compared to April.
In May I reached a total of 76 sales on Merch by Amazon. This corresponds to an increase of +41 % compared to the previous month, which reached 54 sales.
Those sales together generated roughly 209,91 € in royalties. This corresponds to an increase of +73 % compared to the previous month, which reached 121,40 € in royalties.
I’m currently Tier 1000 with 700 slots filled, divided into 572 products on the German marketplace, 110 on the US marketplace, and 48 on the UK marketplace.
I’m glad to see that increased sales even though I am still not able to publish any new designs. Makes me hopeful for the rest of the year!
Spreadshirt.de
Chart of my sales on Spreadshirt.de in May 2020
Spreadshirt.de is really developing itself from a platform that I was quite annoyed of to one that I’m really happy to be having these days. Sales are coming in more and more frequent and I had more sales this month that in December of last year.
That is definitely a good sign.
In May I reached a total of 63 sales on Spreadshirt.de. This corresponds to an increase of +58 % compared to the previous month, which reached 40 sales.
Those sales together generated roughly 197,85 € in royalties. This corresponds to an increase of +51 % compared to the previous month, which reached 130,85 € in royalties.
I currently have 1427 designs published on Spreadshirt.de.
Fortunately, Spreadshirt was able to increase the daily upload limit again to 20. Also, designs are being published again right away and don’t need manual review, which took ages for me before.
I was really excited about them launching custom designs for face masks and spent some time creating a storefront with Spreadshop only for mask designs. Then I played around a bit with Pinterest ads and I really got a lot of clicks, but only two sales, which were cancelled eventually, as Spreadshirt is taking very long to produce and deliver those masks, as it seems.
Meh. It could have worked though!
Spreadshirt.com
Chart of my sales on Spreadshirt.com in May 2020
Hold on, two sales in a row? Calm down Spreadshirt.com, calm down!
In May I reached a total of 3 sales on Spreadshirt.com. This corresponds to an increase of +33 % compared to the previous month, which reached 2 sales.
Those sales together generated roughly $ 10.60 in royalties. This corresponds to a decrease of -24 % compared to the previous month, which reached $ 14.00 in royalties.
I currently have 346 designs published on Spreadshirt.com.
The upload situation on Spreadshirt.com is really pissing me off slowly. They reject so many designs in bulk, without checking them individually, for the most vague reasons. Those are all designs that I am uploading and selling on Spreadshirt.de without any issue.
How does that make any sense?
Total Sales and Royalties
Adding the figures from all above platforms together amounts to a total of 142 sales. This corresponds to an increase of +48 % compared to the previous month, which reached 96 sales.
All sales together generated roughly 417,48 € in royalties that I earned. This corresponds to an increase of +57 % compared to the previous month, which reached 190,79 € in royalties.
This month I just spent a little bit of money on Pinterest ads to promote my face mask designs, without getting the results I had hoped for. In total, I have spent 19,08 € on that experiment.
I questioned a lot of my efforts for this business during May, as in, not being 100% sure what to focus on. The process I outlined in April seemed a bit overwhelming to routinely execute, so I’m taking a step back again to focus on what is obviously working. Which is simply making more relevant designs and uploading them to the platforms.
I tend to keep overthinking things, which all too often makes no sense for the long-term success of a project. Therefore, I will put special focus in the next few weeks to not try any new things and to keep things simple.
There’s lots of work to do.
You can check out all my print on demand income reports to track my progress.
How are things going for you? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
That’s awesome Benny, the progress you had is great! Fingers Crossed for the next one being as good or better 😉
I hope so! ?
With regards to making things more simple I am finally starting to look into automating my upload process and to add other platforms. ?
To which platforms are you uploading? ?
I use Redbubble, TeePublic and Displate
Hi Zane!
How are those platforms going for you? I’ll be getting to upload on Redbubble this week as well, gotta figure out the whole upload process there.
Let’s see if it’s worth it.