How to Create Clever T-Shirt Ideas for Merch By Amazon (Print on Demand)

hey YouTube welcome to day two of my 14
day YouTube challenge when I'm doing a
video every single day for 14 days in a
row and today from my merch my amazon
print on demand people we're gonna be
talking about creating creative ideas
for your t-shirt and if you're a person
and you don't feel that you're naturally
creative this video is gonna help you
out so there is a site that I came
across recently called pun pedia and
it's literally an encyclopedia of puns
and it's really gonna get your juices
flowing and so I discovered this not too
long ago by typing in keyword pun
looking for some ideas and this site
came up and I was like oh my goodness so
I was literally sitting here for hours
and hours just jotting down ideas and
now I'm ready to start designing so I
just want to show you some examples that
I came up with so I immediately zeroed
in on dolphin puns for whatever reason
I'm not a dolphin fan but it was just it
was a keyword that I had never really
thought of for merch by Amazon so if you
click on dolphin puns each keyword they
give you examples and ideas for how you
can use these puns so for example you
can use the word porpoise for the word
purpose you know get it something can
become some fin so how would you turn
that into a shirt dolphins something
beautiful in the sea or there's
something in the water and then of
course you highlight fi-in on the shirt
maybe make it in all caps or whatever to
make the pun you know obvious so if you
go through here they give you all kinds
of examples of things you can do now
what I would do because what's gonna
happen after people watch this video
especially if this video happens to get
a lot of views over time
everybody's gonna be using the examples
that I gave I would highly recommend you
use this as a template but come up with
your own ideas and you'll see what I
mean in a second so I wrote down some
ideas that I thought of based on just
this page so for dolphins you've got fi
in so I thought of dolphins have finesse
and they do you know they swim through
the water they're all smooth so if
you've got a cute little dolphin picture
or design or whatever and you put that
in there
BAM finesse in the sea that's a
another phrase you can use the
definitive source for everything dolphin
that could be for dolphin fans it could
be for dolphin trainers or Orca the
orchestrator of the sea orcas are killer
whales orchestrators tend to lead things
right so it's kind of a stretch but you
get the idea so like I said before don't
just take my examples or the examples
that are there use the concepts so you
think okay what other words have fin in
them and you go well I can't think of
anything that has fin in them you can
google it there are websites out there I
just typed in words with fin in them and
the free dictionary com came right up so
not only do they give you words but they
have them broken down by the number of
letters so if you're looking for some
different words that have fin in them
you can just google it it's all about
being creative at the end of the day and
see a lot of people think with merge by
Amazon it's about being a designer and
hey let me tell you if you've got some
background in t-shirt design obviously
that's always going to be an advantage
but I haven't sold over a hundred
thousand dollars or actually more than
that that's my royalty I don't know what
my revenue number is for Amazon but I've
earned over $100,000 on merged my Amazon
in a little over two years and I can
tell you it's not because I'm a designer
it's because I have come up with ideas
that other people have not and that's
the key to success with print-on-demand
in many ways I'm not trying to minimize
you designers out there because I'm a
little jealous I wish I had the skill
but being first with a unique clever
idea even if it's just a simple text
design sometimes that sells better than
the most creative or artistic design
that you could come up with so let's do
some research now now I'm over here in
Amazon and I typed in dolphin shirt we
all know or at least you probably know
by now if you've been in merged any
length of time that that's just too
broad it's not specific enough it's
going to be too much competition and
it's just not a keyword I would
typically go after in 2019 it's just too
broad if you look at the search volume
underneath the word dolphin shirt or the
keyword dolphin shirt you'll see it's at
1600 per month so it gets a decent
amount of searches and then the cost per
click on average if you were to
advertise with this keyword it would be
a dollar eight per click and by the way
this is
keywords everywhere Chrome add-on so you
can add this free add-on to your browser
on Chrome and you can get this kind of
information to get an idea of how
competitive a particular keyword is so
if you type in dolphin dolphin shirt and
scroll the first thing I notice is that
the shirts that are ranking on top
aren't even merged shirts and one thing
I noticed is that people seem to like a
lot of all-over print for their dolphin
shirts so if you design for red bubble
or any p OD that allows you to do all
over print that might be a good idea if
you're gonna do some dolphin designs
just keep that in mind so when I scroll
down I finally come to a merge cert
that's a dolphin shirt and it's not
selling all that much 605,000 here's
another one 616,000
here's another one but it's not a merge
short so the merge shirts
don't seem to be selling all that much
notice once again the all-over print
they're getting all the attention for
these these dolphin shirts so this is
not a keyword that I would go after it's
broad it's not really selling a lot so
what I would do next to see if there's a
way that I can narrow this keyword down
a little bit so I have less competition
and hopefully more demand so when I type
in dolphin shirt and notice I'm getting
some additional keywords I am using
another add-on I'm telling you I don't
know how you can do merge without Chrome
because of all the great add-ons this is
an add-on called the amz suggestion
expander it's another free add-on that
adds on to Chrome and it gives you
additional keywords to research that
Amazon is not going to give you and so
one of the keywords that that got my
attention is pink dolphin shirt so
that's a little bit more narrow let's
see what that looks like I noticed my
volume is a lot lower 320 searches per
month 48 cents CPC cost per click so
this is not as competitive of a keyword
and this is what you want you want to
narrow down so if you are not familiar
with much by Amazon I should mention
these numbers that you see below the
shirt this is from the DSM azan quick
view extension another extension and it
gives you an idea of how well shirts are
selling so the lower the number the
better this is like the first extends
that everybody that gets on merged
installs everybody knows about this if
you're in merge but I just want to make
sure in case you didn't now you have to
be careful with this keyword because
there's a brand called pink dolphin and
it's this one here where you see with
the plus sign but some to my
understanding I'm not a legal person so
please always check this with people who
are licensed to give this kind of
information but as long as you're just
doing a pink dolphin shirt like pink
dolphin the color pink and you're not
infringing on their brand and design you
should be okay I don't think they have a
trademark on pink dolphin you seen them
saying but again I'm not a legal expert
so if you scroll through here you will
see that here's a pink dolphin shirt
let's see how well is selling nine
hundred and fifty eight thousand not a
lot and I was wondering are people
searching for a actual pink colored
dolphin are they looking for a dolphin
shirt that's pink but based on the
results I think people must be looking
for the color pink so a pink dolphin
shirt and here's another one 1 million
five hundred six thousand so this is a
narrowed down key word but the demand
still is not that great so what I would
do next is go okay
are there any other animals that have
fins that I can use some of my examples
on and so immediately I thought of
whales so let's go back up to the top
and let's type in whale shirt and let's
here we get killer whale shirt now
that's a specific kind of whale aha so
let's see what that looks like
see what kind of demand we get 170
searches per month not a lot but that
also means is probably lower competition
here's one 353,000 not bad it's actually
a sponsored shirt so this is probably
someone who found this keyword and was
like I'm gonna run some ads on this
here's another one
funny killer whale shirt four hundred
and eighty four thousand five hundred
and twelve so this keyword here's
another one I think that might be the
same one
five hundred and one thousand so this
particular keyword looks a little better
less competition but the designs are
selling a little bit more now this is
not a hot keyword you're not gonna make
a killer
shirt and so you know 20 a day or
anything like that
but I'm trying to give you an idea of
what you want to do when you narrow down
so you want to try to find lower
competition but you also want through
the designs to be selling one thing I
didn't make clear and I had to jump back
in and add this later when I'm looking
for how competitive something is or how
much competition is out there for that
keyword the main thing I look for is the
number of results so for example
dolphins shirt has over 3,000 results
but killer whale shirt only has 264
results so as you're doing your research
you want to keep that number in mind as
well that's another way to gauge how
much competition is out there for the
keyword that you're going after now with
regards to making your dolphin if you're
like me and you have Photoshop you love
custom shapes because custom shapes can
be installed into Photoshop and you can
draw a lot of things very quickly the
only thing I would say is just to make
sure you have rights to use these shapes
commercially and I get my ships from all
over I don't get them from just one side
I typically will just Google whatever I
need and then I'll buy the pack or
download the pack or whatever but I
don't get them from one specific place I
know I get that question a lot I just
get them for it wherever I can find them
I search by keywords so if you click the
letter U or you just come over here to
the custom shape tool and select it you
can come up here and you can see guys I
have a lot of custom shapes here I have
nurse related custom shapes actually I
had to buy a license for that I do
remember that it was 90 bucks but I do
use it and it has you know paid off I've
had some nurse shirts that have sold but
here's my dolphin right over here on the
right so in order to draw the dolphin
all I do is come up and select my color
so if I wanted to do a pink dolphin I
would select the pink hold down the
shift key so it's drawn and scale click
and drag BAM
I've got my pink dolphin or whatever
color I want to make now if you're gonna
do a killer whale shirt probably don't
want to do a pink dolphin but I was just
showing you that just because we were
talking about pink dolphins and the
other thing I like about Photoshop is
you can make your shapes have these like
interesting patterns so you can
right-click your layer and go to
blending options and you can add a
pattern on top of
your color so if you want a pink dolphin
but you want to have flowers you can add
a pattern on top of it and then just
like shapes you can also install
patterns in Photoshop as well just
google it there's tons of videos out
there on how to do it but I can choose
different patterns to overlay on top of
my dolphin so if you want to make a
retro 70s dolphin with some flowers
there you go just like that and you can
toggle the opacity that determines how
strong the flowers come in so if I keep
the opacity low you can barely see them
but if I make it higher increase it you
can see the flowers are stronger so
imagine doing this with many different
shapes many different patterns you can
come up with a lot of different ideas
for your art and I use this a lot with
print-on-demand so I hope this was
helpful you guys now you can see how you
can use this tool to come up with ideas
but I cannot emphasize enough how
important it is for you to come up with
your own ideas and don't just take the
examples that they mention on the site
use that as a template and go oh let me
let me use another word that has fin in
it and come up with my own idea so good
luck talk to you later