Lately I've been hearing from a lot of people really upset and disappointed that their application to join Amazon Merch was denied.
Back when I first signed up for Merch back in 2015 or 2016 it was a pretty simple application. They asked for your name, e-mail and if you had a website or social media account you wanted to supply. Basically there was very little for them to judge you on. I'm guessing they asked for a website thinking if you had some kind of online presence you had some way to promote your shirts and drive some more traffic to their site.
Over the years Merch has grown tremendously in popularity and for a while we were seeing people wait 6 months, a year, even 14 or 15 months to get a decision.
More recently Amazon seems to be onboarding people to Merch much quicker, I'm hearing people getting on in 3 days, a week maybe a week or two tops. Unfortunately it also seems like they are much pickier about who they let on.
I've been hearing some people report they are being asked for design samples and given questionaires about what types of designs they'll be making, how they'll promote them, and other people are reporting just the standard application so there seems to be a lot of variance in the application process.
Another thing that's frustrating a lot of people is a lot of talented graphic designer and even professional graphic designers with nice portfolios are being declined, while others are being let on and putting up poor designs and infringing on trademarks
Anyhow, in this video I wanted to address essentially what your 3 options are if you're declined from joining Amazon Merch. Watch the video to find out what they are.