Just a quick Amazon Merch update video. Couple things I wanted to talk about are why shirts are going into processing status, as well as talking about AMS ads, my account finally got the final approval and I can finally run ads.
Shirts Going Back Into Processing
I've been hearing a lot of people talking about shirts going back into processing. This could be happening for a couple reasons. First off we got the notification on our dashboard back on September 12, 2018 that they are redoing the link structure of shirts and they will be going back into processing during this phase and could be down for a few hours. I checked one of my shirts and it does appear to have a new link structure so this may be happening already for some of you.
There's two other reasons people may be seeing this happen. The second is Amazon seems to be doing some cleansing and cleaning up listings prior to Q4. A number of people with shirts which have been live for a year or more are seeing some designs being taken down so it seems Amazon is doing some manualy reviews and takedowns.
Lastly, there's been some chatter on the Amazon Forums that shirts offered in kids sizes are being taken down if the subject matter of the shirt is of an adult nature or inappropriate. In most cases the shirt isn't taken down entirely, but the kids sizes are removed from the listing.
These are really the three main reasons you may be seeing listings going into processing.
I Finally Have AMS Ads
So Initially on 09/12/18 after the announcement of the new AMS rollout to Merch sellers, I checked the bottom of my dashboard and was excited to see I had the code.
I immediately went to setup my AMS ads account. Because I already had an AMS account associated with my old Kindle KDP merch account and advertising I had to go through an alternative signup process of creating a new Amazon account to connect to AMS ads.
I did that, immediately got my two approvals and was eagerly awaiting the third and final approval meaning I could start running ads.
I was beginning to get a bit nervous as I've heard of other merch sellers already being live with ads, I still was not. I was wondering if I messed up the setup or what happenned. Well this morning I woke up to the final confirmation e-mail, my AMS ads account can now go live.
I started off with one ad running $5 per day, promoting 4 shirts with sponsored listings and running a period of two weeks. I'll try to keep you guys updated in about a week as well as at the conclusion of the test ad to see if were in the profit or if we've spent more on ads than we've made in conversions.