Yeah I suppose some of my methods aren't exactly magic. Personally I would rather buy one of my shirts than run FB ads, in my experience it's Amazing what buying a shirt will do. First off it gives your shirt a BSR score which I don't believe it will even have one prior to a sale. Not only that but I often notice after I purchase a shirt I tend to get a few organic sales to follow.
Another method I don't personally utilize but which works is dropshipping your tee shirts on Amazon to customers on other platforms ie put up a listing on eBay or Etsy or Gumroad and use Amazon to fulfill those orders. Its kind of a grey area but I believe if you use the slower shipping and not the 2 day prime your within TOS. This is basically the same strategy as buying your own shirts but doesn't cost anything and can be done on a larger scale.
Another thing I've done in the past is send my shirts to influencers. Without even paying influencers just sending them a free shirt I got a couple to wear my shirt during videos or on Snapchat and it really blew up sales of one of my shirts.
Buying it is one way to do it and I have noticed the same thing. I am mad that I can't run Amazon giveaways on my shirts, a lot of shirts I can but none of my own for some reason. That would be the magic trick :-)
Sending them to influencers is a great idea.
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There's a workaround to run Amazon PPC involving AMS and Amazon Vendor Express but its a pain in the butt to setup, I'm in the process of setting mine up right now.
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I have never got AMS to be profitable, not on shirts or my private label products.
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