The 2026 Guide
Updated: 08.10.2026
Amazon Merch on Demand is one of the most appealing print on demand opportunities available, you upload designs, Amazon prints and ships products when customers buy, and you earn royalties with zero upfront cost and no inventory. Amazon’s customer base is enormous, and having your designs in front of it without paying for that access is a genuine advantage.
But Amazon just made a significant change. In June 2026, they replaced the flat royalty model that sellers have relied on for years with a three-tier system that rewards sellers who drive their own traffic, and cuts earnings nearly in half for those who don’t.
Short version: Amazon’s flat royalty rate is gone as of June 1, 2026. A standard $19.99 t-shirt now earns $2.44 if all your traffic comes from Amazon’s own search (Creator Tier), $4.88 if at least 15% of your sales come from traffic you bring yourself (Plus Tier, matching the old rate), or $5.27 at 35%+ external traffic (Premium Tier, beating the old rate). Passive, upload-and-forget Merch selling now pays half what it used to.
Here’s exactly what changed, what it means for new and existing sellers, and how to approach the platform in 2026.
How Amazon Merch on Demand Works
Amazon Merch on Demand is Amazon’s own print on demand platform. You apply for access, upload your designs once approved, set your retail prices, and Amazon handles everything else, printing, shipping, customer service, returns. You earn the difference between your retail price and Amazon’s production and fulfillment costs.
Products available include t-shirts, hoodies, long-sleeve shirts, sweatshirts, phone cases, and PopSockets. There’s no upfront fee and no minimum order quantity. Amazon only charges their production cost when a sale is made.
The catch is that access is invitation-only. You submit an application at merch.amazon.com and Amazon decides whether to approve you. Approval is not guaranteed and the waitlist can take weeks to months. Apply early, the sooner you’re in the queue the sooner you can start.
The June 2026 Royalty Change: What You Need to Know
This is the most important update for anyone researching Amazon Merch in 2026. Most guides still show the old numbers, which are now wrong.
As of June 1, 2026, Amazon replaced its flat-rate royalty model with a performance-based three-tier system. Your earnings per sale now depend on where your traffic comes from.
The Creator Tier is the default for all sellers. Traffic coming entirely through Amazon’s organic search and recommendation engine qualifies at this level. A standard t-shirt priced at $19.99 earns a $2.44 royalty at Creator Tier. This is a 50% cut from the previous flat rate of $4.88.
The Plus Tier applies when at least 15% of your monthly US sales come from external traffic sources, paid ads, social media, email marketing, or other non-Amazon channels. The same $19.99 t-shirt earns $4.88 at Plus Tier, matching the old flat rate.
The Premium Tier applies when at least 35% of your monthly sales come from external sources, and requires a minimum of 10 unit sales that month too. At this level the same shirt earns $5.27, more than the old flat rate.
Worth knowing on the mechanics: Amazon recalculates your tier monthly using a trailing two-month average of your non-organic, traffic-driven sales, not a one-time qualification. And this tier system currently only applies to US store sales, international marketplaces like the UK and Germany aren’t affected by this change yet.
The implication is stark. Sellers who have been uploading designs and letting Amazon’s organic search do all the work will see their royalties cut in half. Sellers willing to drive their own traffic can earn more than before. Amazon is effectively shifting the marketing burden from the platform to the seller.
What Things Actually Pay
T-shirts are the most common product but not the highest-margin one. At the $19.99 standard price point in the Creator Tier, you earn $2.44 per sale. That’s low, you need a lot of sales to build meaningful income from t-shirts alone.
Premium hoodies and sweatshirts at the $39.99+ price point earn significantly more. Creator Tier royalties on a $39.99 hoodie are approximately $13.20. Zip hoodies and long-sleeve shirts at higher price points also offer strong royalties above $5 per unit.
A fishing hoodie at $44.99 earns $11.77 per sale, far better than a generic t-shirt at $15.99. The lesson is to price higher and sell higher-margin products rather than chasing volume at the lowest price point.
The metric that actually determines your income is royalty per design per month. A seller with 500 designs averaging $5 per month in royalties earns $2,500 monthly. A seller with 2,000 designs averaging $0.50 per month earns $1,000 monthly. Fewer, better-optimized designs at higher price points beat thousands of minimum-priced listings every time.
The Tier System: How Design Slots Work
Amazon limits how many designs you can have live at any time through a tier system, separate from the royalty tiers above, this one governs how many products you’re allowed to list. You start at Tier 10, meaning 10 active design slots. Tier progression goes: 10, 25, 100, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000+.
You move up tiers by making sales. Reaching Tier 100 from Tier 10 requires roughly 25-30 total sales across your designs, achievable with the right niche focus and pricing strategy. Tier progression typically takes 3-6 months to reach Tier 100 assuming consistent uploads and moderate sales.
Fill every available slot. Empty slots don’t help you, every unfilled slot is a missed opportunity for a sale that could advance your tier.
As of 2026, tiers are now calculated based on trailing 12-month performance rather than total lifetime sales, and listings that go 18 months without a sale are automatically deleted. This means you need active, selling designs rather than a graveyard of old uploads.
Niche Selection Is Everything
The same principle applies here as on every other print on demand platform, niche-specific designs massively outperform generic ones. “World’s Best Dad” competes with millions of listings. “World’s Best Electrician” competes with far fewer, and converts better with the right buyer.
Good niches on Amazon Merch tend to be profession-specific, hobby-specific, or tied to identifiable communities with buying occasions, birthdays, holidays, milestones. Avoid anything trending in the news cycle since those niches fill up with competing designs within hours.
Trademark checking is non-negotiable. Amazon will remove listings that infringe on trademarks and repeated violations can get your account suspended. Before uploading any design, verify the text and imagery don’t infringe on existing trademarks.
The Strategy in 2026
Given the royalty tier restructure, a purely passive approach, upload and wait for Amazon’s algorithm to find you, now pays half what it used to. The sellers who adapt will drive some external traffic to their listings.
This doesn’t have to mean running paid ads. Posting designs on Pinterest, Instagram, or niche Facebook groups, or including Merch links in a newsletter or blog, can qualify you for the Plus Tier with relatively modest external traffic. At Plus Tier you’re back to the old royalty rates. At Premium Tier you’re earning more than before.
During Q4, the October through December holiday season, increase prices 10-15%. Demand during the holiday season consistently outpaces supply for well-designed products, and buyers are less price-sensitive when shopping for gifts.
Upload designs across multiple product types. The same design on a t-shirt, a hoodie, and a long-sleeve shirt triples your surface area with one creative asset. Most sellers focus only on t-shirts and leave the higher-margin products untouched.
Is Amazon Merch Worth It in 2026?
Yes, with clear eyes about what it is and what it demands.
The zero-risk entry point is genuinely appealing. You can start without spending anything, test which niches and designs resonate, and build a catalog with no financial downside. Amazon’s customer base is the largest in ecommerce, and getting your designs in front of it without advertising costs is a real advantage.
The June 2026 royalty changes make passive income harder to achieve than before. A catalog that used to generate $500 per month at the old flat rate now generates roughly $250 at Creator Tier unless you’re driving external traffic. That’s a meaningful cut for established sellers and a real consideration for new ones.
The sellers who do well in 2026 are the ones who treat Merch as one channel in a broader strategy, uploading the same designs to Etsy and Redbubble alongside Merch, and driving some external traffic to qualify for the higher royalty tiers. If you want the deeper breakdown of running print on demand across multiple platforms rather than just Merch alone, I cover that in How to Make Money with Print on Demand. Merch as a standalone passive income source is harder than it was. Merch as part of a multi-platform POD operation still makes sense.
This fits into the bigger picture of building income that doesn’t need your constant time, I cover where Merch and other POD platforms fit alongside dividend investing, digital products, and rentals in Passive Income in 2026: What It Actually Takes to Build It.
Frequently Asked Questions
As of June 2026, Amazon uses a three-tier royalty system. At the default Creator Tier (organic Amazon traffic only), a standard $19.99 t-shirt earns $2.44. At the Plus Tier (15%+ external traffic), the same shirt earns $4.88. At the Premium Tier (35%+ external traffic), it earns $5.27. Hoodies and higher-priced items earn significantly more, a $39.99 hoodie earns approximately $13.20 at Creator Tier.
Apply at merch.amazon.com with your Amazon account. Amazon reviews applications manually and approval is not guaranteed. The waitlist can take weeks to months, so it’s worth applying as early as possible even before you’ve finalized your designs.
Any traffic that isn’t Amazon’s own organic search or recommendations: social media posts with a tracked link, email newsletters, a blog, or Amazon Sponsored Products ads. Amazon tracks this through Amazon Attribution links, which need to be set up for external sales to actually count toward your tier.
Yes, but the fully passive version of it pays half what it used to. It’s still a zero-risk way to test designs and build a catalog with no upfront cost, and sellers willing to drive even modest external traffic can match or beat the old royalty rates.
Reaching Tier 100 from the starting Tier 10 typically requires 25-30 total sales across your designs, which usually takes 3-6 months with consistent uploads and moderate sales. Listings with no sales in 18 months are now automatically deleted, so keeping designs active matters more than it used to.
Sources
June 2026 royalty tier restructure and dollar figures: Merch Titans, AMZ Prep
Trailing two-month tier recalculation and US-only scope: MyDesigns
Design tier system and 18-month deletion rule: Stores Automation