How much can I make Selling T-shirts using Merch by Amazon

When you sell a t-shirt via Amazon.com, Amazon pays you a royalty or percentage of each sale amount. The amount that Amazon keeps has both a fixed component and a percentage component.

Lets quick go over what these components of Amazon fees are:

Fixed component of Amazon fees- Amazon will deduct a fixed amount per sale irrespective of the t-shirt sale price. This amount is to cover the cost of materials, production, and printing. As of August 2017, this fixed amount is $9.80 and it has steadily risen in the last 2 years. About 2 years back, this amount used to be $8.10, resulting in an increase of $1.70 or 21%.

Variable component of Amazon fees – Amazon charges 15% of each sale to cover fulfillment cost. Fulfillment cost includes the cost of packaging and shipping the t-shirt whenever any customer orders the t-shirt.

Additionally, depending on the t-shirt ordered, there could be additional cost as well. As of now, there are two optional additional costs involved:

• $4.00 for two-sided printing.
• $1.50 for premium brand t-shirts

Below table covers some scenarios (excluding optional additional costs):

As you can see, any sale below $11.53 will result in you losing money every sale. $19.99 looks like a sweet spot, wherein you can make about 35% profit per sale.