Anyone who goes looking for Amazon's Merch on Demand royalty page is usually asking something simple: if a design of mine sells on Amazon as a shirt, what do I get? It is the right question. The royalty only answers it once you know what the number is paying you for, and it pays for more than the drawing.
How Amazon Merch royalties are worked out
Merch on Demand is Amazon's own print on demand program. You upload artwork, choose the products and colours, and set a list price. Amazon prints each order, ships it, deals with the customer and handles returns. Your royalty is the list price minus Amazon's costs: making the product, fulfilling it, and Amazon's own cut. You see an estimate as you set the price, and royalties are paid monthly.
Amazon sets the cost side and you set the price, so price is your only lever, and raising it makes each sale worth more and less likely at the same time.
The rate itself has also been moving. Several independent guides report that since June 2026 the royalty depends partly on where buyers come from, with a default rate and higher rates for creators who send a set share of their sales from outside Amazon. The page sits behind the creator login and we have not been able to check it ourselves, so treat any figure you have seen quoted as unconfirmed and check your own account.
What the creator still does
Merch on Demand takes the printing and posting off your hands. It does not take the listing work, and that is the part people underestimate.
- Getting in. You apply, and Amazon decides whether to accept you. Not everyone is accepted.
- Writing every listing. Each design needs a brand name, a title, a couple of bullet points and a description, written in the words shoppers actually type.
- Working inside a limit. A new account can only have a small number of designs live, and the allowance grows as designs sell.
- Passing review. Each design and its text are checked against Amazon's content rules before going live, and a phrase that turns out to be somebody's trademark is a common reason for a rejection.
- Finding buyers. If the reported traffic tiers are right, the better rate goes to creators who bring buyers from outside Amazon, which means social posts, an email list, or ads you run and pay for.
For someone who enjoys the listing side, that is a fair deal. The point is that one royalty figure pays for the design, the listing work and, if those reports hold, the marketing too. Next to an offer that does the listing work for you, you are comparing two different jobs, not two rates.
What one of our Amazon orders left after every cost
We are not part of Merch on Demand. We sell on Amazon as an ordinary seller, with shirts made by a print partner, so instead of one royalty figure we see every cost as its own line. Here is a real order from August, a t-shirt that says Sorry For What I Said During The Merge Conflict.
- The buyer paid $19.99, with shipping included in the price.
- Printing the shirt cost $7.84.
- Posting it cost $4.75.
- Amazon's referral fee was $2.00, which is 10% of the price.
That leaves $5.40 of profit. The sales tax on the order was collected from the buyer and passed on, so it never enters the sum.
The fee line is the one to watch. Amazon's fee on clothing steps up at price thresholds: 10% from $15 to $20, then 17% of the whole price above $20. This shirt sat at $19.99 on purpose. At $20.99 the fee would have been about $3.57, and the extra dollar from the buyer would have left the order 57 cents worse off. The post on selling one design across three marketplaces has the rest of that arithmetic.
Why only some of our designs go to Amazon
Amazon rations new listings for sellers too, not just for Merch creators. We have a weekly allowance of new catalogue entries, and one shirt design uses a great many of them, because every colour in every size is its own entry.
So at the moment a design goes to Amazon here only after it has sold somewhere else first. A design that has not sold yet is still listed; it starts on Etsy and on our own shop sites instead. It is the same logic as the Merch upload limit, seen from the other side: space on Amazon goes to designs that have already shown they can sell.
How to choose between the two
Neither route is better in general. They suit different people.
- If you like writing listings, can keep designs flowing through a tiered allowance, and can bring buyers of your own, Merch on Demand pays you directly for all of that, and you keep control of the price and the words.
- If you would rather make the design and stop there, an arrangement that handles the listing, pricing and customer work pays you for less work, and should be judged on that basis.
- Either way, read the licence before you upload. Ours is exclusive for merchandise, which is a real cost, and the post on who owns your design sets out what that means.
What that order would pay a partner here
On our side the real costs come out first, and what is left is profit, shared with the artist. On our top tier the artist's share is half. The merge conflict shirt is one of our own designs, but had it been a partner's, their share of that order would have been $2.70. That is a small number, and it is the honest one. It came with no listing to write, no allowance to manage and no parcel to post.
As examples of what a design becomes once it is listed, here are two shirts that have sold on Amazon through us: the merge conflict shirt from the order above and a Hold My Drink shirt on Tickle Stitch.
The usual caveat applies here as much as on Amazon. Most designs sell modestly or not at all, and this is not fast money. What changes is the downside: no stock, no listing fees out of your pocket, and a design that never sells costs you only the time it took to draw. Every line of the per-channel arithmetic is on the payout example page, and if that trade suits you, you can create a free account and upload a design.