Back-to-school t-shirts on Amazon Merch on Demand: A great little niche worth considering
September is around the corner and that’s when teachers and children will be heading back to school. As a major milestone in many children’s lives, starting school or moving to a new grade is exciting.
New friends. New subjects. Simply a great time to be a kid.
One of the ways to help a child have an amazing time on their first day back at school, or helping teachers bring humor to the classroom, is with back-to-school t-shirts.
And Amazon Merch on Demand delivers.
As to be expected, sellers in this niche are doing well. But can you join this niche with something special of your own?
We think so. Here’s how.
How big are back-to-school shirts on Amazon Merch on Demand?
To help us determine the market size of back-to-school t-shirts on Amazon Merch on Demand, we headed over to Merch Informer’s Products Search module. In essence, we carried out two quick searches.
The first one is for the seed keyword “school”, which brings back a best-seller’s rank (BSR) of just over five million.
Meanwhile, a search for “back to school”, which is much more focused and targeted, brings back an average BSR of 4,647,433.
Because of this one-million point difference, our focus in this article will be on the “back to school” keyword.
Keywords, search volume and BSR
Merch Informer gave us a total of 48 of the most searched-for keywords related to this niche. We then extracted the most relevant ones to help you in your research process. Here are the main keywords and their associated search volume:
- “back to school”: search volume – 87 611
- “Back. to school”: search volume – 16 185
- “Back-to-school”: search volume – 15 507
- “back to schools”: search volume – 8 647
- “back school clothes”: search volume – 4 069
- “boy back to school”: search volume – 2 931
- “back school”: search volume – 2 590
- “boys back to school”: search volume – 2 345
- “back to the school”: search volume – 1 416
- “high school back to school”: search volume – 1 343
- “back to school middle school”: search volume – 1 247
The major keywords “back to school” and the different variations thereof show us quite a high search volume in excess of 100,000 searches.
After this, we see that searches for “back to school” are narrowed down, particularly toward boys.
In addition, there are divisions between searches for different schools such as high schools and middle schools.
And finally, we notice that there is a combined relatively high search volume for the general keyword “clothing” related to this niche, with “t-” and “sweatshirts” also making the cut.
Listing saturation
Of course, we also explored the listing saturation by looking at what keywords some of the top sellers in this niche are targeting.
Here’s a brief breakdown of their current strategies:
- Seed keywords: school (6,138), back (2,927)
- Secondary keywords: day (2,029), first (1,612)
- Target audience: teacher (1,082), teachers (928), students (587), kindergarten (526), kids (458), girls (405), boys (405), student (316), women (287), men (201), family (133), son (125)
- Grade number: grade (1,051), 1st (372), middle (246), year (210), pre (201), preschool (196), elementary (192), 2nd (189), 4th (178), second (125)
- Adjectives: funny (586), happy (397), cute (392)
- Purpose: gifts (580), welcome (358), appreciation (260), celebrate (255), present (214)
From this list, we notice that sellers are targeting the back-to-school niche quite precisely, as “school” and “back” are by far the most dominant keywords. This means that it’s crucial to state the seed keyword explicitly.
In addition, we also see that sellers are targeting the first day at school, in particular.
Interestingly enough, merchants are primarily targeting teachers, even though we did not see a high search volume for this keyword. Other audience types in this niche are kindergarten students and young kids.
As for the grades that this niche is mainly aimed at, we notice the first grade coming up quite a lot, followed by elementary school levels and then the second grade.
These t-shirts on Amazon Merch on Demand are generally cute and funny, intending to leave a pleasant impression. Finally, they are mostly purchased as gifts to celebrate the event.
Pricing
With Merch Informer, we were also quickly able to determine the prices that sellers are charging for back-to-school t-shirts. Here’s what we discovered:
- Lowest price: $7.99
- Highest price: $34.00
- Average price: $17.26
What are some of the bestselling merchants doing right?
Next, we delve into some of the bestselling listings that we discovered on Merch Informer, picking the top two creators with sales in excess of 20 per month.
Seller 1
- Title: Happy First Day Of School Leopard Back To School Teacher T-Shirt
- Seller: Back To School Teacher Student Boys Kids Girls Tee
- Price: $16.95
- BSR: 92,185
- Sales: 28
Seller 2
- Title: Ready To Tackle Fourth Grade Back To School Football T-Shirt
- Seller: Ready To Tackle 4th Grade Gift First Day Of School
- Price: $19.98
- BSR: 68,412
- Sales: 38
Keywords
What’s interesting about these two sellers is their target audience. Seller one is exclusively targeting teachers’ back-to-school t-shirts, whereas seller two is targeting t-shirts for fourth graders.
In any event, both t-shirts use the words “back to school” in their titles, and although the titles are quite short and not as detailed as possible, they are descriptive enough to have earned themselves some sales, making them the top sellers in this niche.
Pricing
With regard to pricing, with an average price of just over $17, we see that seller one has priced around $1 short of the average whereas seller two has priced at just over $2 above the average.
This is an essential strategy because when pricing as close to the average as possible, sellers are able to earn more sales by not alienating their audience through prices that go way out of the ballpark.
This is evident in both of these sellers’ pricing strategies, and we’ll focus on this in our recommendations section below.
Designs
As for the t-shirt designs themselves, we see that seller one has opted for a text-heavy design that says “Happy First Day of School” with a touch of leopard design on the text.
As for the second seller, they’ve gone for a slightly different strategy by incorporating both the design and inclusion of a football as well as some text elements for the design to read “Ready to Tackle Fourth Grade”.
As such, we see that there is nice congruence between the text and the design and that this is well-illustrated in the listing title, creating a sense of cohesion in the listing.
What is the profitability of back-to-school t-shirts?
To determine whether there is money to be made in this niche, we multiplied the number of sales by the listing price to determine average rates of profitability. Here are the results:
Seller 1
- Price: $15.95
- Sales: 28
- Average profits: $446.60
Seller 2
- Price: $19.98
- Sales: 38
- Average profits: $759.24
Our recommendations
Without further ado, we present to you our recommendations for successfully entering the back-to-school niche on Amazon Merch on Demand.
- Keywords: since the title of your listing plays such an important role in your rankings on Amazon’s search results, it should be fully optimized. For this niche, using the words “back to school” or variations thereof, is absolutely imperative. In addition to this, it’s vital to segment your audience. Are you catering to teachers or to schoolgoers? In either situation, this information needs to appear in your listing title, as well as listing description, to ensure greater ranking accuracy.
- Pricing: when it comes to pricing, you need to price around the average of $17. A one or two-dollar difference can mean profitability in the range of $400 or $700. This variation is not to be taken lightly and requires careful consideration. However, with Merch Informer, it becomes child’s play because all it takes is a few clicks of a button to give you an indication of the right price for your t-shirt.
- Designs: the design of your t-shirt not only needs to speak to your audience, it also needs to speak to your title. Whether you use text-only or text-heavy designs with graphic elements will depend precisely on that – your target audience. Make sure that the text is centered and large enough to be read. Your message and design should also be tailored to your audience. It can be complicated, or simple. For example, a t-shirt aimed at teachers will have a much different design than one aimed at a first-grader.
The bottom line
As we wrap up this article, we hope we’ve given you some valuable insights into how to proceed with the back-to-school niche. It’s evident that the niche is profitable.
It’s just a matter of ensuring your listing is fully optimized with high-search-volume keywords, the right pricing strategy, and excellent designs.
And to achieve all of this, you need Merch Informer.
Access to the platform goes for a monthly fee of only $9.99 and it’s absolutely indispensable to your research and design process.
Try it. It will be absolutely worth it.
