Mental Health T-Shirts: Raise Awareness and Make a Profit Along The Way Through This Amazon Merch on Demand Niche
With mental health awareness gaining traction around the world, there’s no better canvass to express your support for this issue than a t-shirt.
And with only 6,000 listings on Amazon.com for the search query “mental health awareness shirt’”, there’s certainly scope for you to explore this niche due to its low-competition nature.
In this article, we explore the market size and bestseller practices to give you better insight into how to strategically enter and succeed in this niche.
Let’s get started.
How big is the mental health niche on Amazon Merch on Demand?
To begin the research process, we headed over to Merch Informer’s Products Search module. In the section below, we explore both the demand and supply side of this niche. Firstly, we look at current search volume and then we examine how bestsellers are positioning themselves.
Keywords, search volume and BSR
The average best-sellers rank for “mental health” t-shirts, as revealed by Merch Informer, is 6,199,141. Although quite high, there is a comparable high search volume for these products. Below is a summary of the most sought after keywords in this niche (above the 2,000-mark), alongside their BSR rankings:
- “Mental health is health shirt”: search volume – 38,534, BSR – 1,198,953
- “Mental health is health”: search volume – 37,952; BSR – 1,198,953
- “Mental health”: search volume – 32,014; BSR – 6,199,141
- “Mental and emotional health”: search volume – 3,275; BSR – 56,173
- “Child mental health”: search volume – 2,993; BSR – 6,298,170
- “Black mental health”: search volume – 2,383; BSR – 192,472
From these results, we see quite a lot of fluctuation in the BSR depending on the keywords used. However, a high BSR doesn’t necessarily translate into a low number of sales. It’s a combination of factors that drive your sales upwards.
Furthermore, we see diversity in the top search queries with the inclusion of “child mental health” and “black mental health”.
Overall, we see a combined search volume of over 150,000 searches in this niche, making for a lucrative opportunity and signaling high demand for these products. This is despite the fact that there is a low number of listings for these products on Amazon.
Listing saturation
As promised, we now discuss the supply-side of t-shirts in this niche. In particular, we look at how sellers have positioned their listings through relevant keywords in their titles.
Here are our findings based on the results from Merch Informer:
- Seed keywords: mental (5,815), health (5,497), awareness (2,931)
- Supporting keywords: support (854), green (574), matters (560), stigma (497), closure (445), illness (430), depression (398), ribbon (379), fight (246), suicide (246), raise (240), prevention (230), help (211), anxiety (193), disorder (179), love (165), warrior (158), care (150), therapy (140), survivor (133), kind (129), positive(125), disorders (123), bipolar (119), mind (110), self (107)
- Audience type: women (386), men (367), therapist (218), counselor (211), kids (183), family (182), counselors (182), therapists (171), friends (147), nurses (146), mom (107), wife (105)
It’s clear that these sellers are accurately targeting the mental health niche by using the seed keyword “mental health awareness” in their titles. This is evidenced by the cumulative total of over 10,000 times this word and its broken down forms have appeared in listing titles.
As for the supporting keywords, they cater to a broader vocabulary used in this niche. They include words that are strongly related to mental health and address important secondary search queries.
Finally, the audience type is extensive as evidenced by the high search volume for mental health-related topics mentioned above. This means it is suitable for men, women, and children. Basically, people of all ages because mental health affects everyone.
Pricing
Of course, we couldn’t leave prices in the market unexplored. We used Merch Informer to give us the lowest, highest, and average prices in this niche. Here are the results:
- Lowest price: $13.38
- Highest price: $24.99
- Average price: $17.98
What are some of the bestselling merchants doing right?
Here are two bestsellers in this niche that we identified:
Seller 1
- Seller name: Mental Health Awareness Support PTSD Graphic
- Listing title: “Broken Crayons Mental Health Awareness Supporter Graphic T-Shirt”
- BSR: 143,678
- Selling price: $19.98
- Number of sales: 18
Seller 2
- Seller name: Mental Health Awareness TShirt Men Women Teens
- Listing title: “Its Okay To Not Be Okay Shirt Mental Health Awareness Ribbon T-Shirt”
- BSR: 138,311
- Selling price: $14.95
- Number of sales: 19
Keywords
With a specific niche like mental health awareness, which contains longtail seed keywords, it doesn’t leave sellers much space to describe their product in too much detail. However, both seller one and seller two have done this successfully by incorporating the seed longtail keywords and a brief description of their products in their titles. This is a good strategy because it means more buyers will find these t-shirts, thereby increasing the likelihood of more sales.
Pricing
The average price in this niche is $17.98. While the first seller has opted to go to nearly $20, the second seller has charged just under $15. Despite this, they are both still within the mean in this category. That has positively impacted their sales by making their products more accessible and affordable.
Designs
Seller one has chosen a text-only design that reads “Broken crayons still color”. The colors used in the text are varied. For example, the primary color is green on a black background, while the “Broken crayons still color” text is a mixture of white and other varied colors. The text has been accurately centered and the arrangement of the textual elements in the design is harmonious.
Seller two, on the other hand, has opted to offer a textual design accompanied by a light green ribbon, which is the symbol for mental awareness. The text is large and in all-caps, meaning it’s easy to read and the message on the shirt gets across very quickly. Therefore, it has a powerful effect on the viewer and this is perhaps one of the reasons why this is considered the top bestseller in this niche.
What is the profitability in the mental health awareness niche?
And finally, we reach the levels of profitability that one can expect in this particular niche. Here is our estimation of average profits the two bestsellers mentioned above have made. We’ve come to this gross total by multiplying the number of sales by the selling price.
- Mental Health Awareness Support PTSD Graphic: 18 x $19.98 = $359.64
- Mental Health Awareness TShirt Men Women Teens: 19 x $14.95 = $284.05
With this information at hand, we see that you can easily be making in the region of $300 in this niche, if you approach it correctly. Below, we’ll share some of our tips with you so that you can achieve your sales goals.
Our recommendations
Extracting some of the best practices employed by the bestsellers in this niche, we come to the following conclusions, which we present as recommendations:
- Keywords: make sure that your listing title contains the words “mental health” or “mental health awareness”. This is a must in this niche. Any deviations from this could lose you sales. Because this is a longtail keyword and it takes up a lot of space from your listing title, make sure the remaining words in your title are highly relevant. You can take a look at the listing saturation keywords we mentioned above to help guide you with this process.
- Pricing: pricing around the $18-mark is highly recommended. This means you’ll be able to hit the sweet spot for customers and charge competitively. Both bestsellers we identified above have employed this strategy to their success.
- Designs: whether you choose a text or design-only design for your shirt, or a combination of both, using the green color and mental health awareness ribbon will go a long way to making your shirt relevant. Research your competition and see how you can improve on their designs by using catchy and interesting phrases just like the two bestsellers mentioned above.
The bottom line
In summary, mental health awareness is here to stay. Using t-shirts as the canvas from which this awareness should be raised will continue.
This means the niche is worth considering for sellers who want to realistically earn upwards of $300.
When it comes to your research and design process, it’s important to be as prepared as possible. And no tool can help you achieve that than Merch Informer.
Access to the platform comes at a monthly subscription of only $9.99.
