Merch Made Easy

YouTube merch shelf lets you sell your Shop products right below your videos on YouTube. Free and without any risks. If you do not have a Spreadshop yet, open your free shop here.

No hidden costs.

YouTube Merchandise offer you an additional way to make your channel even more attractive for your fans. It won’t impact your other YouTube revenue streams. The same is true for all YouTube partner programs and your Adsense account.

Your fans, your Shop, your prices

You set your own prices. This means that you can directly influence your earnings through YouTube Merchandise. Every product in your Spreadshop has a fixed Base Price. Set the retail price for each product individually in the Shop settings (Prices & Promos > Shop pricing). A print area is already included in the basic price. The difference between retail price and base price is your margin. Your margin determines your earnings.

You can also pass on our regular promo campaigns to your fans. These are e.g. free shipping or 15% off everything promos. In your Shop settings (Prices & Promos > Promo campaigns) you can flexibly determine when which campaign runs.

Success will be rewarded

If you sell lots of products in one month, we reduce the base price in seven successive sales tiers. This will automatically increase your income as the retail price stays the same.

The YouTube merch shelf allows you to sell your Spreadshop products directly below your videos on YouTube. You must meet the following requirements to use the YouTube merch shelf:

• Your channel has more than 1,000 subscribers
• Your channel is approved for "monetization”
• Your channel is not marked as made for kids
• The YouTube partner program is available in your region

What can I do if I don’t meet the requirements?

You can still open a Spreadshop and sell your fan merch, even without the YouTube merch shelf. Spreadshop is 100% free, no strings attached. And you’ll make money on every sale. Just link to your Spreadshop in your video description.

We produce your Spreadshop products print-on-demand. Every order is printed directly and immediately after the order has been placed – no matter whether it concerns 1, 10 or 100 items.

You can concentrate on your content and take care of your community – we’ll do the rest: order processing, production, shipping and customer service.

To connect your Spreadshop with YouTube, start directly in YouTube Creator Studio. If you meet all the requirements, you’ll be able to see the category “Monetization”. Click on “Merchandise”, then on “Start Now” and choose Spreadshop as your merch Shop.

Register Spreadshop and link to Google

Now you’ve joined the Spreadshop universe. We can produce your merchandise articles either in Europe or the USA. Choose the region where most of your YouTube followers live. So they can benefit from low shipping costs and fast deliveries. If you’re not sure, we can help you decide on the right region. After you have chosen a region, you register with the same email address that you use for YouTube merch shelf. Confirm the link between your Spreadshop and Google by entering your Google access data. Click on "Set Up Shop" to be forwarded to Spreadshop’s Partner Area.

Got more YouTube channels or accounts you’d like to connect with Spreadshop? No problem: Just repeat the process described here for each channel.

Create products and activate Spreadshop

The Partner Area is the control center for your Spreadshop. Here you’ll create your merchandise for your YouTube channel. You can start right away, design your first products and then activate your Shop. Once your Shop is activated, the first products that you choose via your product list will be transferred to YouTube. It may take up to five days for the products to appear under your YouTube videos. Use this time to set up the Shop to suit your followers.

You’ll be informed about your first sales in your Partner Area. More information about your sales, bestsellers and credits can be found in the statistics. And don’t forget: So that we can pay out your credit we’ll need your bank or payment details. Verify this info is correct in your account right now so you can get paid. Now you’re all set up and your Spreadshop is ready to go.

To sell your merchandise on YouTube, you need a shop. Open your Spreadshop directly through YouTube Creator Studio (Monetization > Merchandise > Start Now > Spreadshop). This is how you connect your channel directly to your shop. Or you can register directly with Spreadshop and click on "Open Spreadshop" (bottom left menu).

Then give your Shop a name that matches your YouTube channel. Now choose a shop theme you like – and you're ready to go. Now you can customize your Shop even further.

Customize Shop appearance

Design your Spreadshop to make your YouTube fans feel at home immediately: Use your YouTube logo for your Shop, for the favicon and for your invoice that will be sent with every order (Shop Settings > Edit Shop Layout > Logo).

To further customize your Shop, adjust the fonts and colors (Shop Settings > Edit Shop Layout > Colors & Fonts). When you’re using a standard Shop theme, you don’t need to worry about sufficient color contrast or accessibility – the themes take care of that automatically. If you want to make more adjustments, switch to the Classic Theme (Shop Settings > Edit Shop Layout > Themes). The Classic Theme lets you customize all colors, fonts and buttons.

Choose the model photos in your Shop to fit your target group. Decide which models will best be showcased on your merchandise (Shop Settings > Edit Shop Layout > Model Photos).

With our regular promo campaigns, you can offer your followers articles cheaper. Of course, you also decide on the look of the promo banner in your Shop (Shop Settings > Edit Shop Layout > Promo banner). Upload your own file or change the colors, size or placement of the banner on your homepage (Shop Settings > Pages > Homepage).

Customize pages in your Shop

You can also customize individual pages in your Shop the way you like. All pages – from the Shop start page to the "About us" page – can be configured completely freely (Shop Settings > Pages > Homepage), Decide for yourself what your homepage should look like. You can put a stronger focus on either designs or products.

The same applies to your product list: You decide if you want to show your followers the whole variety of your products or all of your designs at once (Shop Settings > Pages > Product List). You can also sort your designs and products to determine what shows first in the product list. If you design certain products specifically for individual videos, you should also move them up in your Shop.

Activate the Design Tool to enable your followers to customize your Shop products (Shop Settings > Pages > Customize Tool). They can e.g. add their own text to one of your designs by using the Customize Tool.

Do you have reoccurring topics that in your videos? Then arrange your Shop accordingly so that your fans can find what they are looking for faster. Your topics are displayed in the navigation bar of your Spreadshop as an additional menu item (Shop Settings > Pages > Topics).

You can add an "About us" page and tell your Sop visitors something about you, your YouTube channel and why you provide them with your merchandise here (Shop Settings > Pages > About us).

Choose from over 140 products to create merchandise for your YouTube channel. From clothing for women, men or children in different qualities to accessories and home & living products, there is something for every one of your followers.

Upload designs

Your design is already optimized for printing? Perfect! Drag and drop it into the upload window or use the upload function of your browser. We support all common file formats.

Then select your Spreadshop as your sales channel and click on "Edit product selection". Now, you’ll have your product done in three easy steps:

• Choose products
• Edit products
• Describe design

1. Choose products

First, decide on which products you want to sell your designs. Choose the products that best fit your videos or target audience. The main and sub-categories for men, women, children, accessories or home & living can be completely selected or deselected with one click. When your product selection is complete, you can edit each product individually in the next step.

2. Edit products

The following editing options are available to you with a click on each individual product:

• Customise designs on the product
• Change product color
• Choose print area

Customize designs on the product

On clothing, most designs work best when placed in the middle and at chest height. Use the guides to align the design both horizontally and vertically. Make sure that detailed designs are shown as large as possible on smaller products such as coasters, mugs or caps. Then the design details come out best.

Change product color

The standard color determines in which color the product is displayed on YouTube or in your shop view. Make sure your designs always look their best to make your followers happy! Avoid light designs on white items and dark designs on black items. Simply deactivate the corresponding colors or use our product templates for light and dark designs.

Choose print area

Now choose your print areas. Depending on the product, up to four print areas are available: front, back, left and right. Please note: The base price contains only one print area. Each additional print area incurs an additional €4.50. This increases the retail price accordingly. So, consider what is important to your target group: Design, message or price. Your margin won't change.

Tip: You can save your settings in a product template to reuse them in the future. It will help you speed up the creation of new products and saves a lot of time.

3. Describe design

Almost done: As a final and very important step, you should describe the design as accurately as possible to help Google and other search engines find your Shop designs. Let the metadata speak for itself and give your design an appropriate name, description and keywords.

You can display a total of 12 different products among your YouTube videos and choose from up to 250 Spreadshop products. This article will show you how to diversify the order of your YouTube products.

Sorting the Spreadshop product list

Your product list determines which products appear in your YouTube videos. You can submit up to 250 products to YouTube in total. You can set up the combination of your designs and products like this:

• Of your product types, there will be a transfer of max. 12 to YouTube. You can set up the order of the product types here: Page Settings > Product List Page > Sort product types. If you have activated several colors for a product type, we’ll send the product to YouTube in the standard color of your choice.
• The order of your designs is also determined by your product list: Designs: Page Settings > Product List Page > Sort designs. The designs are submitted to YouTube separately until a maximum of 250 products is reached. This means that if you have only a few product types activated for your designs, more designs can be transferred to YouTube. Once you’ve activated the maximum number of product types for your designs, the 21th design in your product list will be the final one.

All your designs and products submitted to YouTube will eventually be displayed in the YouTube merch shelf under "My Items".

Varying the assortment on YouTube

Adjust the display of your merchandise – directly in YouTube Studio. Click on the monetization tab, go to Spreadshop and change the product order. In addition, you can assign individual products to specific videos to offer your followers exactly the right products. Or you can completely disable the merchandising area for individual videos. In "Displayed items" you can check which products are currently sold under your videos.

If you do not determine the order of the products yourself, the best selling product will appear first. What’s more, preference is given to those products that were newly imported in the last 10 days.

Choose between two regions to have your merchandise printed for YouTube: in the USA or in Europe. This brings you and your subscribers many advantages:

• fast delivery times and low shipping costs
• country-specific languages and currencies for your customers
• fitting top-level domains for your Spreadshop

It’s a good idea to choose the region where most of your followers live. Apart from the environment, you benefit most from short shipping distances. Regardless of this, we will of course ship your products to almost every country in the world, no matter where they are produced.

Global business, locally produced

Spreadshop is a global print-on-demand service provider with production sites in Europe and the USA. No matter where you are in the world, we’ll do our best to offer exceptional product quality and service.

This starts with your Shop website. Spreadshop is available in 12 languages and 10 currencies. If you don’t know where most of your followers live, take a look at your YouTube statistics. There you can find which countries your fans log in from.

North & South America, the Pacific and Africa

If the majority of your YouTube followers are at home here, you should open your Spreadshop on our American platform. Your orders are then produced at one of our two locations in the USA. From there, other shipping regions such as the Pacific region, Oceania and Africa are supplied. Your customers not only benefit from low shipping costs and fast delivery times, but also from a tailor-made Shop website. With matching top level, local language and three currencies.

Europe, Asia and the Middle East

If your followers are mainly from Europe or Asia, then you should choose our European platform. Here your orders are manufactured and shipped in the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany. You can choose between 15 top-level domains, seven currencies and eleven languages for your Spreadshop.

Help! My followers are at home everywhere

If your YouTube fans are spread all over the world and you can't decide on a region, we recommend opening a Shop on both platforms. In the Shop settings ("Advanced" > "Language and currency") you can link your Shops on both platforms. This is how you reach your full potential to connect with as many followers as possible. Connect one of the two Shops to your YouTube channel and your fans will be automatically redirected to the Shop that suits them best.

However, opening a Shop on both platforms also means you should be sure to upload your designs to both Shops. So far there is no possibility to copy designs and settings between your Shops.

You've met all the requirements for YouTube merchandise, opened a Spreadshop, created your first products and prepared them for import to YouTube – and still your merchandise doesn't show up on YouTube?

YouTube checks compliance with community guidelines

YouTube checks every product that’s imported into your merch shelf. This is done to make sure your merchandise meets YouTubes’ community guidelines. This process can take three to five days. It’s possible that your designs are already online at Spreadshop, but haven’t yet been published on YouTube (or just partially). Have a little patience.

The progress of the merch review can be found in your YouTube studio in the monetization tab. If your product was rejected because it was against the guidelines, you’ll also be informed there.

The YouTube merchandise area is available for followers in these countries. Make sure your audience in all other countries can explore and purchase your merch. You should link to your Spreadshop in your channel and video descriptions!

This way, even fans who don’t see the merch shelf under your videos can access your Shop.

If you offer Spreadshop products through your YouTube merchandising area, Spreadshop will share data with Google about the products you have created, your shop ID, sales information, and performance reports on your Spreadshop(s).

This includes in particular

(a) Spreadshop will use Google Analytics or a similar analysis tool to track your YouTube sales and share relevant metrics in real-time (or near real-time) via Google Analytics e-commerce reports (see Enhanced Ecommerce reports and future URLs thereof) with Google. This applies to all sales in your Spreadshops that are linked to YouTube and includes

• income less shipping, taxes, returns and other deductions
• the number of transactions
• the number of meetings
• the conversion rate from sessions to transactions

(b) Spreadshop may provide Google with additional information regarding sales in your Spreadshop, such as cancellations, returns or chargebacks.

(c) Google may disclose the information provided by Spreadshop to you and your agents. Google may e.g. display the turnover achieved with your Spreadshop. Google may also combine data shared by Spreadshop with other data to show you a summary of your total earnings.

By connecting your Spreadshop to YouTube, you declare your revocable consent to such data transfer. Further information on data protection can be found in Spreadshirts’s Privacy Policy.