I felt like one of the luckiest people alive. When I was accepted into the Merch by Amazon program.
It was seriously a dream come true. The ability to make beautiful T-shirts that would actually sell...
But I quickly made mistakes over and over again, that eventually stopped me from making more shirts. And now I await my fate on whether or not I'll be allowed to continue selling shirts on Amazon's amazing platform.

I decided to write a DUH blog post, About the mistakes I made, So you can learn from me and not make the same mistakes I did.

Amazon Takes Copyright seriously.

And they should! Not only does it hurt the companies that create amazing works of art, But it hurts your competitors. Amazon wants to make money, But also they don't want lawsuits. I knew this joining the program. I mean it was obviously. But Amazon only gives you a couple "strikes" before your out. They also don't always specify specifically what you are doing wrong, Which is stressful.

DO NOT COPY OTHER PEOPLES WORK.

No this is not a mistake that I made, But It needs to be addressed. Just because you see a design on the internet, Doesn't mean you can save it and upload it to Merch. DON'T DO IT! Make your own design. Its perfectly fine to look at other designs to give yourself ideas. But don't outright copy pixel by pixel. That's no good.

Do NOT hire someone right off the bat.

I love Fiverr; You can hire a lot of free lancers for nice work on the cheap.
But they don't always have your best intentions. If you hire someone use websites like

Google Reverse Image search
Tineye

You want to check that the Shirt design wasn't flat out stolen. Which happens. Also, check the clipart, Make sure it's royalty free. In the end, its YOU who will get in most the trouble. So be careful. That's why I recommend making your designs.
This is partially what caused me to get in trouble. I hired someone. I wanted him to make me a shirt with a mermaid on it... it was a simple outline of a mermaid, And it looked super nice. But when I first saw it, It kinda looked like Disney's Ariel. But because I haven't seen "The little mermaid" more than once or twice, I wasn't super familiar with her face. I assumed I was being paranoid and uploaded it anyways.
Yeah.. Bad move. It was immediately rejected.

I later showed my boyfriend, And he said it looked EXACTLY like her. So yeah.. basically the design I bought was a rip off of Disney.

When in doubt DO NOT UPLOAD IT. It may be a nice design, But its not worth the risk.

DO NOT USE COPYRIGHTED/Trademarked NAMES.

This is what got me in trouble. What's sad is I didn't even know that this was a no go.

I made a videogame shirt; I added keywords like "Pokemon" and other popular brands.
No, The shirt didn't have anything copyrighted on it, In fact, it was just a generic fun design. The freelancer used basic clipart And cool lettering.

REJECTION.

What sucks, I submitted a couple other shirts doing the EXACT same method. At the same time. Using keywords that I thought would sell. I had no idea that I was doing something incredibly stupid.
And shortly after I lost my account.

If you can find a place you can search keywords and phrases and make sure that there is no trademark behind it.
So if you want to use the keyword "popcorn". And there is some brand called "popcorn". I'd avoid using it completely.

To some of you this may seem obvious and stupid, But I never even thought of it. This is the first time I've ever gotten in trouble for something like this.

Conclusion

Maybe Amazon is being a little crazy, but who could blame them. I feel like other POD shirt companies are constantly getting in trouble for things like this, I feel like Amazon is doing what they can to avoid it all together.

What I'd do differently.

I'm so heart broken about this, I've never been so excited for something! I hope I can get a second chance. I would be 10x more careful then I was! I would also use a search engine to check each phrase and word for copyright/trademarks.
I also would make the shirts my self, That way I know the source. Or at least demand the source from the freelancer so I could easily verify it.