HOW TO START ON AMAZON
Making the First Steps: How to Start Selling on Amazon
The army of Amazon sellers counts approximately 10 million warriors worldwide, with 2.3 million of them actively battling for the place in Amazon’s spotlight. It comes as no surprise: the platform is an e-commerce leviathan and everyone interested in online sales reasonably sees it as their best chance to succeed. One of the most appealing features of Amazon is its user-friendly registry procedure. Though not deprived of its peculiarities, the procedure can be carried out by anyone who puts their mind to it. On this page, we describe how to become an Amazon seller, covering the main milestones and challenges that come with reaching them.
Step 1
Make Sure You Are Prepared
A tremendous amount of work needs to be done before you even start the registration process. This mostly involves creating a business plan and conducting a market research to see what your chances of being profitable are. A lot depends on your business model and whether you plan to sell your own products or source them from other brands or manufacturers.
Of all these aspects, Product Research is arguably the most important one. After all, the product is a seller’s bread and butter, and you want to make sure somebody is willing to buy them from you. For that, your products need to do several things:
There are many other aspects to preparatory work. If you are interested in knowing more, visit our Product Launch Strategy page.
Solve A Problem
Products are only the manifestation of what you actually sell - a solution. Somebody is cold, bored or unable, and you help them get out of this condition. What problem does your product solve? How many people are troubled by it?
Stand Out
If you browse Amazon for a while, you’ll see that many products look similar to each other, sometimes reaching the point of being almost identical. Seeing two similar items, a buyer will likely go to the page with more reviews and higher ratings. You won’t have either at the beginning of your path, so you need to attract attention via other means.
Be Competitively Priced
People are ready to pay more only if they put their trust in you and your products. Reputation builds slowly, so you might want to attract people with lower prices, at least at the beginning. A new seller should use all the tools available to snatch a piece from more experienced players.
Step 2
Choose the Account Type
Given all the complexities of strategizing and analyzing are already behind you, you can get down to working with Amazon itself. For that, you’ll need an account and not a regular one. If you want to sell on Amazon, you’ll need a Seller Central account.
A Seller Central account grants you access to the wide selection of tools one needs to start selling on Amazon. There is no going around it, but you have options regarding the type of account. You can choose between an Individual Account and a Professional Account.
Individual Account
This type will suit those who don’t expect too many sales and don’t need access to the full range of Amazon’s selling tools and advertising programs. It also doesn’t allow you to sell in certain categories and obliges you to pay $0.99 per every item sold, not including referral fees. It might be a good option for small-scale sellers who don’t have many items to sell or want to have a test launch without investing much resources.
Professional Account
This account will suit those sellers who plan to sell more than forty items per month - the monthly subscription costs $39.99. But for that price, you also get access to a most extensive Amazon toolset: advertisement campaigns, reports, analytics and much more. This subscription also allows you to sell in all categories, including the restricted ones. If you want your business to grow on Amazon, you’ll need a Professional Account, and better sooner than later.
Step 3
Create a Seller Central Account
The next step in the Selling on Amazon journey is to Create a Seller Central Account. This step is relatively simple, though you’ll need to have several documents and verifications ready. The list includes, but is not limited to the following documents:
- Bank account and routing number
- Credit card ( chargeable internationally)
- Government-issued ID
- Tax information
- Phone number
You might also be requested to provide a copy of your latest bank statement. You will also be sent a postcard with a code to verify your physical address.
It is crucial to execute every step of the registration process as diligently as possible. We have a dedicated Amazon Seller Central Creation page that contains all the necessary information on the topic. Once you create your Seller Central Account, you need to properly configure it. All the peculiarities of this process are outlined on our Amazon Seller Central Management page.
Step 4
Register You Brand
If you sell your own products under a Private Label, you might want to protect your intellectual property and prevent unauthorized sellers from selling your items. For that, you need to enroll in the Amazon Brand Registry program. It’s strongly advised to do so before your products go live since customers can recognize your brand name and associate your products with it from day one.
The two main benefits of a Brand Registry are the protection against gray sellers and access to new tools Like A+ Content, Amazon Store, Manage Your Experiments and Brand Analytics, inaccessible otherwise. You need to meet the eligibility requirements to enroll in the Brand Registry, and there is also a procedure of its own. We have a whole section dedicated to our Amazon Brand Registry services.
Step 5
Create Product Listings
Your account is finally ready, now is the time to show your products to the world. A listing is a technical term for a product description page where customers can learn about items you sell.
Before creating a listing, you need to make sure your product complies with all the policies Amazon applies to the products sold, not to mention laws and regulations. To make sure your product is safe and compliant, read the corresponding Product safety and Restricted products policies.
There are many guidelines for creating a high-performing and ranking product listing (all specified on our SEO Listings Optimization page). The main principle, however, is simple – to make use of Amazon Listing Best Practices. Include relevant keywords, utilize all the resources you are given, and use eye-catching imagery and descriptive yet concise text.
Your product will also need an identification number, also known as Global Trade Item Number. For products that are already being sold, you only need to look it up from other sellers. If the product is new, you’ll need to generate a GTIN yourself.
Mind that in order to sell a product under certain categories, you might need to file a category approval request.
Step 6
Determine The Price
Once your listing is ready, you need to specify the product’s price. The process itself is very simple, but the work entailed in the determining process is not. You need to consider all your expenses, including relevant fees and other costs incurred, to determine your desirable profit margin. But there is more to that.
Your price also needs to be lower than that of other retailers outside and, if possible, on Amazon. The thing is that products with the lowest price can rank as Featured Offer, right near the buttons ‘Buy Now’ and ‘Add to Cart’. This is relevant for products sold by several sellers: of all available options, it will be your listing that the customer sees. As such, they are much more likely to buy from you rather than some other seller, since that includes manually exploring all other offers.
If you plan to sell products manufactured by other brands, you should also adhere to their price management policies.
Step 7
Choose a Fulfillment Method
Now that your product is ready to be sold, the only thing left is to decide how it will be handled. There are two main options sellers have for delivering goods to their customers:
Fulfilled by Seller (FBS)
This is exactly what it sounds like: the burden of shipping and delivering the product lies with you as a seller. You will need to arrange the storage, shipment process, tracking, in one word - everything. Though this gives you all the control over the process, it also inundates you with loads of additional work. Your customers will expect the products to arrive within the timeframe they choose while shopping, and you need to make sure they receive them on time.
Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)
This is one of the greatest benefits of selling on Amazon. You can delegate the shipping process to the platform and spare yourself the trouble of handling it yourself. Amazon will take care of storing, packing, delivering things and even customer service and returns. The only thing you need to do is send your items to Amazon and replenish your stock once it’s on the verge of selling out.
CONCLUSION
The army of Amazon sellers counts approximately 10 million warriors worldwide, with 2.3 million of them actively battling for the place in Amazon’s spotlight. It comes as no surprise: the platform is an e-commerce leviathan and everyone interested in online sales reasonably sees it as their best chance to succeed. One of the most appealing features of Amazon is its user-friendly registry procedure. Though not deprived of its peculiarities, the procedure can be carried out by anyone who puts their mind to it. On this page, we describe how to become an Amazon seller, covering the main milestones and challenges that come with reaching them.
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FAQ
Amazon SEO Listing Optimization is the process of enhancing your product listings to increase their visibility in Amazon's search results and generate more clicks and sales.
Amazon SEO Listing Optimization is crucial because it improves the overall performance of your products on Amazon. This leads to increased traffic to your product pages and a higher conversion rate, which ultimately leads to higher sales and revenue.
The Amazon Listing Quality Checker is a tool that analyzes how listings perform on Amazon based on various parameters. It provides valuable insights into what works well on your listing and what could be improved.
There is no reason for not having your listings optimized. The statistics show that the overwhelming majority of listings don’t perform as well as they could. Optimization can help you use their true potential.
We charge for each product listing optimized. If your product has several variations, the cost will cover their optimization as well.
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