The moment you decide to sell on Amazon, the clock starts. You should comply with all Amazon performance metrics from day one. As you will be investing your hard-earned money and a lot of time setting up your account, the least you want would be ending up with zero sales.
Before you jump right into the Amazon FBA business, there are several steps that any prospective seller should take before getting started with the Amazon seller account process. You can leverage the platform to make your business profitable in days by taking advantage of Amazon’s tremendous reach and user-base.
Who Can Become an Amazon FBA seller?
Amazon offers the opportunity to sell products on its platform not only to already established businesses but to individual sellers, small businesses, and aspiring entrepreneurs.
This basically means anyone can leverage the opportunity and start selling on the Amazon FBA platform. But before that, you need to follow some steps like register yourself on Amazon, find your profitable products to sell, create your Amazon product listings, etc.
Amazon has built the marketplace very easy and user-friendly so you don’t need much time or resources to get started. You can figure everything out yourself and start selling on Amazon FBA. Apart from this, you can also get some FBA training to learn about this business in a professional way.
Necessary Paperwork (Amazon Seller Account Checklist)
You must have a bunch of information beforehand to get through an Amazon seller account’s complete registration process. The information that you need includes:
● Business information
No matter if you want to set up an Amazon FBA seller account or plan to operate under the FBM program, you should need a legal business name, contact information, and address.
● Email address
There should be a designated email address that you can use for your Amazon FBA business account. It is important to have an email account set up already, as you will receive emails from Amazon on the given email almost immediately.
● Phone number
During the registration process, Amazon will need to reach you on your phone number for the verification process. Thus, you should have a registered and currently operating phone number. Also, keep your phone nearby while setting up your seller account.
● Credit card
You should have an internationally chargeable credit card to activate the billing process. If you don’t have a valid credit card, Amazon will cancel your registration.
● Tax ID
You also need your tax identity information along with your company’s Federal Tax ID number or Social security number.
● State tax ID
In the state where you have tax nexus, you should have a relevant state tax ID. According to the updated law of the US Supreme Court, eCommerce sellers are also bound to remit sales tax for online purchases.
Questions to Consider Before Registering Your Amazon Seller Account
You should work out some of the logistics of being a successful seller before setting up your Amazon seller account.
Who will handle custom inquiries?
The key to operating a successful Amazon FBA business is not just having valid answers to all customer queries but also responding to the customers within 24 hours. Hence, you should have a possible backup and figure out who will be the primary point of touch for buyers. This is a critical operational issue that you should address before setting up your Amazon FBA seller account.
Where will you send Amazon order returns?
Being an Amazon FBA seller, you don’t need to worry about the return process as FBA will be handling all the returns and shipments on your behalf. However, suppose you are an independent Amazon seller. In that case, you should send them to a designated party for testing and grading the returned products and making them available again for sale.
Operating as an Amazon FBA seller, will you co-mingle your products?
If you take advice from an Amazon FBA seller, he/she will highly recommend using FBA due to the ease and potential visibility to a vast range of Amazon Prime customers.
However, before going that route, you have to decide if you want to co-mingle with FBA inventory or other Amazon FBA sellers or not. You will get this lethal option of sending the products into Amazon fulfillment centers and co-mingle with other users.
The downside is, your products can be mixed up with the lower-grade products of the counterfeit. And if a commingled product is chosen to fulfill your order, you will have to explain to Amazon why the customer is complaining about your product.
To avoid this, you have to become a “stickered” Amazon FBA seller well before sending your first shipment to the fulfillment centers.
Are you planning to use a DBA (Doing Business As) option to operate your Amazon FBA business?
Though you can easily opt for using your own brand name, there are some legitimate reasons to use already renowned brand names. The choice is completely yours; if you want to keep your own brand name, that’s completely fine.
Is the product category you plan to sell is gated?
Amazon has restrictions on selling a few product categories. Thus it is important to know if your desired product category is gated or not. Though the process of ungating is surmountable, you should have an idea about the process beforehand.
You will have to apply for ungating to sell restricted products on Amazon. Don’t forget to review Amazon’s approval category page to get an idea about the items and the ungating process.
It is advisable to add all your intended catalogs within 30 days of setting up the Amazon seller account. If Amazon is restricting the products you want to sell on Amazon, you have to change the catalog or even close your account and start the process from scratch.
Important Skills For Amazon Sellers
As an Amazon seller, you should be well versed with all the rules and regulations of the Amazon marketplace. Besides, an Amazon seller should have a combination of skill sets to master the marketplace and get success in the long-run. Here are a few skills or prerequisites to become a profitable Amazon seller should:
- Stellar marketing content to create engaging product listings
- A clear idea of your product sourcing approach
- A developed process for product hunting and addressing stale inventory
- Understanding of basic cost structure
- Know who is already selling the same SKUs
- The time needed to get listings in place
Wrapping Up!
Whether you plan to be an Amazon FBA seller or want to operate under the FBM paradigm, you should have enough knowledge in hand to get through the whole process. Know exactly what you want to sell on Amazon, the rules and regulations of the marketplace, whether the product can be sold on Amazon or not. Keep track of the updating terms and have required documents in hand while setting up your Amazon seller account. And the important step is to have the required investment ready before jumping right into it. Amazon FBA needs some kind of investment to get started. You can’t expect to be a profitable Amazon seller if you are on a razor-thin budget. Learn about all the costs and fees that are required, find the best product to sell on the platform, get your marketing game right and you are ready to go.