How To Set Up Your Amazon Seller Central Account 2024

the first step to starting your Amazon FBA seller account is to go to sell. amazon.com and then you're going to go down and click the sign up button now warning be careful here because there are actually two different ways that you can sell on Amazon you can sell with a professional account which is going to cost you $39.99 a month or you can go with the individual account and the individual account is actually free and they actually hide this feature in order to sign up for a free individual seller account you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom and click on sign up to become an individual seller now the catch with signing up as an individual seller is you are going to have to pay an additional 99 for every item that you sell and I've been selling on Amazon for over8 years and my advice to you is if you plan on selling more than 40 units per month sign up for the professional plan don't sign up for the individual seller plan I'll talk more about the differences between the individual and the professional plan later in this video but there are a bunch of features that you get when you sign up with the professional Plan before I go any further in this tutorial I do want to let you know that there are five really common reasons why people end up getting denied from being able to sell on Amazon they get their account banned and they're never able to sell on Amazon so you're going to want to pay close attention and make sure that you avoid these common mistakes that people make when applying for their Seller Central account and to sign up for the professional plan which is what I recommend go ahead and click on the sign up button if however you do want to go with the individual seller account because you're only going to be selling a few items as I mentioned just scroll down to the bottom and click on this sign up to become an individual seller button and the truth is you can start off as an individual seller and you can always upgrade to the professional selling plan later if your business starts to grow and you start selling more items on Amazon another thing that people don't realize is you can sign up for the professional Amazon Seller plan and that is going to cost you $39.99 a month but here's another secret that a lot of people don't realize that Amazon will charge you for that first month but they won't charge you again until you actually start selling products and I say this because if you're planning on selling on Amazon but you know that you're not going to actually get started for a few months it's a good idea to sign up for your seller account now because sometimes it does take a few weeks or months before your account gets fully approved and if for any reason Amazon charges you during those months that you're not selling you can just message Seller Support and they'll refund you all that money so once you're ready you're going to click sign up now make sure you hit the like button on this YouTube video because I'm going to share with you right now one of the reasons why people get banned from selling on Amazon this is one of the most important steps of this entire tutorial so please make sure and pay attention one of the most common reasons why people get banned from being able to sell on Amazon is they already have an Amazon seller account maybe they started one back a few years ago when they were in college to sell some used textbooks or maybe someone else in their house has an Amazon seller account and they didn't even realize and when you go to start your new Amazon seller account this is a red flag for Amazon because Amazon is wondering why you're starting a new Amazon seller account when you already have another one now there are very specific situations where it is allowed for you to have a second Amazon seller account for instance if you have a new legitimate business that needs a separate account that's a separate entity then you can do it but before you start your second seller account I recommend reaching out to Amazon and letting them know about the situation so that it's documented that you're going to be doing this and Amazon used to be a lot more strict with this but still it's not worth the risk of being banned I always recommend letting Amazon know that you're going to be starting a new Amazon seller account so at this point if you already have an Amazon account you're going to go ahead and log in with that Amazon account however if you are creating a new account for your new business click create your Amazon account you're then going to put in your name email and a password but before you go any further I do have a really important tip when it comes to what email address you use and this is another one of those things that people get in trouble for they get banned or a lot of times Amazon will deny them from getting a seller account and I'll talk about that in just a second but for anyone that's new to the channel my name is Travis marzani I've been a full-time e-commerce entrepreneur for over 10 years I've helped thousands of people start their own Amazon business and I teach people how to create their own passion products and sell them on Amazon and if at any point throughout this video you have questions leave them in the comments down below and I will respond to every single one now back to the tutorial and let me share with you a common mistake I see people making with the email that they choose when signing up for their seller account a lot of people make the mistake of using a Gmail account or a Yahoo account and you can do this but again sometimes this is a red flag for Amazon that you're not a serious seller it's much better if you have a business email address and I'm going to use tra at passion product.com because that is my business address I'm not going to use my personal Gmail account so then you're going to type in your password and you're going to hit next they'll then ask you for a phone number which should be easy but if for any reason you don't have one or you've already used your phone number with a different account you can always get a Google Voice number and use that instead they'll then send you a one-time password to your mobile phone you'll enter that and you'll click create your Amazon account I do have a complete checklist that you should go through before you start to sign up for your Amazon seller account I'm going to be going over that throughout this video but if you want to get that checklist you can click on the link down below to sign up for my free Amazon FBA course and I have a free 8 Hour step-by-step Amazon FBA course and if you want to get access to that at any point you can look at the description down below and there are some things on this checklist that you may not have thought about obviously as we've already mentioned you need to have an email address and you want have a phone number that you would use for your Amazon seller account ready but at this point in signing up for your seller account they're going to start asking more serious questions and they're going to be asking you for some other information and one of the first things they're going to ask you about is your business information as well as what is your best contact address so you're going to want to make sure you have all your paperwork ready for that as well as the mobile number a chargeable credit card and a few other things that we'll be going over and don't worry even if you live outside the United States I'll be talking about how you can still sign up for an Amazon seller account and be able to sell things within the United States but be careful a very important part about this step is do not sign up for an Amazon seller account with a debit card if you sign up with a debit card for an Amazon seller account they will suspend your account they will ban you and they're not going to tell you why often times but I will tell you why it's because they don't like it when people sign up for debit cards they want you to sign up with a credit card also at the end of this process they're going to ask for some different identity details some information such as either a picture of the front and back of your driver's license or a picture of your passport now I'm going to walk step by step through this with you because I've seen a lot of people mess up little small details that end up getting them in a lot of trouble it ends up making it so their account is banned they're denied from selling before they even get a chance so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to go here and we're going to select the business location and for me that is in the United States but if you're not located in the United States don't worry you can still sign up to sell on Amazon from pretty much anywhere in the world and I'll go into more details about that throughout this video but if you want me to do a dedicated video just talking about how to start an Amazon seller account from outside the United States leave a comment down below and I'll consider doing that is a future video at this point you're going to select what is the entity type of your business now if you don't know the answer to this you're probably going to put none and select I'm just an individual seller and you can sell on Amazon even if you don't have a legitimate business business structure you're just going to have to use your social security number if you're located in the United States and they need this information for tax purposes because when you make your first million dollars off Amazon they're going to report it to the government and Uncle Sam knows where to go and collect that but one thing that I want to note is that if you are located outside the United States I do recommend setting up an LLC it's going to make it a lot easier for you to sign up for your Amazon seller account and an LLC stands for limited liability company it's a way for you to leg start a business within the United States and whether you live outside the United States or inside the United States starting an LLC makes a lot of sense because it does give your business legal protection meaning if someone sues your business they can't come after your personal assets however if you don't need the legal protection but you still want to start a business account you can do what's called a DBA instead which stands for doing business ads and this allows you to open up a business bank account a business credit card which is very helpful because it allows you to keep your business and your personal finances separate though I will warn you that if someone sues your business they can come after your personal assets so I would recommend signing up for an LLC if you're selling something that people consume or that has a high chance of someone wanting to come sue you you can always sign up for a DBA first and then later on upgrade to an LLC to get that legal protection now if you are outside the United States or you're just looking for a easy way to sign up for an l LC you can go to Wy regged agent.net to set up an LLC based in ying and Ying is a great place to set up an LLC another option is to set up an LLC in Delaware and Legal Zoom can help you do that I'll put links to both of those down below in the description however I do want to warn you that if you live within the United States you should just set up an LLC in your home state for me for instance in California that does cost $800 a year in order to have an LLC but it's worth it for the legal protection now at this stage for most people watching this tutorial you're probably going to select privately owned business however if you're a charity obviously click on that option there's also a spot for state-owned business and a spot for publicly listed business in a publicly listed business means a giant company with stockholders so most people watching this video you're probably just going to select privately owned business you'll then want to enter your business name and confirm that your business location type and everything are correct then scroll down and click agree and continue they'll then ask for your company registration number which for most people watching this video that is just your EIN which stands for employer identification number and an EIN is basically a social security number for your business if you have a business you don't have to give Amazon your social security number but you do have to give them your EIN again so that when you make your first million dollar amazon knows where to send the tax bill to and getting an EIN is very easy to do it's free and really fast you can go to this website right here and I'll include a link to that down below in the description and to get your a it's very simple you just fill out some information about your business and then you tell the IRS tell the government about your company and they will give you an EIN number in just a few minutes I do recommend printing out the page that they give you with your EIN information because you are going to need this later in the future and it's just really good to keep for your records and once you have that you're going to go here and you're going to paste that number in and obviously I'm going to blur out a lot of the information throughout this tutorial because this is private information and while you're entering all this information you're going to want to make sure you double check that all your details are correct because if you type in the wrong information again this could lead to Amazon not approving your account and any little small mistake could cause a ripple effect of issues next they're going to ask for your registered business address and it's okay if it's your home address but I will warn you that it's it's only okay to use your home address if your business address is registered to your home however if you're not located in the United States or if you want to keep your home address private you can hire a company to be your registered agent and it's relatively inexpensive there's a lot of different websites that offer this service including Legal Zoom and what they're going to do is they're going to provide you with a legitimate address that you can use as your business address they'll then ask for your business phone number and you can use the same phone number that gave to them earlier and then you'll click send an SMS they're going to send you a text message to your phone you're going to take that PIN number you're going to paste it in and click verify next you're going to put in either your name or the name of your registered agent if you prefer to use a registered agent then you're going to fill out this next section with some personal information like the country of your citizenship and the country of your birth again if you're from outside the United States don't worry about half the people that join my Amazon FBA program are from outside the United States and they're able to sell on Amazon without any problems I do want to let you know that if you are looking for a little extra one-on-one help to starting your Amazon business I do have a complete Amazon FBA program there's a link to that down below in the description it comes with weekly Q&A calls step-by-step lessons and some one-on-one help as well now at this point in setting up your Amazon seller account you're going to have to put in some information about your passport or your driver's license and I chose to use my passport so I'm going to have to put in my passport number as well as the the date of expiration I'd recommend if you have a passport to use your passport but if you don't you can use a driver's license or some other type of government ID Amazon is very strict about who they let become sellers on their platform because there are a lot of scammers out there that try and start an Amazon seller account and then scam Amazon customers and Amazon has become very good at catching those people but sometimes they make mistakes and they end up thinking that you're going to be a scammer even though you're not and at the end of this video I'm going to share with you the two biggest reasons why people get denied from being able to sell on Amazon and often times they will get banned for life for making this mistake and you don't want to make these mistakes again I'll talk in depth about those at the end of the video but in general if you're following this video and you make sure that you fill out everything the way that I'm telling you to fill it out you're going to be okay and after you're done with that you're going to scroll down here and click if you're the owner of the business or click on this box if you're actually using a register agent and you're just putting information about the legal representative of your business in this case I am the owner of the business so I'm going to click right here and if you're the only owner of the business you're going to click yes if you're not the only owner of the business you'll click no right here and it'll ask for some more information about the other owners of the business now before we go into the next step Amazon is going to warn us that we do need a few really important things for instance we do need a valid bank account number obviously the point of selling on Amazon is to make money and so you need to have a business bank account that they could put the money into but don't worry if you don't have a business bank account you can easily get one all you need to do is take your business paperwork whether it's your DBA paperwork or your LLC paperwork and go into your local bank give it to them and they will start a business bank account for you I personally recommend if you're in the United States to go with us bank because you can get a free business bank account however if you're outside the United States you can go with a bank like payeer or world first bank now another really important thing here is you're going to want to make sure that the name on your bank account matches the name of your business and if you don't have a business bank account and you're just signing up as an individual seller that actually is okay as well you can use your personal bank account but I do recommend trying to keep your personal and business bank accounts separate and it goes on to say to verify your bank account you're going to need to provide some documentation for instance you're going to need to provide at least leas a bank statement they'll also tell you that you're going to need to have a valid credit card number for the next step and as I mentioned I would avoid using a debit card or any kind of like prepaid credit cards you're going to want to get a valid credit card and this credit card is going to be used to pay your monthly fee or pay for any kind of other cost that you might have such as advertising costs also if you're signing up for an individual seller plan this will pay for the 99 C charge for every product that you sell on their website so once you have all the different documentation ready you're going to click I understand and the first thing that they're going to ask is what is the name of your financial institution and they have a list of banks here but if for any reason you do not see your bank you can click on others and then specify the name of your bank for me I'm using US bank so I'm going to select US Bank they then ask for your n-digit routing number as well as your bank account number and you can find out what your routing and bank account number is by looking at the bottom of a check and you can see the routing number is well as the bank account number and again I'll blur these out for obvious reasons and since my bank is not eligible for instant verification they're going to require me to upload a bank statement later in this process well go ahead and click continue you'll then be asked to provide your credit card information and after you enter your credit card information hit next now at this point they're going to ask you what you want your store name to be a lot of people get tripped up on this part they're confused they're not sure what they should put but I'm going to explain exactly what you should put as your store name right now and the secret with your store name is it doesn't really matter you can put whatever you want now if you are planning on selling a certain category of products or one specific product put as your store name whatever your product is so for instance with carnivore electrolytes we put the store name as carnivore electrolytes and if you don't know what I'm talking about here I did an entire Series where I showed from start to finish how I created and launched a real Amazon product step by step all the details so make sure to subscribe to this channel because I'm constantly launching new products and showing you step by step how you can do it as well but for you with your store name you literally can put whatever you want you could put your name I could put Travis's passion product store and you can always change your store name later so we started off with carnivore electrolytes we're actually probably going to change that to something like passion product store and it really doesn't matter what your store name is when people are buying on Amazon They Don't Really Care you can make it the same name as your LLC if you want to but you don't have to Amazon is not going to flag you if your store name is different than your LLC name or different than your brand name so don't overthink this step too much like I said I recommend just making it the same as your brand name if you only plan on selling one product or make it the same as your LLC if you plan on selling a lot of different things but don't get tripped up on this stage just pick something and know that you can always change it later after that step Amazon's going to ask you a few important questions the first thing it asks is do you have a UPC code and UPC stands for Universal product code and a UPC code is those little barcodes you see on products that they scan at Walmart at Target and pretty much every product that's being sold in retail stores has a UPC code and if you're going to be selling your product on Amazon it needs to have its own UPC code and you can get a UPC code for just $30 by going to gs1.org if however you're selling selling other people's products like use textbooks or you're doing the Retail Arbitrage or online Arbitrage method which is where you buy products online at a discount and you flip them on Amazon those products will also have UPC codes so you're also going to say yes then it's going to ask you do you have any diversity certifications that you would like to add to your business account this step is specifically if you're a minority owned business a woman if you're a veteran or part of the LGBT plus Community Amazon will sometimes highlight these businesses and it helps customers to know that they're supporting a a small business that has certain diverse qualifications now I don't have any of these qualifications so sadly I'm going to have to go ahead and put no but I did know a person that didn't qualify for these certifications but was married to a woman that did qualify for one of these and they registered the business under her name and got that qualification and I'm sure you can always add these diversity certifications later on the process but I will say that if you do qualify for one of these certifications I do recommend that you go and get that certification before you start the process of starting your Amazon seller account the next question that Amazon's going to ask you is are you the manufacturer or brand owner or agent or representative of the brand for any of the products that you want to sell on Amazon now this question also scares a lot of people it trips a lot of people up but here's what you need to know before you say yes or no if you are selling your own product on Amazon let's say you're either creating a passion product or doing a private label product that no one else is selling on Amazon you're going to hit yes but if you're doing wholesale or Retail Arbitrage meaning that you're selling other people's products on Amazon then you're going to hit no And for those that don't know private label is where you take a product that some manufacturer is making and you just slap your brand your own private label on that product and then you sell it on Amazon and you can find manufacturers that will do this for you on websites like alibaba.com you can even find manufacturers right here in the United States using a website called thomasnet.com and I've done a ton of videos about how to find a manufacturer for your product right here on this YouTube channel and it's something I talk in- depth about in my free Amazon FBA program and I'm going to link that to you at the end of this video it's an 8 Hour step-by-step tutorial so keep watching for that now for the purposes of this video I'm going to go ahead and put yes because that's what I recommend doing I recommend as I said creating your own unique passion product and selling it on Amazon and in my opinion it's the best way to make money on Amazon right now especially if you want to create a legitimate passive income business but as I mentioned I'm go ahead and put yes here and if you do put yes it's going to ask you do you own a registered trademark for the Branded products that you're going to sell on Amazon and I do recommend if you're doing private label or selling your own unique passion product to go ahead and get your product trademarked and I have other videos on my Channel showing you exactly how to do this but at this point since this is just a dummy account that I'm creating I don't have any trademarks and it's okay to say no and you can always get your trademark later and the reason why I recommend having a trademark is it does give you access to Brand registry and brand registry is a program within Amazon that allows you to tell Amazon that you are the owner of this brand it allows you to register your brand with Amazon and it makes it so that no one else can mess with your Amazon listing it gives you a ton of different protections and if you are selling your own unique product or a private label product on Amazon you really should get brand registry because it's going to protect you in a lot of different ways because if you add a product onto Amazon and you don't have brand registry anyone can come in and change your Amazon listing which could cause a lot of issues for you on top of that by having your product and your brand registered it gives you access to a ton of other features including something called enhanced brand content specifically it allows you to add these images Down Below in the description section everyone when selling on Amazon can add images at the top part and add the bullet points but it allows you to more customize your Amazon product listing which is going to result in more sales for you because it allows you to show the benefits of your product and convince people to buy your product instead of the competition so I highly recommend spending the money on a trademark it's only going to cost you around $250 you don't need to hire a lawyer in order to get a trademark and to sign up for a trademark you go to uspto.gov I have step-by-step videos showing you how to do it including some different tips to make sure that your trademark does get approved but the cool thing is it actually doesn't matter whether or not your trademark gets approved you're able able to apply for brand registry as soon as you apply for your trademark you're just going to give Amazon your application number for your trademark and they will approve you for brand registry now keep in mind it does often Take 6 months or more for your trademark to get approved and back in the past you would have to wait until your trademark was approved before you could sign up for brand registry but as I mentioned that's not the case anymore I still do recommend if you are going to get a trademark to sign up as soon as possible because like I said it does take 6 months I've even seen people that have had to wait 12 months 18 months before their trademark was approved but once you're done filling this out let's go ahead and click next and I will reveal the biggest reason why new Amazon sellers have their account denied in just a minute but there are still a couple of questions in your application before you can submit it for approval and at this point they're going to ask you to upload your identifying documents now I chose a passport and I do recommend picking a passport it's a little bit more professional but don't worry if you don't have a passport you can upload a photo of the back and front of your driver's license and you don't have to have a scan copy you literally can just take out your phone and take a picture of your passport they're also going to ask you for a bank account statement now I don't recommend taking a picture of your bank account statement I recommend going to your bank's website downloading the PDF and uploading it right here and once you're done with all of that you can go ahead and click submit and once you've submitted your application it's going to take you to this page it's going to ask you if you want to do a live video call with one of their agents to verify all your information and I'll show you an example of what this call looks like later in this video but basically you're going to get on a call with a live agent you're going to show them your passport in video and that way they can make sure that it's actually that your face matches the passport and they're just double-checking to make sure that you're not a scammer now here's my huge warning a lot of times after you submit your application for your Amazon seller account they email you and they ask you for additional information additional documents sometimes it's things like a utility bill to prove that you actually live where you say you live and you're going to have to submit to them a real utility bill showing that address that you claim to be your business address now again for any reason if you don't have access to a utility bill maybe you're a digital Nomad you're traveling the world or maybe you live in a country where you're not able to get that utility bill or something that happened to me when I first started my Amazon seller account I was living with my parents and the utility bills were in their name now for full transparency I was paying rent to my parents but that did cause some issues and if you run into any of these issues there are ways around it I've even seen people just Photoshop utility bills or you can contact Amazon and explain the situation to them and you can find some other option but if any of those are the case for you worst case scenario you can always sign up and use a registered agent and there's a lot of different websites out there that can provide this service for you because you're not the first person that would have experienced this but now I want to share with you three big reasons why a lot of people end up getting denied from being able to sell on Amazon and sometimes they even get permanently banned for life from ever being able to sell on Amazon so pay attention in this next section and make sure you watch this before you apply for your Amazon seller account and even after years of experience doing this myself I still made one of these mistakes so again pay attention and this one mistake that I made that I'll share with you in just a second could have made it so that I would have been banned from selling on Amazon or at least made it so that I wasn't able to start a new Amazon seller account so the first mistake that I see a lot of people making is they'll get approved for a seller account but then they'll go into the backend and they'll change some details within the first month or two maybe they Chang their Bank information maybe they Chang their address and I don't recommend doing this this is a huge red flag to Amazon if Amazon sees that you signed up with one address signed up with one bank account and then you're immediately changing it that seems like a scam alert to Amazon they're going to flag your account and not always but some sometimes they're going to close your account down and say hey what's going on now often times you can contact Seller Support and ask them what happened and explain the situation to them and you can get your account back but if you know that you're going to be changing bank accounts if you know that you're going to be changing addresses I recommend doing that before you sign up for your seller account just to make sure that everything goes smoothly the next mistake that people make when signing up for a seller account is not being patient Amazon is a big company they take a lot of time to figure things out and you want to make sure that anything anytime you're interacting with Amazon that you're polite that you're professional and that you're patient anytime that you're writing them an email or a message make sure that there's no typos no grammar mistakes make sure that you seem like a legitimate professional business person make sure that when you talk to Amazon or you send them an email that you treat it with the same care as if you were trying to apply for a job if you're applying for a job you're going to double check everything make sure that the grammar is good make sure that there's no typos you want to do the same thing when interacting with Amazon because if you seen unprofessional they're much more likely to not let you sell on their platform now I don't want you to be scared about this they're not taking it super seriously they're not checking for grammar mistakes and they're going to ban you if you have a grammar mistake but if you come across as a professional business person they're much more likely to respond positively to you and after you've confirmed your identification and submitted your application you'll get a notification that says thank you for sharing your information and keep in mind it may take a long time for your account to be approved because Amazon is a giant company and when you apply for an Amazon seller account they're going to take some time vetting you making sure that you're a legitimate business and now I want to share with you the issue that I made when launching my new product carnivore electrolytes and here's a big piece of advice and something that I should have done a better job at and that is pay attention to all the details I actually had someone helping me to sign up for the Amazon seller account and they put their birth date instead of my birthday date and that small little detail caused a ripple effect that was a big pain in the butt I had to get on on a live video call with someone I had to explain the situation and you could tell that they were a little bit unsure they're like why did you make that mistake they were really interrogating me they were really trying to figure out whether or not they would approve me for my Amazon account and it was stressful it was a waste of my time so you really want to be careful and double check all the information that you're submitting to Amazon and there is a decent chance that you will have to get on a call with an Amazon representative in order to get your account approved but don't worry this is a very simple call and I'll show you a reenactment of what that call looks like Amazon doesn't allow you to record these calls for privacy reasons but I took notes of exactly what was happening and now I want to show you a quick reenactment of what a call with an Amazon representative looks like so that you can be prepared and then after that I'm going to give you my free 8h hour Amazon FBA course hello my name is April and I'm going to be taking care of the process for you I need to confirm that you are the owner of the passport uh yes I am amazing can I see it the front and the back of the passport uh the front the back okay amazing so I have your file ready on my computer right now and I did find an issue the date that you provided was different than the date that's on your passport so you need to change it in our system because this is different than what we have in our system this could take up to 48 hours for you to get approved if you are approved and now I want to give you a free 8 Hour step-by-step course all you have to do is Click right here it's a free YouTube video showing you step-by-step how to start your own Amazon FBA business and I put 10 years of my experience selling online into this one video and it's completely free so click on that video I'll see you in the next video and thanks for watching

Channel: Travis Marziani

Views: 9,951

Keywords: Ecommerce, Online Store, Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Shopify, online shopping, marketing, Effective Ecommerce, Amazon FBA, Private Label, entrepreneur

Id: HghX5xB_EtY

Length: 31min 38sec (1898 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2024