Amazon Seller Central – An Ultimate Guide

Thanks to the advancement in technology, it has become very convenient to shop for your favorite items while sitting at home. There are various online marketplaces but the one that stands out due to its excellent customer service is Amazon. It is undoubtedly the biggest online retailer offering millions of goods. Whether its sewing machine or salt lamps, everything is available on this marketplace.

You are probably among the thousands of shoppers who use Amazon regularly for purchasing your favorite item but has it ever occurred to you that while you can shop different kinds of goods from this marketplace you can also offer them. Yes, you heard that right! With the facilities, Amazon offers, this is becoming the number one platform for running an online business and earning income right from your home.

However, because of its popularity, many merchants from different parts of the world are now joining this marketplace due to which the competition here is also increasing day by day. This means you now have to be extra careful and focus on every factor that can aid you in achieving success.

Whether it is discovering the right goods with the lowest competition and high demands or perfectly optimizing your listings with the help of right phrases and keywords to land higher in the results of different search queries of purchasers, each and every aspect must be considered. If you ignore even one of them, it can dent your performance significantly. However, when you think of offering stuff on this platform, an account on the platform must be set up.

Since all these processes can be quite time-consuming, it is not easy to do all of this manually. This is why many merchants are using different tools that give you the exact results and that too within a few minutes.

Are you thinking to expand your start-up? Want to target online shoppers? Are you confused about which platform to choose for this? Well, look no more! This article is definitely the best place to get your answers. Here, we will tell you all about getting started on the biggest retailer that is Amazon.

What is Seller Central Amazon?

Seller amazon central is an interface that enables the brands and other merchants to market their goods directly to a large number of audience. It among the quickest and best ways to either expand your business or launch a new one as it saves you from the inconvenience of managing your own website, online store, or a dedicated e-commerce site.

By having an account on this platform you qualify as a marketplace or a third-party merchant. It allows you to connect with millions of shoppers as it is the largest online retailer in the world however, it is a little complex process. Worry not! We will help you in learning it.

After you are sure that you want to become a merchant, before you consider anything else, you need to pick the goods you want to launch. This part is very crucial as goods are what will generate an income for you either high or low.

So how to discover the appropriate item? What characteristics must the items have? The answer is right here; these goods must be something that people actually need and has no or less competition. By selecting such goods it will be you can attract more shoppers easily and produce high income.

How to Discover the Perfect Item to Launch on Amazon?

The first and foremost thing is to determine the capacity of the item you are planning to introduce. This can be done by accurately estimating the sales and income that the item is expected to generate and examining the trends of other similar items. This way you can decide quickly if it is worth your investment or not.

As a beginner, keep in mind to select such an item which does not have much weight and is light in size so that the shipping process can take place without any trouble. Moreover, try to select an item whose retail price is no more than $2000. These attributes will reduce the amount of your initial investment so that you don’t have to spend a heavy amount right away.

Now the important question here is, how to find such goods? As discussed earlier, to pick the appropriate item, a great amount of info is needed. But it is not that simple to gather such enormous details manually and it requires a lot of time and energy on research as you have to create complex spreadsheets for analyzing the details later. The human error factor can also not be neglected in such cases.

We will show you how you can pick the perfect item more efficiently by using the right tools. Yes, that’s right! There are some advanced tools that are proven to be very useful for online merchants. You can select any tool depending upon your requirement, however, the three best ones that we recommend are:

• Jungle Scout
• Helium 10

• Jungle Scout

The most essential element for success on this platform is the quest for the right item since the competition is increasing every day it is necessary to use an efficient tool that gives accurate results. This is where this toolset can help you.

It is another tool for merchants that helps them discover high-demand items, evaluate sales, discover keywords, and monitor your rivals and that too for one single dashboard that is simple and can be navigated with ease. It quickly shows you the most productive items that will give you the performance you desire.

It consists of “Tracker” that displays total sales, average price, rank and many other useful parameters that help you to examine the platform carefully so that you can pick the best profit-making goods while the built-in profit calculator can aid you in figuring out the estimated income. You can also analyze the data through graphs.

Moreover, it also has a special feature called “Launch” which consists of a large number of suppliers and manufacturers so that you can discover the right one for your goods. You can discover the right words and phrases for your listings so as to increase the probability of your item being visible in search results.

The database of this tool consists of more than 70 million goods. The amazing function of this app is that you can choose from multiple filers. With these filters, you can select the important criteria such as high-demand/low-competition, etc.

You can use Jungle Scout in any version; the in-browser app, the plugin, or the combo package. The extension may cost you $39 per month. For the web app, you will have to pay $49. There is also a package that consists of both pro extension and web app which is available for $69 per month only. Please note that the prices may vary depending upon whether you pay monthly or yearly. Even though they do not provide a free trial, you can request a refund within 14 days.

• Helium 10

Helium 10 is another powerful tool that consists of many functions that can be quite helpful for any offering stuff on Amazon. It has a staggering database of over 400 million items and other important features that can help you find niche ideas, gauge the competition and eventually trace their achievement with connection to keywords ranking.

Helium 10 consists of 13 key functions but the one that absolutely steals the show is “Cerebro”. It is a reverse ASIN tool that lets you put any ASIN and find out which keywords are currently used by competitors. It also permits you to add filters to get better results.

“Blackbox” is another helpful tool that helps you to examine the sales and price history of various items whereas appropriate keywords can be found through ASINs of the items. Moreover, with the help of this tool, you can eliminate useless words and phrases.

Helium 10 offers 5 pricing plan which may vary depending upon if you pay monthly or yearly. The Diamond, Platinum and Elite plan cost $197, $97 and $397 respectively. One subscription plan is free in which you get limited access to most of the tools and the other one is A la carte in which you only have to pay for what you use. It ranges from $17 – $97 per month.

Fulfillment Methods

Becoming a merchant on this big marketplace includes more than just discovering the suitable stuff to sell and advertising it perfectly on the internet. You need to think it all through before you become a seller. It also includes finding a safe and secure place to store items, procedures to pack them safely and delivering them on time to customers hence you need to carefully choose your fulfillment method.

Currently, there are two main types of fulfillment processes. You can choose either one depending upon the feasibility and requirement. One is the service rendered by Amazon itself while in other method you have to take care of fulfillment through third parties.

Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)

It is a type of fulfillment process for retailers. With this method, it has become extremely convenient to be a merchant. All that is required from the merchant is to send their stock to the storehouse of Amazon and the rest of the things are up to them.

By using this efficient service you can sit back and relax as it takes the burden off of you by taking care of all selling practices. . The goods will be stored in their warehouse until they sold. When a shopper orders your item, their employees will prepare, pack and deliver it as well as track your item. Moreover, they will also handle returns, refunds, shipping costs, and customer care. Sounds simple, right? It sure is, but it like any other service, comes with a cost. You have to pay charges of storage and other services to amazon. Remember to keep tabs on your stock level and send more when required.

Merchant Fulfillment Process

This is another option for the merchants for delivering their goods to the buyers. Contrary to FBA, in this process you have to manage the entire process by yourself from packing to delivering it to the consumers as well as after-sales services. But there will be charges with it as well because you have to take help from third parties for shipping etc.

However, whichever method you go for, remember that there will always be costs associated with it so it is very important that you evaluate each method and then decide wisely.

After deciding on which method to use, the first step of launching your goods is to make amazon seller central account. It is a very simple process and we’re here to help you with the whole process.

Making an Account on amazon seller center?

Now, that you have selected which item launch on the platform and you have agreed on the process of fulfillment, it is time to consider the next step which is signing up or setting your profile. Here, it is important to be aware that you have two different account options, so you need to consider if you want to register as a business (LLC) or you want to go for individual (sole proprietor). While the procedure is not complex and can be completed in around an hour, it is suggested to that you are aware of some key info that will make the procedure smooth. That info includes:

• Your official name, contact details, and address of the company
• Your company’s official email address (it is better to have an email account beforehand so that you can get important mails without any delay)
• A credit card with a legal billing address that works internationally
• You have to verify your identity through a phone call so keep it nearby while you register
• Your company’s Tax Identity Number.

After you have all these details, you are ready to make your profile. Now, what is required from you is to follow these instructions and voila, you will be registered:

Visit the main page of the platform, at the bottom hit the “make money with us” button and then opt for “sell on Amazon”

A services page will then be loaded where you have to hit the option for selling

Next, it will ask you to put in some key details like name, email ID and password to proceed.

Here, the key point is that if you already have an account, you don’t need all these steps as you can sign in from that account.

After that, you are required to put in your legal name. Remember, if you want to register as a business you should provide the name of your business and tax ID details otherwise, go for your name and details.

When you have entered all these details, it will require your business’s address as well as your contact no. You will also have to put in a unique business name here that will be visible to everyone on the platform. One can not select a name that is already taken.

To proceed further, it will ask you to provide your billing details and that is where your internationally chargeable credit card comes into play along with your other banking information.

Now the last step is to put in your details regarding tax. At this stage, you must mention if you want to be a sole proprietor or a company. It is essential because if you select the former, you will have to use your Social Security no. instead of an Employer Identification no. in your tax details. When you submit the tax details, you will be provided with a W-9 form.

Lastly, you will be asked to give some general info about your goods, however, you can skip this step and come back anytime to update this information.

Congratulation! After you have followed all these steps your account is ready, you become a merchant on this platform and you’re good to go !

Once you are done setting up your account it may seem confusing to you but you don’t need to worry anymore. We are here to help you understand the key functions of the dashboard.

Navigating the Key Dashboard Features

To be able to access the functions of the dashboard, you must log in. After that when you scroll down to the summary of the sales section, click on the statistics to get the most useful details. There are three key features on this dashboard which can prove very helpful to you hence it is wise that you are aware of them.

Menu Bar

All of the stats regarding the sales are present in the Reports section. It can be found on the left side

Sales Reports

The other feature is Sales Snapshot which presents you the daily performance of your item based on the total amount of units that have been sold by you till now and the income you have earned from them.

Sales Graph Comparison

The third and important feature is the comparison of the sales graph which is located just below the Sales Snapshot. With this feature, users can compare the sales of the present day to that of the previous days. This will aid you in evaluating if your sales trend is going up or down.

Conclusion

Before introducing an item on a competitive platform like Amazon you need to do thorough research to choose the best profit-generating ones. For that purpose, you can use any of the powerful tools available in the market. To proceed further, you have to set up an account on amazon central seller then decide which fulfillment method to use. You can any of the two methods depending upon your feasibility.

After that, you need to decide whether you want to operate as an individual or a business. In both cases, when you are creating aan account, you will be required to enter some information such as an internationally chargeable credit card, tax information, etc. Next, you have to list down your goods with their title, description, and features, etc.

FAQ

Q: What is FBA?

A: FBA is a fulfillment program for merchants offered by Amazon itself. Through this method, you send your goods to Amazon and they take care of the storing, packaging, delivery and customer care of your goods including the handling of returns. There are several other benefits of this program such as more probability of getting the order through the Buy box etc. However, it comes with a cost but these costs are usually less than other methods. Before you choose any fulfillment method, you should calculate the expense of both and choose the most economical one.