Amazon Seller Central: How To Become an Amazon Seller

Brands and manufacturers that want to sell directly to customers on Amazon need look no further than Amazon Seller Central.

Whether you’re an ecommerce veteran or just starting, Amazon Seller Central allows you to manage your products and order fulfillment — and offers valuable insights to help you better cater to your audience. 

Learning how to become a seller on Amazon Seller Central may seem intimidating, but we’re here to break down everything for you in actionable, digestible steps. 

What Is Amazon Seller Central? 

Amazon Seller Central is a hub where you can control all aspects of your business without having to log in to different systems or apps to get things done.

Sellers can track their sales, performance, customer review insights, and search analytics, all of which are useful for developing product listings and marketing strategies.

How Does Amazon Seller Central Work? 

Whether you’re selling globally or domestically, Amazon has you covered. 

Amazon Seller Central provides tools and resources to help Amazon sellers list and sell products directly to buyers through the third-person (3P) selling module. 

According to Amazon, you can choose to sell as a brand owner or a reseller, though many sellers choose both methods. You can also select an Amazon selling plan that works best for you. The Professional plan costs a flat rate of $39.99 a month, and the Individual plan costs 99 cents per individual item sold. Regardless of which plan you choose, you’ll pay a referral fee.

The platform provides you with all the tools you need to effectively streamline your business operations — freeing up time for revenue-generating tasks like marketing and advertising. 

Some of Amazon Seller Central’s offerings include: 

• Inventory management;
• Pricing;
• Order and return management;
• Advertising;
• Reports; and 
• Customer service.

Once you understand how to become an Amazon seller, you can get your store up and running in no time.

What Are the Benefits of Becoming a Seller on Amazon Seller Central?

According to Jungle Scout’s “The State of the Amazon Seller 2023” report, “89% of them {Amazon sellers} are profitable, up from 85% the year prior, indicating a level of resiliency shared by ecommerce businesses compared to other sectors.”

With these staggering numbers, it’s not hard to see why so many people are flocking to this marketplace.

Here are some additional benefits. 

Control Over Assortment and Pricing

Brands often sell 3P on Amazon to increase their control over their assortment and pricing.

As a 3P-seller on Amazon Seller Central, brands can list more of their product catalog than what’s sold through the traditional first-person (1P) model, providing additional paths to market.

Consumer Insights

As a 3P-seller on Amazon, brands are responsible for direct fulfillment (either using their warehouses through merchant-fulfilled shipping (MFN) or leveraging Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and their network of warehouses).  

Either way, having access to order volume can be extremely helpful for informing a brand’s go-forward strategy.

Efficiency and Ease 

With Amazon Seller Central, tasks that once took all day to accomplish can be done in minutes.

For example, Amazon’s automated pricing tool removes the burden of setting prices, tracking pricing health, setting fixed price alerts, and checking on discounts.

With Amazon Ads, you can create ads to promote your products, develop high-converting product listings, and offer special deals to attract new customers.

Amazon Seller Central also makes it easy for sellers to reply to customers’ messages, check reviews, gather customer feedback, and manage orders and returns.

These are just a few examples of how sellers can use Amazon tools to boost efficiency.

Here’s How To Become a Seller on Amazon Seller Central

Step 1: Sign Up

Visit sell.amazon.com and click “Sign up.” If you already have an Amazon account, simply enter your account information to log in. Otherwise, you can create an account.

Image Source: Amazon 

Step 2: Complete the Details

Once you log in, you’ll be directed to the page below, where you’ll need to fill out details to set up your Amazon Seller Central account. 

Make sure you have a:

• Valid government-issued ID;
• Bank account info and routing number;
• Internationally chargeable credit card;
• Tax information; and a 
• Phone number. 

Once your submission is verified, you’ll be all set to start selling on Amazon.

What Is a Perfect Launch on Amazon Seller Central?

If sellers successfully use five of Amazon’s selling programs within the first 90 days, they’ve achieved a “Perfect Launch,” according to Amazon.

These selling programs include:

• Brand Registry;
• A+ Content;
• Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA);
• Automated Pricing; and 
• Advertising.

If executed properly, Amazon states that “sellers achieving Perfect Launch generate 6.3x more first-year revenue than other sellers.”

3 Tools to Boost Your Business Growth on Amazon

Here are some of the best Amazon tools you can use to grow your business.

1. Amazon Brand Analytics 

Amazon Brand Analytics in Seller Central is a handy tool you can use to optimize your listing and improve your ranking on Amazon. 

It provides insights into how customers interact with your listing, what keywords they use to find your products, and how your brand stacks up against competitors.

You’ll gain access to six detailed reports:

1. Amazon Search Terms Report
2. Demographics Report
3. Item Comparison report
4. Alternate Purchase Report
5. Market Basket Report
6. Repeat Purchase Behavior Report

If you’re looking for ways to ensure your product appears on the first page of Amazon’s search results, check out this powerful tool. 

2. Customer Review Insights

Customer Review Insights is another free tool in Amazon Seller Central, providing brands with practical actions to improve current products and develop new ones. 

With Customer Review Insights, you don’t need to read and analyze thousands of reviews anymore. The tool automates product review analysis and separately displays positive and negative reviews. It’ll show you the most important topics, their impact on star ratings, review snippets, and common words and phrases. 

Customer Review Insights is particularly helpful when you want to find out what product features customers love or what they’re looking for from your brand, but you haven’t offered it yet. 

3. Product Experience Management

High-quality product content and consistently available inventory are essential when selling on Amazon. A product experience management (PXM) solution can help you manage both of these things in a single solution. 

High-Quality Product Content

You need to ensure your product information is up-to-date and consistent. It’s also crucial that your Amazon listing page looks exactly like the listing on your ecommerce store or other channels. That way, customers can easily find what they’re looking for and know they’re getting the same product — no matter where they look.

With a PXM solution, you can centralize your product data in one place — making it easier to manage, syndicate, and optimize that data across channels. It also allows you to enrich your product pages with A+ content, while ensuring that content meets all of Amazon’s description requirements.

Home goods brand Rotho is a successful example of using a PXM solution to create better product experiences and grow an international presence on Amazon. Previously, the brand used spreadsheets to manage 850 SKUs for Amazon.de and Amazon.uk. This led to messy data — reducing their team’s productivity and hindering their ability to expand product catalogs to new markets.

However, after deploying a PXM solution to unify product content, Rotho saw a greater uplift in business efficiency. They went live successfully in six markets, including Germany, the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.

“We’ve got the system set up to work the way our business needs to, and it’s allowed our teams to move forward with our goals to grow across Europe,” Alexandra Kuture, ecommerce manager at Rotho, says.

Consistently Available Inventory

With a PXM solution, you can integrate inventory details from your back office operations with Amazon Seller Central to help avoid over-selling.

With end-to-end order management, your PXM solution helps connect Amazon Seller Central with your back-office operations to fulfill orders, update the consumer with shipping details, and ensure products have the available inventory.

Reach New Customers and Drive More Sales by Selling on Amazon

Now that you know how to become an Amazon seller, it’s time to take action. Sign up for an Amazon Seller Central account and start listing your products and fulfilling orders on this marketplace. 

Don’t forget to use the tools above to optimize your listing pages and create a consistent product experience across channels.