(Image: [[http://cjm.ziniao.com/img/attention/a5.png|http://cjm.ziniao.com/img/attention/a5.png)]]- How to set up your Amazon seller accounts
step by step.
What's happening, guys?
I'm Dan Rodgers.
I'm an Amazon seller and a part of the Just One Dime team.
Now this is a very important video.
This is the very first step
to your selling on Amazon venture.
Now, regardless of where you live in the world
or where you want to sell, this video
is going to clear everything up
in terms of you setting up your Amazon account.
I myself have gone through a huge amount of verification
for both Europe and North America, and what we wanna do
is give you guys all this information upfront
so you minimize mistakes and get selling.
Now this video is step one to your selling venture
but if you want to expand further, so once you set up,
what are the next steps, check out other videos
on this channel.
And you can also check out the Just One Dime membership
in the description.
There, we go into much more detail of the subsequent steps
of building your business, regardless of where you live.
We actually have members from over 100 different countries,
all building their own Amazon businesses.
So that said, let's jump into this.
Now I am gonna reference a lot of material in this one.
So I'm gonna drop all the links in the description
for you, so it's nice and easy.
You can check them out there.
So step number one is to choose your marketplace.
Now, I wanted to remind you about this.
If you're new to FBA, when you use Fulfillment by Amazon,
FBA, to fulfill orders,
your personal location does not matter.
So don't let that hold you back or determine which market
you actually sell in because in all likelihood,
your inventory is gonna go from your manufacturer
to Amazon's fulfillment center.
You're not even gonna see it most of the time.
So currently, there are actually 16 Amazon marketplaces.
We have the USA, we have UK, we have Germany, France,
Canada, Japan, India, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, China,
Australia, the UAE, Singapore, and Netherlands,
and on top of that, there's another three, referenced here,
as you can see, which okay are KR, TH, and TW,
being Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan.
Now, those are listed, but they don't seem
to have a fully functional site yet.
Now, when signing up, there are unified accounts,
and this means that when you sign up, you actually sign up
for a group of these marketplaces we just mentioned,
not just one of them, and then you can access each one
of those individual marketplaces from one dashboard.
So for example, the North American unified account
holds the USA, Canada, and Mexico,
while the European unified account holds the UK, Germany,
France, Italy, and Spain, and I expect Netherlands
to actually be added to that very soon as well.
So again, those are one Seller Central dashboard
and you can access all of those Individual markets
from the one dashboard.
So overall, the choice is yours on this,
but I personally make more from North America than Europe,
and you can see, even if we use Prime Day
as an example here, the US is just leaps and bounds ahead
of the other markets in terms of pure sales volume.
If a product sells 10 times a day in the UK,
it might sell 30 times a day in the US, and yes,
US does have more competition,
but that still remains my recommendation.
If I was signing up and starting today,
I would start with a North American unified account.
And step number two is to choose your entity type.
This means how are you applying to Amazon?
What type of entity are you?
Now the choice to sell as an individual
or a company actually lies with those
who live in Amazon-accepted countries,
and let me explain what I mean.
Each Amazon region has a list
of accepted seller registration countries
and any person or business within that accepted country
can actually sign up for an account and sell on Amazon.
Each region also has a different list
of supported currencies, and this determines
whether Amazon can disperse your payments from the sales
you make to your business' bank account in the currency
that you want to receive those funds in.
So in short, depending on where you live
is going to limit your options here.
It's either gonna give you the ability to sign up
as an individual or a company, or it may limit you
to only being able to sign up as a company.
I'm not gonna delve too deep
into all of these nooks and crannies
'cause, as you can probably tell,
the situations are diverse, but in a nutshell,
here's what you want to do.
Check if your country is accepted.
Any person or business registered
in one of the following countries can sign up
for an account.
Here's the list for North America.
And here is the list for Europe.
Now, if your country is mentioned there,
then what it means for that marketplace
is that you have the ability to choose to sign up
as an Individual or as a company, but if it is not there,
then what you're gonna need to do is set up a company
in an accepted country.
It's totally doable.
This is actually how I eventually got my start
when I was still setting up from South Africa.
I had tons of problems.
I ended up setting up all different companies,
but it does work.
So it is doable, that is an option.
Now pro tip here, while you're at it,
you may as well check both the European
and North American accepted list, as we just went through,
and set up in a country accepted by both.
That way, if in the future, you want to expand and sell
on a different marketplace, you want to sell on all of them,
your company's country is accepted by all of them already.
So secondly here, whether your country is accepted or not,
putting that aside, something else you need to check
is whether or not the bank account
or the proposed bank account you're gonna use,
whether or not that bank account's currency
is gonna be supported by Amazon.
In other words, can Amazon pay you your earnings
in your home currency?
So here is the list for North America.
And here is the list for Europe.
Now if your country and currency is there, then great.
In most of those cases, Amazon's actually gonna be able
to directly pay you your earnings out.
If not, then you need to bolt on an extra service,
an online payment service, something like WorldFirst
or Payoneer, and that type of service is gonna allow you
to receive practically any currency like USD, GBP,
euros, et cetera, and then convert it within this tool
and then disperse it from there to your home country
or to your actual bank account in that currency.
Now the second pro tip here
is sometimes it's actually worth doing that anyway.
You can get a better currency conversion rate
using something like WorldFirst, where you determine
when that currency is converted, and at what rate.
This is something I do, so if you're already selling,
then that's something you can do
just to boost that income further or just kind of ensure
that you're not losing a lot on that foreign exchange.
Now in terms of Payoneer or WorldFirst
or any of these payment solutions, remember,
they offer individual and business accounts,
and you need to choose the correct one
in accordance with how you're gonna sell.
If you're running a company,
you need to choose their business account.
If you're doing this as an individual,
you need to choose their individual personal account.
And here's one more option on the currency saga.
This is actually a new option, but if your currency
is listed on this page over here, which is actually the same
between North America and Europe, by the way,
then you have the option to use something
called Hyperwallet,
and this is a currency conversion service that Amazon
is currently integrating to make this easier
for international sellers.
Now, you can see the instructions below here,
but in your Seller Central account, what you want to do
is go into the settings,
and then you're gonna choose your country
in the bank location drop down, and it's gonna allow you
to sign up for Hyperwallet,
and you just continue the process from there.
So I know we haven't actually got into the signup,
but it's really important to understand the groundwork here,
but at this point, you should be clear on where you wish
to sell, your entity types, so individual or company,
as well as your currency support,
and what you might need to do there.
Now it's best practice to get all of this set up
before moving on to step three, and everything's ready
to input and just be streamlined.
So step number three, sign up link.
So where do I actually sign up?
There's two really easy places
where you can start sign up from.
The fastest way is to just type in services.amazon.com
or services.amazon.co.uk, depending on where you want
to actually sign up for.
You can find those links in the description below as well,
but once you're on the page, as you can see here,
you can then just hit Start selling
from any one of these links.
The other way to sign up is you can simply actually go
to the bottom of amazon.com, the homepage of amazon.com
or.co.uk, and you'll find a section
that says Make Money with Us, and under that,
you can find Sell on Amazon.
That link is going to take you to that same location.
Now at this point, you do need to know
that there are two types of accounts.
You can sell as an individual or as a professional,
and so you can have an Individual Seller account
or you can have a Professional Seller account.
Now with the Individual Seller account,
you don't have to pay a monthly fee of 39.99,
but you pay a closing fee of 99 cents per unit you sell.
On the other hand, with the Professional Seller account,
you do not pay that 99 cents per unit you sell,
but you pay the 39.99 per month.
So in effect, the more you sell,
the cheaper the Professional Seller account
actually becomes.
The Professional account is what I recommend.
I actually really would recommend you stay clear
of the Individual Seller account for so many reasons.
The first of which is that as soon as you're selling 40
or more units a month, the Individual Seller account
becomes more expensive.
The second reason
is that your Seller Central account features
are very limited with an Individual account,
as opposed to the Pro account.
And thirdly, there are certain disadvantages,
like with the Buy Box to Individual accounts,
so overall, just go with the Professional selling account.
Now, once you click on Start selling here,
this actually begins the setup of a Professional account,
and you're gonna want to click on Create New Account
at the bottom here.
Then you want to enter a name and email address
and a password here.
I recommend using a dedicated email address for this,
just for this Amazon account.
Now you're going to need to receive an OTP
to that email that you've just put in.
So that's gonna come through.
Try to use that relatively quickly.
If it does time out, you can of course just resend that,
but once that's cleared, you can click on Next.
Step number four is you're gonna input all your details.
Now here, you're gonna want
to choose your business' location.
So whether you have an incorporated business,
something like a US LLC, or a UK limited company,
any other type of company, or if you're trading
as a sole proprietor, also called the sole trader,
or just you as an individual,
you still wanna select here where is that business based?
Where does that business operate from?
Next here, you're gonna want to choose your business' type,
and here, most of you
are going to choose privately owned business
if you have an LLC or a limited company or the like.
Any of you starting as individuals, you're gonna sell
as yourself, you're going to choose none.
I am an individual.
If you're signing up as an individual here,
you want to input your name exactly as it is
on your passport or ID document because, remember,
you may have to upload that document later
and you want them to match exactly.
Those of you starting with companies here,
LLCs, limiteds, et cetera, you're gonna want
to input the registered company name here.
That is the name on top of the legal documents you have,
for example, the Certificate of Incorporation.
Now an easy way to spot it is it's going to end
with a company suffix like LLC or Limited,
so it could be, for example, Click the Like Button LLC.
Once that's done, you can agree and continue.
So from here, I actually continued the process as a company,
because between individual and company, the company process
is going to be more complex, but the process for individuals
should be simpler and it should be very similar.
Now on the following page,
you need to input the company registration number.
Again, this is something you're gonna find
on that legal document.
Make sure you double check it.
This needs to be accurate.
At this point, you're gonna enter
your business' registered address.
Now individuals can just put in their personal address.
Those who run companies
are going to input their company's address.
Now remember, your company address
might still be your personal address, that's fine,
but it is the registered address, meaning it is the address,
again, on your legal documents.
I want to give you the third pro tip here.
Take a very good look at your bank statement
that you would use for verification.
Now, obviously, that needs to be a bank statement
in the name of the entity that you're applying as,
so you or your company, but take a very good look
at the address on that statement, and you actually want
to input the address here, exactly as it is
on that bank statement, down to the letter.
It needs to line up absolutely perfectly.
At this point, you want to input a telephone number.
So this can just be your phone number,
because you're a primary contact person for this business.
You'll see that there is a drop down
for different countries.
Now if at this point,
you don't actually have a specific telephone number
for a certain country and that's what you need,
what you can also do is use Skype phone numbers,
or other online phone number services.
Next here, we're gonna choose a method of verification.
SMS works really well for cellphones, and the call feature
is actually really good for instances
where you can't receive text.
For example, some Skype phone numbers
can't actually receive SMSes.
So they will actually call you.
Then you're gonna click on Send SMS.
It's gonna bring up a box where you can input that OTP,
input it, and then it should say
Verification Successfully Completed.
Now at this point, you want
to input your primary contact person's name.
That does not have to be you, but you want to put it
in exactly as on that person's ID document.
We are gonna upload
the primary contact person's ID doc later,
so it needs to match exactly.
Pro tip number four, I have had situations with sellers
where they run into a real brick wall here
because they do not possess an ID document
that is in an accepted country.
Now if you do run into this problem, you need to consider
if you know someone who has that ID document
in an accepted country that you need.
They could become your primary contact person
and it's going to help you get through this part
of the verification process.
Now we can click on Next.
Now you need to choose the country of citizenship
for that primary contact person from the drop down.
Now remember, those drop downs are not universal.
So I'm gonna scroll through them slowly for you now
so you know exactly what is in these lists as of March 2020.
You need to have a primary contact person
with citizenship or government-issued ID
in one of these countries.
Now input the country of birth as well as the date of birth,
choose the proof of ID document.
This is often gonna be passport,
and then input the document's number
and the date of expiry.
Then you're gonna choose the country of issue
from this list here and at the bottom,
choose whether this contact person is the beneficial owner
or a legal representative of this business.
Then you need to state
whether or not you've added all the beneficial owners.
And finally, you're gonna click Save.
Now on this screen, you can select which marketplaces
you wish to sell in.
You probably already know at this point
where you wish to sell.
So select that.
I would avoid unnecessarily adding more here.
You can always do that later.
Now at this time,
it appears Amazon's actually running a promo
where you can register for North America, Europe, and Japan
all at once for 39.99, which is a great deal, but remember,
that could change, so once selected,
you want to click on Next.
Now this page is where you want to input your billing info.
You can input your card details and billing address.
Now Amazon accepts Amex, Visa, and Mastercards
but do not accept online payments like PayPal.
So you need to use one of the major cards here.
It can be a debit card or a credit card.
Since this account and paying for this account
is a business expense, the business should be paying for it.
Now that might be your personal card if you're running this
as an individual, but it should be your company's debit
or credit card if you're running this as a company.
Now, it doesn't make a huge difference at this point.
You can do either, and always change it later,
but it is good to start thinking that way,
that your company should be paying for its expenses.
You should not be paying for your company's expenses.
So a quick note here.
This card will be charged for the first month
or until you make sales, but in the future,
what's quite nice is once you have a balance from sales,
this amount's actually gonna come off the balance
that you have in your Seller Central account,
so it will no longer charge this card,
it's just gonna come off of your balance.
So once that's done, we can click on Next.
Here, we're gonna want to input our store information.
Now the first thing we want to do here
is choose our store name,
and a lot of people get really confused
about the store name, but really, it's just a name shown
on your listings and you may well have seen it like this,
sold by store name and fulfilled by Amazon
or sold by Smash the Like Button and fulfilled by Amazon.
It's also near the top of your listings,
but it can be changed at any time,
and there's no real reason to stress about this,
but I did want to give you pro tip number five here.
If you already have a brand name in mind,
then making the store name the same as your brand name
is a great way to go.
Think of it like this.
If you see Nike products sold by or under the Nike store,
that only adds credibility.
It's a good cohesive whole, it's a good way to brand.
So if you do have a brand name,
that's the way I would do this.
Additionally, store names can only be taken once,
so it's really subject to availability.
So if you have a specific brand name
that you're in love with and that's gonna be
on pretty much most of your first products,
then why not grab that while it's available
and sell your products beneath that?
That brand name is on your products and on your store.
Now I'm gonna throw in pro tip number six here
because if your brand name is taken in lowercase,
try it in uppercase, because the availability
is case-sensitive.
In other words, if it's taken in all uppercase,
you can probably still get it in all lowercase.
Now if you don't have your brand name yet,
what you can do is check out my video in the description
on exactly how to create your Amazon brand name.
This is a really easy but fun process as well.
So I think you'll enjoy it,
and then you will have something really solid
to not only put on your products
and potentially trademark one day,
but also to fill in here as your store name.
But do not let the store name hold you up.
You can always adapt this later.
Put something in here for now.
Remember, you can always change this
even if you end up selling superbrowser multiple Amazon seller accounts private label brands
under this one store.
Then you can change that store name
so it's a different kind of cohesive whole
to these different brands.
You can do that later.
For now, you just need something in here.
Now for the next questions here, it really actually depends
on how you're looking to sell on Amazon.
Are you doing arbitrage?
Are you doing private label?
Now I focus entirely on private label.
So that's what I'm gonna focus on, and that's the way
I'm going to approach these next questions.
I'm gonna select yes for do you have UPCs
for all your products?
Now, I wanted to give you pro tip number seven here.
I highly recommend that you use GS1 UPC codes
to add products to Amazon, specifically,
if you're doing private label final products.
If you're doing arbitrage or things like that,
then GS1 codes, which are more expensive,
might not make sense, but overall, I really recommend,
for private labelers, you guys use GS1 UPC codes.
I will put a link to my GS1 video in the description as well
if you want to learn more about that
and how to get those codes.
And for the next question, I will also select yes here
for are you the manufacturer or brand owner
because as a private labeler, you will be the brand owner.
Now, if you do select that,
it's going to actually open up the next question,
which is do you have the trademark
for those branded products?
Now, if you do, you want to say yes here
'cause you're gonna be able to streamline
into brand registry already.
If not, then you're gonna say no here,
and pro tip mumber eight, I think,
so getting your trademark is a huge advantage.
Don't put off selling because you don't have a trademark,
but it's definitely something to start considering,
start thinking about, and pushing toward.
If you don't know much about trademarking
or brand registry or the benefits thereof,
I'll also put my video related to that below
so you can see what brand registry is all about,
what the requirements are, and how to apply.
So now we can click on Next.
At the top here it reads this is for the sole owner
or primary contact for this account.
So here you can see an overview of your registration,
and you're going to need to select the ID document type,
or upload the requested ID document type.
Often, this is going to be a passport.
Then you're gonna need
to provide any additional documents.
Now these vary between situations, but in this case,
we can provide either a bank account statement
or a credit card statement.
Remember, this is why we wanted to make sure
the earlier address that we input would line up
with the document we upload here, and the address
on that document.
So once you've uploaded these
and double checked all the details of your submission here,
you can click on Submit.
And then after this, the verification team goes to work.
They're gonna look at your info.
They're gonna verify as much as they can.
They're probably gonna ask you for one or two more things
and might have a few questions
and they're gonna reach out to you via email.
So keep an eye out for them there.
Now, I know a lot of you are really proactive
and you want to get things ready,
so if that's the case, in the meantime,
you can prep some commonly asked for details,
things like bank statements and utility bills
proving bank account ownership or address.
These are often easily downloadable from your bank,
and the main thing here is make sure
they're as recent as possible.
They cannot be any older than three months.
With Payoneer or WorldFirst
or any of these online payment accounts,
they also issue letters called letters of ownership,
so you can ask them for those and they are used
for the same purposes with Amazon,
proving account ownership and address.
You may also be asked for an EIN,
which is an Employer Identification Number.
You can get this by heading over to the IRS website.
Now these can be issued to individuals in the US,
but they can also be issued to companies,
whether those companies are in the US or abroad.
So for example, if you're a foreign company,
you can go download the document from the IRS website
that matches your company's country.
Then you fill out that document and what you do
is you call the IRS' number
and you're going to verbally give back your answers
to that same document, and they are going to issue your EIN
over the phone.
So now you are well on your way to selling on Amazon.
I wanted to ask you guys to please share this video
with someone you know who's interested in selling,
or who thinks they cannot sell because of their location.
So I hope this cleared up all the ins and outs
of setting up your Seller Central account.
Remember, guys, once you are set up,
if you want to take those next steps,
check out other videos here.
Also check out the Just One Dime membership below
if you are looking for a community
of like-minded entrepreneurs,
other people doing exactly what you're doing
from all corners of the globe, but in any case,
I hope this helped you make that first step
and I wish you many sales in the future.
I'll see you guys in a future video.
(exciting orchestral music)