How to open your Amazon Seller Account from anywhere.
I’ve been selling on Amazon for a good few years now, in both North America and Europe. Having gone through a 4 month account verification, I wanted to compress my experience on this and give you the simplest possible process for opening your own Amazon Seller Account. My hope is that this will help you skip the headaches, learn from my mistakes and get selling.
I am going to reference a lot of webpages throughout so you can jump straight to them. I took this guide and accompanying video (middle of guide) very seriously because it took me months to get verified when I started because none of this was well explained. This 5 step guide is what I wish I had in the beginning. Let’s begin.
Step 1: Choose where to sell
I wanted to remind you, when you use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to fulfill orders, your personal location does not matter as in all likelihood, you’ll never see your products anyway. Inventory will go straight from manufacturers to the Amazon fulfillment centres. So don’t let your location restrict your choice on where to sell.
There are currently 19 Amazon marketplaces (all clickable):
USA, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Mexico, Japan, India, Italy, Spain, Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Holland
When signing up, there are Unified Seller Accounts. This means you sign up for a region which gives you access to multiple marketplaces in that region within one dashboard.
Here are the most important two which you’ll likely be looking to sign up for.
- The North American Unified Account holds the USA, Canada and Mexico.
- The European Unified Account holds the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Poland and Sweden.
The choice is yours but here’s my input. I make more in North America than Europe. If we look at this graph of net sales between Amazon marketplaces, we can see that the US is leaps and bounds ahead of other markets in terms of pure volume. In terms of demand, you can often expect 3 times as many sales in the US than in the UK. For, example, you may sell 10 units of a product in a day in the UK, while the same product would sell 30 times a day in the US. North America does have more competition but remains my recommendation. If I was starting again today, I would start with a North American Unified Account.
Step 2: Choose your entity type
The choice to sell as an individual or company is limited to those who live in accepted countries. Let me explain.
Each Amazon region has a list of accepted countries for seller registration, any person or business registered in these countries can sign up for an account. Each region also has a list of supported currencies. This tells you whether Amazon can disburse payments directly to your personal or business bank account in that bank account’s currency.
I am not going to delve too deeply into this because the situations are so varied but start by checking if your country is accepted.
Any person or business registered in these countries can sign up for an account:
- Here is the list of countries accepted for North American seller registration
- Here is the list of countries accepted for European seller registration
If your country is present, you can choose to start as an individual or with a company.
If your country is not present, then you’re most likely going to need to set up a company in an accepted country. This is totally doable and is how I got my start when first setting up while still in South Africa. Pro tip, while you’re at it you may as well check both European and North American accepted lists and set up in a country accepted by both in case you wish to expand in the future.
In this regard, companies like Clemta can help you set up a company and bank account in the US. (Get 10% off by using code: DANRODGERS)
Companies like Osome can help you set up a company and bank account in Europe as well as help with your accounting.
Secondly, whether your country is accepted or not, you need to check if your bank account’s or proposed bank account’s currency is supported by Amazon.
- Here is the list of supported currencies for North America
- Here is the list of supported currencies for Europe
If your currency is there, then great, you can receive payments directly from Amazon to this bank account.
If not, then you need to bolt on a service in the middle. You can use an online service such as OFX, Payoneer or World First to receive payments in pretty much any currency (GBP, USD, EUR etc.) and then convert that currency online before transferring it to your local bank account. In short, Amazon can pay you.
If you choose OFX, email will.moffett@ofx.com and say I sent you for 10% off. You can also use code: DANRODGERS
Pro tip: sometimes this is worth doing anyway as it often allows far better exchange rates. I do it. I have used both Payoneer and World First and both work successfully. Both support different regions and final payment currencies so just check each for your situation. Remember, these services offer individual and business accounts, choose the right one in accordance with your set up.
If your currency is listed on this page, which is the same for North America and Europe, then another option you have is Hyperwallet which is a currency conversion service which Amazon is integrating.
In your Seller Central account you can do this in settings by choosing your country in the Bank Location drop down, it will allow you to Sign up for Hyperwallet and you can continue the process from there.
Now that you are clear on where you wish to sell, your entity type and your currency support, we can move on. It’s best to have this all in place before moving to step 3.
Step 3: Sign up
There are 2 easy places from which you can sign up for an account:
a) The fastest way is to simply type in services.amazon.com or sell.amazon.co.uk. Then hit Sign up or Start selling from any of the links.
b) Go to the Amazon marketplace’s home page. You can click through to any of these at the top of this guide. Once there, scroll to the bottom and click on Sell on Amazon under the Make Money with Us section.
There are 2 types of accounts:
You can sell as an individual with an Individual Seller Account (ISA) or as a professional with a Professional Seller Account (PSA).
With the ISA you simply pay a $0.99 closing fee per item you sell.
With the PSA you pay $39.99/month but no closing fees. In effect, the more you sell, the cheaper your account becomes.
The PSA is what I recommend right from the beginning and makes sense anyway once selling more than 40 units a month. The ISA is also highly limited in terms of features in Seller Central and the cons outweigh the short term cost savings.
At this point, keep in mind Amazon may update what this interface looks like within the actual signup but these core principles remain the same.
Once you have clicked through, you’ll need to click on Create New Account then enter a name, email address and password. I recommend using a dedicated email address just for this Amazon account. Choose the email wisely as you do not want to change this later.
You’ll need to receive an OTP to your email that you’ve input and you want to input this relatively quickly. If it times out you can resend it.
Click Next.
This accompanying video may be helpful for the next part of the process:
Step 4: Fill out your application
On this next page, the process really begins.
There’s a nice checklist of some of the documents you are going to need.
Choose your business location. Whether you have an incorporated business like a US LLC, UK LTD company, any other company or even if you’re trading as a sole proprietor or sole trader (as yourself), you still want to select where that business is based.
Next, you want to select the Business type. Most of you are either going to select privately-owned business if you have an LLC or company registered anywhere while those of you trading as yourselves are going to select None, I am an individual.
Individuals will need to put in their full name exactly as on their passport or the identity document. You will upload this later. Make sure it is accurate.
Those with companies will need to input the registered name of the company exactly as on the certificate of incorporation or the legal documednt you received when registering it, this will often end with a company suffix like LLC, LTD or PTY LTD. Make sure it’s exactly right.
Then Agree and Continue.
I continued the process as a company from here but the process for individuals is simpler and similar. On the following page, you need to input the company registration number. This is the number on your legal incorporation documents. Double check it.
Then enter your registered business address. Individuals can put their personal addresses and companies will put their company address. Pro tip: This is the largest hurdle for sellers based in far flung countries because this address needs to be verified later. For this reason, think hard on what you could use for verification of this address, most likely a bank statement or utility bill within the last 3 months that is in the name which is applying for this account (you or your company’s name), then examine the address on that document and put it in here exactly as on that bill or statement. These need to line up perfectly.
It should be noted that Amazon sometimes sends a postcard containing a verification code to the address you list. Upon receiving this code (whether you or an acquaintance or service) you can then enter this code on seller central to validate the address.
Now input a telephone number, this can just be your phone number as you are a primary contact person, there’s a dropdown for different countries. If you don’t have a number in a certain country, you can also consider Skype phone numbers and online phone number services.
Choose a method of verification, SMS works well for cell phones while Call is a great feature to have for Skype phone numbers or any numbers that can’t receive texts.
Click send SMS.
It will bring up a box to input the OTP, input it and then it will say Verification Successfully Complete.
Input the Primary Contact Person’s name exactly as on that person’s ID document, which will be uploaded later, this needs to match exactly. Pro tip: There have been situations where sellers get stuck on this ID document because they personally don’t have ID in an accepted country. If you run into this problem, consider if you know someone who could be your primary contact person who does in fact have such an ID document for verification purposes. This might be a family member or potential silent business partner.
Click Next.
Now you need to choose the country of citizenship for the primary contact person from a drop down. Remember, these drop downs are not universal and this is only viewable within the signup process. You need to have a primary contact person with citizenship in one of these countries.
Input the Country of birth as well as Date of birth.
Choose the proof of ID document, often passport work well and input that document’s number and date of expiry.
Choose the country of issue from the list.
At the bottom, choose whether this contact person is the beneficial owner or legal representative of this business.
Select whether or not you’ve added all beneficial owners and click Save.
On this screen, you can select which marketplaces you wish to sell in. You probably already know where you wish to sell at this point. Select that. Don’t unnecessarily add more here, you can do that later and keep in mind you do need to pay additional monthly fees for other unified accounts. Occassionally, Amazon runs promotions where you can register for North America, Europe and Japan all at once for the single 39.99 a month which is a great deal.
Click Next.
This page is where you want to input your billing information.
Input your card details and the billing address. Amazon accepts AMEX, VISA and Mastercard cards but do not accept online payment systems like PayPal here. This is also where your Amazon accounting begins. Since this account fee is a business expense, it makes sense for the card being charged to be a card linked with your business. So, if you’re selling as yourself, then your own card is fine, if you’re selling as a company, then that company’s debit or credit card is best. This is not a requirement though, the card does not need to be in the business’s name, but its good to start thinking like this. Note that you will be charged instantly here for the first month. In the future, when you have a balance from sales in your account, this fee will simply come off that balance by default.
Click Next.
Now input your Store Information.
Choose your store name. This is also sometimes referred to as your unique business display name. Many people get confused with this. The store name is the name that is often shown an Amazon like this Sold by STORE NAME and fulfilled by Amazon. It’s also near the top of your listings.
If you already have a brand name in mind, then this can make for a great store name as well and this makes sense. Think of it like this, when you see Nike products sold under the Nike store, that adds credibility. Additionally, store names can only be taken once so I recommend grabbing your brand name as the store name if it’s available.
Pro tip: if your brand name is taken, try it in capitals or lower case as availability is case sensitive. If you don’t have a brand name yet, check out my video on creating your Amazon brand name. You can also change this store name later, for example if you end up selling multiple brands under this one store, so don’t stress over it.
I am going to approach the next questions from the standpoint of creating a private label, which is what I do. In other words, when you’re looking to develop products and sell them under your own brand name on Amazon.
Select Yes for do you have UPCs for all your products. I highly recommend you open a GS1 account and only use GS1 barcodes for your final private label products. Here is my interview with GS1.
Select Yes for Are you the manufacturer or brand owner, as you will be the brand owner.
This will open the next question of Do you have the trademark for the branded products. If so, say yes and you can streamline into brand registry as well. If you don’t have the trademark yet, then say no.
Pro tip: Getting your trademark is a huge advantage, don’t put off selling if you don’t have this but definitely work toward it so you can take advantage of brand registry. I will link my video on why trademarking and brand registry is important and how to apply. Note that you no longer need a website to apply for brand registry.
Click Next.
This is where the verification process will begin.
At the top it reads: “This is for the sole owner OR primary contact for this account.” This should make it clear why earlier I said to choose your primary contact person wisely if you yourself don’t have ID in an accepted country.
This is an overview of your registration. Here you will need to select the ID document type or upload the requested ID document type, which is often a passport.
Then, you will need to provide additional documents, in this case either a bank account statement or credit card statement.
Once you have uploaded these and double checked the details, click Submit.
Step 5: Finalize your registration
After this, the verification team goes over your information and will reach out via email if they need any additional documents or have other questions.
If you want to get things ready in the meantime, you may want to prep some of the other commonly-asked for details such as:
- Bank statements or utility bills proving bank account ownership and business address. These are often easily downloadable from your bank and must be as recent as possible, no older than 3 months. For Payoneer, World First or OFX, they too can issue such letters of ownership for you and these also work for Amazon purposes.
- You may be asked for an EIN, which is an Employer Identification Number. You can gain this number by heading over to the IRS website. These can be issued for individuals in the US but also for companies whether in the US or abroad. For example, if you have a foreign company, you download the document relevant to your company’s country from the IRS website, fill it out and then you may have to call the IRS and verbally provide them with your answers from the document, they’ll then issue you your EIN over the phone.
Now you are well on your way to selling on Amazon. It’s not without issues, keep a cool head and continually provide what the verification team asks for.
Some processes can be completed during the application process while others can also be completed after gaining access to your seller central dashboard. Two notable mentions here are the tax interview and the deposit method.
Please share this guide with anyone you know who is interested in selling on Amazon or who thinks they can’t because of their location. Share it in groups you’re a part of and lets get this info to the right places.
Happy selling.
