Starting an ecommerce business by selling on Amazon is a great idea. Amazon is the largest ecommerce platform in the world and has a huge customer base. To start, you will need to create a seller account on Amazon which typically involves the following steps:
- Go to the Amazon Services homepage and select “Sell”
- Select “Start selling”
- Sign in to your existing Amazon account or create a new one.
- Choose the type of account you want to create: an individual or professional account.
- Enter your business information and tax information.
- Choose a payment method for your account.
- Review and accept the terms and conditions of the Amazon Services Business Solutions Agreement.
- Provide a credit card to verify your identity and to enable Amazon to charge you for any fees associated with your account.
- Complete the registration process by providing your bank account information for payments.
After completing these steps, you will be able to list products for sale on Amazon and start reaching millions of customers worldwide.
Sounds pretty simple and straight forward. But as you go over these steps you are likely to encounter many challenges and the most common among these is related to Seller SKU and Product ID Type. Let me explain this in simple terms.
A product SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) on Amazon is a unique identifier assigned to a product by the seller. It is used to track inventory and for ordering purposes. The SKU can be a combination of letters and numbers, and is set by the seller. It is not the same as the product’s ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), which is a 10-character alphanumeric code assigned by Amazon to identify the product on their website throughout its lifecycle on Amazon.
Other types of product IDs that can be used include EAN (European Article Number), UPC (Universal Product Code), and ISBN (International Standard Book Number). These are typically used for products that are not unique to Amazon, such as books or other items that have been assigned a unique identifier by another organization.
A lot of people starting fresh on Amazon end up buying UPC codes online for their products to make it easier to list their products. However, it is not necessary to purchase a UPC code to sell a product on Amazon.
At EVOPS Marketing & PR we specialize in helping you set up ecommerce businesses as well as grow and succeed. Our services range from e-commerce platform set-up to management, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), social media marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing and influencer marketing.