Seller Account Registration

This lesson covers the two selling plans Amazon offers, which one to choose, and how to get through registration without stalling.

Individual or Professional

Amazon sells two plans, and the difference is how you pay:

• Individual. No monthly subscription. You pay a fixed fee for every unit you sell: $0.99 in the United States, £0.75 plus VAT in the United Kingdom. That is on top of the referral fee and any fulfilment fees, which both plans pay.
• Professional. A monthly subscription with no per-unit fee: $39.99 a month in the United States, £25 a month plus VAT in the United Kingdom.

Those were the rates when this lesson was written. Amazon publishes the current ones on its selling pages (US, UK), and it is worth checking them rather than trusting a figure in a video or an article.

The break-even, and why it points one way

The arithmetic is simple. Divide the subscription by the per-item fee and you get the number of units a month at which the two plans cost the same.

• United States: $39.99 divided by $0.99 is about 40 units a month.
• United Kingdom: £25 divided by £0.75 is about 33 units a month. Amazon UK quotes both fees without VAT, so the break-even stays at about 33 units whether or not you can recover the VAT.

Below that, Individual is cheaper. Above it, Professional is cheaper, and the gap widens with every extra sale. Amazon's own advice is close to this arithmetic: it suggests Individual for sellers with fewer than 40 items a month in the US and fewer than 35 in the UK.

Why the answer is Professional anyway

The fee comparison is not the whole decision, because the plans are not otherwise identical. Professional carries capabilities that Individual does not:

• Restricted categories. Many categories, brands and products need Amazon's approval before you can list them, and the ungating process covered later in this module is how you get it. Amazon's UK pricing page says that only Professional sellers can list and sell in restricted categories, and that an approval does not carry over if you move to Individual.
• Bulk listing and reports. Uploading many products at once, and the business reports that show you what is selling.
• Software access. Tools that connect to your seller account, such as repricers and inventory managers, usually work through Amazon's SP-API, and Amazon's plan comparison lists the SP-API for Professional only.
• Promotions. Promotions, gift services and other special listing features are Professional only, on the same comparison.

The Buy Box is not on that list. Amazon's plan comparison shows both plans as eligible to become the Featured Offer, Amazon's own name for the Buy Box. Whether your offer wins it depends on price, delivery speed, stock and your seller performance, which the Buy Box lesson later in this module covers.

If you intend to source, ship and sell in any volume, several of those become necessary quickly. Starting on Individual to save the subscription usually means switching within a month or two anyway, and in the meantime you are sourcing under restrictions that rule out products you would otherwise buy.

If you are worried about paying before you sell

A common hesitation is paying a subscription in a month where nothing sells. Two things worth knowing:

• You can switch between plans in your account settings, so a quiet period is not permanent.
• Sellers do sometimes contact Seller Support and ask for the fee to be credited for a month in which they sold nothing, and it is sometimes granted. This is one seller's experience rather than a published policy. Do not build it into your budget: assume you will pay every month, and treat a credit as a surprise if it happens.

Registering, step by step

1. Go to amazon.com or amazon.co.uk and scroll to the bottom of the page. The link is Sell on Amazon, in the footer.
2. Create a new Amazon account with a new email address. Do not register with the account you shop from. If you are logged in as a shopper, Amazon will offer to use that account, and it is worth declining. Keeping the selling business on its own email and its own login keeps your buying history separate from your seller account and avoids confusion later when several people need access.
3. Verify the email address.
4. Choose the country the account is for, then the business type you settled on in the previous lesson.
5. Enter the business name and address exactly as they appear on your registration documents.
6. Enter a phone number. Amazon verifies it immediately by text message, so use one you have to hand.
7. Enter a credit card. This pays the first month of the subscription and is used for any fees not covered by your sales.
8. Complete identity verification. Amazon will ask for documents: identification, and for a company, registration paperwork.

Where registrations go wrong

The process is usually smooth, and the failures nearly all come from the same place: details that do not match. The name on the account must match the name on the identification. The business address must match the register. A card in a different name than the account holder causes queries.

Get those consistent before you start and verification is normally quick. Fix them halfway through and it takes considerably longer.

The next lesson starts on the numbers that decide whether a product is worth buying, beginning with sales rank.