Setting up your small-merchant/individual account

- Let's take a quick look at how to set up an individual account. By the way, I'm going to assume that you already have an Amazon buyers account set up. If you don't, Amazon will add a few steps to what we're going to see in this video, in order to create an account for you. There are actually several ways to get into this process. Perhaps the easiest way to begin is to find the product you want to sell in the Amazon catalog. Go into the product page, then click the Sell on Amazon button.

Of course, the other way to start is to begin at the Sell on Amazon page. Click the Sell as an Individual button. You'll be asked to create an account or to log into your existing account. If you've been buying from Amazon in the past, you can simply use that account log-on information. You'll then be shown a page in which you can search for a product you want to sell. Pick a category and search by title or keyword or enter the product's number, the ISBN, UPC, or ASIN number.

The ASIN is Amazon's own product ID, the Amazon Standard Identification Number. In the search results page, find the product you plan to sell. If you can't find it, try again. Check the product carefully. Make sure you're listing against the correct product. Click on the link to go to the product's page and confirm, and if you can't find the product in the catalog, then you're out of luck. As an individual seller, you can only sell items already in the Amazon catalog. When you're sure you've got the right product, click the Sell Yours Here button.

And now we're back at the same Sell an Amazon product page we saw a few moments ago. So now the next step is to provide information about the product you're going to sell. This page shows you basic information about the product and also the competition. You can see the lowest prices and the various conditions. Click one of the links to open a new browser tab, showing the competitors. It's a good idea to keep this window open, so you can refer back to it while creating your listing. Now, in order to sell yours, you need to provide a few quick inputs.

First, select the condition of the product. We saw these conditions in an earlier video. You can find the condition definitions by searching the Sellers Help system for product condition. You can add a note about the condition, if you wish to. Don't exaggerate. Don't try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, or it'll backfire. The product may sell, but it'll be returned. If you're selling used products, you really should consider providing a comment about your product, to give people a feeling of security about buying from you.

Let them know the product's in good condition, that it works and so on. Take a look at how other people wrote their conditions, and you'll get the idea. In most cases, of course, you'll be entering a quantity of one. It's also a good idea to provide photographs of the product. Again, you can often see other merchants' examples. Do your best to provide a clear, focused photograph, without background clutter. Next, you'll need to enter the price at which you plan to sell this product. Amazon shows you the lowest price of the product in the condition category you selected, but be careful here.

Amazon is very price sensitive. You'll want to price your product competitively against the competition. If your product isn't at or near the top in the Amazon listings, it's not going to sell. But look at the competitors' prices. You don't want to price your product below an unreasonably low price. Let that product sell, and price instead against the products that are more the norm. Amazon shows the lowest combined price, product and shipping. Again, Amazon's very price sensitive, especially if you're shipping the product yourself, rather than using Amazon FBA.

Many sellers try to ensure that their product comes up number one in the merchant list, and they do that by providing a combined price even a penny lower than the current lowest price. So, we could set this to 449 dollars and 99 cents. Next, the SKU field, the stock keeping unit number. You don't have to enter anything here, if you don't want to, and as an individual merchant, you probably don't need to. It's just a unique ID, a combination of letters and numbers that identifies the product to you, for your inventory system.

As an individual, you probably don't have an inventory system, so you can ignore this. Next, you need to select how you plan to ship. Either ship yourself or let Amazon ship for you. As an individual, we'll just leave the option button set to the first option. In fact, we're going to ignore the second option button, as FBA doesn't make sense for most people selling one or two products or a handful a month. We'll be looking at FBA in detail later in the course. Finally, we choose which shipping speeds we're willing to work with. One is already selected and can't be de-selected, but you can choose whether or not you're willing to ship using a different method, in some cases including international shipping.

The choices vary, depending on the product category. The more options you select, the higher the chance of selling, of course. Click continue, and you'll see the Submit Your Listing page, unless, as I said earlier, you haven't yet set up your Amazon account, in which case you'll go through a few additional steps before reaching this page. This page shows you your product information. Check it carefully. You'll see the price you're asking for the product, how much Amazon will charge you in fees, how much they will give you as a shipping credit, and the total you'll be given if the product sells.

You can change this information later. For example, you can change the price if you later find that competitors are now ranking higher than you. If you want, you might actually list your product at a price too high to sell, so you can get the product listed, see how it appears on the page, see your Amazon sellers account, and so on. Then you can come back and change the price later, to start competing, because as soon as you click the Submit Your Listing button, the process begins. As you can see, this page lets you list more products for sale.

It also has links into Amazon Seller Central, the web console used to manage your seller account. That's where you can modify your listing, change the price, for instance, and deal with products that have been sold. You can close the browser now, if you wish. In order to get to Amazon Seller Central later, go to your regular Amazon account page and use the Your Seller Account link, or just go directly to sellercentral.amazon.com. You'll probably want to bookmark that. And remember, once you have access to Seller Central, you can quickly reach the seller help area by clicking the help link up here.

Note also that you'll need to provide Amazon with bank account information at some point, so Amazon can transfer your earnings to you. Amazon pays every two weeks. When you go into your Seller Central homepage, you'll see a little notification here. Click the link, scroll down to the deposit method area, click the add button, and follow the instructions. You may want to add more products to sell, of course. I'll be covering how to add products in a later video. Note, however, that from now on we won't be talking much about the individual account.

We'll be focusing on the professional seller, and examples I show will be for the professional account. If you have an individual account, you may notice a few differences here and there.