7 Steps to Start Your FBA Business

Want to grab a piece of that pie and start selling on Amazon? As the most profitable online retail platform in the world – the company generated around $108 billion in net sales in the first quarter of 2021 alone – there’s ample opportunity to sell a product that you’re passionate about using the Amazon storefront. With the right marketing and analytics, you can attract some of those millions of Amazon customers directly to your online business and start making a profit.

In the post below, we outline the building blocks you’ll need to launch your first Amazon store in less than a month, taking you one step closer to enjoying the many benefits of being an ecommerce entrepreneur.

What Are the Benefits to Opening a Store on Amazon?

Before creating your first Amazon storefront, let’s look at some of the benefits to opening a store and starting your journey in ecommerce.

‍More time for your hobbies and interests: Most of Amazon’s professional and individual sellers don’t spend 10+ hours a day working on their business. In fact, many people decide to sell on Amazon so that they can have a more flexible work schedule and plan their days accordingly. 

Once the initial work is done and you’ve dedicated time to create your first Amazon storefront, maintaining your business won’t be as time consuming as it was in the first few months. Once you get the flow going and your store starts to make a profit, then you can start to enjoy spending more time on extracurricular activities. Isn’t a well-balanced lifestyle what it’s all about, anyway?‍

Simplicity: No, you don’t have to be a techie to be a successful seller on Amazon. Managing your storefront takes some creativity and attention to detail, but you don’t need to know code or even have the latest gadgets or expensive devices to succeed as a seller. 

Being a successful Amazon seller requires a passion for what you’re doing, marketing your product better than the competition, and investing the right amount of time and energy at the beginning stages of your business. It also helps if you are choosing the right tools that work for you along the way.

We at Mayan are here to guide you in the right direction. Through data analytics, process automation, and machine learning, our professional software and team of experts will help you do just that. 

Ready to start the process? This guide walks you through how to open your first Amazon store in 7 essential steps.

How to Set Up Your Amazon Store: A Beginner’s Guide

1. Open an Amazon Seller Account

The first thing you need to do before launching your first Amazon store is sign up on Amazon Seller Central and apply to open an account to start selling your products on their platform. You can choose between being an individual seller or opening a professional account. Individual sellers don’t pay anything up front for their membership, but it’s a $0.99 charge per item sold. A professional account costs $39.99 a month to sell in the United States, but it comes with a number of benefits. And in order to be an FBA seller, you’ll need to sign up for a professional account.

To be approved as a seller, you’ll need to have a credit card that works in the country where you plan to be selling your products in (for instance, if you’re based in the U.S. and want to sell to customers also in the U.S.). You simply fill out everything in the application and wait for your approval.

2. Register Your Brand

Once your seller account is approved, the next step is registering your brand. You can do this at the Amazon Brand Registry. You’ll need to have a registered trademark (either pending or already active) as well as have your logo/company name on the products you plan on selling. If you don’t have a logo yet, we suggest hiring a professional graphic designer to create one for you. 

While you don’t necessarily need to register your brand to have a successful Amazon store, some of the benefits include protection for any copyright infringement and easily reporting any potential violations.

3. Buy UPC Codes (Unique Product Codes)

Every product that you sell on Amazon will need to have its own UPC, which stands for Unique Product Code. While there’s a lot of third party resellers out there (that thousands of Amazon sellers use), the only official producer is GSI U.S. 

Essentially, you are buying one GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) code for each of your products. When you are building your Amazon storefront, GTINs can be encoded as a UPC or EAN (European Article Numbers) when you are inputting the barcode for the products being sold in your store. 

Please note that if you are selling reused items on Amazon then you won’t need to purchase a UPC code, as the product will already have one. 

All variations of the items you plan on selling will require an ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) to categorize them. You can input these codes when you’re uploading the products to your Amazon storefront. To learn more about ASINs and why they are so important for Amazon sellers, see our post here. 

4. Make Sure Your Product Photos Have a White Background

Visuals are an important part of any business, and this is especially the case for your Amazon storefront. Once you have your product images that you’re happy with, make sure they are on a clear, white background. Images without a white background won’t be approved by Amazon, and you’ll have to spend some time reuploading if the images aren’t up to scale.

If you are happy with your product photos and don’t have the official white background, you can hire someone to edit them to be Amazon-ready on a freelancer website like Fiverr. You will pay them a one-time fee to basically remove the original background and replace it with a white background. 

Many independent contractors will label their services as “Amazon product photo editing” or “photo retouching and remove background for Amazon.” So, have a browse and you can easily find someone to do this in less than a few days for a small fee (typically less than $20).

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5. Add the Products to Your Online Shop

Now that you have your account registered, brand, and your product codes and images, you’re ready to upload your first products to your new Amazon storefront. The fastest way to do this is to make an Excel spreadsheet and categorize all of your products first before uploading them to the Amazon Seller page. 

Simply log into your account, click “Add a Product”, and you can upload the spreadsheet as a CSV file. Make sure you add information like how many of each item you have in stock, the price, what type of product it is, and so forth. Double check all of your work so that you don’t miss anything.

6. Input Your Product Descriptions

Take your time with this step in the setup process, as it’s probably one of the most important parts of building your first Amazon storefront. Product descriptions need to be clear, catchy, and optimized for search. Keyword research is a key factor here, as it can help you get a level up on the competition. Check out other storefronts that sell similar products to yours, and find some examples of other digital stores that you love for inspiration.

7. Create Your Amazon Storefront Page

Your store is almost ready to go. Log in to your Seller Account and follow these steps so that your digital store can be officially launched.

• Go to the navigation menu and click Stores, then Manage Stores, and finally Create Store.
• Choose your store template. You can highlight your favorite store items and find a layout that works best for your brand.
• Open Store Builder.
• If you want to create subpages to display any different products in your store, simply select Page Manager and click Add a Page.
• To adjust any of the photos, text, or videos in your store, click the Tile Manager.
• Pick the products that you want to be featured first in your store. Select Preview and you can see what your store will look like on mobile or desktop devices.
• If you’re happy with the results, select Submit for Publishing. It may take a few days for your store to be reviewed and then approved. 

Once approved, your store will go live. You can log in and head back to Store Builder to rotate any featured items, add new products, and check your stats like page views, insights, product ranking, and more.

Voila! Sit back and take in what you’ve accomplished. Your new Amazon store is ready to be shared with the world.

Of course, this is only the important starting point of your experience as an Amazon seller. But with a solid foundation from these essential steps, you’ll be on the path to building a profitable, thriving Amazon store.

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