Are you interested in starting an Amazon business, but are not sure what you need to get started? In this article, you’ll learn the most important aspects of starting an Amazon business. We’ll cover a mixture of must-have items and things that will make things easier.
As of 2021, there are around 100 million Amazon users in the United States alone. With such a large buying power, getting started as an Amazon seller is a great idea. However, to capitalize on that potential, you’ll need to get started on the best foot by ensuring you have the items listed on this checklist.
Bank Account or Money Transfer Service
You’ll need to open a bank account or money transfer service and use it as your primary payment method with your Amazon seller account. Therefore, you can pay for the Professional account fee and run your business.
Also, you’ll need to share your bank account statements with Amazon to open a seller’s account. The specific documentation you need to share varies, but generally it should have been used for the last 3 months.
However, it’s a good idea to shop around for the best money transfer companies to keep the fees low and enjoy the best currency conversion rates. Also, you want to decrease the transfer speed and have the ability to send large amounts of money.
Location
Amazon allows you to create accounts from most countries in the world and sell on any marketplace. For example, you open an account from Europe and sell on Amazon US. This level of flexibility makes Amazon one of the more compelling e-commerce business models.
In some countries, you may have extra hoops to jump through when providing documentation. Amazon has a list of the countries that fall in this category on its website. Furthermore, there’s a short list of countries from which you cannot create Amazon accounts. You’ll need to relocate if you’re currently living in one of those countries.
Business Structure
You’ll need to decide on your business structure when starting your Amazon business. This is one of the more important parts of your checklist. You can go down the route of running the business under your personal name. This might be fine while the business is small and you don’t have any partners. However, in the long run, this isn’t the best business structure for Amazon sellers. That’s because you have no liability protection.
In comparison, an LLC (limited liability company) structure has many advantages, and here’s a summary:
- Quick registration: forming an LLC business takes a short amount of time. You can take advantage of the services here at Business Anywhere for help registering an LLC to enjoy the benefits for your Amazon business.
- Liability protection: when doing business under an LLC, any liability issues don’t become a problem for you personally. That’s because it’s the business that is liable.
- Authority: your Amazon business will have more authority and reputation when it’s registered as an LLC.
Start-Up Funds
You’ll need start-up funds to pay for things like inventory to get going with Amazon. The amount of money you spend depends on how fast you want to scale, but the general consensus is that starting with $2,000 to $5,000 is more viable.
There are multiple ways to get start-up funds, including savings, borrowing from friends and family, and getting a loan. There are pros and cons of each method that you should consider to choose the right option. You can also consider crowdfunding platforms and other more unique ways of raising money.
Time To Work
It’s important that you have the time and energy to put in the hours to work hard on your Amazon business. Hence, you’ll need to make sacrifices to make more time to work. This could mean reducing the amount of time you spend watching Netflix, or taking weekends off to hang out with friends.
Ultimately, the more time you sacrifice the more you’ll have to spend on your business. However, you need to strike the right balance to ensure that you don’t burn out.
Amazon Sellers Software
You can take advantage of the excellent Amazon seller’s software solutions to improve the quality of your business. They can help with different aspects of your business, including:
- Keyword research: by doing keyword research, you can figure out the potential of your market. Also, you can find high-traffic and low-competition keywords.
- Product research: the product research tools enable you to discover sales estimates and product performance. Hence, you can discover the best products to sell on Amazon.
- Listing optimization: you can improve the quality of your listings to ensure that you’re able to get more traffic and conversions. The listing builders ensure you use the right keywords and optimize the length of each text.
- Alerts: managing many products can get overwhelming – especially if you have scaled your business. Therefore, you’ll want to use the alerts systems that notify you of important changes to your product listings. Also, you can use these tools to spy on competitors.
- Profits: take advantage of the tools that allow you to view the profitability of your products. Hence, you can identify your biggest winners and losers.
Final Thoughts
To summarize, there’s a lot of preparation you need to do when starting an Amazon business. However, by taking it one step at a time, you can check the items off on this list and get started before long.
Overall, starting an Amazon business has fewer hurdles than most other options. That’s because you have the option of using Amazon FBA services to fulfill your orders. This means there’s no need to manually handle stock.
