Home Digital Marketing Can Individuals Sell on Amazon? What Are the Advantages?

Can Individuals Sell on Amazon? What Are the Advantages?

Amazon is the largest American online retailer that allows everyone to launch a business from scratch and present an existing brand. In addition, the marketplace provides several beneficial options:

  • Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA program) to store products at the company’s fulfillment centers
  • Amazon Prime with free shipping rates
  • Buy Box option to ease the choice of customers and promote the seller.

To start selling, each person should first create an Amazon seller account. 

 “The Amazon seller account is the account that allows you to sell products on the Amazon Marketplace.”

Can Individuals Sell on Amazon? What Are the Advantages?

 

According to SageMailer’s research, the Amazon seller account gives an ability to let Amazon take care of seller’s orders, shipping, and even customer service. In addition, Amazon also deals with some marketing routines instead of the seller. This option saves a lot of sellers’ time and is proven to insure sellers against unnecessary spendings.

Amazon FBA Individual vs. Professional

The seller can decide between two different account options. The choice depends on the goal. If it is a company or a store, then the professional account will be the best selection. However, if a seller works by himself and sells a couple of items per month, the individual account will be more suitable.

The individual account implies only 40 items to sell monthly. Besides, the user should pay a fee for each item to the tune of $0.99. On the other hand, the Professional seller can sell an innumerable number of products. However, there’s a fixed monthly fee of $39.99/month.

Let us establish precisely the requirements and propositions of the two account options presented above.

What is Amazon Individual Seller Account

As it was said, the Amazon individual selling plan won`t charge a seller a monthly subscription fee. Instead, after each order, Amazon requires the seller a $0.99 fee.

The account is suitable for petty trading. There is no ability to use Amazon inventory tools and receive reports; however, individual sellers don’t need them anyway.

It is essential to know about closing fees and referral fees which are crucial.

What is Amazon Professional Seller Account

To use a professional selling plan, the seller should acquaint the main conditions:

  • the user pays $39.99 each month (both when listing or selling products);
  • the subscription fee is non-refundable;
  • there are no fees per item sold as in an Individual account;
  • the seller can use Amazon inventory tools for managing their orders and uploading batch files;
  • the seller can generate a lot of different reports to track vital business metrics;
  • referral fees and closing fees remain.

The professional seller account is quite effective as it provides better conditions for wholesale.

What’s the Difference Between Professional and Individual Seller Account

So, who benefits more: professional sellers or individual sellers? On the one hand, while using the individual type of seller account, the seller doesn’t pay a monthly subscription fee. However, on the other hand, there is a fee per item sold, which is not considered cost-effective.

Concerning inventory tools, individual selling plans do not provide such an opportunity as well as there is no ability to manage orders using order reports and order-related feeds.

Professional sellers can use Buy Box Eligibility, use promotions, and coupon services. There is also a possibility to use taxes on your orders.

Uploading feeds, performing API functions, and generating reports – are available only for owners of professional accounts.

Thus, creating a professional account extends opportunities for sellers a great deal. If you sell more than 40 items per month – a professional selling plan is beneficial for you.

Buy Box Eligibility

All sellers on Amazon have a desire to win a Buy Box. It is similar to the owners who want their website to rank first on Google’s search page. Many sellers may propose the same product with different conditions. When buyers are looking for a product, it is difficult for them to choose the right one.

Amazon is unable to list all sellers on the product’s home page. Instead, it filters the sellers and picks one to encourage customers to buy products from that seller. This selected seller is the winner of the “Buy Box.”

Amazon’s Buy Box idea is made for customers to produce reliable and fast choices. Buy Box qualifying sellers are professional sellers meeting high-performance requirements.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, choosing the right selling plan depends on your goal at the Amazon marketplace.

If you are looking to sell off a few excess items to get a couple of dollars or sell one-off items, an Individual plan is your best bet.

But if you want to build a business on Amazon and turn it into a stable source of income, you need to choose a Professional plan.