How to create an amazon seller account for free

Amazon offers two types of seller accounts: Individual and Professional.

The Professional account costs $39.99 a month, which is enough for many beginners to think twice about setting up their account. In this guide, I’ll show you how to set up an Individual account so you can get started today without any upfront charges.

Please pay close attention and follow the steps exactly or you will be charged the $39.99 even if you choose Individual.

There is a quirk in the registration process that is forcing many people who want Individual accounts to pay the $39.99 fee anyway. You can request a refund immediately after, but following the steps below will ensure you don’t have to deal with this unnecessary headache.

If you find this guide helpful, please consider signing up for eCommerce Insider and taking our free Fundamentals of a Successful Online Selling Business course. Our goal is to help you realize the benefits that generating a full-time income from online retail offers while avoiding things like unnecessary risk and debt.

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Which account type do you want?

The account type that will let you get started selling on Amazon for free is called the “Individual seller account.” This account type has some limitations as compared to the account that has a monthly fee (known as the Professional seller account), but it’s perfect for someone who wants to get started without spending any money right away.

You can also read a detailed discussion about the difference between the two seller account types in this post.

Keep in mind that you can upgrade or downgrade at any time. So if you are on the fence, I highly recommend just signing up for the Individual account now rather than putting this off for later so that you can think about the decision more.

Setting Up Your Free Amazon Seller Account

If you decide on an Individual seller account, all that’s left to do is sign up.

You can sign up for an individual seller account at services.amazon.com.

Once you click that link, do not click the button that says “Start selling”!

The button starts the process of setting up a Professional account and will open a registration screen like this:

If you enter your name and email here and click next, your email will be connected to a Professional account even if you back out and try to start over for an Individual account.

The correct link to click (as of March 2021) looks like this:

If the page is updated and looks different for you, you’re looking for a link that says “Sign up to become an individual seller.”

If you can’t find the link, use the “find function” to identify the sign-up link.

You can do that by holding down control (command on Mac) on your keyboard, then press “F”. So press “Ctrl +F” or “Command + F” and you’ll be able to do a search. Search for “individual” and scroll through the results and one should be the link to sign up as an individual seller.

After clicking that link you will be walked through the process of setting up your Amazon Seller account. As you can see as you go through the process, there is no monthly fee.

Why is Amazon asking me to pay $39.99?

If Amazon is asking you to pay $39.99 despite clicking on the right link, it means that at some point in the past you started the process of setting up a Professional account.

Once you do that, the best route to go is pay the $39.99 fee, downgrade the account, and request a refund.

During our Accelerator in February 2020, one of the new sellers had to deal with this unfortunate issue – that’s how we figured this out.

With her permission, here is the email that she received from email when trying to get an Individual account but being asked to pay:

In the blue box you will note it says to “choose the Individual plan after clicking on “Start Selling” – this is wrong and exactly how you will end up in this situation in the first place.

If you do find yourself in the position of needing to downgrade your seller account, the Amazon help article is here. Note: you will need to login to Seller Central to open this link.

If you follow the advice above from the beginning of this post, you should be able to avoid all this though!

It may be worth clearing your browser cookies before even clicking on the Individual link and registering for an account too.

Any questions?

Hopefully finding this post helped to simplify the process of signing up for you.

After you’ve set up your seller account, you’re going to need to find some items to sell.

Make sure you check out our Challenge program if you want to maximize your sales over your first 30 days:

https://pro.onlinesellingexperiment.com/p/challenge

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via the comments below, the chat box, or by emailing support@onlinesellingexperiment.com.

Don’t forget to look into our free eCommerce Insider membership if you found this content useful and want more advice on building a successful online retail business while avoiding unnecessary risk, over investment, and debt.

https://onlinesellingexperiment.com/ecommerce-insider/