How To Create An Amazon Product Listing Inside of Seller Central

If you’ve been looking for step-by-step instructions on how to create your Amazon product listing and get yourself set up to launch your product on Amazon.com, you’re in the right spot.

If you haven’t yet selected your product or started working with a manufacturer to help you create your product, you can find those resources linked below.

Let’s dive in and take a look at the step-by-step process for how to create your Amazon product listing and optimize it to give yourself the best chance of launching your product with a bang.

Create Your Amazon Seller Account

Before You’re able to create a listing on Amazon, you’ll need to set up your Seller’s account first. 

If you have already completed that process, click here.

If not, feel free to read on and follow our step-by-step account creation guide below.

At this point in the process, you can head over to sellercentral.amazon.com and begin the process of setting up your Amazon seller account.

Once the page loads, click on the sign-up button.

While there is a version of seller Central that allows you to create an account and be charged per sale since the goal you should have is to meet a minimum of the 10x10x1 formula that we discussed in part one, you want to make sure you’re setting up the professional version of in Amazon’s seller account.

As of 2021, this is the default version of the account that is set up by going through this process, but if you have any doubts click the back button in your browser and see if there is a price listed under the sign-up button on the Seller Central homepage.

The next group you will see will ask you to enter the email address and password you want to use to enter your seller’s account.

If you have an existing Amazon account, you can use this screen to log in directly with that account, but it’s almost always better to set up a separate account using a different email address and password that are only associated with your business.

To do this, you’ll need to click create your account button located at the bottom of the sign-in form.

After clicking the creation button, you’ll be prompted to enter your name, email, and the password you wish to use to login with

Keep in mind that this password must contain at least six characters, but it doesn’t currently have the requirement for the use of numbers or special characters.

After you fill out this form click the yellow next button located at the bottom.

At this point, Amazon will send a one-time password code to the email address you provided during the account creation process.

You’ll need to check your inbox and enter the code as quickly as possible, as these codes typically expire within about 10 minutes.

Once you confirm your email address by entering the OTP, Amazon will ask you to enter a valid mobile phone number, which they will use to verify your account with OTPs moving forward.

Choosing Your Business Type

Once you’ve confirmed your cell phone number by answering the one-type password, you will be taken into the business validation phase of your Amazon seller account creation.

On this screen, Amazon will ask you to enter the location of your business, this needs to match the country in which your business is located and will be validated at the end of this process.

In addition to your location, Amazon will ask you to verify your business type. You can choose from any of the ballot types located in the drop-down list which include:

• State-Owned
• Publicly-Owned
• Privately-Owned
• Charity
• Individual

Generally speaking any and all business types will fall under the privately owned business category.

Keep in mind that if you haven’t set up a business at this point, such as an LLC, that you want to choose the “individual” option.

Once you’ve confirmed your business type, Amazon will ask you for your full legal first, last, and middle names.

Once you fill this out, Amazon will show you any appropriate policies, agreements, and notices that make sense for your particular situation.

After you take the time to review these documents, press the agree and continue button located at the bottom screen.

Entering Your Personal Information

Once your business information has been completed, you will next need to fill in your personal information.

We have already filled in some of our information, such as name and phone number. Amazon needs to associate the account with an official record such as a passport or driver’s license.

At this stage, Amazon will ask you for a variety including:

Country of Citizenship

Country Of Birth

Date Of Birth

Proof of Identity (Passport or DL)

Expiration Date for Proof of ID

Country and/or State That Issued Your ID

Additionally, I will ask you to validate your business information, including your address and phone number.

They will use this physical address to send you a postcard as the final validation step, so make sure it’s accurate. 

Once you don’t check all your permission click the next button at the bottom of the screen.

Choose Your Marketplaces

After you’ve completed your business and personal information, Amazon will allow you to choose the marketplace for marketplaces where you’d like to sell your products.

By default, they will populate your North American marketplace (what you would see on Amazon.com), but give you the option to add additional marketplaces including Canada, Mexico, and Europe.

If any additional information is needed to register in any of the marketplaces you wish to sell and, Amazon will let you know at this stage what they need to complete registration for the specific markets.

Add Billing Information

At this stage, Amazon is going to ask you for the billing information you would like to use to pay the $40 monthly fee to have your professional Amazon Sellers account.

In the background, Amazon also uses this as an additional verification step, to ensure that there is consistency in all of the information you are entering.

That means, make sure to use the card in the same name as your personal or business name to avoid any delays in the account creation process.

Just like any other credit card form, Amazon will ask you for the card number, the expiration date, and the full name of the cardholder (business or personal name).

Once you’ve entered this information click the yellow next button at the bottom of the page.

Add Your “Store Information”

Once your card details have been validated by Amazon, you will be prompted to enter your information for your Amazon store.

This is the term that Amazon uses for any products that are sold via your account.

You’ll be asked to confirm a few crucial details including the following questions.

The Name Of Your Store: This can be whatever you want, but should be your brand name

Do You Have UPCs For Your Products?

If You’re The Owner or Manufacturer Of The Products You’re Selling: Unless you’re reselling other people’s products, the answer is yes.

If You Have a Trademark For Your Brand Name

This information is used by Amazon to help understand which of their different services you may be able to take advantage of.

For example, if you have a trademark for your brand name you’d be eligible to enroll in the brand registry program.

After you verified all this information, click the next button to move on to the final phase of the account creation process.

Validate Your Mailing Address

The final stage account creation process is to validate your address.

As mentioned in the personal information stage, the address that you entered at that point is where Amazon will mail a physical postcard, to ensure that you are living or working at that address.

This postcard will contain a verification code, similar to the one-time passwords that they sent to validate your email and phone number.

The postcard will typically arrive within 7 to 10 days and once you have it in your possession, you can enter the code and finish verifying your account.

At this point, your pages start creating your product listings inside of your solar central dashboard.

Create Your Product Listing

Now that you have your Amazon seller’s account created, it’s time to move on to the listing creation phase.

While this process is essentially the same for every type of product it’s uploaded to Amazon, there are a few small changes to the look and feel of the secretion system and type of product you are selling.

Depending on the category you may see a variety of different options.

That being said, the basics of listing creation are the same across all categories. You can use the guide below to make sure you’re creating a truly optimized listing.

The Setup Process

Like with most things in the Amazon FBA World, the listing Creation process is broken down into several different (and easy to follow) steps.

The first step in the syncopation process is to log in to your account at sellercentral.amazon.com and then from the main dashboard click on your inventory tab.

In this tab select the “add a product” option, which will take you into the product creation tool.

The Category Search

The first thing Amazon will prompt you to do, inside of the ad a product tool is to search to see if your products are already being sold on Amazon.

This option only makes sense if you are reselling other people’s products.

If you are selling your private label product or manufacture your product, feel free to in the search bar and click on the “I am adding a product sold on Amazon” button directly underneath the search bar.

This will take you into the “Category Search” Screen.

At this point, Amazon will ask you to either search for or select a category to sell your product in.

If you already have an understanding of which category your product is the best fit for, feel free to use their selectable options below the category search.

However, if you’re unsure or you just would like to verify your options, use their category search tool and start by typing in the main keyword for your product.

For example, if we were going to list a garlic press for sale, we could type in a garlic press into the category search and if Amazon has a garlic press category (believe it or not, they do) we would then be able to select the most correct category.

In the event Amazon cannot figure out the exact category your product will be a fit for, they will auto-generate a list of options of things that are a close match.

For example, if we are going to list a pair of fishing shoes (not sure if they’re a thing or not, but go with me for the sake of this example) Amazon is unable to find an exact category for that product.

In this case, Amazon will present us with a variety of closely related categories such as water shoes and other things related to sports and outdoor clothing.

We can then choose from one of the categories or run the search with another way of phrasing the keyword for our product to see if there’s a better matching category.

Once you have found a category that matches your product as closely as possible, click the select button (next to the category name) and you’ll be taken into the “Vital Info” screen.

Vital Info

Once you are inside the vital info screen, Amazon will ask you to provide the critical information to help separate your product from the other products sold on Amazon.

While each category has a slightly different “vital info” screen, there are always going to be a minimum of three things that are required to move on to the next age of your product listing creation process. 

Product ID 

The first piece of information that is always required inside of the “vital info” screen is your product identifier or product ID as Amazon refers to it.

Here, you will need to provide a unique identifier that corresponds with one of the options from the drop-down menu.

Amazon allows you to use any of the following types of identification numbers to create a product listing:

If you are unfamiliar with this terminology or would like to know where to get the UPC, you may want to check out this article here.

Product Name 

The next section that Amazon will require you to fill out, regardless of the category you’re selling in, is the product name.

This field is the name of your product and will display on Amazon exactly how it is written in the backend.

Generally speaking, the best format to use for this is the name of your product (e.g. garlic press) followed by the word from and your Brand Name.

This allows your product to be shown for any searches for your brand (this will grow in importance over time) as well as ensure that your product shows up for the main keyword.

Additionally, this field allows for a maximum of 200 characters (including spaces) and should be filled in using “title case”, meaning the first letter of each word should be capitalized.

Brand Name

The third and final field that is mandatory across all categories is going to be the brand name.

Even if you have not completed Brand you may also be an additional field registry at this point or you don’t have a trademark on your brand name, you should fill in your brand name here.

For a manufacturer name, directly underneath the brand name category, since you are the manufacturer of the product if you are private labeling or selling a product you manufacture, copy and paste the value you entered in the brand name field.

Keep in mind both of these fields are limited to a max of 50 characters including spaces.

Once you have filled in all of the fields with Asterisk next to their names (these indicate that the fields are required) click the save button along the bottom right-hand corner of the form.

This will then take you into the variate tab.

Variations 

Inside this tab, Amazon will ask you to complete any and all information related to variations of your product.

If you only plan on selling one color, style, or count of your product, you can skip this screen for now and move on to the “offer” tab, by clicking it at the top of the screen.

On the other hand, if you’re going to be selling multiple versions of the product, such as different sizes, colors, or quantities, you’ll want to create them as variations at this point.

Even IF you’re only selling one style of your product, for now, I suggest setting up the listing to have variations at this point. It can be done later, but it’s much easier if you do it during the initial listing creation process.

Choose a Variation Theme:

When Creating a Variation, Amazon will first ask you to select the variation theme. There are a variety of different themes in different categories, but the most common are listed below.

• Color: For When You’re Selling Products With Different Colors (a red version and a blue version)
• Color-Size: For When You’re Selling Products With Different Colors AND Different Sizes (Blue Medium and Red Large)
• ItemPackageQuantity: If you’re Selling Multiple Counts of the Same Product (60 and 90)
• ItemPackageQuantityColor:  If you’re Selling Multiple Counts of the Same Product In Different Colors 
• Material: If you’re selling the Same Product in Different Materials (Suede and Leather)
• MaterialSize: If you’re selling the same product in different sizes and Materials.

Depending on your category, you may see some additional options. Choose the one that is the best fit for you.

At this point, Amazon will ask you to fill in the vital information for all of the variations that it has created based on the selection of your variation theme.

For example, if we select the color-size option, Amazon will create a chart and ask us to fill in the different colors and sizes we plan to offer on Amazon.

Additionally, they will ask us for our unique product identifiers for each variation that we create inside of the variations screen.

They will also ask us to fill in price-related information for each variation so that they can create the individual listings for us to fill in later.

Once you have filled out this information click your save and finish button.

Offer 

Regardless of whether or not you created variations, our next step is to fill out the “offer” tab.

Generally speaking, there are going to be 4 fields we need to complete inside of this tab.

Seller SKU:

The first field Amazon will ask you to complete the inside of this tab is your seller SKU.

While this field is not required, it’s best to fill it in with something you will recognize inside of reports.

If you choose not to complete this field, that’s okay too, Amazon will automatically generate an SKU for your product and upon completion of the West creation process will fill this information in for you.

Standard Price

The second field you’ll need to fill in is your standard price.

This price is going to be the price your product is sold for on Amazon.com, in less you create a sale which will talk about later and is the price people will see when they find your product site.

Item Condition 

The third field you need to fill in before you can move forward in the process is the item condition.

Choose the correct condition from the drop-down list and you’ll be good to go.

Generally speaking, you can either choose new or used.

If you’re creating a listing to sell your products or private-label products that you sourced, you’re going to select new.

On the other hand, if you’re reselling used products, select used.

Fulfillment channel

The final thing you’ll need to select in the offer screen is your fulfillment channel.

If you’re planning on shipping the item yourself, choose the merchant fulfilled option.

If you like Amazon to ship and provide all the customer service for you (the most common option) choose to be fulfilled by Amazon option.

Once you select your fulfillment channel click the save button and feel free to move on to the “Images” tab.

Images

The final tab that is required to create any product listing on Amazon is the images tab.

Here you’ll be able to upload between one and nine different images and by default, they will be shown on your Amazon listing in the order they are uploaded.

If you’d like to rearrange them after you’ve uploaded all of the images, you can do that once the listing has been completed created.

Amazon has a few strict requirements to follow for the images which are outlined below.

• Images need to completely and accurately represent the product you are selling.
  • This means, your image needs to show the product for sale with no additional logos, props, or accessories that are not included with the product that will be shipped when someone buys it.
• All main images must be on a pure white background.
  • Main Images must be real photos, not mockups
  • Main Images can only contain one angle of the product (they shouldn’t showcase multiple angles)
• Images must be at least 1000 pixels on the longest side and 500 pixels on the shorter side
• Images must not be larger than 10,000 pixels on the longest side
• JPEG is the preferred format, but you can also upload Gif or Tiff Images

Additionally, there are a few requirements for different categories and subcategories, all of which can be found here.

While this is technically all that’s required to complete the listing creation process in many different categories, we would be remiss if we didn’t cover a few additional things (Like your product description!) that are found by toggling the advanced view button inside of your listing creation window.

Advanced View *

By moving the advanced view toggle (located in the upper right-hand corner of your listing creation screen) will open up a variety of additional fields and tabs to completely optimize your listing.

The exact contents of the additional fields will vary from category to category, but we are going to cover several that are important regardless of the category you’re creating your product in.

Compliance *

While we don’t generally advocate that people sell chemical products or electronics, if your product falls into either of those types of categories, you want to make sure to fill out the compliance tab.

Here you will find a variety of options to fill in including whether the suck encompasses your battery or any applicable dangerous goods information and regulations as well as if your product needs to have a warning under California proposition 65.

If you are selling a non-electronic or chemical product and you know you don’t need to give a California prop 65 warning, feel free to move this tab and move on to the description tab.

Description *

Regardless of the product, you’re selling, you’ll point to fill in the description tab.

Here, you’ll find two of the most important fields for creating a listing that converts. 

Product Description:

The first thing you want to fill in under the description tab is your product description.

This is the description that is displayed on your Amazon product listing once someone searches for your product.

If you’d like to find a couple of examples of what this looks like go to any products on amazon.com and scroll down towards the bottom of the listing we will see a multiple paragraph description of the product.

This is one of the few chances we get to educate people about our product and how we can help them solve their problem and tell them why to choose us over our competitors.

This field is limited to 2000 characters, including spaces, and should only contain letters or numbers.

While in the past you’ve been able to add HTML or special characters, these are technically not allowed by Amazon and if you use them your listing can be removed.

Key Product Features

The next thing you want to fill in is what Amazon refers to as key product features.

In the real world, we call these bullet points.

These will appear alongside the images of your product on your Amazon listing directly underneath the product price.

Most categories allow you to create up to nine different bullet points to talk about the features of your product and what makes your product different/better than other products on the market.

These features are generally best written in a benefit format, meaning instead of talking about the technical things a product can do, it’s better to talk about how the different features of the product actually benefit the user.

For example, if our garlic press has a better grip than the competitors in the market, instead of saying “we have a better grip”, you could say something like “never worry about your garlic press falling out of your hands while you’re cooking again”.

This lets potential buyers know that it will fit comfortably in their hands and stay there, even if their hands are wet from cooking or they’ve dealt with this problem in the past due to the size of their hands.

Each of the key product features is limited to 500 characters, including spaces, and needs to be filled out with only letters or numbers.

There is no reason to add a bullet point, as Amazon will take care of that for you once the listings published

Cpsia Warning

The third field you’ll see inside of this tab is the consumer product safety improvement act morning dropdown.

The CPSIA warning dropdown only applies to a few different categories of products and if you’re not aware of any specific warnings for your product (such as it being a choking hazard for children), select the “No Warning Needed” option and click save.

Keywords *

The search terms or keywords field allows you to enter up to 249 bytes (characters) of information related to your product.

Generally speaking, this field should be reserved for other ways to describe your product.

If we return to the garlic press example, we may want to include, garlic crusher, garlic squeezer, and any other similar terms.

Keep In mind, that the use of competitors’ brand names or special characters is prohibited.

Using these or exceeding the 249 character limit can result in none of your additional search terms being used or indexed by Amazon.

Additionally, it’s important to keep in mind that this character limit does not include commas or spaces so feel free to use a comma-separated list in this field.

More Details *

The more details tab will contain any possible additional information that you could include about your product.

For the vast majority of products, many of the fields in this tab won’t be relevant, but take a look and make sure to fill in any fields that are relevant for your product.

You can fill in things like packaging dimensions and the weight inside of this tab below Amazon will fill in this information if you’re using the fill by Amazon service.

Additionally, if you’d like to create a presale for your product, you can do this by creating a future release date for the product inside of the more details tab.

That’s a Wrap

Congratulations, at this point you’ve made it further than the vast majority of people into your e-commerce journey.

You successfully selected a product, sourced a product, and created your first listing on Amazon.com.

At this point, you can move on to the launch phase and get ready to start building your list and making sales on Amazon.