Amazon Individual Sellers and Professional Sellers: Key Differences and Upgrade Guide
On Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce platform, sellers can choose to become individual sellers or professional sellers according to their own needs. This article will dive into the key differences between the two, as well as the process of how an individual seller can upgrade to a professional seller.
Differences in fee structure
- Individual sellers: No fixed monthly fees, but you will be charged $0.99 plus Amazon service fees for each item sold.
- Professional Sellers: Pay a fixed monthly fee of $39.99, plus commission on each sale.
Sales permissions and restrictions
Product category
- Individual sellers: Limited to a small number of product categories, some categories require platform permission before they can be sold.
- Professional sellers: Enjoy wider rights to sell product categories. Except for a few restricted products, most categories can be freely listed.
Batch operations
- Individual sellers: Bulk upload of products is not supported and needs to be added manually one by one; detailed order data analysis reports cannot be viewed.
- Professional sellers: You can upload a large number of products through the backend batch upload tool, and use advanced reporting functions to monitor sales performance.
Logistics and distribution
- Individual sellers: If you use FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon), you will need to pay extra for each item.
- Professional Sellers: FBA services included in the monthly fee.
Marketing Tools
- Individual Seller: Does not have permission to create promotions.
- Professional sellers: can design various promotional plans independently.
Golden Shopping Cart
- Individual seller: Not eligible for golden shopping cart.
- Professional Seller: Have the opportunity to obtain it after reaching certain performance standards.
International market expansion
- Individual sellers: Usually limited to their home market.
- Professional sellers: able to reach more international markets.
Advantages of becoming a professional seller
- Increased sales potential: Having more category sales authority means higher turnover.
- Lower transaction costs: Although there is a fixed monthly rent, the marginal cost of each transaction is lower in the long run.
- Get more tool support: Enjoy features like batch processing to improve operational efficiency.
- Broaden sales channels: Gain access to more international sites.
How to upgrade from an individual seller to a professional seller
- Log in to your Amazon seller account.
- Select the “Upgrade to Professional Plan” option in Seller Center and follow the instructions to complete the information update, including tax ID and payment method settings.
- You will officially become a professional seller after passing the review.
Through the above steps, sellers can not only enjoy richer functions and services, but also further expand their business scale and enhance their competitiveness. I hope every seller can find the business model that suits them best and achieve a career breakthrough!