Are you an industrial designer? Sell your products online

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Some categories (for example beauty and food) are gated by Amazon. This means that you have to provide invoices before you can sell in these. In general, I would avoid these to start. 

You have to make sure that you have enough margin. This can be calculated by taking the selling price and subtracting the product cost, cost of shipping from Asia to USA, and the fulfillment price (search for the FBA calculator and add the ASIN of your competitor to calculate this. You can find the ASIN on the product page). You also have to take some other costs into account (returns, storage costs etc.) so make sure that you have enough margin. 

Avoid seasonal products and competing with big brands. 

Oversized products are more expensive to ship so be careful.

For standard-sized products, these are the rules:

-Each carton should weigh less than 50 lb (22 kg) and measure a maximum of 24 inch on any side. (61 cm, 63.5 cm)

-Each carton should contain the same amount of units

-Each box should weigh less than 20 lbs (9 kg) and measure 18" or less on its longest side (A) 14" or less on its median side (B) 8" or less on its shortest side (C) (45 35 20cm)

Products larger or heavier are considered oversized and will be more expensive to ship. Make sure that your manufacturer follows these packaging guidelines.

Check the patents or hire someone on Upwork to do it for you.

Hire a lawyer to check if you need warning labels on the product. Also, ask what certification is needed and check with your manufacturer if they have these. Add a label to indicate where the product is made.

The manufacturer needs a really detailed design to make a sample. In this video we discuss the design document that you need to provide to the manufacturer.

You can contact inspection companies (see for example Qima) and ask what needs to be checked. They will perform the tests. If possible you do this before you work with a manufacturer so that you are sure that they have the required certificates as well. 

You can contact inspection companies (see for example Qima) and ask what needs to be checked. They will perform the tests. 

You can ship goods from Asia to the USA by sea or by air. Air is more expensive. You can contact freight forwarders and they will arrange the shipping for you. In Amazon you create the shipping labels and send these to your freight forwarder. He should take care of everything. Freightos is a great site to get started and get some bids.

You will need to fulfill orders. You can do this yourself but it is a lot easier if you let Amazon do it. You can send your goods to their warehouses. This is called FBA (fulfilled by Amazon). This makes your life a lot easier and I would recommend it. It has some tax implications as it creates nexus in multiple locations but this is something that you will have to discuss with your accountant.

Google 'open Amazon seller account' and go through the steps. Once you have an account, it is possible to add a new product. You will need a barcode for this (this can be bought from GS1). Once you have the barcode, you just add the product description. 

There are tools (for example Helium10) that will help you with finding keywords that have high search volume. This will help you to rank higher in the Amazon search results. Higher ranking =  more sales and this leads to higher ranking so it is a vicious circle. Therefore you need to add all the pictures you can and do the keyword research using a software tool. You can use the same keywords for the ads. It is also possible to hire someone on Upwork or Junglemarket to do this for you. 

Go for a pro account as this is not very expensive and offers more options. 

Contact a trademark lawyer and get your trademark done. This will allow you to register your brand with Amazon and open up new advertising opportunities. Amazon also offers some options to expedite this process.

Go to Upwork or Junglemarket and search for a freelancer that has experience with Amazon products. Filter based on location and reviews. Check their portfolio. Look at listings of Anker (this is a famous brand on Amazon) to see how they present their products.

You have to reply to customer messages within 24 hours, you have to check the customer feedback (and ask to remove it if it is negative). You also have to check Voice of the customer. 

Other than this it is mainly checking the inventory levels. We use InventoryPlanner for this.

We also use Helloprofit to get an overview of our sales. AdBadger is used to manage our ads. 

Try to find more products in your niche or bundle products together to grow. It is the same process over again. Rinse and repeat.