2026-06-10 · 7 min read
Amazon Seller Central Tips for New Sellers: 10 Things to Set Up First
New to Amazon Seller Central? These 10 setup steps will protect your account, improve your listing quality, and give you the data you need to grow.
Why Setup Order Matters
Most new Amazon sellers rush to list their first product before configuring the account properly. That shortcut costs them: poor account health scores, missed sales data, and preventable suspensions. The 10 steps below take less than two hours total and prevent the most common mistakes new sellers make in their first 90 days.
1. Enable Two-Factor Authentication
Go to Account and Lists, then Login and Security. Enable Two-Step Verification using an authenticator app rather than SMS. SMS-based 2FA is vulnerable to SIM-swap attacks, which have been used to hijack Amazon seller accounts. An authenticator app generates a time-based code that is far harder to intercept. This is the single most important security step on day one.
2. Verify Your Bank Account
Amazon holds disbursements until your bank account is verified. Go to Settings, then Account Info, then Deposit Methods. Add your bank account and wait for Amazon's two small verification deposits. Confirm the amounts in Seller Central within 72 hours. Sellers who skip this step find their first payout delayed by weeks.
3. Lock In Brand Name Consistency
The brand name you register in Seller Central must match exactly what appears on your product, packaging, and any trademark application. Inconsistencies between your Seller Central brand name, your ASIN's brand attribute, and your physical packaging create friction when you apply for Brand Registry later. Decide on your brand name spelling and capitalization now and use it identically everywhere.
4. Get Category Approvals Early
Some Amazon categories require approval before you can list: Grocery, Beauty, Health, Automotive, Fine Jewelry, and others. Apply for any category approvals you need before you have inventory ready to ship. Approval can take days or weeks, and waiting until your products arrive at a warehouse causes unnecessary delays. Check which categories require approval under the Add a Product flow in Seller Central.
5. Create Your FBA Shipment Plan Before Products Ship
If you are using Fulfillment by Amazon, create the inbound shipment plan in Seller Central before your supplier ships the goods. The plan determines which Amazon fulfillment centers receive your inventory. If your supplier ships to a warehouse not in the plan, Amazon may refuse the shipment or charge unplanned prep fees. Coordinate the destination with your supplier before they book freight.
6. Configure Your Return Address Settings
Set a valid return address in Settings, then Return Settings. This address is used for FBM returns and for Amazon's return label system. An incorrect or missing return address causes customer service issues and can affect your return processing metrics. Use a real address that can receive packages, even if you plan to use FBA for most orders.
7. Check the Listing Quality Dashboard
After creating your first listing, go to Inventory, then Manage All Inventory, then the Listing Quality tab. Amazon scores each listing on completeness: images, bullet points, description, backend keywords, and required attributes. Low-quality scores reduce your listing's visibility in search results. Fix every yellow or red flag before you start advertising or expecting organic traffic.
8. Understand A9 Algorithm Basics
Amazon's A9 search algorithm ranks listings based on relevance and conversion probability. The two inputs you control most are keyword placement and conversion rate. Put your primary keyword in the first 80 characters of your title. Your conversion rate improves with better images, competitive pricing, and accurate descriptions. Organic ranking follows sales velocity, so listing quality directly affects how fast you climb after your first sales.
9. Set Up Pricing Health Alerts
Amazon can suppress your Buy Box if your price is significantly higher than the same product elsewhere online. Go to Pricing, then Automate Pricing, and set a price floor that protects your margins. Also enable pricing health notifications in your Account Health settings. Catching a suppressed Buy Box on day one instead of day seven recovers real revenue.
10. Find the Voice of the Customer Report
The Voice of the Customer (VOC) report in Seller Central (under Performance) shows customer feedback on your listings, including common complaints and return reasons. New sellers often miss this report entirely. Check it after your first 10 to 15 orders. If customers consistently report that the product did not match the description or arrived damaged, that signal tells you what to fix before you scale advertising spend.
What to Do After Setup
Once these 10 steps are complete, run a listing audit on every ASIN you add. The free Amazon listing audit checks your listings for suppression risks, image issues, and keyword gaps before they cost you ranking or sales. Prevention is faster than recovery on Amazon.
What to Watch in Your First 90 Days
Setup gets you listed. The first 90 days decide whether the account survives. Amazon judges new sellers on a small set of metrics, and the thresholds are published rather than secret. Order defect rate has to stay under 1%. Late shipment rate under 4%. Pre-fulfilment cancel rate under 2.5%. Valid tracking rate above 95%. Those four apply to seller-fulfilled orders, so an FBA-only seller starts with most of them at zero by default, which is one of the quieter arguments for starting on FBA.
Check Account Health weekly, not when something breaks. The page shows each metric against its target and flags policy violations separately. A single intellectual property complaint on a new account carries far more weight than the same complaint on a three-year-old account with a clean record, because Amazon has nothing else to judge you on yet.
The Three Things That Suspend New Accounts
Related account linkage. If Amazon associates your new account with an older suspended one, through a shared bank account, address, device, or IP, it closes the new account without much discussion. This catches people who are genuinely unrelated, such as two sellers in a shared office. If you know there is a link, disclose it up front rather than waiting to be asked.
Inauthentic item complaints. A single customer claiming your product is not genuine can trigger a request for invoices. Amazon wants supplier invoices from the last 365 days showing quantities that cover your sales, with contact details it can verify. Receipts from a retail store do not qualify. Arrange this paperwork before you need it, because the response window is short.
Dropshipping policy violations. Buying from another retailer and having that retailer ship directly to your Amazon customer is against policy, no matter how the packing slip looks. Amazon's stated rule is that you must be the seller of record on every packing slip, invoice, and piece of packaging.
Set Up Your Reporting Before You Need It
Two reports do most of the work in the first quarter. The Business Report under Reports, then Business Reports, then Detail Page Sales and Traffic by Child Item, gives you sessions, unit session percentage, and buy box percentage per ASIN. Unit session percentage is your conversion rate, and it is the number that tells you whether a listing problem is a traffic problem or a persuasion problem.
The Search Query Performance report under Brands, available once you are in Brand Registry, shows the actual search terms bringing impressions to your ASIN along with your share of clicks and purchases for each. It is the closest thing Amazon gives you to its own keyword data, and it costs nothing.
What Not to Do in the First 90 Days
Do not run advertising on a listing that is not finished. Paying for clicks into a listing with three images and no A+ content burns budget teaching Amazon that your product does not convert, and conversion history follows the ASIN.
Do not ask for reviews outside the official channels. The Request a Review button in Seller Central and Amazon Vine are the two compliant routes. Inserts offering a gift card for a review are a policy violation and the suspensions that follow are hard to reverse.
Do not change your main image after the listing gains traction without checking conversion afterwards. A main image change resets nothing in the algorithm, but it does change how many people click, and new sellers often swap images without measuring the result.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does Amazon seller account verification take in 2026?
Identity and business verification usually completes in two to seven business days once you have uploaded readable documents. The most common delay is a mismatch between the address on your bank statement or utility bill and the address on the account. Amazon compares them literally, so an abbreviated street name on one document and a spelled-out one on the other can send you back to the start.
Do I need an LLC to sell on Amazon?
No. Amazon accepts individual sellers in most marketplaces and you can register as a sole proprietor. An LLC changes your liability and tax position, not your eligibility to sell. Whatever entity you choose, the legal name and tax details in Seller Central must match your tax registration exactly, because Amazon validates them against government records.
Should a new seller start with FBA or FBM?
FBA removes four of the account health metrics from your control and makes your listings Prime eligible, which is worth a meaningful conversion difference in most categories. FBM gives you lower fixed costs and full control of the shipping experience. Most new sellers with a small number of SKUs do better on FBA, and the sellers who do better on FBM tend to be selling heavy, bulky, slow-moving, or made-to-order items where FBA storage fees eat the margin.
How much money do I need to start selling on Amazon?
The Professional selling plan is $39.99 a month and the Individual plan charges $0.99 per item sold instead, so the platform cost is small. Inventory is the real number, and it depends entirely on the model. Retail arbitrage can start under a few hundred dollars. A private label launch with a minimum order quantity, photography, and launch advertising is usually several thousand.
What is a good conversion rate for a new Amazon listing?
Unit session percentage between 10% and 15% is normal across many categories, and strong listings run higher. A new listing sitting under 5% with real traffic usually has a price, image, or review-count problem rather than a keyword problem. Compare against your own category rather than a global average, because grocery and apparel behave nothing like electronics.