If you live in the United States
You can skip most of lesson 3 and parts of lesson 4, and you have the option of selling as an individual before forming a company. Everything else applies unchanged.
Course · Amazon.com
Selling on Amazon in the United States
Sixteen lessons that take you from “I have heard you can sell on Amazon” to a live account with inventory, a supplier, and books that balance. Written for beginners, including people who do not live in the United States.
Before you start
Read them in order. The order is the point.
Most people start at lesson 6 — they open Seller Central, get asked for a bank account in the company's name and a tax identification number they do not have, and stop. Lessons 0 to 5 exist so that by the time you reach registration, every document Amazon asks for is already in a folder on your desk.
If you live outside the United States
Amazon accepts sellers from a long list of countries, and non-residents form U.S. companies every day. The extra work is concentrated in lessons 2 to 5: a company, a tax number, an address, a bank. It is procedural, not impossible.
What this course will not do
Promise a number. Nobody honest can tell you what you will earn, and any course that opens with a monthly figure is selling something. We will show you how the arithmetic works and let you run it on a real product.
Syllabus
The sixteen lessons.
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What it actually costs to start
The four ways people sell on Amazon and what each one really needs in cash. Amazon's two selling plans, referral fees by category, and the costs that appear later — storage, returns, advertising, accounting.
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Choosing a model and your first product
How to pick between arbitrage, wholesale and private label with your own money and time in mind, and how to run unit economics on a product before you buy a single unit.
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The company: LLC, EIN, and the forms nobody warns you about
Sole proprietor or LLC, which state, what a registered agent is, how to get an EIN with no Social Security number, and the annual filing that carries a $25,000 penalty if a foreign-owned LLC skips it.
A U.S. address, mail and a phone number
What kind of address holds up when Amazon verifies you, how mail forwarding works, and getting a usable U.S. phone number from abroad.
The bank account
Which providers open business accounts for non-residents, what they ask for, how long it takes, and how to pay suppliers without losing money on the conversion.
Sales tax, resale certificates and when you need a CPA
Why Amazon already collects sales tax for you, why you may still have filings, and the resale certificate your wholesale suppliers will ask for before they sell you anything.
Opening the Seller Central account
The documents, the identity video call, the reasons registrations get refused, and what to do when the account lands under review.
Brands, gated categories and Brand Registry
Why you cannot list some products on day one, how approval actually works, what a trademark costs at the USPTO, and how intellectual-property complaints end accounts.
Finding wholesale suppliers and writing to brands
Where authorized distributors live, what a first email to a brand should say, minimum order quantities, pro-forma invoices, and how to spot a supplier who does not exist.
Private label and importing into the United States
Sourcing, samples, inspections, Incoterms, and the 2026 import reality: the $800 de minimis exemption is gone and every commercial shipment is a customs entry.
FBA or FBM: getting inventory to the customer
Prep requirements, labels, shipping plans, capacity limits, storage costs, and when handling your own shipping is the cheaper answer.
The listing and the launch
Titles, images, keywords, the Buy Box, first sales, and the review rules that carry federal penalties if you break them.
Running the account: metrics, money, returns
Order defects, late shipments, A-to-z claims, reconciling payouts against your books, and the liability insurance Amazon requires once you cross a monthly sales threshold.
Scaling without breaking anything
What to hand to an assistant, what to automate, how to add products without running out of cash, and when private label starts making sense.
The mistakes that kill accounts
One checklist of everything that suspends sellers: counterfeits, review manipulation, multiple accounts, tax neglect, and the ones nobody expects.
When it is time to sell in Europe
What transfers from your U.S. operation, what does not, and the point at which the European course becomes worth your time.
Educational content, not legal, tax or immigration advice. Laws and Amazon policies change; verify with the official source and a licensed professional.