Amazon Handmade: Getting Started Guide

To support growing craft communities and to facilitate successful business ventures, Amazon Handmade provides an opportunity to offer your unique, handcrafted products to customers around the world. Refer to the tips below for ideas on how to improve discoverability of your handmade products after listing them for sale, which in turn can drive more traffic and sales.

Once you create a selling account, you can apply to join Amazon Handmade.

Note: A Professional selling plan is required to unlock Handmade features and benefits, including the ability for your listings to display in search results and being eligible for Handmade’s lower referral fees.

We waive the monthly Professional selling plan fee, following your approval to sell in Amazon Handmade and your approval for a Professional selling plan, for as long as you are approved to sell in Amazon Handmade, have eligible products for sale in the Handmade store, and are approved for a Professional selling plan.

To verify whether or not you have a professional selling plan enabled, go to Account Info and check Sell on Amazon, under Your Services section. This should say “Professional”.

The professional selling plan is required because it unlocks the features necessary for listing products in the Handmade category and for them to show up in search results so customers can purchase them. If you do not have the professional selling plan enabled, go to Switch to a Professional selling plan for step-by-step instructions.
We will waive the monthly fee following your approval to sell in Amazon Handmade. This waiver will be in place as long as you are approved to sell in Amazon Handmade and you have compliant products listed in the Handmade store.

Once you are approved to sell in Amazon Handmade:

Go to Add a Product page to create your first listing.
- Select a Category and Sub Category that best fits your product.
- Provide the required information to create your listing:
  - Tabs with a red exclamation mark in a circle indicate tabs that have required entries.
  - Fields within a tab marked with an asterisk (*) are fields that require an entry.
  - Click Advanced View to display additional tabs that contain fields where you can provide additional details. We recommend that you provide bullet points and keywords to ensure customers can find your products.
Click Save & Publish.

Alternatively, you can upload listings in bulk by using Amazon Handmade: Use inventory templates to upload products to your account.

For more information, go to Amazon Handmade: Amazon Handmade: List your products.

Note: Most listings go live in an hour, but it can take three to four hours until your listing is synchronized and searchable on the website.

Best practices

Use appropriate titles, search terms, and occasion types for each of your listings that enables customers to search for and find your products. For more information, go to Optimize your product discoverability.

Review titles to help customers find your products:

Titles should be clear and succinct. Use short and simple words that describe the product as titles. For additional information on product listing titles, go to Amazon Handmade: Product title best practices.

Optimize search terms to improve search results:

Search terms are essential keywords that help customers find your products in the Handmade store when they search for them. Search terms should focus on subjects closely related to your product and are words that others may use in a search query to find them.

For information on how to update your search terms, go to Amazon Handmade: Edit product listings.

Search term best practices:

Search terms should be one word only, not a phrase, compound word, or sentence.
Put yourself in your customer’s frame of mind. What words would they use to search for your product?
Do not use your product title or brand as keywords. Amazon already includes them in the search index.
Search terms can always be updated or changed, so try new ones to see if that improves search ranking.
Do not use common misspellings and variations in pluralization, capitalization, and spacing, in your keywords. Amazon search accounts for these.

For additional information, go to Using search terms effectively.

Images:

High-resolution images with clear details that highlight your product can create defining impressions in potential customers. For additional information, go to Amazon Handmade: Image requirements best practices.

Note: If you are a registered Brand Owner, you can change the product page to describe your product features in a different way by including a unique brand story, enhanced images, and text placements. To learn more, go to About A+ Content.

We recommend your main image to be on a white background and other images to show the product in use. Note that text, logos, graphics, or watermarks are not allowed on your main image.

Product descriptions:

Optimize Product description and Bullet Points.. Your product description should be a concise, but friendly overview of your product and its uses.
Your bullet points will reflect specific features of your products, such as size, color, scent, metal, age restriction or other warnings.
Bullet points make it easier for customers to shop your products by highlighting key features and benefits in a quick, digestible format.
If bullet points are indexed for your product, being shorter than 1,000 characters improves discoverability of content in the bullet points.

Listing:

Set expectations accordingly by entering the production time (time needed to create the product) for each listing. You will find this field in the Offer tab while creating your listing. Faster and accurate delivery promises ensure a good customer experience and may improve sales.
Note: Sellers offering a delivery timeframe of less than 14 days can generate up to a 20% increase in glance views for their listings.
Consider listing variations. Variations are similar products, differing in size, color, metal type, and other variants displayed on a single detail page. Having your listings consolidated under a single detail page allows you to consolidate your reviews.

Add occasion type to your items:

Occasion types allow you to label your product for a specific occasion or theme to your product (like weddings or birthdays). Customers can browse by occasion type in the Handmade store, making discoverability easier for products relevant to events.

For information on how to add/update your occasion types on a product listing, go to Amazon Handmade: Edit product listings.

Shipping and delivery options:

Your total delivery time is a combination of your production or handling time + delivery time. Configuring an accurate delivery time for your products helps ensure a good customer experience and improve sales because you will see fewer order cancellations and late shipment penalties.

Consider the best shipping options for your products. Maintaining accurate shipping times is critical in establishing trust with customers and maintaining a strong seller performance rating.
Consider offering free delivery. Customers love free delivery, and cite it as a primary influence when making customer’s online purchase decisions.

For best practices on configuring these options, go to Amazon Handmade: Best practices for fulfilling orders.

Another option to consider is Use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to ship your Handmade products. With FBA, you ship your products to one of our fulfillment centers and when a customer places an order, Amazon ships it for you.

Your products are eligible for Amazon Prime FREE Two-Day Shipping and more.
Customers get Amazon's trusted customer service and returns.
Our services let your business scale quickly.
It is cost-effective.

Advertise on Amazon with Sponsored Products:

Sponsored Products is an advertising service that helps you promote the products you list on Amazon. You choose which products you want to advertise, assign keywords to those products, and enter a cost-per-click bid. When an Amazon customer searches Amazon, using one of your keywords, your product advertisement is eligible for display alongside the search results. You pay a fee for this service only when an Amazon customer clicks your advertisement, at which point the customer is taken to the detail page where your offer is listed.

Click here to get started.

Learn from other makers on Handmade community forums:

There is an entire Handmade community at your disposal on Seller Central.

Click here to interact with our community of makers. Ask questions or help fellow makers with their questions.

Amazon also maintains an exclusive Facebook group.

Market your maker profile and promote on social media:

Once you set up your maker profile, you can use the short URL to promote your store on your own social media accounts like Facebook or Instagram. Let friends, family, and customers know that your products are available for sale in the Amazon Handmade store.

When posting to social media posts about you, the maker, or your products, tag @amazonhandmade in your post for a chance to be featured.

Amazon Handmade: Getting Started Guide

Best practices

See also

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