Making sure that the spelling of your business address
is verified and accurately set up with UPS
is extremely important to have set up
before you set up your Amazon seller account
Now, this is just one of the things you need to do
And because of this, this is the reason why
that many Amazon accounts could get suspended
So if you don't do these things right here
you could have suspensions, account's gonna be deactivated
or you can have issues down the road
So, in this video
Hi, my name is Beau Crabill
You have no idea who I am, maybe you do
You know, selling on Amazon every single day
And what I wanna do in this video is explain some things
you need to be doing before setting up an Amazon seller account
So one, like I just said, is making sure the spelling of your address
is perfectly correct with the UPS
How you can do this is, you can actually go to the ups.com
So just ups.com
I'll put a link down below as well for the address validator
Is, you just type in
You know, you could type in your name or your company name
There will be street address, the floor number, city, all that stuff
Now, what it's gonna populate out
You'll see what it is, like right here
The one thing that you wanna kinda look for is the little
last digits of the zip code
Because, you know, a zip code is typically
people know the first 5 digits
but there's also those last few digits at the end that
people don't know
If your address is not validated
not verified, or if you're spelling it wrong
Then if you go into Amazon, Amazon's partnered with the UPS
And if your address is incorrect, they may just
automatically flag your account as not good and deactivated
Also, what you want to do is have two forms of ID ready to go
So, passport and a driver's license is fine
If you don't have a passport, I suggest going to usps.com and
I heard that actually
Eventually, you're gonna have to need
to get a passport anyway to travel
So, the reasons for this is that Amazon, they are a bit of a
I don't wanna say hassle, but they make you jump through some hoops
when you first get your account set up, especially recently
You know, as I'm making this video in 2020
is, Amazon has suspended a lot of sellers recently
And it's because, the main
I think the reason why, my theory behind it
I don't think there's many, much evidence behind this
because I don't think it would be illegal to get that evidence
But there's a lot of sellers in China
and Russia, and also in America who have set up
fake accounts to mess with other sellers
Now, this does not happen that much in the online retail
wholesale space that I practice and preach about
It happens a lot in the private label space
where things can get a little dirty and black at
So, that happened a lot in late 2018, early 2019
It was just a huge mess
So, what I believe is, now going on, is Amazon's making sure that
people are actually legit and they're real people
So because of that, the right address is one thing
Having two forms of ID, passport and driver's license
Make sure it says the same thing
on your driver's license and passport
Like, don't have your names spelled differently
Having a credit card or debit card for your business
Now, you don't have to set up an Amazon account under a business
You can set it up yourself just as an individual
But one thing I would caution is that
if you plan to later be a business on Amazon
keep that in mind
Now, you can always, I'm not a tax attorney
I don't, I can't give legal advice
I'm not, I can't give you legal advice
I do have people in some of my trainings
that are actually legal attorneys
that can provide you with this advice
But if you're gonna later change on to a business
keep that in mind because there could be some
hoops you have to jump through
And if you do decide to change into an LLC or into an S Corp
If your EIN changes, or there's
a different part in the business in a different address
communicate with Amazon prior
just so there's a log of communications saying, hey
I'm about to change my address
Hey, I am now a new entity, can I update this, right?
So it's super important to do that
So with that, have some type of credit card
Now, some people
they don't like to get a credit card, that's fine
It does make it a little harder operating your Amazon business
But you can technically do it with a debit card
But Amazon likes having a credit card
It's just 'cause they sometimes may have to charge your card
so do keep that in mind
Some sort of utility bill
So Amazon now, especially if you're in a single-member LLC
or sole proprietor, is
you're gonna have to have some sort of utility bill
for the address that you put on
So again, Amazon, all they're looking for is their
Most of their like, things that they try to get a hit on
or like, try to suspend accounts, or whatever they try to make
your business a hassle, is, they have robots running
and algorithms that if there's any discrepancies that like
okay, if you're address is wrong
or if your utility bill doesn't match with your address
or if your driver's license doesn't match with your address
anything like that, then, you know, that can be a hassle
So, some sort of utility bill will be handy
on the address that you have on your business
Also, this is really important
When you're ready to set up your Amazon account
understand that you don't wanna be on a public WiFi
Amazon has suspended a lot of sellers recently
because they're changing WiFi, stuff like that
So, Amazon won't necessarily always give their rules of
how people get suspended
But what I have seen, this'll be the safest thing to do
is have one computer for your Amazon business
one IP address, and one WiFi
So, the reason why I actually decided to use
and actually create up one of, my analyzer tool
Which is now rebranded to Supplier Scout
the Crabill Analyzer Tool
Is, I can operate my analyzer tool on any type of computer
So before, there's a couple of tools out there that are a lot worse
That you'd have to like, download something
You have to, I used to have a PC, and then I also had a Mac
So, I was signing from different computers
You know, I got my Amazon account suspended a long time ago
because I was dropshipping, and arbitrage, and things like that
But to keep it as safe as possible
use one computer, one IP address, one WiFi
If you have to sign in to public WiFis
I would suggest maybe having a hotspot with you
with your cellphone carrier
You can get a hotspot like, with Verizon or AT&T
Typically like, hotel WiFis are pretty secured and are fine to use
unless you're using the public one behind it
So like, if you go to a hotel and you're like
using your room WiFi, that's fine
But if you go into the public Starbucks WiFi
or you go to some local place, or the mall
I don't suggest doing that at all
Also, the last thing is keep your login secured
I use a little thing called LastPass
I believe they have a free version
They may have some paid versions as well
I think I use a paid one
But, oh yeah, so no, we have our team that uses a paid one
but I have a free one
But anyway, there's a thing called LastPass
where if you have to share logins with your team
or anything like that
Actually, the first thing, what I would suggest doing
is add any of your team members as secondary users
So in your Amazon account, you can go log in
you can do that, I'll put some screenshots up here as well
You can go to users, you can add secondary users
Secondary users are fine, right?
So also, if you're managing someone else's Amazon account
You know, I work with brands all the time
and I manage their accounts
I'm like, please add me as a secondary user
Like, show 'em a PDF, show 'em how to do it, and go from there
I don't want them to share the logins
I don't want like, me to log in from my computer
I wanna be as a secondary user as my e-mail
That's totally fine, that's legit inside Amazon
But for some reason that you need to share your logins
To a business partner, to an employee
or whatever it may be, use LastPass
Amazon does not like when passwords are being shared around
If your password gets leaked and then someone logs in
or even tries to log in, that's not good at all
I had someone tried to hack into my Amazon account
but they had the wrong e-mail luckily, a few years ago
I think it's because I'm on YouTube
But they were able to log in to a different account that I had and
Anyway, so keep 'em secured
I use LastPass
What LastPass does, it's kinda cool
Is, you can go to a website, and it will automatically populate
those logins
And you actually don't have to share the password with somebody
It will just go, it'll just show the black little dots
So you can do that
Also have 2-factor authentication on your Amazon account
So, what you can do in Amazon
is you can have Amazon send you a code every time that you log in
Now, if you're using one computer, one IP address, one WiFi
you can just hit save this computer
and it's not gonna have to do that again
But for whatever reason
if someone tries to log in from somewhere else
is you can have a 2-factor authentication set up
that can get sent to your phone or an authentication app
or Gmail, whatever it may be
One good use of this is Google Voice
So with Google Voice, you can get a number set up
where if someone calls your current cellphone number
it would say, hello, this is a Google Voice number
And 206, whatever number from Amazon is calling you
Would you like to pick up, right?
Or it'll say, hi
This is someone from Amazon calling
So then you can pick it up from your phone
The person on the other end
thinks you're talking from your Google Voice number
which is just some number that's not actually yours
And then also, you can get Google Voice linked up to your Gmail
So if someone sends a voicemail to you
or if Amazon texts you that code
then they will be able to get that code and log it in
So the last thing I wanna talk about
'Cause this is kind of all about making sure that there's
less friction in all of Amazon
And, you know, I don't like this to be
a big of a deal due to the fact that like
selling on Amazon should be very simple
You get an account set up, good
But Amazon does suspend a lot more people recently
And I believe it's due to the fact that people
mess up on these types of things
I wouldn't worry about Amazon suspending you
But the only other thing that you should be worried of
off of reducing issues with Amazon, is going too fast too quick
So, if you opened up your account
and just sent a bunch of inventory like, on the first day
watch out
Now, what I mean by too much inventory
Like, if you go from doing nothing and then started doing
thousands of dollars a day
or like, tens of thousands of dollars a week, that's not good
Or if you just send in a crazy amount of units
and if you have mistakes at the beginning
Amazon, they are very wary
of sellers who make mistakes at the beginning
Now, all of this stuff, I believe, is actually very positive
Because the more, harder it is to sell on Amazon, the more issues
Amazon puts barriers behind sellers, it's good news
I see it as good news because people are not educated
Like, the 99% of people who have not watched my YouTube videos
who have no idea what they're doing
they're gonna quit
And the people who know what they're doing
So like, you watch my videos, people in my trainings
webinars I do, workshops, everything like that
You're more educated, so you can, you know
not go through these issues
But anyway, recap this
I talked about issues and things you wanna do
for getting your Amazon account set up
If you have any other questions about that
or any question about selling on Amazon
comment them down below, and that's about it
So, I will see you in the next video