How do you sell on Amazon UK?
To sell on Amazon UK, open a Seller Central account on a Professional or Individual plan, register your brand in Amazon Brand Registry, create listings for your products, and choose how to fulfil orders: Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) or shipping them yourself. Then grow through strong listings, reviews and Amazon Advertising, while managing your margin after referral fees, fulfilment fees and ad spend. For a brand, the goal isn't just sales on Amazon. It's profitable sales that don't undercut your other channels.
This guide is for consumer brands, whether you're launching on Amazon for the first time or already selling there and want it to pay its way.
1. Choose how you'll sell: Seller Central or Vendor Central
- Seller Central (third-party seller): you sell directly to Amazon's customers, set your own prices and own the stock until it sells. This is where most growing brands start.
- Vendor Central (first-party, invitation-only): you sell wholesale to Amazon, which buys your stock and sets the retail price. Less work day to day, much less control.
2. Open your Seller Central account
Amazon UK offers two plans: Individual, at £0.75 per item sold, and Professional, at £25 a month excluding VAT however much you sell. The Professional plan unlocks advertising, bulk listing tools and more categories, so it's the right choice for almost every brand. You'll need business details, identity documents, a bank account and a card to register. Fees change, so check Amazon's UK pricing page before you launch.
3. Register your brand in Amazon Brand Registry
Brand Registry is essential for brands. It needs an active registered or pending trademark, for example with the UK Intellectual Property Office, and gives you:
- Control of your listings, so resellers can't change your product content.
- Brand protection tools to report counterfeits and copycats.
- A+ content and a Brand Store, for richer product pages and a branded shop on Amazon.
- Sponsored Brands ads and access to Amazon Vine, which helps new products get early reviews.
4. Build listings that rank and convert
Amazon is a search engine. Your title, bullet points and backend keywords decide whether you're found; your images, A+ content, price and reviews decide whether you're bought. Use the words customers actually search for, show the product in use, answer the questions that cause returns, and group sizes and colours as variations so reviews build in one place. The conversion principles that apply on your own website apply here too.
5. Decide between FBA and FBM
- Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA): you send stock to Amazon's warehouses and Amazon picks, ships and handles returns. Your products become eligible for Prime, which usually lifts conversion, but you pay fulfilment and storage fees.
- Fulfilment by Merchant (FBM): you ship orders yourself or through your own warehouse. More control and no Amazon storage fees, but you have to hit Amazon's delivery standards.
Many brands use FBA for fast-moving lines and FBM for bulky, fragile or slow-selling products.
6. Get your first reviews the right way
Reviews drive both ranking and conversion. Use legitimate routes, such as Amazon Vine for new products and good post-purchase service. Never buy reviews or offer incentives for positive ones: it breaks Amazon's rules and can get your account suspended.
7. Advertise on Amazon
Most Amazon sales start with a search, and ads decide a lot of what appears first. Start with Sponsored Products on your core range, then add Sponsored Brands once you're in Brand Registry. Measure every campaign against margin, not just return on ad spend, and use the search-term data to improve your listings.
8. Protect your margin and your other channels
Track each product on contribution per order: sale price, minus the referral fee, fulfilment and storage fees, ad spend, returns and product cost. Then protect the rest of your business:
- Keep pricing consistent with your own website and retail partners, so Amazon doesn't undercut them.
- Choose your range deliberately. You don't have to list everything; some brands keep hero or exclusive lines for their own website.
- Watch for unauthorised resellers and counterfeits, and use Brand Registry to deal with them.
Common mistakes brands make
- Launching without Brand Registry, then losing control of the listing to resellers.
- Pricing as if Amazon were free, forgetting referral and fulfilment fees.
- Running ads on return on ad spend alone, scaling sales that lose money.
- Letting stock run out, which can cost you your ranking.
- Treating Amazon as a separate business instead of part of one channel plan.
Where Amazon fits in your channel mix
Amazon brings reach: customers who start their search there and may never visit your website. Your own site is where you own the customer relationship and the data, which is the heart of D2C. The strongest brands run both deliberately, with clear roles, pricing and range for each. See how we run D2C ecommerce growth across Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop and retail media.