Amazon Seller Central is the dashboard third-party sellers use to list and sell products on Amazon, the largest online marketplace in the U.S. It puts your products in front of Amazon’s enormous customer base, including the many shoppers who start their product searches on Amazon instead of Google.
Sellers choose how orders get fulfilled. With Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), you send inventory to Amazon’s warehouses and Amazon handles storage, packing, shipping, returns, and customer service, which also makes products eligible for Prime shipping. With merchant fulfillment, you ship orders yourself. Brand owners can also enroll in Brand Registry for added protection and marketing tools.
Amazon works best for product businesses with healthy margins that can compete on price and reviews. Casual sellers can start on the Individual plan, but the Professional plan unlocks advertising, bulk listing tools, and eligibility for the Buy Box.
The trade-offs are real. Between referral fees, FBA fees, storage charges, and advertising, total costs can take a large share of each sale. Competition is intense, you get limited access to customer data, and Amazon enforces strict performance standards that can put your account at risk if your metrics slip.
For Long Island product brands, Amazon usually works best as one sales channel alongside your own website rather than the whole business.