Guides

“Approval needed” on Amazon is not one problem with one fix — the same two words appear on at least five structurally different screens, and the correct response to each is different. Two of them are not about gating at all: one is a purchase order waiting on a colleague, and one is a brand-owned block that no invoice will ever clear. Sending a supplier invoice into the wrong one of these is the single most common reason sellers spend weeks on a wall that was never going to move. ...

Used - Like New on Amazon means the item is fully functional and effectively unworn — the box has been opened, and that is close to the only thing separating it from New. Amazon’s published buyer-facing definition, in full: “An item in perfect working condition. Original protective wrapping may be missing, but the original packaging is intact and in good condition with minor damage possible. Instructions are included.” (Amazon, Marketplace Items Condition Guidelines, data checked 2026-08-07.) ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This does not affect our rankings or conclusions. Short answer, tested on 2026-08-07: Amazon still has exactly one advanced search page, and it is for books only — https://www.amazon.com/advanced-search/books/ returned HTTP 200 with a working form, while /advanced-search/, /advanced-search/music/, /advanced-search/video/, /advanced-search/software/, /advanced-search/videogames/ and /advanced-search/dvd/ all returned HTTP 404. Google-style operators (OR, NOT, intitle:, a leading minus) do not filter the main product search: in every test below they narrowed results by matching the operator word as ordinary text, and in two cases returned exactly the products they were supposed to exclude. What does still work is unglamorous: URL parameters (node=, rh=), the left-hand sidebar refinements, and third-party databases built on top of Amazon’s catalog. ...

An Amazon Business account and an Amazon seller account are two different account types that sit on opposite sides of the marketplace. An Amazon Business account is a buying account: it is the B2B version of a normal Amazon shopping account, with multiple users, business pricing and purchasing analytics. An Amazon seller account is a selling account: it is what you use to list products, manage orders and get paid through Seller Central. Neither one converts into the other, and closing one does not close the other. Data checked 2026-08-07. ...

Here is the single answer, checked against Amazon-published pages on 2026-08-07: Amazon announced in 2021 that it would stop supporting HTML tags in the product description on product detail pages, and it has never published a list of tags that remain permitted. Every “but this one tag still works” claim you can find — <br>, </br>, <b>, <ul> — traces back to replies written by other sellers on the Seller Forums, not to Amazon. The supported path to formatted, visual content on a detail page today is A+ Content, and Amazon staff say so on the forums themselves. ...

An Amazon FBA removal order is an instruction to take units out of Amazon’s fulfillment network and send them somewhere else: back to an address you control, to disposal, or — through a separate program — to a liquidator. In the US marketplace, removal and disposal fees are billed per unit at the moment each unit is removed or disposed of, not in one lump sum when the order finishes (Amazon staff account News_Amazon, Seller Forums, posted 2026-01-29, effective March 1, 2026). ...

Short answer: at list prices checked on 2026-08-06, an outsourced image starts at $50, or $95 with a model, while an AI product-image subscription puts the nominal cost under $0.30 per image. Past roughly two SKUs the price gap is so wide that cost stops being the deciding variable — what should decide it is whether your product’s exact appearance can survive being re-rendered, and how much of your budget disappears into retries and subscription terms rather than into images. ...

Amazon stranded inventory is FBA stock sitting in a fulfillment center with no active offer attached to it — the units are physically there, but nothing on Amazon can sell them. Amazon’s own definition, posted by staff account Topher_Amazon on the public Seller Forums: “Stranded inventory is FBA inventory in fulfillment centers that does not have an associated active offer and thus is not available for sale on Amazon” (read 2026-08-06). ...

Amazon Vine ROI is decided at the parent-ASIN level, not at the account level. Amazon charges $0 for up to 2 units, $75 for 3–10 units, and $200 for 11–30 units per parent product on the US marketplace, and you also give away every unit a reviewer claims (official Amazon seller page, checked 2026-08-06). So the real question is never “should we use Vine” — it is “for this SKU, do the enrollment fee plus the free units buy back more contribution margin than they cost, inside the launch window?” This guide gives you the cost formula, a break-even calculation you can run in a spreadsheet, and five gates that decide which SKUs get enrolled at which tier. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This does not affect our rankings or conclusions. If you want a machine to tell you what is wrong with a listing you already have live, four tools do the job today: Amazon’s own Listing Quality Dashboard (free, and the only one that sees your compliance data), Trellis’s Listing Quality Checker (free, ASIN in, score out), SellerApp’s Listing Quality Check (free, ASIN or URL), and Helium 10’s Listing Analyzer or ZonGuru’s Listing Optimizer if you want keyword-level diagnosis on a paid plan. All of them score the same visible surface. None of them can tell you whether your listing is actually indexed for the keywords it contains — which is the failure that costs the most money. ...

The Amazon Ads MCP server is a connection layer that lets an AI assistant call the Amazon Ads API in plain language. It is not an AI that optimizes your ads for you. Amazon’s own documentation describes it as “a standardized access layer for AI models and agents” (advertising.amazon.com, data checked 2026-08-05). The practical consequence for a seller is simple: if you do not already hold Amazon Ads API credentials, you cannot connect to it at all, and getting those credentials is a separate application process. This guide covers what the server does, the exact credential gate in front of it, which advertising actions are documented, and the situations where it is the wrong tool. ...

Amazon Carrier Central: How Inbound Delivery Appointments Get Booked Amazon Carrier Central is the Amazon-run portal where a carrier — not the seller — requests the appointment to deliver freight into an Amazon facility, and if you ship on an Amazon partnered carrier you never touch it. The site’s own instruction to carriers is one line: “To schedule your inbound freight delivery please request an appointment with your earliest available time” (data checked 2026-08-05, from the official portal at carriercentral.amazon.com). ...