Can You Sell an Amazon Seller Central Account? Yes, You Can. No, You Can’t.

The Confusing and Incredibly Profitable World of Selling Your Amazon FBA Business

Photo by Daniel Eledut on Unsplash

There’s a sleeping beast no FBA entrepreneur dares disturb.

Its wrath is quick, powerful, and difficult to overcome. Victims watch their businesses come to a screeching halt.

Ask any FBA seller and they will tell you that the thing that keeps them up at night is worrying about violating Amazon’s Terms of Service (ToS). Anything deemed to be against ToS will result in a swift ban from operating on Amazon’s platform.

Amazon is very clear that you are not allowed to buy and sell Seller Central Accounts — it’s against ToS.

But it begs the question: how are people making so much money by selling their FBA businesses?

Talk about conflicting messages!

Understanding what’s allowed by Amazon can lead to murky waters, so we’re going to dive in and clear up the fears and confusion about selling your FBA business without getting into any trouble for it. We’ll throw you a lifeline and explain how you can go forward with your sale and make a ton of money from it.

How Do FBA Business Owners Put a Business up for Sale?

As we’ve already established, selling a Seller Central Account is against the rules.

That’s why if you want to sell your FBA business, you’re not selling off your Seller Central Account.

People profiting from selling their FBA business utilize clever loopholes. They employ one of two main options to hand over their keys to buyers.

First, they may use a Listing Page Takeover, where product pages are transferred to the buyer’s account. It’s a long and laborious process, and the least desired option when it comes to selling your business.

The more popular method is an Account Takeover. Just change the tax information, the password, and a few other sensitive areas, and it’s yours.

The second way is far easier for everyone, but isn’t it exactly what Amazon doesn’t want you to do? Won’t they shut down your account, making you and your starry-eyed buyer lose everything?

Yes and no.

Why Does Amazon Not Want You to Sell an Account?

The rationale behind banning people selling Seller Central Accounts is almost purely based on fraudulent activity.

Amazon is trying to stop black hat tactics. Allowing hackers and fraudsters in the backend of their platform would be devastating. That’s why they shut down anything that looks like a hijacked or compromised account. It’s to keep their marketplace free from bad actors, and a security measure to protect the actual account owner.

As many sellers know and fear, Amazon comes down with a quick and heavy hammer with no questions asked at the first sight of suspicious activity.

The speed and blanket approach they use to block out threats has devastated some sellers who received their wrath unfairly. It’s what prevents sellers from capitalizing on a profitable exit that’s actually within their reach.

But there’s another way — and to the surprise of fearful sellers, it’s embraced by Amazon.

Selling an Amazon FBA Business is Different

When you sell an FBA business, you’re not selling an account: you’re selling a business.

There is no way for Amazon to stop this from happening — it would actually be illegal for them to do so.

In the midst of all the mixed messages, the truth is that they don’t even want to stop it from happening.

This isn’t baseless gossip; we have personal contacts at Amazon that have reached out to us because they’re extremely keen on meeting people who buy Amazon FBA businesses and find the entire process fascinating.

They proactively work with some of our larger buyers to help them optimize PPC campaigns and other streamline features that entrepreneurs get when they start moving massive volume. Remember, the bigger your Amazon FBA business becomes, the more Amazon benefits.

So it’s not that Amazon is against you selling your Amazon FBA business — they’re all for it. It all comes down to how you handle it.

Don’t Ask for Forgiveness, Ask for Permission

When you sell an Amazon FBA business, if the buyer tells you not to contact Amazon about the transaction then you need to stop that sale right away.

This is a bright red flag: either the buyer is naive or nefarious. A nefarious buyer may be trying to steal or destroy your business, whereas a naive buyer may be afraid of Amazon’s reaction to a sale, meaning their lack of knowledge all around makes them a bad buyer.

Either way, any attempt to go behind Amazon’s back to sell your business puts you at risk of Amazon swinging its ban hammer and killing everything you’ve built.

It’s better to do the right thing and make it clear to Amazon that you are selling because Amazon is 100% on board with you selling your Amazon FBA business.

This may be hard for many sellers to believe, but the process of cluing Amazon in on the sale proves that they’re not opposed to it. Once you sell your business, all you need to do is notify them by email.

Yeah, it’s that straightforward.

Keep in mind that Amazon is a HUGE company; it is very likely that the first few times you sell an FBA business, you’ll get a frontline customer service support member who has no idea what you’re talking about and will think you mean selling accounts, which will be an automatic no.

Keep emailing them until you get the correct response.

Once Amazon gives you the green light, you can proceed to do an account takeover or a product listing page takeover. Keep in mind that the product listing page takeover involves Amazon more heavily, and it will take far longer to do.

Never a Better Time to Sell an Amazon FBA Business

If you wanted to sell your FBA business but were nervous to do so, hopefully this gives you a bit of relief. Once the worry dissipates, you can finally get excited about the concept of selling.

There’s a lot to get excited about! Right now, you can sell an FBA business for a higher valuation than ever as the market craze for FBA businesses has skyrocketed. According to the 2020 Empire Flippers Industry report, the average FBA business sells for a multiple of 26.2.

Literally hundreds of millions of dollars have entered the fray to snap up these assets. Companies that specialize in acquiring FBA assets have gone on to become startup unicorns at record speeds, proving that FBA acquisitions are powerful portfolio builders.

That means if you’re an Amazon FBA entrepreneur, now is one of the best times to actually sell your business.

You can get a free valuation here to see how much your business is worth or get right to selling your business via this link.