Feeds, right? Amazon Marketplace Web Service might be just the thing for you

Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS) provides data exchange support for listings, orders, payments, reports, and more. For listings, as an example, you can add, delete, and modify, and you can update price and quantity with a simplified feed. Listing, order, and payment data can be integrated into your existing workflows and business practices.

There is no additional fee for using Amazon MWS but you do need at least one of these Amazon MWS-enabled account types, which do have fees:

Selling on Amazon (Select the Professional selling plan.)
Amazon Webstore
Checkout by Amazon
Amazon Product Ads

The Amazon MWS portals contain client libraries and comprehensive documentation. Take a look around:

Canada http://developer.amazonservices.ca
France http://developer.amazonservices.fr
Germany http://developer.amazonservices.de
Italy http://developer.amazonservices.it
Japan http://developer.amazonservices.jp
Spain http://developer.amazonservices.es
U.K. http://developer.amazonservices.co.uk
U.S. http://developer.amazonservices.com

(Don't miss the forum.)

Keep your seller account information secure

Always be on the alert for attempted account takeover (or "phishing") e-mail activity. Learn how to identify phisher e-mails and follow a few security-related best practices.

What is a "phisher" or "phishing e-mail"?

"Phishing" e-mails (also called "spoof" e-mails) are fraudulent attempts to obtain confidential information about your seller account, such as your e-mail address and password. This information is used to gain access to your seller account.

Be on the lookout for these false e-mails, which may look similar to legitimate Amazon e-mail. These e-mails often direct you to a false website that looks similar to the Amazon website, where you might be asked to provide account information such as your e-mail address and password combination.

Protect your seller account by following these security-related best practices:

• Know what Amazon won’t ask for in an e-mail: your social security number or tax identification number; your bank account information, credit card number, PIN number, or credit card security code (including "updates" to any of the above); your mother's maiden name or other information to identify you (such as your birth city, pet's name, etc.); your Amazon.com or Seller Central password
• Review the e-mail for grammatical or typographical errors
• Check the e-mail’s return address; genuine e-mails from Amazon in the United States come from addresses ending in "@amazon.com"
• Check the website address in the e-mail; genuine Amazon websites in the United States end with ".amazon.com"

For more information about identifying "phisher" (spoof) e-mails, search for "spoof e-mails" in seller Help.

Check your seller account home page daily for useful information

Your seller account home page puts a lot of useful information right at your fingertips:

• Technical Notifications: We post Technical Notifications when Amazon has a planned outage or a technical issue. If you see a notification about a particular issue, you'll know that we are already looking into it. You can also check back periodically for posted updates. These notifications appear in the top middle section of the home page.
• Headlines: Headlines are announcements about feature launches, tool updates, new products, and changes that may affect your seller account. These announcements appear in the middle of the home page.
• Widgets: Widgets provide information at a glance of key aspects of selling activity, such as Your Orders and Payments Summary. The Selling Coach provides advice targeted specifically to your business. Click the link in a widget to go directly to the corresponding tool or page in your seller account. Widgets appear in the left and right columns of the home page.
• Selling Tools: Selling Tools provides information about tools that help you sell on Amazon, such as Fulfillment by Amazon and Checkout by Amazon. Posts about the Selling Tools appear in the middle of the home page below the Headlines.

Pending orders: What do they mean for me?

Orders in pending status indicate an issue with the customer's payment method. They should not be shipped, even if a buyer contacts you directly to provide a shipping address. (No shipping address is provided in your seller account until an order is in a shippable status.)

Remember, only ship orders to the shipping addresses provided in your seller account!

Pending orders will not have confirm and cancel buttons in Manage Orders, and they will not appear in Order Reports. Once an order is in a shippable status, the confirm and cancel buttons will appear in Manage Orders and the order will appear in both the Order Report and the Unshipped Orders Report. At that point, the order should be shipped and the shipment confirmed in Manage Orders or with a feed.

For more information, search on "pending orders" in seller Help.

Seven super tips for successful selling on Amazon

1. Check for orders daily: To ship quickly you need to find out about orders promptly. We will e-mail you when you have a sale, but e-mails are unreliable and can be caught by spam filters. We recommend checking for orders daily in your seller account. Under the Orders tab you can view a list of orders you’ve received and set up automatic order reports. We also offer an order notification application that makes it easy to keep on top of orders.
2. Ship orders and confirm shipments promptly: Once an order is placed, you are responsible for confirming shipment of the order after you’ve sent it. Amazon charges the buyer's credit card only after you have confirmed shipment of the order. Use the Manage Orders tool in your seller account to confirm shipments.
3. Check your inventory regularly to avoid stock-outs: Buyers who order products that end up being out of stock often leave negative feedback. Keep an eye on the quantity of inventory you have in stock and update your listings in your seller account accordingly. Use the Manage Inventory tool in your seller account to update listing quantities.
4. Keep pricing accurate: The Offer Listing Page displays the lowest priced items first. Amazon shoppers are always looking for the best deals and are more inclined to purchase items that appear at the top of the Offer Listing Page. Use the Manage Inventory tool in your seller account to enter your listings’ prices.
5. Be accessible to buyers: Not knowing the status of an order can be very frustrating to a buyer. Respond quickly to buyer contacts. Make it easy for them to know how to reach you. Good communication helps build buyer trust and fosters repeat business.
6. Build a good feedback rating: Customers pay close attention to sellers' feedback when making purchasing decisions. Some keys to building a good feedback rating are: accurately describing your products, shipping orders quickly, and providing prompt, polite responses to buyer questions.
7. Know where to look for answers: Our seller Help pages contain a wealth of information about the listing tools available to you, performance measurement, selling policies, and much more. And best of all, it’s available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! Just log in to your seller account and click “Help” in the upper right corner of the home page.

Getting Away from the Gray? Plan Ahead

During these long, gray days in the dead of winter, we find many of our colleagues escaping the sunnier, warmer climates. Whether you're planning a vacation or need to get away from your business for another reason, you need to know some important facts about managing your Amazon seller account while you're away.

• Listing Status: Be sure to set this to "Inactive." This will prevent buyers from placing orders that you can't fulfill right away.
• Buyer-Seller Messaging: Your Listing Status is inactive, but messages will continue to arrive. You will receive less e-mail because you won't have pre-order inquiries. However, you may receive other communications, and you need to respond to these within 24 hours -- even when on vacation -- to maintain a healthy contact response time metric.

For more information, log into your seller account and search on "Listing Status" and "Contact Response Time."

What’s a product identifier and why do I need one?

Product identifiers are industry-standard codes that are used to identify specific products. Most categories on Amazon.com require sellers to use a product identifier to create new product pages or match to existing products on the Amazon.com website. 

The most common identifiers are:

•    Universal Product Code (UPC) – 12 digits; located below the bar code; include the smaller numbers on the left and right sides of the bar code.
•    International Standard Book Number (ISBN) – 10 or 13 digits; located above the bar code; include the letter X, if the ISBN ends with the letter. 
•    European Article Number (EAN) – 13 digits; located below the bar code. 

Even if the category you sell in on Amazon does not require products to have UPCs, we strongly recommend you use them when listing your items.

If you can’t find a product identifier on a product or you no longer have the original packaging, you can request the UPC, ISBN, or EAN from the manufacturer.

If you manufacture your own product, you can find more information about bar codes and identification at the GS1 standards website: http://www.gs1.org/barcodes