How to Open Multiple Amazon Seller Accounts in 2024- Black Hat & White Hat Strategies

Can you have more than one Amazon Seller account? The short answer is yes, but you need to have a legitimate business need (according to Amazon). In this article, I’ll talk about what qualifies as a legitimate business need and what you’ll need to do to open up a second Seller Central account. I’ll also discuss how other sellers use blackhat strategies to open multiple Amazon seller accounts without Amazon ever knowing.

This article is seller focused. If you’re looking for how to open multiple customer accounts (and share your prime benefits) see this section.

Related Reading: How to Structure Your Company for Multiple Brands

Are You Allowed to Have Multiple Seller Central Accounts?

Around April 2020, Amazon changed their policy regarding multiple accounts and now allows sellers, with legitimate business reasons, to open multiple accounts without Amazon’s approval. As per Amazon:

Selling Partners who have a legitimate business need can operate multiple Selling Accounts and do not require Amazon’s approval. However, Amazon recommends that you only open a second selling account if you have a legitimate business need and all of your current accounts are in good standing.

According to this policy, you no longer even need to request explicit permission from Amazon to open an additional Seller Central account IF you have a legitimate business need.

What is a Legitimate Business Need?

Amazon is incredibly ambiguous in their terminology legitimate business need. Is operating multiple brands a legitimate business need? Is wanting a second account to get a new IPI to score a legitimate business need? In my experience, Amazon basically allows sellers to open up a second account for nearly any reason as long as it isn’t because your other Amazon account is suspended or in jeopardy of being suspended.  Again, this is my experience only after having operated numerous Seller Central accounts over the years.

Why Have Multiple Amazon Seller Accounts?

There are legitimate business reasons for wanting multiple accounts and not-so-legitimate ones including:

As mentioned, in my company we have different brands operated under the same company but that is entirely separate from one another. We have different branding, customer service emails and phone numbers, etc. If we have all brands under the same account it would make separating the brands down the road (potentially for a sale) very difficult.

Another reason to open a second Amazon account is to get a new IPI (Inventory Placement Index) score. Some sellers get stuck at a low IPI score and it severely affects their ability to replenish inventory and they turn to open a new Seller Central account. I have no idea if this would be defined as a legitimate business need or not but I know many people who have opened additional accounts for this reason and they have not gotten into trouble.

However, many sellers want multiple business accounts because they are very deliberately breaking Amazon’s Terms of Service and they are terrified of having their account shut down. By having multiple accounts they’re able to hedge their bets. If one account gets shut down, they can simply start selling their products on the other account.

The more grey area comes from legitimate white hat Amazon sellers who fear having their account suspended for illegitimate reasons. We’ve all heard horror stories from sellers who have had their accounts shut down simply in error.  Unfortunately, this happens all too often. If you’re an Amazon seller with your life savings stored in inventory and/or with employees relying on you for employment, having all your eggs in one basket is not necessarily the best business decision. I know many sellers who open a second (or more) Amazon account without Amazon’s permission simply to mitigate their risk even though they do not explicitly break any of Amazon’s rules.

Now keep in mind, that even if you open multiple selling accounts, Amazon is very good at detecting that these accounts are owned by the same person, even if there is not any information explicitly shared across them.

Do Most Chinese Sellers Have Multiple Amazon Seller Accounts?

I was first made aware of the seriousness of the problem of Chinese sellers with multiple accounts when a friend showed me a very complex diagram of all the Amazon accounts of the Chinese company he was working for. It was over half a dozen accounts. Ironically, this company shuttered its Amazon operations after about a year after it lost hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to bring its brick-and-mortar brand to Amazon.

During the massive suspension of thousands of high profile sellers in 2021, many sellers were reported to have dozens of linked accounts.

However, this problem extends well beyond Chinese sellers. In many of the ecommerce groups, I’m a part of, having multiple seller accounts is a strategy employed by many sellers to allow them to stretch the Amazon rules more than they might if they only had one account. These sellers are often using incentivized reviews, super URLs, and other black hat techniques. This is why there’s a problem – these sellers have an unfair advantage over sellers with one account.

Using Import Records to Snoop on Competitors

One of the best things an importer can do is to use import records to see which supplier a competitor is using.

As mentioned, in America, import and export records are public information, however, the government does not catalog or give easy access to this information. However, there are tools that do allow you to easily search this information, the most popular and cheapest being Jungle Scout (others include Import Genius and Panjiva).

These tools allow you to:

• Find out what Chinese supplier a competitor is using (great for finding products)
• See how much a supplier exports
• Find out what suppliers export specific products

See our article A Secret Weapon for Doing Supplier Research

How Do the Black Hat Sellers Open Multiple Amazon Seller Accounts?

Amazon is very sophisticated at finding sellers with multiple accounts so black hat sellers have to be very sophisticated in return to avoid being detected in case one account gets suspended they do not risk all accounts being suspended.

To open up a second Amazon account, with or without Amazon’s permission, requires the following things:

• Separate credit cards
• Separate email addresses
• Separate bank accounts.

This is actually the easiest part of the equation as Amazon does not require any of these three things to match up to the seller entity name, i.e. EcomCrew Inc can use a bank account under Dave Bryant.

The seller entity part is slightly more tricky although it is still relatively easy as one can simply use another personal name (i.e. your wife or relative) or register a new business. In China, it is a well-known secret that many Amazon Sellers require their employees to open up Amazon accounts under their names to avoid the whole seller entity issue. Many Chinese sellers have multiple (sometimes in the double digits) Amazon Seller Central accounts.

The hardest part of having multiple seller accounts is avoiding being detected. Almost all black hat sellers I know, whether in China or elsewhere, have multiple ISPs and computers. Each computer is then linked to one particular internet connection and they take as many precautions as possible to avoid ever accidentally logging one computer into the same internet connection as this would almost immediately alert Amazon that the accounts are from the same sellers.

How to Open A Second Account – The Right Way

Once you’ve exceeded a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue per annum it is not a bad idea to open a second Amazon Seller Central account. The reason for this is that one temporary Seller Central account does not normally affect the suspension of the second account. If you get permanently banned, both Seller Central accounts will almost certainly get permanently suspended though.

If you ever decide to sell your business, having a second seller central account that you do not sell with your business also allows you to keep selling without having to build up seller history from scratch.

A fair warning – operating a second Seller Central account will increase your accounting work and overall maintenance.

How to Open a Second Account

As mentioned previously you will need a separate bank account, separate email, and separate credit card. They do not require a separate business or personal entity.

Again, even though Amazon has stated that you do not need their approval to open a second account, I still recommend that you open a case with them to request permission just to be safe.

You can also NOT sell the same products across multiple Amazon accounts, specifically at the same time. We have sold the same products across multiple Amazon accounts at different times (usually because of an inventory storage issue on one account) and have never gotten in trouble for it. Having two offers on the same product detail page is likely a recipe for trouble though.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this gives you some insight into how sellers are using multiple Amazon Seller Central accounts to get an advantage over you. With Amazon easing their policy on opening multiple accounts, having a second (or third!) Seller Central account can be valuable.

Do you have multiple Seller Central accounts? If so, do you find it to be an advantage for your business? Would you like to open a second account and have any questions about the process? Post your comments and questions below.