How to get Ungated on Amazon
Posted: November 12th, 2020
How to get Ungated on Amazon
Lets to talk about gating and ungating on Amazon. One of the biggest issues you run into when you're a new Amazon seller is after you get your account approved by Amazon then you go to sell stuff and Amazon says, you can't sell that. You also can't sell that. You can't sell this. You can't sell that. You can't sell anything is what it seems like when you're a new seller. That's definitely what it felt like to us.
When we first started selling on Amazon I remember going to Walmart and just scanning things. And Amazon said, we couldn't sell this. We couldn't sell that. We just felt like we really couldn't sell anything. And I feel like this is how it feels for a lot of new Amazon sellers. And it seems like Amazon is only gating, more categories and brands for new sellers. When we first started selling on Amazon you could sell grocery items as a brand new seller. Now, as a new seller, you cannot sell grocery items. So it just goes to show that things change pretty quickly on Amazon.
What is gating?
So what exactly is gating or being restricted? What does it look like? When you scan an item into the seller app, or you bring it up in seller central, it'll say you do not have permission to sell this item. And then you'll see the apply to sell button. So this means that you are gated and you can be gated in brands or in categories. So categories, for example, is toys and games, grocery and topicals. These three are all categories that are gated for new sellers. Topical are a major category on Amazon and include makeup and beauty items. There's a lot of the products you wish you could sell on Amazon. So when you're new, all of those categories are gated. And then you also have a brand gating as well. So tons of different brands are gated. Amazon doesn't give you clear direction on what's gated for who, but a lot of major brands are gated when you are a new seller or even just not major brands as well.
Auto Ungating
There are two ways to get ungated in categories and brands. So I'll start with the first way, which is called auto gating. So what this means is when you click apply to sell, Amazon will say congrats, and you can now this category or this brand. Major tip here, when you find an item and it's gated, or even a category, there is absolutely no harm whatsoever in clicking apply to sell. Absolutely no harm. It does not impact your account in any sort of way. You should always click that because you just never know, even as a new Amazon seller, as weird as this is, you could be a brand new Amazon seller have not sold one item, and you could see something and click applied to sell and get approved. Don't ask me why Amazon does this because it makes no sense why is it gated in the first place if anyone can get approved, but it does happen. So always click that button and see if you get approved.
Over time is as your account metrics get better. Amazon says, okay, you know, you're kind of good at this. We're going to let you sell more items. We're going to let you sell different brands and.or categories. So over time it gets easier automatically. The big numbers that we noticed when we started getting out ungated, and again, Amazon is not clear about any of this. Of course, that would just make too much sense. They're not clear about anything, right? They don't give a defined like, Oh, you get to this many orders and we're going to engage you in major toy brands. They are not clear about that at all, but from personal experience, from what we've noticed, and then the feedback we've gotten from the members of our Amazon online arbitrage leads list, we talk about this stuff in our discord is around 2000 orders major auto ungating occurs. So that's orders, not units. And you can see this in your reports in seller central. That's when we noticed a lot of major ungating so major brands, we went on like ungating spree and just clicked and clicked and click and got undated in so many major brands around 2000 orders. Recently I've seen people where it takes a little bit above 2000 orders and there's sometimes is a lag time. So if you hit 2000 orders today, the ungating might not start applying for several weeks. So just keep that in mind.
Then the other major milestone where we saw lots of engaging was around 4,000 orders. This was the huge one. This was tons of different categories, not just brands. At 2000, we saw a lot of brands. At 4,000, we saw tons of different categories, dietary supplements, baby topicals, over the counter medicine, pretty much everything and anything. And after that, it was kind of at the point where pretty much everything, anything we just engage, we would click apply to sell a, we could pretty much sell anything. There's some things that kind of never auto engage like Nike but after about 4,000 orders, it feels like we could pretty much sell anything we want at this point. Keep in mind again, there was a lag time with this as well. It wasn't right when we hit 4,000 orders, it was a couple of weeks after we hit 4,000 orders that we this going on.
And again, Amazon's not clear about these things. It could always change. There's also other metrics that go into this. Like how long have you been selling other aspects of your account health could impact this as well. Try to always keep your account health as clean as possible, but this is where we saw major movement. So between 2,000 and 4,000 orders, One tip to get to these numbers quickly, because that does seem like a lot, but I really think you can get there quickly. We've seen it in our leads list groups where people get to 2,00 and 4,000 orders very quick. You want to focus on items that are cheap to buy and that are going to sell quickly. So you want to make a profit. Obviously don't try to get to 2000 orders and lose money because that's just a terrible idea. But if you can find items that are cheap so you can purchase a lot of them and sell them quickly. So you want to find cheap items that you can sell as quick as possible. So items with really low rank and try to get to that number as quickly as you can. So you can get really ungated in have a wide variety of items that you can sell on Amazon. We sell across different categories on Amazon. So being unrestricted ungated in different types of categories is super beneficial to our business. And it just makes things a lot easier. So if you're a new to Amazon and you're feeling this pain right now is okay, it will get easier. I feel like every Amazon seller, when they start feels this way, it feels very restrictive. But if you can get past that, it will get easier.
When we first started, we focus on selling items that we knew we could sell. We sold a lot in the sports and outdoors category. And then we sold a lot of like household type items, kitchen stuff. There was a lot less restrictions. Brand-wise there aren't as many restrictions and those categories are open for new sellers as well, . Brand-wise another thing that a lot of people do and we've, we never did this, but I see this a lot is books. You can do a lot with books. That's another huge one that people do when they are new to Amazon.
Nike, Adidas & Under Armour Ungating Guide
Invoice from Distributor
The second way that you can get ungated to sell brands and categories on Amazon is through providing an invoice from a distributor. So when you click apply to sell it to check, if Amazon is not going to auto gate you, you will see that if you do not get approved, it'll say, please provide an invoice from the brand or the distributor, but we have always gone the distributor route with this. It's just seems like the much easier approach. And I'll explain exactly what this is and how it works. So this does work for brands and for categories. So what you're doing is you're going through a distributor and to clarify this, cause this is a question I get a lot it is distributor is not a retailer. So target is a retailer. They are not a distributor target buys products from brands or from distributors, and then sells them in their store and they are a retailer. So if you try to use your receipt from target, that is not considered an invoice, it is just considered a receipt and it will not work for ungating. A invoice from a distributor will say invoice on it. That's a huge difference. And it is from a qualified distributor that Amazon is going to recognize as a distributor.
Toy, Topical Grocery & Brand Ungating Guides
So how this works is, you have to purchase 10 units of that item, and then you go ahead and you submit that invoice to Amazon. And then Amazon reviews it and decides on that. It is very backed up right now. We've seen it with our leads list where it's taking weeks for Amazon to approve stuff. So if you are going this route right now, just be patient, they are just really backed up at seller support. They will review it and then they will approve you to sell either that brand or category. So this is how you get around the restrictions of having to wait to two to 4,000 orders. It's a much faster way, and it really opens up a lot of different items for you. We do have ungating processes available for toys, topicals and groceries. These are also provided for free with our Amazon Online Arbitrage Leads List. If you are interested in that, and it gives you 20 leads a day, Monday through Friday. So it's a lot just for the price of one subscription. You get ungating processes in there as well. So if you're interested in the leads list, I wouldn't bother buying the ungating processes. I would just go ahead and get the leads subscription. It'll save you money that way. Overall this is a really easy way to get on gated and to grow into more categories quickly on Amazon is to go ahead and get invoices from distributors and just submit them. You can do this for brands too, and it helps a lot, but those major categories, toys, topical and grocery, those are probably our three favorite categories. And I think probably three of the most popular categories that a lot of sellers selling.
Amazon Online Arbitrage Leads List
Invoices from distributors will help you a lot. If you get ungated in those major categories and you can even do it one by one. Let's say toys is a big one for example. We really wanted to get ungated in toys right away when we started selling, because I mean, toys is just limitless. Like it's Q4 right now. For example, toys is a great category to be able to sell in. So having those categories ungated really opens up a lot of potential for you.
I hope this demystified how ungating works, because I feel like it's one of the biggest struggles that new sellers run into. I know we were just so confused when we first started selling on Amazon, why can't I sell on anything? Like, why do they give you this account? And I literally can't sell anything, but it does get easier over time. And there are ways you can work around the restrictions and get approved.