7 things you must know about Amazon Ungating Services

What are Amazon ungating services?

Amazon ungating services are 3rd party vendors or companies that specialize in helping you unlock product niches on the Amazon marketplace that you are not currently ineligible to sell in.

If you’ve been selling on Amazon long enough you know that being able to sell more products on Amazon literally equates to more money.

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Most sellers start out in the book category, then move to CDs, etc but after awhile, you want to expand on your business.

Why is it so difficult to get ungated in specific categories to begin with?

Amazon didn’t build its business overnight.

It was a long journey and Jeff Bezos built Amazon with the idea of always being relentless in good customer service.

With so many sellers coming aboard each year there has to be some level of quality control.

This is one of the ways Amazon maintains that quality control. They deliberately gate sellers from selling in categories that either present a greater risk to their brand (via litigation) or greater risk to the customer (think hazardous items).

What are some of the hot categories sellers like to get ungated in?

This is a subjective and relative question based on what type of seller you are and how well you run your business.

If we told you that shoes were a really lucrative category to be selling in, but then you went out and blew a bunch of money on shoes that won’t sell.

Well…. that category isn’t looking so hot for you now, is it?

Every category is lucrative in our opinion but you should master one before you move on to the other.

Categories we really like and think scale well are:

• Groceries
• Music (Popular Music) CDs
• Toys
• Automotive

Why are Amazon ungating services so expensive?

The short answer is…because it takes quite a bit of work.

Sometimes it’s as simple as applying but often getting ungating in categories on Amazon requires a lot of back and forth with Amazon service reps, providing invoices, etc.

Can I do it myself? What does it take?

You can do it yourself. It just takes time and perseverance.

Amazon generally awards sellers with additional categories as you mature in your account. It’s essential to your efforts to ungate yourself in categories to keep your account healthy.

Larry from Watch me Amazon explains in this video how he gets ungated form his wholesale business:

Once I’m ungated is wide open to sell anything in that category?

Nope.

In addition to being ungated in a category you may need to be ungated in a sub category as well.

For example, even if you are ungated in the Music category you will most likely need to be ungated in popular music as well in order to really scale in this niche.

You can probably sell a used Britney Spears CD but maybe not a very hot movie soundtrack.

In addition to sub-category restrictions there are also:

• Restricted brands within that category (think Toys and than Lego)
• Condition restrictions (you can sell used but not New)
• Dangerous or hazmat products (think outdoor but not camping)

Do you recommend any Amazon ungating services

We really don’t because reviews have always been mixed and a lot of them use tactics against the Amazon Terms of Service (TOS).

We have heard some good things about The Funnel Guru but we don’t specifically endorse any company in these instances.

Wrapping it all up

Here are a two things to remember when thinking about restricted Amazon categories and ungating.

• Don’t get ahead of yourself. Master each category and get your streamlined process down first then look to expand.
• Always try to get ungated by yourself first