Many people who are new to selling on Amazon often get a shock when this happens. You create a new listing in your account because you need to get a FNSKU barcode/label for your product packaging. You then enter the product title, price and save the listing. Amazon doesn’t give you any warnings and your listing is created. You get your FNSKU label and forget about it for now, as you have other things to work on.
Then, after some time, when you log back into your account, you learn that your listing is SUPPRESSED!
And that’s when the panic starts! What happened? Has Amazon suspended your listing? Do you need to create a new listing? Do you need to contact Amazon support?
None of that. And for God’s sake, please don’t delete that listing or create a new one! If you do this, your FNSKU code will change. If you’ve already done your product packaging, you’ll have to use labels to change it to the new code for the new listing.
The solution is super simple. All you need to do is edit your listing and upload at least one product image to it, then SAVE it. That’s it! Your listing will be saved and will become active again. It doesn’t even matter what image you upload. It can be anything! You could even take a screenshot from your supplier’s product page and use that because, since you don’t have any stock sent into Amazon yet, the listing won’t be shown on Amazon and you won’t get any sales.
Amazon could easily fix this situation by NOT allowing us to create a listing with no images, but it is what it is.
IMPORTANT!!! Make sure you select the FBA option when you create your listing or change it to FBA after you create it. If you don’t do this and the listing remains as FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant), you could start getting orders, even if you don’t have any stock in, as Amazon thinks you are going to handle the fulfilment process yourself.
I have also seen situations where the listing becomes SUPPRESSED after several months of inactivity, even if there are uploaded product images. Again, to fix this, all you need to do is edit the listing, make a small change, and then click SAVE. Your listing will become active again.
Just don’t get too stressed out about this—and don’t delete the listing! That’s the most important thing to remember. Each listing has its own FNSKU code, so if you delete it or make a new listing, you won’t be able to get back the code you have already used on your packaging or product.
If you use EAN barcodes instead (with the stickerless inventory option), this won’t be a huge problem, even if you create a new listing. EAN codes stay the same for the product no matter how many listings you create.
