How to get started with AWS Partner Portal for ISVs in 5 simple steps

Amit Malik:Apr 26, 2022
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Selling in the cloud marketplace is a no-brainer for ISVs who want to capitalize on committed spends of their customers as well as reach customers globally. Invariably, depending on which commercial marketplace your customers are present, as an ISV, you might need to establish a presence across different marketplaces to get maximum visibility. Invariably, AWS commercial marketplace through the AWS partner portal is something you should definitely explore.  

While there are several ways to boost your marketing and sales opportunities once you reach the AWS commercial marketplace, the first step is to actually get started with the AWS partner portal by registering yourself successfully. This quick guide will help you understand how you can register yourself and discuss the key requirements that you need to be aware of.  

Get started as a seller on AWS partner portal 

To begin your journey on the AWS partner portal, you need to register yourself as a seller. At the same time, you need to ensure that you review all the requirements. As a prerequisite you must have an AWS account. Here are the top steps to get started with the AWS partner portal: 

Register on the AWS Marketplace Management Portal 

As a seller, you need to register yourself on AWS Marketplace Management Portal (AMMP). As mentioned, you need to have an AWS account to register as a seller. Once you reach AMMP, click on register now and choose the AWS account you wish to connect to sell your SaaS offers. 

Once your registration is complete, you need to create a public profile on the AWS partner portal. The public profile is the basic information that your customers can see about your company, including the name, logo, etc. With successful registration and creation of the public profile, you can start selling your free products, and a few other requirements will be needed to be taken care of to sell paid SaaS offers.  

Understand the seller requirements for the AWS partner portal  

Simply registering yourself with the AWS partner portal is not enough to start your selling journey. There are some requirements that you need to be cognizant of. While some of them are common irrespective of whether your SaaS offer is paid or free, others are specific for paid products. Even if you are offering a free product, according to AWS, there is a transaction between you as an ISV and the customer, which is priced at $0.00, hence, you need to comply by the following requirements: 

Seller requirements for AWS partner portal 

As an ISV, if you are selling free products in AWS commercial marketplace, you need to: 

  • Ensure the product is publicly available with all features 
  • Provide adequate customer support 
  • Facilitate regular updates to the products and bugs/vulnerabilities are fixed routinely 
  • Follow AWS best practices when it comes to marketing and sales 
  • Meet all terms and conditions for AWS partner portal as an ISV seller

In addition to these, if you have a paid product, you need to ensure that you have all the legal compliances to run your business entity in the area of sales. Furthermore, you need to take care of banking and tax requirements as well which we will discuss in the following section.  

Provide tax and banking details to AWS partner portal 

When you have a product for which you are charging your customers, you have to share certain financial and compliance details with the AWS partner portal. There are a few forces at play here. 

Providing tax details on AWS partner portal 

First, you need to share your tax information with the AWS marketplace. Whatever you are selling will attract some or the other form of tax. To ensure that all your tax related obligations are in place and to facilitate a glitch free transaction journey, you need to share information related to all forms of tax and value added tax with AWS. By providing the information, you can make it easy for AWS to report or withhold taxes on your sales. Updating tax information on the AWS partner portal is quite simple: 

  • Sign in to your AMMP account that you used to register as a seller. 
  • Click on settings and navigate to the option of complete tax information from the payment information section. 
  • Add your tax details as required.
  • In case you also have value added tax (VAT) information that you need to update, go back to settings and select complete VAT information.  

Providing bank details on AWS partner portal 

Second, you need to provide your banking details to the AWS marketplace. The rationale is quite simple. When you are charging your customers for your SaaS offers, they will make a payment to AWS commercial marketplace from their account. Post the transaction, AWS marketplace will pay you for your sales based on your contract and other details. Thus, you ban details are required for the transfer of payments for your sales via the AWS partner portal or commercial marketplace. You will need a US bank account if you wish to transact through AWS commercial marketplace. To link your US bank account you need to: 

  • Sign in to your account via AMMP through which you registered as a seller 
  • Click on settings and navigate to the option of complete banking information from the payment information section 
  • Complete the information required about your bank account  

Please note that unless you have added information related to tax and VAT (if applicable), you will be unable to update your banking information.  

Starting your seller journey on AWS partner portal 

Once you have registered yourself on the AWS partner portal and have completed all regulatory formalities, you can start your selling in the cloud marketplace. The most common steps for successful sales in the beginning include: 

Preparing and submitting the product 

While you are already aware that you will be selling a SaaS product, you need to configure it for the AWS commercial marketplace. This involves getting the right API integrations etc. Once the product is ready, you need to select the right categories like infrastructure software, devops, business applications, machine learning, IoT, professional services, desktop applications, data products and keywords to ensure its visibility among the right target audience. With everything in place, you can submit your product via your account from AMMP for final approval before it becomes live. 

Marketing and managing the product 

Now that your product is live on AWS commercial marketplace, you can leverage the AWS partner portal to market your product in a way that brings in maximum traffic. Here, you can leverage some of the resources and best practices provided by AWS to drive awareness and increased sales. Furthermore, you can leverage several tools to analyze the performance of your products with reports and manage your product pages from AMMP seamlessly.  

Leverage the AWS partner portal with SaaSify 

Once you have successfully registered on the AWS partner portal, you can sit back and relax while SaaSify can take care of taking your SaaS product towards success. Leverage our white-labelled solution to take your product to the market within a week with no major engineering changes. Provide the ultimate experience to your customers with customizable templates to create your own brand image and recall. Our cloud marketplace experts are there to support you throughout the journey and help you increase your revenue by tapping into the global software market through AWS marketplace. Book a demo today to learn more about your journey on AWS partner portal. 

 

This blog was originally published on SaaSify.