Choose your role.

Brand, seller, buyer, shipper, funder or one of the others. It decides your dashboard, your agent and your tabs, and it is not a permanent classification — one account can be more than one thing as the work changes.

In the US: a seller's permit in your home state, because selling without one is a penalty in most states even if you collected nothing, and it is what lets you buy inventory tax-free — then a W-9 (a W-8 if you are outside the US), because without it a payer must withhold a share of everything they send you. Elsewhere: the tax registration your own country asks of a business that sells.

Wholesale price, suggested retail, case pack, minimum order and a ship window. A catalog missing any of those generates questions instead of orders, and the questions are what kill first deals.

"Where is my money" is almost always an unfinished bank connection rather than a missing sale. Money can be earned and settled and still not payable — and identity checks on a new payout account can take a few days, so start before the first order.

The vocabulary is the barrier more often than the work. The glossary says what each term means and what goes wrong with it, which is the part nobody normally explains.