How To Create Amazon Listing Product Variations With Flat Files | Full Tutorial

How To Create Amazon Product Listing Variations

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If you want to sell different colors or sizes of the same product on Amazon, you can have separate listings for each color, or you can create a product variation and group all of those colors into one listing. So it's easier for your customers to see all the different options you have to offer. In this video, I'll walk you through step by step how to create product variations by uploading something called a product flat file.

These flat files may look intimidating in the beginning, but I'll show you how these work and how to fill them out correctly. Even if you're a beginner, you'll easily be able to follow along. This is also a new channel. And so if you could help me out and hit the like button for this video to help the algorithm and subscribe, if you'd like to see more videos about selling on Amazon, let's dive in before we start.

I want to explain how variations work. Let's say I want to sell. Three different colored shirts of the same shirts. One is red, blue, and green. I need to first create three separate listings for each color. And these are going to be called child listings and they're going to be standalone, separate, not connected.

Next, we need to create a parent listing. That's going to nest. And group all those listings together into one apparent listing is not necessarily something you could search for on Amazon. It's really just a placeholder. It has a name, it has a SKU name, it has an ASIN, but you can't purchase a parent listing.

It's invisible. For example, this is what one looks like. I created it a few years back. This is the parent listing above, and it has the SKU name title and ASIN, but then it has the separate child listings below that vary by color. So first we need to create the separate child listings, and then we need to group them together under one.

Product variation. There's actually two different ways you can create variations. The first is through the added product tool. The other way is through a product flat file. And so each of these files will vary by product category, but this is a lot easier to do versus using the added product tool. So I'm going to show you how to use that method.

To find your product flat file, go into seller central top left button, catalog, add products, click bulk template, and then view templates. Once we get here, we're going to click download product spreadsheet. We need to find our product template using a product keyword that represents our product. So for this example, I'm going to be doing toy fidget gun.

I'll hit search and it pulls up this subcategory toy foam blasters. Now I actually know. For sure that this is not my subcategory because I've listed this product before. And so either way, I actually recommend clicking browse via product category and searching for your product subcategory here. Instead, we're going to do a top down approach searching by category all the way down to the subcategory.

If you're uncertain which subcategory your products in, what you can do is open up a separate tab on Amazon and then. Pull up a competitor listing. Once you scroll down, it should show here under the product details. For some reason, my window Chrome extension does not show it here. I always have to open up an incognito window and find that there.

So I'm going to show you how to do that. If you're on windows, it's going to be control shift. And Mac is command shift and open up Amazon, find the competitor listing, scroll down to product information, and it's going to be here under bestsellers rank. So it's within the subcategory of fidget blocks.

Once I click that, it'll open up a new tab and it will show that Fidget blocks is within fidget toys within novelty and gag toys, which is within the toys and games category. That is how I can find my correct product subcategory. So once we found where it is, let's go ahead and find our template.

Once we found it, we can scroll down and generate a spreadsheet. Once you've downloaded it, you can open it in Excel if you do have Excel, or you can actually upload it into Google Drive, which is for free. So I'll show you how to do that. Once you're in Google Drive, click new, open up a new Google spreadsheet.

To open it up in its correct format, click file, open, and then upload it from your desktop. Once we're here, let me explain the tabs really briefly. This is the instructions tabs, telling you how to fill it out correctly. Images tab, showing you how to correctly upload images. And then let's jump to the template tab.

This is where you're going to be editing product information. Either if you're editing a product listing, uploading a new listing or creating a product variation, you'll notice. That these columns are specific product details that you'll see inside seller central on your Amazon product. So for example, this is where we put our product title.

This is where we put our brand name. This is where we put our external product type ID. There's a lot of these columns. If you're ever uncertain as to what do I put in here or what will be accepted, you can come to data definitions and it will give you a nice accepted values, an example, and then tell you if it's reported or not.

required or not. A quick tip is if you click this top left box, right click, and then if you create a filter, you can actually filter through the columns that are required versus not required, which is super helpful because there are a lot of columns in this form. Next, you'll notice that there's these dropdown boxes for a few of these columns.

Usually in Excel, it would show the options. But it doesn't convert correctly into Google spreadsheets. So to know what's accepted, come over here to valid values, and we can see that for external product type ID, we have the option of an EAN, European barcode, GTIN or UPC. In this example, we will be doing a UPC barcode.

So I'm going to copy that and just paste it in there. Once you've come into the template tab, if you're curious as to what information to fill out, because there are a lot of columns, once again, come into data definitions and I recommend just filtering by required fields only to start off with. Now, here's the thing.

Sometimes you'll fill out all of these fields and you'll submit it and it'll come back and they'll say, Hey, you need to fill out these other fields. Fields, vice versa, maybe you filled out a couple of these and they weren't required. It doesn't matter. The fact is you just need to like turn off your brain, fill this out and upload it onto seller central because time is of the essence.

You don't want to spend all day filling out everything in this form. And going back and forth as to what's required. What is not like, just try to get your initial variation created to start. First thing is the SKU name of the parent and the child listings. Now I'm going to put these in here and the top row I'm going to have as my parent listing, and then the bottom will be the child listing SKU names.

It does not matter of the order. I could have the parent listing in the middle. Doesn't matter either way. Next is going to be record action. This is going to be what kind of update are you making inside your inventory tab? There's three options. A full update is you're creating a new listing in a new variation from scratch.

It is not in your inventory tab yet. A partial update will be. If you already have the listing created inside your seller account, and you're either making changes to the listing or you're taking an existing listing, and then you're putting it into a new variation that you're creating, or a delete is clearly you are deleting the listing.

Now, these are brand new listings and it's a new variation. And so I'm going to put full update for all of these. Once again, let's say I have toy fidget gun four, it's already created inside my seller account. Then I can put in partial update. And then for my external product type ID. I'll just put in my ASIN.

Next thing will be the product type. You can just get this from the valid values. Go here, copy and paste. Next thing is the item name. This is going to be your product listing title that is on Amazon. If you do not have this fully written out quite yet, you can just put in a placeholder. Like for this example, I'm doing toy fidget gun.

I personally like to just put in a. One or two keywords, and then I can go back and edit it later. I just like to get it initially created. And then I go back fully edit my listing. I just want to get the listing created first. That's just me personally. Now here's the thing. I can put that for my parent listing, but for your child listings, these will need to correlate with your UPC barcode.

What I mean by that is when you buy your barcode on GS1, this will be your brand name. And then here it says product description. This is actually your product description. Even though it says product description, this actually acts as your product title. When I come back in here, I need to have the product description or whatever I put in here for product description.

And it needs to match 100 percent on this spreadsheet for the UPC barcode that I got for a toy fidget gun. This is what I put in for the product description. Then I'll paste in the UPC barcode that I received right after I purchased it from GS1. Those need to correlate or else you're going to get a bunch of errors and issues.

So once again, I also need to put in my brand name and this is a registered brand name. So I'll just put that in here, but whatever you put in here in this field. Needs to match here. And then the item name needs to match this. And then whatever the UPC barcode is needs to match right here. I will put my brand name for my parent listing, but I won't put in any kind of external ID.

Next for item type keyword, I can come back into valid values. And under here, it gives me all the different options. I know my subcategory is this one. I'm going to paste that in here. And drag down, I'm going to skip these because it's not required, but I will put my manufacturer name. If you don't have that, then put in your product title.

For the most part, they usually require the manufacturer name. So I'll put that in here. Next thing is I'm going to put in what kind of condition my product is in. When I come in here, I'm going to copy and paste new depending on what your product is, put that in there. I'll put my price point. Next thing it's going to ask for my product description and my bullet points.

So I'll just do command F and start typing that in, skip, and let's just see where it's at right here. Let's scroll over once again, if you don't have your product description, then you can just put in basic keyword when asked for bullet points on this form. You actually can expand the columns. So this is where I'm going to put all my bullet points.

I do have those written, so I'm going to copy and paste those in. Once I have all of those pasted in, I'm going to highlight this row and then drag it down for all of the listings. And then here. Is where I can put in back in search terms, those keywords. Now, if I go back to data definitions, it looks like I still need country of origin, dangerous goods information.

And so I'll come back in here and let's see where those are at. And then I'm just going to fill those out and then dangerous goods information. We come back in this form. This product doesn't apply to any of these. So I'm just going to copy and paste not applicable. And then paste it in here. Now, the last thing and the most important part is the variations tab.

This first one, parentage level, we need to identify which listings or which rows are the parent and the child listing copy and paste in, this is my parent. And I'll just type in a child and then the child relationship. And it looks like the options in here is just to identify which listings will be the variation.

The child listings will be the variation. I won't put anything for the parent row and then the parent SKU. This is where we're going to put the SKU name of the parent listing. The variation theme, this is where we will put in what kind of variation is it? Is it going to vary by size or by color? So if I come back in here, we can see it has the option of addition, item weights, material type, whatever the case may be.

Also, here's the thing is if you're listing for whatever reason, doesn't have what kind of variation you want. So like if you want to vary by color and for some reason there is not a color option, what you can do is You can either type in size color, but if it doesn't accept that, what I have done in the past is I will just put in, what is the addition of the product, drag it down, and then I will go to the color fields, type in color, and then identify which color is each skew.

And then that's, what's going to be shown on to Amazon purple, blue. Red and green. The last step is to save this template and then upload it onto Amazon. So if you come back in here and if we go upload your spreadsheet, it wants the file in a TSV format. So I'll come back in here, file, download TSV, and then upload it onto Amazon.

Once you've uploaded it, you will receive a notification on the status of the spreadsheet. You can come back in here and then it'll tell you if it's finished or completed. And then go ahead and click this download processing summary. To review what changes you might need to make. Here's the thing. If you have any issues with this spreadsheet and you cannot figure it out, when you create a case log, what you need to do, 100%, write them a letter and saying, this is my batch ID, copy and paste this number onto your seller support message.

It will save you so much time. If you just copy and paste this batch ID, they'll be able to identify the issues a lot faster within a minute or two, rather than playing a cat and mouse game. So I hope this was helpful in creating product variation, like down below, subscribe. And I'll see you in the next one.