Container Product Listing Onboarding

📋 There will be a total of 5 main steps to complete onboarding process and list your Container Product on AWS Marketplace:

➡️  Step 1: You as the seller need to complete steps to get started on AWS. Labra will assist you in any way that we can during this process.

Sign in to your AWS account and register as a Seller

• Registering as a seller requires the following steps:
  1. Create your public profile
     • You provide the information that is displayed in AWS Marketplace to buyers that tells them about your company, such as your company name and logo. After you complete this process, you can sell products for free. To sell paid products, you must complete steps two and three.
  2. Provide your tax information
     • To appropriately assess, report, and (where applicable) withhold taxes on your paid sales, you must provide your tax and value added tax (VAT) information.
  3. Provide your banking information
     • You provide your US bank information so that AWS Marketplace can pay you for your sales.
• Please refer to this article to get more information on the steps for registration.

➡️  Step 2: The next part of the journey is completing your Cloud Account setup by giving Labra permissions:

Please follow the below-mentioned steps:

1. Open the link:
   https://us-west-2.console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/home?region=us-west-2#/stacks/quickcreate?templateURL=https://oppsync-assests-s3.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/CFT/labra_flyout_latest.yaml&stackName=labra-flyout-role
2. Fill the organization name under PartnerOrgName and click on ‘Create Stack’
3. Once your Stack is created you will need to provide Labra’s team with the following information:
   1. Your AWS Account ID from which you want to list your service./li
   2. Your AWS account name from which you want to list your service.
   3. From the created stack:
      • CAS SNS Topic
      • S3 CAS Bucket ARN
      • Platform role

➡️  Step 3: The last part of the journey is to create a listing inside AWS

You will need to provide Labra’s team with the following information via a Clustdoc form so that they can create your listing:

1. Product Title
   • Your product title is the first impression you make on potential buyers. It's not just a name; it's your brand identity on AWS Marketplace. Ensure clarity and relevance.
   • The product title can have up to 72 characters.
2. SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)
   • Create a unique alphanumeric code to identify your product internally within the marketplace ecosystem. Use underscores instead of spaces.
   • The SKU can have up to 100 characters.
3. Product Logo URL
   • Make a strong visual impact with a product logo that meets AWS Marketplace specifications, ensuring it reflects your brand identity effectively. It has to be a logo image with a transparent or white background.
     Specifications:
     1. Format: .png or .jpg
     2. Size: 120 to 640 pixels, with a 1:1 or 2:1 (wide) ratio
4. Short Description
   • Craft a concise and compelling short description, which will appear as "Vendor Insights" in the Listing Header. Avoid leading or trailing blank spaces for optimal presentation.
   • Descriptions over 188 characters in length require a ‘show more’ link to be viewed in full (up to 1,000 characters max).
5. Long Description
   • Provides more detailed information about your product, giving potential buyers a deeper understanding of its features, benefits, and value proposition. It's an opportunity to elaborate on what sets your product apart and why buyers should choose it over competitors. The first 297 characters will be visible in the AWS Marketplace products list, so make them count.
   • The long description can have up to 5,000 characters.
6. Product Video URL (optional)
   • Enhance your listing with a video showcasing your product's features and benefits.
   • The product video must be externally hosted and publicly available.
7. Product Highlights
   • Key features or benefits of your product that you want to prominently showcase to potential buyers. These highlights serve as quick bullet points that draw attention to the most compelling aspects of your product, helping buyers quickly understand its value proposition.
   • Maximum 3 highlights allowed and 1 highlight is minimum.
   • Each highlight can have up to 500 characters.
8. Support Information
   • Support information is like a lifeline for customers—it's there to help them whenever they encounter issues or have questions about your product. Providing clear and accessible support details can enhance customer satisfaction and trust in your product.
   • Support details can have up to 2,000 characters.
9. Learning Resources (optional)
   • Links to any resources you’ve created to help buyers learn more about your product, such as product sheets or white papers. Resource links are displayed to buyers on the product listing page.
   • You can add up to 3 more resources.
   • You are required to give:
     1. Resource name (the resource name can have up to 500 characters).
     2. Resource URL
10. Product Categories
    • This helps to classify your product, making it easier for buyers to find relevant listings when browsing through AWS Marketplace. Choosing the most appropriate categories ensures that your product is visible to the right audience.
    • You can add up to 3 relevant categories.
11. Keywords for Search Results
    • Use specific words or phrases that you associate with your product to improve its discoverability in search queries within AWS Marketplace. These keywords help potential buyers find your product when they enter relevant search terms.
    • The list of keywords can have up to 250 characters (including spaces).
12. Refund policy
    • This outlines the terms and conditions under which customers can request a refund for your product on AWS Marketplace. It's important to have a clear and concise refund policy to manage customer expectations and ensure a positive buying experience. Include contact information for refund requests.
    • The refund policy can have up to 500 characters.
13. Configure End-user license agreement (EULA)
    • Choose between Standard Contract for AWS Marketplace, or Custom EULA (provide a URL to a custom end-user license agreement for your product).
      • This is a legal agreement between you as the vendor and the end user (customer) who wants to use your software or service. It lays out the rules and permissions for how the customer can use your product on AWS. It's important because it clarifies things like what the customer can and can't do with your product, who owns the product and its intellectual property, and what happens if there are any problems or disputes. Before customers can use your product on AWS, they need to agree to the terms of your EULA.
14. Product Pricing options:
    • The pricing model that you choose determines how buyers are able to purchase your product you can choose from the following models:
      1. Hourly pricing - Buyers are charged hourly or hourly long-term for per Amazon ECS task or per Amazon EKS pod pricing.
      2. Usage-based pricing - Buyers are charged a per-unit price for their hourly usage of your product. AWS Marketplace calculates usage based on the metering records you provide.
      3. Contract-based pricing - Buyers enter into an agreement with you entitling them to a specified quantity of use of your product for an agreed-upon length of time.
      4. Monthly pricing - A fixed monthly price that provides users with unlimited product usage for the following month.
      5. Bring Your Own License - AWS Marketplace doesn't charge buyers for usage of the software, but they must supply a valid license key to activate it.
      6. Free - Buyers are charged for the infrastructure costs associated with running the software, but no additional charges are incurred.
    • In case of Usage or Contract-based pricing model you will need to choose:
      1. Dimension unit type
         Choose the unit type that best describes how your product will be priced. If your unit of measurement varies by dimension or you’re uncertain whether the unit type will change in future, we recommend choosing the generic ‘Units’ option, as this cannot be changed later.
         It's basically the way you measure how customers use your product for pricing. Here are some common types:
         1. Bandwidth (Mbps): Measures how fast data moves between servers.
         2. Data (GB, MB, TB): Measures the amount of data stored or transferred.
         3. Hosts: Counts the number of servers used.
         4. Requests: Measures the number of times customers ask for some/thing.
         5. Users: Counts the number of people using the service.
         6. Units: A flexible option for custom usage metrics.
      2. Dimension details
         • For each contract or usage dimension that you define, you will need to assign a unique API identifier and a customer-friendly description.
         • Optionally associate an additional usage dimension per contract dimension by enabling pay-as-you-go pricing.
      3. Purchasing Options - Specify how you want buyers to be able to purchase your product.
         • Multiple dimensions per contract - Buyers can purchase their desired quantities of units for each pricing dimension that you define.
         • Single dimension per contract - Buyers can choose from a list of tiered pricing dimensions to purchase their desired tier or volume of units.
      4. Contract duration options - Specify which contract durations you want to make publicly available to buyers.
         • 1 month
         • 12 months
         • 24 months
         • 36 months
15. Add repositories
    1. The repository that will be added to AWS's ECR Account so you can push images into it. After creating your repository, you can't delete or use your repository for other products.
    2. You will need to provide the name for your repository
       • Provide a repository name with a valid input. Example format - 'nginx-web-app'
       • Provide a repository name with a minimum of 2 characters.
    3. A maximum of up to 50 more repositories are allowed.
16. Offer Availability by Country
    • This is like setting the boundaries for where your product can be sold. You can choose to make your product available in all countries, exclude certain countries, or limit it to specific countries where you want to focus your sales efforts. You can choose between:
      1. All countries (product available for purchase in all countries)
      2. All countries with exclusions (product available for purchase in all countries except the ones you exclude)
      3. Allowlisted countries only (product available for purchase only in countries you specify).
17. Notifications
    • To get notified upon various listing events, you can give an email address you would like to receive email notifications on. Further, you can also integrate notifications with any Slack channel in your team.

➡️  Step 4: Once your listing is created in Limited, you will need to upload container images/helm charts into your ECR repository and add a version from the AWS Marketplace Management Portal before your product can be made public.

➡️  Step 5: The final step is where the Labra team will submit your listing to AWS Marketplace to be published.

📅 The SLA for the above 5 steps to list your product on AWS is as follows:

1. The first step which is to get started and complete prerequisites to list on AWS will take ~1 week to complete.
   
   📒  Note: This step will be done along with the AWS team. Labra will only assist when possible.
2. The second step to complete Cloud Account setup will take < 1 day to complete.
3. The third step, which involves creating the listing after all above mentioned information is received by the Labra team is ~1 day.
4. The fourth step is adding the Container Image / Helm charts to the ECR repository which is to be completed by the user and can take between ~ 1 to 3 days.
5. The last step, which is related to testing by an AWS Marketplace representative, takes on ~ 1 month after which your listing will become public.