Amazon seller fees beware

I'm an Amazon FBA seller, it's true that Amazon takes a good sized percentage of fees, but you will undoubtably have a higher sales volume than on other platforms such as eBay. The FBA program itself is actually pretty awesome. I'm never the "cheapest" seller for an item on Amazon but I make consistent sales because of the Amazon Prime member benefits at higher prices. In 2011, I outsourced a lot of my U.S. operations to Amazon FBA, by doing so, my overhead almost hit the floor and I made a lot more money. Also, you can opt for multichannel fulfillment and sell on eBay, and increase your sales volume and turn over rate.

In order for me to process 2000+ items a day of reasonable size (we aren't talking about 2000 HDMI cords here), I would have to have at least 5 employees, in the U.S. thats $3200 per employee, multiplied by 5, thats $16000/mo in overhead costs, not to mention an increased cost of warehousing and equipment - with FBA, I could drop down to paying 1 employee fulltime who processes items to be sent to a fulfillment center, less equipment is needed, and way less warehousing space is needed - and have my items warehoused there while they sell at higher prices, and get to my customers even faster.

The act of processing is sorting, scanning everything in using Scan and Ship, printing out labels and applying the over UPC's, and boxing everything up in large standard size boxes (I think I use 22x22x23 boxes) and sending a 50 lb box to the appropriate amazon warehouse for $11.00 - really fast process with the right tools.

If you aren't doing FBA right now and doing multichannel fulfillment, you're seriously missing out.

I am totally shocked to hear that Amazon takes a high percentage for their services.

Thanks for letting me know.

Silas, does your ebay program tell you how to find deals like that? Seriously how do you have basically nothing in a name brand product such as that?

Thanks for the information buddy. I was not knowing about this. Now I came to know why the cost of many items is high on amazon..

grisbyenterprise, if you are scouting (trying to find single items at a low price to resell) you may want to look into an app like profit bandit. It will tell you what your profit will be AFTER the Amazon fees. It is true that their fees can seem high, but don't get discouraged- making money is very possible! When scouting for products, I try to focus on products that I can triple my buying price for on Amazon. For instance, if it costs me $10, I want it to have a selling price of $30 on Amazon. I will settle for a bit less, but you'll find that Amazon takes about 1/3 of the price in fees. When I first started, I thought this was impossible, but you'd be surprised!

I find inventory REGULARLY at these kinds of margins or higher! I explain a lot of this in my ebook (check the link if interested.) There has been a lot written on this topic elsewhere as well. Once you get a grasp on this, it's time to start connecting with wholesale suppliers and then start your own brand.

As Silas Hart mentioned, the fees are worth it for the amount of traffic and sales you can get INSTANTLY (you'll have to work HARD for anything close to this on your own website.) Don't give up. Hope this helps!

As in any business you want to be aware of the fees that will in incurred when buying and selling a product. Amazon's FBA fees are fair when you consider that you get to sell your product on a site with e HUGE traffic flow of buyers plus they store iit and ship it for you. You also get very low costs on shipping your products to them.

You can use the amazon revenue calulator to determine what you will make on any item before you even buy it. I use it when shopping on ebay. I see what my highest bid can be when buying an ebay item that I will then sell on Amazon.