Selling Plans
- Selling Plan
Amazon’s selling plans give you the freedom to pay per sale or stick to a flat monthly fee. This will be asked when you initially set up your Seller Central account, but regardless of what you chose, you can change or cancel your plan at any time.
a. Individual – This is what we call the standard plan which gives you access to 20 product categories and restricts you to a maximum of 40 items sold per month. You’ll be charged a fee of $0.99 per item sold, although there is no monthly subscription fee. As a beginner, it is recommended to sell as an individual.
b. Professional – Also known as the premium account, professional sellers pay a $39.99 monthly fee for their accounts to be active, even if they don’t list or sell anything, and regardless of the number of items they sell. If you plan to sell more than 40 units a month, you may want to consider getting a Professional Seller account just for the purpose of saving on the per-item fee (plus there are many other advantages being a Professional Seller).
Here’s a quick overview of two different selling plans:
| Individual | Professional | |
| This plan might be right for you if… | • You sell fewer than 40 units a month | • You sell more than 40 units a month |
| • You’re still deciding what to sell | • You want to advertise your products | |
| • You don’t plan to advertise or use advanced selling tools | • You want to qualify for top placement on product detail pages | |
| • You want to use advanced selling tools, like APIs and reports | ||
| • You want to sell products in restricted categories | ||
| • You want to save time creating listings in bulk | ||
| • You want to run promotions including free shipping | ||
| • You want to add multiple users to your account |
- Referral fee
This is the fee that you pay per product and is calculated as a fixed percentage of the selling price. You can think of Amazon referral fees as the commission that you pay Amazon for every sale that you make. There’s a complete list category referral fees and cost calculator based on your product characteristics, fulfillment method, optional services, and other factors. Use the calculator to generate a rough estimate of your per unit sales margin.
- Fulfillment fee
Fulfillment refers to the responsibilities of storing, picking, packing, and shipping products to customers. The two options are Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM). Fulfillment fees depend on whether you plan to ship products yourself, or use FBA to handle your logistics and offer Prime shipping for your products.
a. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) : This method can be best defined using Amazon’s terms: “You sell it. We ship it.” Fee per unit includes picking and packing your orders, shipping and handling your products when customers order. Fees are based on the weights and dimensions of your product. Amazon also takes care of customer service issues, such as returns. It’s an easy-to-use, hands-off model, but it’s important to know that additional fees are involved.
b. Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) : When you fulfill orders yourself, Amazon charges shipping rates based on the product category and shipping service selected by the customer, and then passes the amount on to you in the form of a shipping credit. Using this method, you list your products on Amazon and then you handle all aspects of storage and order fulfillment. You are also responsible for any late, missing, or damaged packages
a. 1 Sellers with the Professional plan set their own shipping rates (except for books, music, video, and DVD products, see credit table below). When a customer buys your product, you receive a credit from Amazon that matches the shipping rate. Keep in mind that the referral fee is calculated from the total sale price, including the item price, shipping cost, and any gift-wrapping charges.
b. 2 Sellers with the Individual plan use Amazon’s set shipping rates for all products. Individual sellers have to ship orders at the set rates even if the shipping credit is less than total shipping costs, so it’s important to price items in a way that makes sure you’ll earn a profit.
- Additional selling fees
As you think about the full cost of selling in Amazon stores, be sure to consider additional selling expenses you may incur, and other optional programs designed to help you increase sales. Other fees that you may incur are stock removal fees, storage fees, export fees, et cetera. Here are some fees that you might expect:
a. Inventory fees – If you store inventory in an Amazon fulfillment center—available to sellers who use FBA or Multi-Channel Fulfillment—in addition to monthly inventory storage fees, you may incur other fees, such long-term storage fees and removal order fees.
b. Rental book service fees – If you offer textbook rentals, expect to pay a rental book service fee of $5.00 for each rental.
c. High-volume listing fees – When you have a high volume of active, non-media listings that have not sold in 12 months, we charge a monthly fee of $0.005 per eligible listing to cover cataloging costs. We waive this fee for the first 100,000 listings.
d. Refund administration fee – If you refund a customer for an order for which you have already received payment, Amazon will refund you the amount of the referral fee you paid for the item(s), minus the applicable refund administration fee, which is the lesser of $5.00 or 20% of the referral fee.