Amazon: Selling With Amazon; Step-by-Step Guide

What is Amazon?

With hundreds of millions of customers worldwide, Amazon is the nation’s biggest online retailer. And it can be a powerful partner in the sale of anything from expensive jewelry to crafts. This review is about working with Amazon as a sales partner.

How it works

To sell anything through Amazon, you’ll need to register and provide some basic information. This includes a government-issued ID, tax and bank account information. You’ll also need to connect a credit card to your account to pay for the site’s fees.

Amazon review (from the standpoint of sellers)

With millions of customers perusing the Amazon website every day in search of products, Amazon can be an incredibly powerful partner for resellers. But the site’s fees can be excessive, particularly when compared to other e-commerce sites. Here’s what you need to know.

Getting started

To start, you’ll chose between Amazon’s two basic selling plans — individual and professional.

The right one for you will depend on how often you list items for sale. If you’re only an occasional seller, you’d want the individual plan. This plan simply charges a 99 cent fee for each listing.

But, if you sell regularly, the “professional” plan is the better deal. It charges a monthly subscription of $40. But you can list as many items as you want each month with no separate listing fee.

Referral fees

In addition to the listing fees, Amazon charges a “referral fee” on each sale. This is essentially a commission that’s calculated as a percentage of the sales price. The site’s commission schedule varies depending on what you’re selling. (You can see the full fee schedule here.)

The highest referral fees are charged on “experiences” (30%) and device accessories (45%). Most other fees range from 8% to 17%. Since these are on top of listing fees, someone wanting to sell a $20 blouse here would pay $1 (listing) + $3.40 (17% of $20) for a total of $4.40. So, after fees you’d take home $15.60 on the $20 sale.

Closing fees

Certain items — books, DVDs, music, games and software — are also subject to a “closing fee” of $1.80 per item.

Shipping costs

If you’re an individual seller, you also must be aware of Amazon’s shipping policy. The site will provide you with a credit that corresponds to the amount the customer has paid for shipping. But, if your shipping costs are higher, you are responsible for the difference.

As with the referral fees, shipping credits vary based on the item. In this case, they also vary based on the shipping speed — standard or expedited. (You can see Amazon’s shipping credits here.) A quick analysis indicates that the fees should be sufficient for everything but heavy items. With those, you should price out the shipping (with a worst-case, across-the-country scenario in mind) before you price your item for sale.

Getting paid

Sellers are typically paid within 5 days of the sale by direct deposit.

Challenges

There are a couple of challenges to selling here. First, you can get booted from Amazon’s marketplace if you get complaints about quality or customer service. That can include the speed of your shipping; defective products or anything else. And it doesn’t have to be a large number of complaints.

Moreover, Amazon sometimes jumps in to compete with big sellers with its own products. And the high selling fees on some products can make it hard to earn a profit here.

Lack of customer support

But, perhaps the biggest challenge for sellers is that Amazon’s seller support system is missing in action. Sellers complain that when they have a problem, all they can squeeze out of Amazon is an automated response.

Some sellers also say they get put into “professional” — i.e. monthly fee — accounts when they wanted individual accounts. And getting the site to switch them to non-subscription accounts feels impossible.

Costly jewelry & watches

On the other hand, with some products Amazon’s fees are on the low side of reasonable. For instance, if you’re selling expensive jewelry or watches the site has a graduated fee. With jewelry, sellers pay referral fees of 20% on up to $250, but just 5% on any amount over that. With watches they pay 16% on up to $1,500 and just 3% on the amount over that amount.

So a $2,000 ring would cost you $138.50 to sell on Amazon. (That’s $1 listing fee, plus $137.50 in referral fees.) This same ring would cost $300 to sell on eBay.

A $5,000 watch would cost $345 to sell on Amazon and $410 to sell on eBay.

Clothing sales

However, the advantage flips with the sale of clothing, where eBay’s fees are considerably more reasonable than Amazon’s.

Recommendations

eBay or OfferUp may be better choices for selling items like furniture, art, musical instruments, office supplies and heavy equipment. And Poshmark may be a better place to sell clothing and notions.

But Amazon is a good place to sell luxury jewelry and expensive watches. You can sign up to sell on Amazon here.

What their users say (from SiteJabber):

I have been selling on amazon as a side hustle for my telecom business. There is absolutely -0- support from them if it comes to customers buying “by mistake” or leaving a bad review literally because they had no clue what they bought or how make it work. I am going to cancel my account with them pretty soon. They are damaging my business.

Seller support is terrible I had to just shut down my store due to lack of help. Always sending generic emails!

I’m glad I can vent my frustration of how garbage amazon seller customer service is on here. They are absolute trash, they’re never helpful with any issues I have on the platform. Why do they even bother having these 3rd party representatives? All they do is copy/paste from a script and basically just say “sorry, can’t help you.” They absolutely fkin suck! I hate them with a passion

Not a “pro” seller

The customer service is terrible. I have been charged for the professional seller account (which I don’t need). That is clearly shown on my bank statement, but does not appear on the Amazon ‘system’ so they are refusing to refund me. What’s worse, I never signed up as a professional seller. But the sign up process seller is so non-transparent and belongs in the 1990s. All in all a terrible experience.

I gave it another shot, as I wanted to relaunch an old eCommerce store. Epic fail. I chose the Individual plan, as I wasn’t ready for the Professional just yet. And STILL got the $39.95 monthly fee billing regardless. No matter where I back-tracked to change it. NO actual Support but an idiot ticket option that only spams your email with lame auto responses. Agreed, they fkn suck.

If I was working at Amazon Support, I would be ashamed of the reviews that are being posted. Like many other sellers here, you just go around in circles trying to resolve any issues. The main issues seem to revolve around the registration process, especially if you are signing up to be an INDIVIDUAL SELLER. Apparently, Amazon’s policy is to default you as a Global or Professional Seller. Therefore, they are extorting money from their customers.

Updated 2/15/2023