Any "Fulfilled by Amazon" sellers here?
Discussion
I'm pondering ways to make money and wondering if selling on Amazon could be an option. I'm particularly interested in the "Fulfilled by Amazon" option and was wondering if there's anyone here who's making it work for themselves. At face value it appears that the seller acquires goods from a wholesaler, ships them to an Amazon fulfillment centre and then waits for the money to roll in.
The costs, as far as I can tell, would be:
Wholesale cost of goods.
Cost of shipping goods to me.
Cost of shipping goods to Amazon.
Amazon's charges for storage.
Amazon's cut from sale.
Tax on my profit.
Also, as I understand it my goods basically go in the warehouse and are then in a queue. If someone else put stock of the same stuff in the warehouse before me then their stuff will be sold first. Right? Can I run my own website/social media/etc. with direct links to my stock on Amazon to help move my own stuff more quickly or will the links just go to a generic Amazon listing that's shifting everyone's stock?
I'm guessing the best stuff to sell will be stuff with high turnover and reduced potential for returns, so small consumables rather than clothing, which appears to be a minefield, and big ticket items.
Am I missing anything? Any advice?
The costs, as far as I can tell, would be:
Wholesale cost of goods.
Cost of shipping goods to me.
Cost of shipping goods to Amazon.
Amazon's charges for storage.
Amazon's cut from sale.
Tax on my profit.
Also, as I understand it my goods basically go in the warehouse and are then in a queue. If someone else put stock of the same stuff in the warehouse before me then their stuff will be sold first. Right? Can I run my own website/social media/etc. with direct links to my stock on Amazon to help move my own stuff more quickly or will the links just go to a generic Amazon listing that's shifting everyone's stock?
I'm guessing the best stuff to sell will be stuff with high turnover and reduced potential for returns, so small consumables rather than clothing, which appears to be a minefield, and big ticket items.
Am I missing anything? Any advice?
What are you going to sell on Amazon that they themselves aren't already selling, or a dozen other Companies?
And if you do find something, how long before the aforementioned cotton on & pull the rug from under you...
It's clearly not impossible as people are doing it, not as easy as you make it sound though.
And if you do find something, how long before the aforementioned cotton on & pull the rug from under you...
It's clearly not impossible as people are doing it, not as easy as you make it sound though.
LordHaveMurci said:
What are you going to sell on Amazon that they themselves aren't already selling, or a dozen other Companies?
Nothing at all. The impression I get is that I can be one of numerous people selling the same stuff with some of the orders placed on Amazon being fulfilled from my stock, that's all. I'm not trying to be Richard Branson, just to make a few quid, hopefully. Just wondered what people's first hand experiences were and if I post links to my stuff elsewhere will people who click through specifically buy my stock or will it be a generic link to an Amazon listing which may be fulfilled from someone else's stock?MitchT said:
I'm guessing the best stuff to sell will be stuff with high turnover and reduced potential for returns, so small consumables
I looked into FBA as a channel for a low weight, low size, low cost and reasonably unique product I have, and it seems anything other than Amazon UK would be a mistake, as I'd end up owing on every EU sale due to the cost to ship.So even if you have something consumable, light, small, there isn't an appropriate bracket in their cost structure if you want to sell on their EU marketplace (at least, those were my findings - YMMV).
I'd be interested to know too. I've recently signed up with FBA and am waiting on the stock to get to me from China. Seems painless enough once they receive stock but getting it here is the long wait with customs charges racking up (2 of the 3 packages have been received into the country via DHL).
Also, trying to communicate with the suppliers to see if they can send directly to Amazon seems a ballache too as ASIN numbers aren't being provided by the supplier, so I'm taking first delivery to see if one can be generated for us to bypass this ordering issue the next time round (if it gets that far).
It hasn't cost that much to be fair so far but it is very early days and we are simply testing the waters to see if it's viable enough.
Also, trying to communicate with the suppliers to see if they can send directly to Amazon seems a ballache too as ASIN numbers aren't being provided by the supplier, so I'm taking first delivery to see if one can be generated for us to bypass this ordering issue the next time round (if it gets that far).
It hasn't cost that much to be fair so far but it is very early days and we are simply testing the waters to see if it's viable enough.
MitchT said:
I'm pondering ways to make money and wondering if selling on Amazon could be an option. I'm particularly interested in the "Fulfilled by Amazon" option and was wondering if there's anyone here who's making it work for themselves. At face value it appears that the seller acquires goods from a wholesaler, ships them to an Amazon fulfillment centre and then waits for the money to roll in.
Dream on!
There have been previous threads on this which are well worth you looking up and reading. In short : Amazon take half your profit for essentially doing your job for you then take the other half when the customer returns the item to Amazon after having changed their mind, so you're left with nothing. If the customer keeps it then you earn about £2.50 after all your deductions.
If it's something that sells then Amazon place a bulk order directly with your supplier on their own terms and sell it themselves leaving you with nothing. The only reason Amazon offer FBA is because basically you're saving them the cost of a sales rep.
Thanks all - some interesting perspectives and info there. I have searched for, and read, other threads but I did wonder if people's experiences had changed since as things do tend to evolve quite quickly these days.
And you're funding the stock!
Ean218 said:
NoIP said:
The only reason Amazon offer FBA is because basically you're saving them the cost of a sales rep.
And you're paying for their future market research....Christ on a bike Amazon aint a charity ;o) they will pick, pack n ship your tat for less than you can do the same thing and in doing this they offer a high level of customer care which can frustrate the seller.
For our agency I have one item on FBA I use to show clients who ask "whats FBA" so I can show the mechanics and the pros n cons.
The secret to keeping the wolf from your SKU is to sell something Amazon cannot buy, this is easier than you think but requires thought and a small amount of work.
When I was selling phones it was not an ideal method of fulfillment due to the battery thief's and worse - remember customer buys, nicks a bit, returns it and its often over a month before you see the item again in a pallet piled with half open tat that in many cases isnt even yours.
For Germany and France it was the only way to avoid bad feedback on carriage issues.
Anyone want to talk it through I am happy to chat
For our agency I have one item on FBA I use to show clients who ask "whats FBA" so I can show the mechanics and the pros n cons.
The secret to keeping the wolf from your SKU is to sell something Amazon cannot buy, this is easier than you think but requires thought and a small amount of work.
When I was selling phones it was not an ideal method of fulfillment due to the battery thief's and worse - remember customer buys, nicks a bit, returns it and its often over a month before you see the item again in a pallet piled with half open tat that in many cases isnt even yours.
For Germany and France it was the only way to avoid bad feedback on carriage issues.
Anyone want to talk it through I am happy to chat
There is always plenty of over fulfillment centers that will not try sell the product themselves if that bothers you.
I am looking at FBA for my existing business, partly due to everything showing as "Prime" with next day delivery. The products get promoted in search results from what i can tell.
The "small and light" option is about the same price for what it cost for me to post something.
I am looking at FBA for my existing business, partly due to everything showing as "Prime" with next day delivery. The products get promoted in search results from what i can tell.
The "small and light" option is about the same price for what it cost for me to post something.
You need to be super super super careful that your products are not the kind able to be copied and sold as bad ones.
For example CD's or DVD's. Amazon lobs them all into one big cart in their warehouse.
When you buy Justin Beibers album from seller X, the fulfilment centre will pick a random item from their big cart which might be seller Y's product. Seller Y might be commiting fraud. If you get reported, you get the book thrown at you.
https://startupnation.com/start-your-business/plan...
For example CD's or DVD's. Amazon lobs them all into one big cart in their warehouse.
When you buy Justin Beibers album from seller X, the fulfilment centre will pick a random item from their big cart which might be seller Y's product. Seller Y might be commiting fraud. If you get reported, you get the book thrown at you.
https://startupnation.com/start-your-business/plan...
Good grief, that's a pretty bleak outlook! If it was how you explain it be, why would there be so many sellers?
Dream on!
There have been previous threads on this which are well worth you looking up and reading. In short : Amazon take half your profit for essentially doing your job for you then take the other half when the customer returns the item to Amazon after having changed their mind, so you're left with nothing. If the customer keeps it then you earn about £2.50 after all your deductions.
If it's something that sells then Amazon place a bulk order directly with your supplier on their own terms and sell it themselves leaving you with nothing. The only reason Amazon offer FBA is because basically you're saving them the cost of a sales rep.
NoIP said:
Dream on!
There have been previous threads on this which are well worth you looking up and reading. In short : Amazon take half your profit for essentially doing your job for you then take the other half when the customer returns the item to Amazon after having changed their mind, so you're left with nothing. If the customer keeps it then you earn about £2.50 after all your deductions.
If it's something that sells then Amazon place a bulk order directly with your supplier on their own terms and sell it themselves leaving you with nothing. The only reason Amazon offer FBA is because basically you're saving them the cost of a sales rep.
Any sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon on here?
I heard that Amazon were going to allow this to be done from home/business premises directly and were trialing it?
So instead of sending an inventory of stock to their warehouses, you could in fact send it directly instead. Has anyone heard of this? My searches have come up with nothing....
I heard that Amazon were going to allow this to be done from home/business premises directly and were trialing it?
So instead of sending an inventory of stock to their warehouses, you could in fact send it directly instead. Has anyone heard of this? My searches have come up with nothing....
TaylotS2K said:
Any sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon on here?
I heard that Amazon were going to allow this to be done from home/business premises directly and were trialing it?
So instead of sending an inventory of stock to their warehouses, you could in fact send it directly instead. Has anyone heard of this? My searches have come up with nothing....
sounds like seller fulfilled prime I heard that Amazon were going to allow this to be done from home/business premises directly and were trialing it?
So instead of sending an inventory of stock to their warehouses, you could in fact send it directly instead. Has anyone heard of this? My searches have come up with nothing....
https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/seller-fulf...
JPJPJP said:
TaylotS2K said:
Any sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon on here?
I heard that Amazon were going to allow this to be done from home/business premises directly and were trialing it?
So instead of sending an inventory of stock to their warehouses, you could in fact send it directly instead. Has anyone heard of this? My searches have come up with nothing....
sounds like seller fulfilled prime I heard that Amazon were going to allow this to be done from home/business premises directly and were trialing it?
So instead of sending an inventory of stock to their warehouses, you could in fact send it directly instead. Has anyone heard of this? My searches have come up with nothing....
https://services.amazon.co.uk/services/seller-fulf...
We have recently moved a lot of stock to amazon for FBA small and light, in the last week they have sent out 2 completely wrong items to customers, 1 got refunded straight away and while our stock has still went down? The second customer left a bad review which Amazon removed but its a pain in the arse to monitor.
Also be aware of the VAT trap if sending stock to other countries, you are required to register for VAT in other european countries as soon as you have stock there, even if you do not make a sale. All good fun.
Also be aware of the VAT trap if sending stock to other countries, you are required to register for VAT in other european countries as soon as you have stock there, even if you do not make a sale. All good fun.
JPJPJP said:
haha what a joke “2. Store inventory in your own warehouse” so now we’re going to get all these white van man self employed delivery men selling stuff out their house. Sorry warehouse. Amazon sounds like ebay in reverse.I've been using SFP for 2 months and it's not without its problems. I've only enabled 6 Asin's out of 2,000 because we don't have the automation to scale it fully due to label creation issues.
Their API integration is awkward, you have to match the order exactly (sku, quantity) but we're working on a fix for that. It fails for us when making labels for bundles or kitted products, because the fields don't match.
1. £3.75 for next day delivery (1kg), so you must increase your prices significantly, especially if you have low value sales. That £4 item is now a £6.50 item. This comes down the more you ship.
2. Amazon support haven't got a clue about a few things, some issues surrounding cut off times, pending order, some things don't make any logical sense.
3. Training awful, you can choose several carriers and Amazon will take the parcels on their own van, including royal mail, but not DPD. You can also add your own royal mail account ID so you get billed instead, but they won't collect those, can be confusing to start off with, as they don't forget explain any of that.
4. If labelling manually, you can't print the labels from the browser, you must download and open in Adobe viewer, it's the only way to get the labels to print in an acceptable quality. It just takes ages. Every parcel needs dimensions too! But it will remember the dims for each product.
5. Cancel a label, but then making a new one doesn't work, meaning you can't make a label for an order if you cancelled the first label.
6. They will give you oders for areas that Buy Shipping doesn't cover, even some large cities. Amazon expect you to send the parcel somehow still! I challenged them on this, basically said use another carrier at your own cost.
7. Amazon labels will not show your own order reference for your order system. And you will need a 2D barcode scanner if you wish to scan the tracking number. So when you get returns, takes ages looking our order number up.
8. SNL, or small and light when using SFP is a waste of time due to postage costs. You're forced to deliver them next day. They offer a 3 day service which is basically royal mail tracked LBT 48 large letter for just a quid! (80p on FBA). And they get delivered in 2 days, not 3 but Amazon still force SNL on to next day making it very costly at £2 for a next day large letter.
Not profitable when most of your sales are £2-4.
Amazon will take your royal mail tracked 48's and inject them directly in to a Royal Mail RDC that very night which is good. Note that is when using Amazon's "economy 3 day" delivery service, which just means instead of an Amazon logistics label, you get a royal mail label. These type of Royal mail's need to be given to the Amazon driver because they're billed to Amazon.
They also expect minimum 20 parcels per day, large letters don't count, criteria is strictly.
I'm sticking with it for now until issues are ironed out.
SFP means we can cut out FBA and offer prime from one pool of stock, everyone knows FBA is a black hole, especially at Xmas with stock disappears for weeks!!
Also I should note SFP has me winning the buy box much more for FBM sales (merchant fulfilled non prime orders), as non prime customers can't easily upgrade to next day delivery at a small cost to them, and that's all Asin's, not just the SFP enabled ones.
Hope this helps
Their API integration is awkward, you have to match the order exactly (sku, quantity) but we're working on a fix for that. It fails for us when making labels for bundles or kitted products, because the fields don't match.
1. £3.75 for next day delivery (1kg), so you must increase your prices significantly, especially if you have low value sales. That £4 item is now a £6.50 item. This comes down the more you ship.
2. Amazon support haven't got a clue about a few things, some issues surrounding cut off times, pending order, some things don't make any logical sense.
3. Training awful, you can choose several carriers and Amazon will take the parcels on their own van, including royal mail, but not DPD. You can also add your own royal mail account ID so you get billed instead, but they won't collect those, can be confusing to start off with, as they don't forget explain any of that.
4. If labelling manually, you can't print the labels from the browser, you must download and open in Adobe viewer, it's the only way to get the labels to print in an acceptable quality. It just takes ages. Every parcel needs dimensions too! But it will remember the dims for each product.
5. Cancel a label, but then making a new one doesn't work, meaning you can't make a label for an order if you cancelled the first label.
6. They will give you oders for areas that Buy Shipping doesn't cover, even some large cities. Amazon expect you to send the parcel somehow still! I challenged them on this, basically said use another carrier at your own cost.
7. Amazon labels will not show your own order reference for your order system. And you will need a 2D barcode scanner if you wish to scan the tracking number. So when you get returns, takes ages looking our order number up.
8. SNL, or small and light when using SFP is a waste of time due to postage costs. You're forced to deliver them next day. They offer a 3 day service which is basically royal mail tracked LBT 48 large letter for just a quid! (80p on FBA). And they get delivered in 2 days, not 3 but Amazon still force SNL on to next day making it very costly at £2 for a next day large letter.
Not profitable when most of your sales are £2-4.
Amazon will take your royal mail tracked 48's and inject them directly in to a Royal Mail RDC that very night which is good. Note that is when using Amazon's "economy 3 day" delivery service, which just means instead of an Amazon logistics label, you get a royal mail label. These type of Royal mail's need to be given to the Amazon driver because they're billed to Amazon.
They also expect minimum 20 parcels per day, large letters don't count, criteria is strictly.
I'm sticking with it for now until issues are ironed out.
SFP means we can cut out FBA and offer prime from one pool of stock, everyone knows FBA is a black hole, especially at Xmas with stock disappears for weeks!!
Also I should note SFP has me winning the buy box much more for FBM sales (merchant fulfilled non prime orders), as non prime customers can't easily upgrade to next day delivery at a small cost to them, and that's all Asin's, not just the SFP enabled ones.
Hope this helps
The issue we have is that without the unfair support amazon give themselves on fba items it’s very hard to keep your account metrics in good order. This is particularly true in your export countries where your volume is lower.
One or two bad feedbacks down to courier issues and you can be in bad shape with FBM wheras with FBA amazon just remove the feedback and you carry on.
I’ve done all of the Amazon methods from vendor to fbm and fba and sfp and the message is clear - you’re renting amazon customers. They’re not your customers and amazon are granting you highly conditional access to their platform. It’s not an area where being fair, just or reasonable will help or influence. Treat with extreme caution. Never get comfortable and never drop your guard. Ever.
One or two bad feedbacks down to courier issues and you can be in bad shape with FBM wheras with FBA amazon just remove the feedback and you carry on.
I’ve done all of the Amazon methods from vendor to fbm and fba and sfp and the message is clear - you’re renting amazon customers. They’re not your customers and amazon are granting you highly conditional access to their platform. It’s not an area where being fair, just or reasonable will help or influence. Treat with extreme caution. Never get comfortable and never drop your guard. Ever.
MitchT said:
I'm pondering ways to make money and wondering if selling on Amazon could be an option. I'm particularly interested in the "Fulfilled by Amazon" option and was wondering if there's anyone here who's making it work for themselves. At face value it appears that the seller acquires goods from a wholesaler, ships them to an Amazon fulfillment centre and then waits for the money to roll in.
The costs, as far as I can tell, would be:
Wholesale cost of goods.
Cost of shipping goods to me.
Cost of shipping goods to Amazon.
Amazon's charges for storage.
Amazon's cut from sale.
Tax on my profit.
Also, as I understand it my goods basically go in the warehouse and are then in a queue. If someone else put stock of the same stuff in the warehouse before me then their stuff will be sold first. Right? Can I run my own website/social media/etc. with direct links to my stock on Amazon to help move my own stuff more quickly or will the links just go to a generic Amazon listing that's shifting everyone's stock?
I'm guessing the best stuff to sell will be stuff with high turnover and reduced potential for returns, so small consumables rather than clothing, which appears to be a minefield, and big ticket items.
Am I missing anything? Any advice?
I'm doing the exact same and have just started out! Perhaps I've made some grave errors, but in the process of trying to do things correctly, I have also invested in:The costs, as far as I can tell, would be:
Wholesale cost of goods.
Cost of shipping goods to me.
Cost of shipping goods to Amazon.
Amazon's charges for storage.
Amazon's cut from sale.
Tax on my profit.
Also, as I understand it my goods basically go in the warehouse and are then in a queue. If someone else put stock of the same stuff in the warehouse before me then their stuff will be sold first. Right? Can I run my own website/social media/etc. with direct links to my stock on Amazon to help move my own stuff more quickly or will the links just go to a generic Amazon listing that's shifting everyone's stock?
I'm guessing the best stuff to sell will be stuff with high turnover and reduced potential for returns, so small consumables rather than clothing, which appears to be a minefield, and big ticket items.
Am I missing anything? Any advice?
-Forming a limited company to protect my personal assets
-Purchased product/public liability insurance to protect against potential claims
-An accountant (at some stage in the next 12 months!)
I'm using Amazon as a storefront, although all stock will be held in my own premises and will be shipped by myself. FBA and SFP appear to be a veritable minefield. FBA also means additional charges for holding stock etc. - cuts into your profits. I'm also planning to create an e-commerce website (Squarespace - c.£25/month) and then direct people to my website via social media, which saves on Amazon/eBay selling fees. Audience is smaller though.
I'm now tackling GTIN exemption, which if fails, will require me to obtain bar codes (UPC/EAN) for the products I have imported.
It's not easy, and you need to learn fast.
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