Amazon fees mind boggling
At what point do you just give up and say 'It’s not worth the effort '? I know that Amazons fees have always been pretty outrageous, I knew that when I signed up. ( I only sell second hand books, and it has made me a few pounds. not a lot but enough to make it generally worthwhile ) And then a year or two back they raised the item fee again. Shrug and carry on, try not to look at individual fees as they come in. And then, this morning, I did. A £12 book. Which is the lowest I go. Amazon fees £4.82 My payout £9,98 with £3.20 postage to pay. In my pocket, £6.80. I supply the product, pick it, pack it, take it to the Post Office and am still held responsible for it, basically for ever. under Amazons rules So I get just a little over half the money the customer pays. Amazon gets the rest, for overseeing an efortless electronic transactiopn where the seller does all the actual work. So how do the rest of you get on.? And how do some of you have a viable business when you sell items for less than £20 a time ?
152 replies
Seller_esvgLzKXw2YAl
I presume that your on an individual account, which increases the cost accordingly.
I literally sell thousands of items each month for under £2 and quite happily make a profit on them.
It really does depend on what you sell. And just for the record, the fees are actually fairly equitable with the likes of Ebay, depending on what you sell.
I do think they are to high, but that is the way it is and everyone has to pay the same fees.
So with that being understood, it’s quite obvious that people are making money, as they have to pay the same fees as you are. The savings can be made, by bulk purchases, cheaper shipping and so on.
Seller_AeSYBToQ271lM
A 50% profit margin is actually pretty good. Very few of my items are anywhere near that. It all comes down to how you value your time. Most of us work on volumes. I don’t know about the time for you to supply the product ie whether you go out and search for them or just buy in. Taking away the time to go to the post office as it depends how far it is and also you could be taking lots at a time, some of us also have postal collections. I would estimate it would take me no more than 5 mins to print out the order, pick and pack a book. That means I could do 12 an hour. £6.80 x 12 = £81.60 per hour.
Seller_BS5lg2keRs2QO
In case you aren’t aware it is currently £2.90 to send via RM as they have dropped the online price.
As to how much effort Amazon put in for that sale it’s of course debatable.
I do sell books for a lot less then £12 both on Amazon and Ebay and aren’t too worried about the fees on either site. If there’s a profit i buy / list the book, if there isn’t i don’t buy it. I get more sales from those sites than i would get going to door to door with a suitcase full of books.
Although the fees are comparable for most categories, for books Ebay does work out a fair bit cheaper.
Seller_QVpjrN1BsybDT
I agree entirely.
The fact that other sites may have comparable fees does not make it any less outrageous.
Seller_sFEUMUfeW5484
So many sellers are pricing their items wrong. Not taking into account thinigs such as VAT/Fees/shipping etc correctly.
The probelm is that those sellers that don’t know what they’re doing, make it VERY hard for the rest who actually add the fees/vat etc correctly to get sales. Because Amazon end up with a false view of the genuine market price.
Seller_IcGtGTuwjEcXw
Set up a business account with AMAZON, it`s a good way to sell books still.
50% is pretty good in your pocket. perhaps you could look at cheaper ways to send items. i guess 3 large text books could weight over a 1 kg and then other carriers are cheaper.
if you post over 16k a year THEN collections are free from RM (BUSINSS ACCOUNT HOLDERS). or some carriers will collect from your homes. perhaps offer a locker collect (if thats possible for you). you can go to the local corner shop, i think its call collect plus and drop off small parcels?
all the best
Seller_JdozeOAZofvET
tbh FBA makes big difference, they can charge 1.50 FBA for items, that would cost atleast 2.90 with royal mail and thats not for tracked service… and then delivery isn’t your concern and don’t need to pay insurance for higher value items.
i think amazon wants sellers to upscale a lot and that’s where the money is, in the volume and variety of products.
Seller_CUs6cobAjKDF7
I get it with the fees, in something quite competitive (fashion), it’s 15%.
I sell a populat item for £25 and I get hit with nearly £7 of fees. Sure, is there profit? Yeah, I bought it for £3.60, but it’s not particulary great with something so competitive
Seller_2mXvaemgrVabX
All i can say is that its real hard, it used to be good about 8 years ago and then all of a sudden Amazon pushed us off the face of a cliff so to speak due to their sophisticated algoritms, we also had an IP violation in regards to amazon, but really we managed to settle with the rights owner and since then we have never got back to the revenue streams we had. It was a pain, and i had to pay staff wages out of my own pocket and live on bread and soup.
Seller_FEO0des6cjAyK
hi, its a struggle if you dont have a large amount of product to sell or you wont make a lot in return but thats the case in selling anything in any other way, take into consideration what shop costs and other overheads you could have, you really do need to accept that if you want to make money selling you need to think big.
