What Is Fulfilled By Amazon Mean

Is The Amazon Fba Model Worth It

We catch this question a gazillion times in our comments section. Selling on Amazon FBA is probably the best choice for any newbie seller with a strapped budget.

Order fulfillment grabs a lofty share of attention while running an online business. Leaving this part to the experts gives you a sizeable scope of time to take care of stuff like product promotion and customer engagement.

Some of the onset benefits to bank from the FBA business model include:

How To Start Being Fulfilled By Merchant

For new sellers, Fulfilled by Merchant is the default fulfillment method. The initial steps, including account creation and listing your products, are essentially the same as when you go for FBA. Check out our for a detailed walkthrough on how to start selling on Amazon.

Secondly, you need to have a warehouse all buttoned up or have a reliable 3PL that can store and fulfill orders on your behalf. In our Guide to Finding a Great 3PL, we go over the things you should consider when looking for a 3PL, including their capacity, location, and pricing.

Also remember that with FBM, you are responsible for dealing with all after-sales customer serviceincluding returns, refunds, and other customer complaints. With FBM, when a customer requests a product return, Amazon automatically sends them a ready-made return label with your address.

How To Avoid Scammers On Amazon

As Amazon has further cornered the online market, it has become an even better target for fraudsters. Amazon is trying to fix the problem, but its still a big problem. There is always a risk that you will be scammed when buying from an Amazon Marketplace seller.

That said, Im not advising you to run out and cancel your Prime membership. The vast majority of the time, youll be fine, especially if you exercise a little caution. If what youre buying is shipped from Amazon or a third-party seller, check the listing and reviews. If everything looks good, go for it, but if you see any red flags, maybe buy elsewhere.

To learn more about detecting fraudulent sellers in the wild, check out our comprehensive guide.

• TAGS

You May Like: How To Connect Your Amazon Prime To Twitch

Differences Between Fulfillment By Amazon And Seller Fulfilled Prime

The critical importance of selling on Amazon is difficult to overstate. More specifically, the benefits of selling on Amazon Prime cannot be ignored.

The marketplace giants Prime program plays a starring role in day-to-day operations of brands and retailers of all shapes and sizes. In fact, with 200 million Prime members worldwide spending an average of $1,400 a year compared to the $600-per-year average spent by non-members the Prime subscriber pool clearly offers significant opportunity to reach ready-to-spend buyers.

Today were going to look at the two programs that give you access to those lucrative Prime shelves: Fulfillment by Amazon and Seller Fulfilled Prime .

While both programs allow you to sell on Amazon Prime, thats about where the similarities end. FBA and SFP are fundamentally very different, and each one has features that appeal to certain businesses depending on size, profitability and aspirations.

To help you determine which program may be best for your business, here are five key differences between the programs.

Advantages Of Amazon Fbm

With Fulfilled by Merchant, Amazon sellers can still take advantage of the valuable real estate on Amazons high trafficked site.

Access Amazons customers with fewer fees

are far heftier than FBM. With Amazon Fulfilled by Merchant, sellers primarily have a monthly subscription fee, a small fee per order placed, and a referral fee for each order.

Avoid Amazons strict FBA requirements

Amazon is known for changing its FBA requirements without giving sellers enough time to adapt to changes . These requirements can be a hassle for merchants fulfilling on Amazon. With FBM, there are fewer rules and penalties for failing to hit their strict standards for each Amazon Prime order.

Retain greater control of your business

With Amazon FBA, your branding takes a hit. Customers receive a box with Amazons branding not yours. Customers may associate your products with Amazon and will communicate with Amazons customer support if there are issues. When you use FBM for the order fulfillment process, you can better ensure you are providing the customer experience you want.

Canned water brand Open Water moved to FBM from FBA and has ShipBob fulfilling all of their orders. They found not only ShipBob did a better job of packing it all correctly and had better rates, but Amazon was putting too much plastic in their orders, which doesnt align well with their eco-friendly brand.

Get better support

Also Check: Kindle Registering

Run An Insightful Optimization Gameplan

You need logical hacks to improve the overall conversion rate for your FBA business. And this isn’t all about the shady blackhat SEO strategies. Your CRO blueprint has to look natural. From the user-generated reviews to the product descriptions everything needs to be spot-on.

Contrarily, it’s fair to say that Amazon is a massive marketplace with thousands of towering sellers. Hence, making your products visible is such a tough job, especially for a newbie FBA seller.

So to cut all corners the snappy away, you need to optimize your product titles and be as descriptive as possible while describing the necessary features for all your listed items. Your optimization format should also focus on other significant components such as color, size, and the number of units in stock.

New customers always want to cross-check how your products compare to those of your competitors. To win their trust over, you’ll need to work with up to scratch ranking factors which result in positive reviews and more sales.

You must also work on your product photos and titles from a conversion optimization standpoint. Customers tend to be more visual. So you can’t overlook the prime significance of using high-resolution images on your listings.

Do You Have Enough Employees

If your business sells trending or seasonal products, then there are periods of unusually high demand. In times like these, you may not have enough employees to help you manage all the orders you receive. It would be a good idea to start using FBA, since Amazon employees handle packing and delivering orders to your customers.

Also Check: Amazon Audible Desktop Site

Returning Shipments Without A Packing Slip

If you ordered an item that you want to return but can’t find the packing slip, you can still return it via our Returns Centre. You’ll be asked to select the relevant order from Your Account.

If you want to return an item that was given to you as a gift, you can also return it via our Returns Centre. However, you will first need to ask the person who purchased the gift for you for the order number.

Secrets Of Fba Everyone Needs To Know

The FBA process is fairly simple, but there are a few more secrets that can help you find success through this marketplace. First, make sure that your product photos and titles are on-point.

So many of the listings on Amazon have gibberish titles that can look unprofessional, and optimizing titles takes all of a few seconds. Make sure that you take good product photos, too, and include as many views as possible. If your pictures are better, people will choose your listing over another similar one.

Also, never underestimate the power of user reviews. On Amazon, people need some way to find a reason to choose a listing. Therefore, in going through all the channels, they will eventually end up finding themselves at the reviews, looking to see what others have experienced firsthand.

Marketing is Everything. In a highly-competitive market like Amazon, youre competing with a lot of the same or similar types of people and products. Your marketing is whats going to make you stand out and help people choose your brand over the others. Marketing is critical to the success of all sellers who are using FBA, which is why you need to make sure that you have a solid marketing strategy in place. Thats probably the single biggest secret to success with selling on Amazon effective marketing.

And one other group we recommend joining because you never know when Amazon will suspend your account) is the .

Read Also: Do You Need An Llc To Sell On Amazon

Additional Fba Costs To Consider

Fulfillment fees and storage costs are just your two main costs. There are additional fees for the following scenarios:

• Labeling Amazon applies barcode labels on a per-item fee
• Prep Service Amazon preps your inventory for storage on a per-item fee
• Repackaging Amazon repackages your returned items to be resold
• Long-term inventory storage When products are stored in an Amazon warehouse longer than 365 days
• Unplanned services If your inventory arrives at warehouse without proper preparation or labeling
• Returns processing Whenever a customer returns the product
• Removal order If you ask Amazon to return or dispose of your inventory in a their fulfillment center
• Oversize items Have special handling fees per shipment

As you can see, FBA costs can vary depending on your business and the type of items you sell. You will face additional fees if you have very large items, inventory with long-shelf lives, or want to use FBA just during the holiday season.

So Is It Better To Ship Through Amazon

You know your business and your selling habits better than anyone else. FBA could be the making of your business or it could leave you feeling out of the loop when it comes to shipping your products.

Why not try Amazon FBA? You could list one of your most popular products to begin with and work out cost per value after a set period of time.

With FBA you can pay monthly, which means if you want to pull out you can recall your inventory by simply creating a removal order from Amazon and closing the listing. Hereâs more information on .

Also Check: How Do You Sell Books Back To Amazon

How Do Fulfillment By Amazon Viagra Pfizer Canada And Seller Fulfilled Prime Stand Out From Each Other

• Logistics. Within the framework of Fulfillment by Amazon , the platform handles the entire logistics process from product storage in warehouses to dispatching. Seller Fulfilled Prime leaves you 100% in charge of everything in this regard, yet forces you to cover dispatch fees at your own cost.

• Stock control. With FBA, product storage is entrusted to Amazon, which can definitely take a huge load off your mind Except if you are selling via several channels, in which case you will need to split your stock into two or decide to completely yield stock management to Amazon. Added to this is the fact that storage fees increase the longer your products remain in Amazons warehouses This problem does not exist with SFP, but is replaced by another issue: complying with Amazons promise regarding delivery lead times .

• Return management. In the event of a product being returned under the FBA programme, Amazon handles everything: a definite advantage for small establishments that have other things to worry about. With SFP on the other hand, you need to be able to count on your own customer service but that also means controlling your returns more carefully. In both cases, the fees are to be covered by the vendor.

How Do I Get Products Ready For Amazon Fba

Amazon offers a clear set of guidelines for preparing products for Amazon FBA. For one, each product needs to be individually packaged for e-commerce, individually labeled, and ready to sell.

Additionally, products sold as a single unit should be packaged together. Packages can be clear plastic, opaque, or cardboard. Units that arent securely packaged must be bagged with non-adhesive bands or tape.

Each product must also have a scannable barcode with a UPC, ISBN, EAN, or FNSKU, which all depends on the stickering settings you have set up in your account.

You May Like: What Aws Stands For

When To Use Amazon Fba

According to Jungle Scouts , 57% of Amazon sellers use FBA to fulfill all of their orders, while an additional 34% use FBA combined with other fulfillment methods. Overall, we recommend FBA for most Amazon sellers .

Seeing as 91% of Amazons millions of active sellers use it, FBA certainly has its advantages. Despite its popularity, top sellers recommend thoroughly reading the companys policies and fee guides, and using Amazons calculator tools to see just how profitable the business relationship would be before diving in.

In particular, we recommend Amazon FBA for:

Be Smart About Your Product Selection

Think about sales rank, but also about what you get in exchange. High-ranking products are competitive, but theyll sell quickly and keep inventory moving. Low-ranking products could cause stagnant inventory and long-term fees. However, they may also give you the chance to become a leading seller since theres less competition. You have to weigh the options for yourself.

Read Also: Kohl’s Tracking Id Amazon

Example : Paperback Book

Say you have a book that is less than 10 oz., which would qualify as a small standard product. Therefore, its fulfillment fee would be $2.50 according to current rates. Youll also have to factor in your storage fees and any other costs, which totals $3.50 in our example.

You Still Have To Pay For Shipping To Amazon Fulfillment Centers

Although your shipping cost to customers is included in FBA costs. youll still need to fork over some cash to get your products to the fulfillment center.

So, you are still dealing with a limited amount of shipping costs.

Amazon has Partnered Carrier options that allow sellers to ship products to Amazon fulfillment centers at a reduced cost.

When you use an Amazon-partnered carrier, the company provides you with a shipping label for boxes youre sending to the warehouse. The cost is billed to your FBA account as an inbound transportation charge.

Amazon also offers partial truckload and full truckload options with partnered carriers. This is useful if you have a huge amount of merchandise that you need to send to a fulfillment center. Youll typically need a dock or forklift if you want to use that service, though.

Also Check: Amazon Drive File Too Large

Amazon Fbm Vs Fba Vs Seller Fulfilled Prime

The two main fulfillment methods for Amazon sellers are FBA and Fulfilled by Merchant . FBA basically means having Amazon store, pick, pack, and ship your orders out for you with corresponding fees and also with a few inhouse features designed to streamline your selling experience. FBM, on the other hand, means you have to do all those things yourself or work with a 3PL to ship out your own orders.

As discussed earlier, the third option is Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime , which basically means Fulfilled by Merchant, but with Prime eligibility for potentially stronger sales. Although SFP is a nice blend of FBA and FBM, it has pretty strict eligibility requirements and required metrics to stay in the program.

The table below shows how FBM differs from FBA and SFP.

What Type Of Products Do You Sell

When youre contemplating using Fulfillment by Amazon, keep in mind that its best if you sell products that are small in size and pricey, so that you dont round up skyrocketing FBA fees. This is because it costs a lot to ship products that are larger and weigh more, and FBA fees are determined by size categories. Furthermore, if youre shipping products that are large, heavy, and inexpensive, then you may not make enough profit to justify using FBA. FBA is ideal for companies that sell small items with higher retail prices.

Don’t Miss: Can I Buy Food From Amazon With Ebt

When Should I Choose Amazon Fbm

Amazon FBA is still the preferred choice among Amazon sellers. The convenience and seller tools that come with FBA are still, for the most part, worth all the fees .

That being said, there are certain instances where FBM makes so much more sense. Some sellers also use a combination of both FBA and FBM to stay ahead of the competition.

These days, FBM is the go-to method for getting around . Going FBM and running your own warehouse will spare you the trouble of not being able to send your inventory into Amazon warehouses. This is particularly convenient during peak shopping seasons, and knowing that lead times for shipments are taking much longer to arrive at and be checked into an Amazon warehouse, largely due to the global shipping crisis.

Make sure to have a clear idea of what your FBA fees are going to be compared to the costs you would incur when doing FBM. This will make it much easier to assess which fulfillment method is best for your business. A good example of this is when youre selling oversize or bulky products, as there are situations where the FBA storage and handling costs for these large items are much higher than with FBM and may even be subject to shipping restrictions by Amazon.

Also Check Out: