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Online Sales

How to Make Real Money Selling on Amazon

Letting Amazon FBA ship your product directly after a sale is one of the best ways to make high volume, high profit sales through Amazon. Because Amazon has warehouse facilities close to most cities, storing your product with Amazon will give you the cheapest and fastest shipping options to your customers. This is a selling advantage to sell nationally, especially if you sell on Amazon and want to meet Amazon’s two-day delivery guarantee and Amazon’s Prime customers.

However, getting your product to Amazon is not easy. There are numerous rules and requirements that your shipment must meet to be accepted by Amazon. If your products don’t meet those requirements, then getting your shipment processed will be slow and expensive. Your shipment could even be returned.

To keep shipping costs to Amazon low, Precision Fulfillment meets Amazon’s rules for receiving frieght. Here’s a list of some questions that you may want to have answered before shipping items to Amazon.

When should I ship my product to Amazon FBA?

Timing for when you should ship your product to Amazon FBA is a critical question because storage costs rise the longer you leave unsold product in an Amazon warehouse.

On May 15 of 2022, Amazon increased their “aged inventory surcharge”. Before May 15, Amazon didn’t charge a surcharge for items held longer than 271 days. Now, they add a $1.50 surcharge per cubic foot of storage space.

Storing a product over a year? Expect a $6.50 hike in your storage fees per month, per cubic foot. If that’s more than the profit being earned during that period, Amazon FBA won’t make sense for slow selling items.

Should I use Amazon FBA for holiday shipments?

The cheapest time to store items at an Amazon facility is between January and September. Per cubic foot, storage rates are $0.83 per month.

During October through December, Amazon charges a premium of $2.40 per cubic foot. That’s close to a 300% increase for the holiday months.

If your product is not intended for the holidays, pulling your product so it’s not being sold on FBA during the holiday season may be a smart financial decision. 

Boxes hosted on Amazon FBA.
Photo by ANIRUDH

How Can I Send My Products to Amazon FBA? 

Amazon has a host of requirements for sending shipments to its regional warehouses. For a full list of packaging requirements, see Amazon Packaging Requirements and Amazon Shipping Standards

For the use of Polybags: 

  • The thickness of the bag must be at least 1.5 mil (thousandth of an inch).
  • The poly bag must be transparent.
  • The poly bag must have a barcode (such as a UPC or EAN) or X00-label that is scannable through the bag or have an X00- or ASIN label on the outside of the bag.
  • Poly bags must be completely sealed.
  • The poly bag or shrink wrap must not protrude more than 3 inches past the dimensions of the product.

For the use of bubble wrap: 

  • Tightly wrapped and taped shut so the product cannot fall out
  • Labeled with a scannable barcode on the outside
  • Able to pass a 3-foot drop test on a hard surface without the contents breaking. A drop test consists of five drops:
    • Flat on base
    • Flat on top
    • Flat on longest side
    • Flat on shortest side
    • On a corner

For the use of cases: 

  • All products in a box must have matching SKU and condition and must have been packaged together by the manufacturer.
  • All boxes with the same product must contain equal quantities of that product in each box. For example, a case pack of 24 units must always contain 24 units.
  • The case pack limit is 150 units per case.
  • While receiving this type of shipment, the fulfillment center scans one unit from the box and the box is placed in inventory. There is no need to scan every unit because they are all the same.
  • In some cases, a manufacturer or distributor may package more than one case pack into a larger box. These larger boxes do not qualify as a case pack and must be separated at the appropriate case-pack level.

Expiration dates: 

  • Expiration-dated products must include the expiration date on the outer box in 36-point or larger font and on the individual units. Lot numbers alone are insufficient.
  • Expiration-dated products that require additional preparation, such as poly-bagging or bubble wrap, must have labels with expiration dates applied to the outside of the product prep or packaging to ensure that the expiration date is accessible for Amazon associates during the check-in process.
  • Perishable items are not allowed.

Questions?

For more information and strategy advice about selling online, contact the pros at Precision Fulfillment and Kitting.

Top Photo Credit: Andrew Stickelman