Amazon Launches New Category, A Fee Hike for Some Sellers

Amazon is launching a new "Electronics Accessories" category and corresponding store in January that will have many sellers paying more in fees to the online marketplace.

For example, a camera bag that would currently be listing in the Camera and Photo category with a commission ("referral fee") of 8% will be listed in Electronics Accessories beginning January 15, 2013, for which there is a referral fee of 15%. Amazon also charges sellers 8% for sales of Consumer Electronics items.

The Electronics Accessories category will have the following referral fees: for product sales up to $100, the greater of 15% or $1.00, and 8% for any portion of a product's sales proceeds over $100.

According to the announcement, which was emailed to sellers on Wednesday, the new store will help to improve customer experience by providing a central destination for more than 3 million unique Electronics Accessories products, a more intuitive browse structure, and other features to help make it easier to discover related products.

Amazon said it would also continue to improve product data quality to attract more customer traffic and help drive sales for all Electronics Accessories sellers.

Initial reaction appears to be resignation. One EcommerceBytes reader said the Amazon platform is very disjointed as far as categorization of products goes. "Since almost any seller can create a listing, many times sellers will create listings and incorrectly categorize them to either get in a category with a lower Amazon referral fee or to create a listing in a restricted category." He said Amazon is lax in controlling product categorization and is slow to correct multiple listings of the same product whether its listed in the same category or across many different categories.

The new fees may lead to more intentional mis-categorization of products, he said, in order to avoid higher fees.

Listings that have already been created for electronic accessories products will be moved automatically to the Electronics Accessories category when it launches on January 15, 2013.

Included in the new Electronics Accessories category are headphones; surge protectors; tripods; film; batteries; screen protectors for cell phones; MP3 docking stations; ink and toner; and gaming accessories. A full list is available on the Amazon website. Current fees can be found on this page.