---

Amazon announced some major fee changes last month that will have an impact both FBA and non-FBA sellers. Some of the fee changes are designed to ensure the marketplace is offering products that are likely to sell, and Amazon is using fees to give merchants an incentive to clear out slow sellers from both real and virtual "shelves."

Amazon also announced new fees for artisans selling on its Amazon Handmade marketplace.

Make sure you understand the new fees, otherwise you could have an unpleasant surprise waiting for you later this year.

Change #1: A Hike in FBA Storage Fees (October through December)
The first change impacts sellers who use Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) - those who send inventory to Amazon's fulfillment centers. Amazon will lower storage fees for the month of October, and will raise storage fees for the months of November and December. It will also lower outbound fees for November and December, and standard rates will resume in January.

Amazon spokesperson Tom Cook told EcommerceBytes the move was to address the issue of items sitting in fulfillment centers that were unlikely to sell - such as 2011 calendars. The goal is to make sure the inventory that's in Amazon FCs in the fourth quarter will sell during the holidays.

You can read more about the new fees in this Newsflash article from May 18th.

Change #2: Higher Fees for Slow-Moving Items (beg. in August)
Amazon is changing the way it calculates High-Volume Fees. This impacts merchants who sell items that come in a single design with numerous sizes or colors - products such as Tshirts and window blinds.

Amazon instituted the High-Volume Fee last year, allowing a seller to list up to 2 million non-media ASINs, after which they would have to pay $0.0005 cents per ASIN beyond that.

With the new change that goes into effect on August 1st, sellers will only be able to list up to 100,000 ASINs before the fee kicks in, but with a twist - only ASINs that were created over 12 months ago and have not had a sale from any seller in the past 12 months will count toward the first 100,000 ASINs. In addition, the new fee is $0.005 per ASIN.

If you sell over 100,000 ASINs on Amazon, you can read more about the fee changes in the May 20th issue of Newsflash.

Change #3: New Fees for Amazon Handmade (beg. in August)
Amazon is extending its promotional monthly subscription fee waiver through the end of 2017. That means sellers who list primarily on Amazon Handmade won't have to pay the $39.99 monthly Professional selling plan subscription fee until 2018.

However, Amazon is increasing the referral fee from 12% to 15% on sales in Handmade at Amazon. Also, an applicable minimum referral fee of $1.00 will apply to all Handmade at Amazon category transactions, up from 50 cents.

You can read more in the May 26th issue of Newsflash.

Edited to correct the stated amount of the High Volume Listing fee.

---

About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

You may quote up to 50 words of any article on the condition that you attribute the article to EcommerceBytes.com and either link to the original article or to www.EcommerceBytes.com.
All other use is prohibited.

Sign up for our Email Newsletters


Email this story to a friend.

4 of 6