A very basic question that you might be asking is how much it costs to sell on Amazon. The basic cost of selling is very simple. Once you go into the world of FBA (covered later in the book) the fee structure gets a little more complex. To start I would recommend anyone interested in selling on Amazon to become a Professional Seller which has a monthly fee of $39.99 a month. Amazon does offer a free selling plan for smaller sellers which does not charge this monthly fee, but these fees usually are greater than 40.00 if you sell more than 40 products a month. I recommend just jumping straight to the professional selling plan because the cost is minimal and if you are not willing to spend the 40 dollars a month you probably are not very committed to your business and will more than likely fail anyways. In addition, the Professional seller account is going to give you access to the Amazon API which is required for most of the tools that you will use, and you can learn more about by checking out our additional blog posting at academy.kingsridgemedia.com. By no means is the Professional plan a requirement, and if you feel that you are fully committed to this business but do not have the money to invest in this plan you can certainly start with the Basic Plan offered.
In addition to the monthly fee there are commissions to everything that sell on Amazon. The commissions vary by what product category you sell in as mentioned above whether you are using FBA or not. I am going to give you a simple breakdown of commissions for a typical book sale you would make on Amazon.
Say you sell an item for $18.99
Amazon will charge a Variable closing fee $1.80 (Varies by Category)
Amazon will charge a Commission of 15% $2.85 (Varies by Category)
You will get $14.34 deposited to you after the sale
The initial reaction most people have when they see the fees associated with Amazon is that you could not ever make money with such high fees. Keep in mind that by tapping into the Amazon Marketplace you are accessing millions of customers. In addition, Amazon spends millions marketing and driving people to their website. When you take all of this into consideration these nominal fees, they charge on a sale are small compared to the marketing expenses you would incur to drive traffic to a site of your own.
