These days, Amazon.com is as much an online marketplace as it is a retail website. Many companies besides Amazon sell goods through the website. And often, they rely on Amazon to warehouse their goods, fulfill orders and ship right to customers’ doorsteps.
First, businesses register with Amazon and sign up for a seller account. You can choose an individual plan and pay 99 cents for each item sold. You can also choose a professional plan for $39.99 per month, a flat fee no matter how many items sold (additional fees apply for both).
When you list items on Amazon, you’ll build a product detail page. Here, you’ll include product details, such as features, warranty information and more. Some things you’ll fill out: title, images, variations (i.e. size) and featured offers (if any).
As for fulfilling orders, you can sign up for Fulfillment by Amazon. If you join this program, customers can often get their goods in two days or less through Amazon Prime shipping. Interestingly enough, you can even use FBA to fulfill orders elsewhere, such as on your personal e-commerce site. The orders are routed to Amazon, which then picks and ships.
To use FBA, you’ll send your products to Amazon and their warehouses where they are then stored. You’ll have to provide details to make sure everything gets to the right place. Once a customer buys a product on Amazon or another connected channel, warehouse workers collect the goods, package them and then ship them.
Of course, none of this comes for free. Fulfillment for a 15″ x 12″ x 0.75″ box weighing six ounces or less costs $2.92, while a 16 ounce shipment costs $3.59. Fees go up from there. Fulfillment for some products, like apparel, may be a bit more. Amazon also charges referral fees, which range between 8 to 15 percent of the cost of the item sold.