How To Reduce Amazon Seller Fees

As a manager of a thriving e-commerce business, you're probably looking for ways to maximize the ROI on your Amazon storefront by reducing costs. But first, let's take a refresher and look at the four core components to answer how much Amazon selling fees are. Those factors include:

• Seller Plan Fee: As an e-commerce business that sells over 40 items monthly, this plan provides advertising, reporting, more flexibility, a store dashboard, and other features starting at $39.99.
• Closing Fee: Depending on what you sell, everyone pays a referral fee that's generally between 10% to 15%, a variable closing fee on media, or a high-volume listing fee.
• Fulfillment Fees: Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) allows Amazon to handle all logistics while providing your customers Prime shipping with costs based on what you sell. 
• Additional Fee: Other expenses that affect the ROI of a sale include various inventory fees, shipping costs (if you're shipping an item yourself), and other e-commerce expenses associated with selling online.

With so many aspects cutting into profits, it's crucial to find ways to minimize Amazon seller fees. Here are our 5 essential tips to increase returns and reduce Amazon seller fees.

1. Reduce Shipping Costs

For e-commerce businesses handling fulfillment in-house, knowing if Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) can save you money is a vital first step to take. Start by using Amazon’s FBA calculator and compare expenses. Is it more expensive to ship on your own? Or will FBA save you money? 

It might make sense financially to keep shipping in-house, but you might also be able to save on fulfillment through a 3PL partnership. Nevertheless, here are a few additional ways to save on shipping as an Amazon Marketplace seller:

• Partner with a fulfillment company and use an inventory management service
• Use unbranded boxes and print your own labels
• Negotiate with your carrier
• Use USPS Priority Mail
• Source free shipping supplies

2. Embrace Repricing Strategies

If you're unfamiliar with Amazon repricing, think of it as a tactic that adjusts your marketplace store's prices on the fly by factoring in cost, shipping, and other industry variables. Adopting a dynamic pricing strategy like this not only makes it easier to capture the Amazon Buy Box, but it might also reduce seller fees by adjusting your pricing by considering your ROI per purchase. Meaning, an adjustment only happens if it's advantageous.

Using repricing software allows you to automate price updates and set strategies aligned with your business goals immediately. If you're looking for an Amazon repricing partner, our services can help by capturing the Buy Box 72% of the time on average.

3. Sell Bundles and Multi-Packs

One of the easiest ways to attract buyers and reduce Amazon fees is by bundling or packaging multiple items under one listing. While bundles and multi-packs may sound similar, they're inventoried differently in software like ours to make merchandise management effortless. Here's how:

• Bundles: Think of bundling as a single bicycle sold as one unit but composed of different items or SKUs. Bundles consider the quantity and relationship between different SKUs to fulfill that item and deduct items from other SKUs to satisfy an order as a single purchase.
• Multi-Packs: In a situation where you're selling multi-packs of batteries, a single battery is the component SKU, but you can increase the pack size to offer larger quantities as one item instead of selling each unit as individual SKUs.

Both cases save e-commerce sellers by consolidating listings and allowing them to pay one set of fees instead of several. Bundled and multi-packs also attract more buyers. The best part is that we offer solutions for leaders looking to increase ROI by adding an automated bundling or multi-pack inventory solution that delivers results.

4. Maintain a Clean Inventory

Overselling and out-of-stock items affect more than just your bottom line. Inventory challenges can impact your seller ranking, lead to negative reviews, lost sales, while overstocked items could result in additional storage fees. 

We know it's challenging to keep any stock up-to-date without inventory management software. If you need assistance, we can cover you in the following ways:

• Clean-up and removal of duplicated listings
• Non-matching SKUs across marketplaces
• Multi-channel Inventory Syncing
• Extensive bundling or variation set-up projects
• Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF)

5. Stay Active

Remember, Amazon doesn't need to be a jungle for sellers to succeed. And you can always solve, streamline, and save on Amazon fees by partnering with a company that knows how to handle multiple eCommerce marketplaces at once.

Start Reducing Amazon Fees With SellerActive

Amazon fees can cut into the bottom line, but they don’t have to. When you take a look at each aspect of your growing business, from pricing to shipping, you can find ways to reduce those fees and improve ROI. With an inventory management tool like SellerActive, you can make multiple changes at once with ease. Automatically route orders to FBA or your 3PL provider quickly, ensure listings across multi-channel platforms are consistent and get your products to your customers. 

Email our experienced support staff to learn more about our inventory management software or begin a 14-day free trial today!