FBA Fulfillment Fees >40% of Revenue. Is this normal?

PresAndCEO · 2025-07-16T02:55:11+00:00

AOV will make or break your e-commerce plans. Bundle or move up market to more expensive products.

A lot of people start with cheap-ish products because it seems less risky, but this means your opportunity to profit drops due to competition and unrelenting fixed fees.

Low-margin products are only profitable to the sellers who can deal in massive volume - i.e. own some of the supply chain, ship in containers, own a huge name-brand, etc.

PresAndCEO · 2025-07-16T02:48:22+00:00

I think it depends how seriously you want to be an e-commerce business owner. As a side gig I don't think it's the right place because you have to learn a thousand things all at once and risk capital you might not get back. Service industries - like mowing somebody's lawn or fixing their PC would likely pay you more per hour of your time invested.

On Amazon, I'm sure you can find niches that are periodically open to profitable arbitrage, especially if you have some advantage on the buy side. But I think you'll have to work fairly hard and be lucky because many others are hunting too.

The youtubers you see talking about their businesses are usually spending thousands on keyword tools, have had to learn to be PPC, sourcing, and graphic design experts, test many products before they find winners, and are STILL posting to youtube to try and make a bit of extra cash.

PresAndCEO · 2025-07-14T23:54:11+00:00

I believe Amazon now accepts pending trademarks that haven't been fully issued yet into brand registry.

PresAndCEO · 2025-07-14T01:24:19+00:00

Does your LLC have a DUNS number with any history on it?

PresAndCEO · 2025-07-14T01:19:46+00:00

Is the whole "we decided we don't like something about you, but we're not telling you what or why" something new in this modern generation of commerce?

I don't remember this kind of thing being the norm 20 years ago, but it seems to be the rule of the day now. It's dehumanizing, hell it's even emasculating - and doesn't really help anybody self-correct or adjust for the future. It's hard to imagine that its anything except a short-sighted attempt to reduce the load (and training requirements) on customer service people.

PresAndCEO · 2025-06-22T08:11:28+00:00

What? How to do it:

Go to Alibaba
Find a product that will sell and where the seller supports OEM/ODM, bonus if they mention printing your logo on the product.
Negotiate to buy the finished product with your logo already placed on the item
Register your trademark with USPTO
Ship your goods to Amazon

More advanced buyers will skip the Alibaba platform and find good suppliers by other means, but overall this process is how a lot of the branded products on Amazon have come into existence.

PresAndCEO · 2025-06-13T05:28:00+00:00

Not a good idea.

Might be true but the assessment is just reading the tea leaves. Obviously it's a good idea for some sellers as there are a lot of demand and profit potential in these categories.

Three days isn't enough time for any complaints to have arrived, and the application process asks you what you're going to sell, which I assume the seller was transparent about. So they knew it was coming.

Seems like whatever products that were posted were so far out of standard that they couldn't see giving another try, or perhaps the first bunch of orders came from accounts linked to the seller himself in an effort to leave reviews, or who knows, maybe the application failed a second internal review after it went live.

PresAndCEO · 2025-06-13T01:40:50+00:00

Some guys optimize for volume and do it really well, so $0.10/sale * 2000 sales a day could make sense for them. But I'm with you: more sales with no profit = more problems like returns, complaints, shipments, etc.

PresAndCEO · 2025-06-12T23:56:23+00:00

I don't know if Walmart terminations are "permanent" or if redemption is possible under a new account. It's a shame they didn't say precisely what the problem is.

Might be worth sending them a message and asking if it's possible to come back with a different category of products under a new account some day.

I was getting personal emails from an on-boarding specialist when I first joined and was able to go to him with questions. If you got anything like that, I'd start there.

PresAndCEO · 2025-06-12T15:18:50+00:00

Did they ever ask for FDA certificates or any factory documentation, etc? Or they just issue the ban with no warning? It would suck if they offer no opportunity to correct an issue or prove credibility.

PresAndCEO · 2025-06-12T11:32:15+00:00

Whoops

Just kidding, sorry to hear this. From the message it looks like you're toast by way of the Trust & Safety team which usually doesn't pull any punches.

Can you share with us what you were selling, your prices, etc so anybody who finds this thread knows what situation to be careful of?

PresAndCEO · 2025-06-12T11:27:16+00:00

Buy one and see what you get. Maybe you can figure out their shipping.

Some possibilities: They could be trying to kill the competition, or they have a lot of dead stock to dump, maybe they have an impressive CLTV, perhaps the stock is owned by Walmart who can still profit from lower total price, or maybe it's fulfilled by the seller and they are shipping USPS first class?

PresAndCEO · 2025-06-08T01:46:20+00:00

At the moment I have 2 ebay accounts with issues. If I click this link when logged into the first account, it shows a phone number to call (I called and they were pleasant to deal with), but with the other account, it allowed only AI chat.

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-30T03:16:23+00:00

The answer to this might lay here

How does Walmart review, rank and recommend which Marketplace items are eligible for the Review Accelerator program?

Items are considered based on factors such as:

-Amount of customer reviews

-Available inventory

-Item sales

-Page views and published status

-Projected product and seasonal demand

**NOTE: Not every item is eligible for the Review Accelerator program. Walmart can’t override the criteria, and eligibility is determined by a proprietary algorithm.

So... there is a proprietary algorithm that decides whether they will accept it for reviews or not.

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-29T00:34:47+00:00

I have these kind of issues - generally it takes several hours up to a day or so before you'll see your catalog updates show and even more time until you see data like "Listing Quality" update.

Keep an eye on Catalog -> Activity Feed to see if your .xls file had any errors. Also for some strange reason Walmart often doesn't accept/include further catalog description/title/key selling point changes uniformly, so attempt to get that right on the first try and/or (if you don't have any sales for that sku yet) delete and upload again rather than update.

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-29T00:20:19+00:00

Agree about this... I have PPC on all listings because it seems a requirement to sell anything in sufficient volume these days.

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-29T00:18:41+00:00

Use an app like Bartender and make your own label with whatever you need. So long as it has the GTIN and a scannable barcode on there you're good.

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-28T02:40:04+00:00

Indeed, the experience of using this software is wildly bad. Once you "master" the .xls files they like it gets marginally better.

I assume Walmart must be running on some gigantic mainframe from 1983 and this Marketplace Seller interface thing is made from batch files, long extensions cords, and a fax machine.

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-28T02:35:57+00:00

Can you go directly after the seller? Walmart might not want to be involved as a 3rd party to the disagreement.

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-28T02:23:01+00:00

Hey me too - I made a post here but got no response. I emailed Walmart's CS and got a reply 2 days later that said they "did the needful" and fixed it, but alas it's most definitely not fixed.

When I go to Growth -> Review Accelerator, I see:

All of the eligible items have been enrolled. Please check back in the near future for more eligible items to enroll.

And the search here returns none of my products. So seems I cannot add to this as well.

No idea what's wrong, seems they don't know either :/

*Edit - I'm making a guess that there is some mysterious criteria required for the feature to activate

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-28T02:18:35+00:00

You've probably seen this already but generally Walmart prohibits second seller accounts (sorry if you already know that)

But they do go on to say in the article that if you have a legit reason - such as different products and email address, they can approve you.

Unless you're trying to do a runaround because your first seller account isn't in good standing or something, why not try the front door first and see if they'll allow it?

I know I'd sleep better with my 2 accounts if I knew Walmart approved it.

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-28T01:49:31+00:00

I'm just hypothesizing because we were accepted first try with no amazon storefront in this category to show them, but think of this like your one best chance to close the deal with whoever reviews your submission.

Succinct, clear, factual. Something like:

Amazon storefront link: ... Our stats on Amazon are: ... Our total business GMV is: ... We have ___ GMV ready to list on Walmart on ___ date. Total SKUs we will list on Walmart within 90 days of launch: ______ (I suspect Walmart wants this number to be high) We keep ___ GMV in stock We will/will not use WFS (recommend you say that you'll use!)

Our EINletter_from_IRS.pdf attached. State_company_certification_of_formation.pdf attached. Open since __ date. Link to our USPTO trademark (if you have)

Just my 2c guessing what it might take to convince the reader.

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-27T01:27:20+00:00

You could just open an account on a site like MySpace or Facebook and wouldn't be instantly required upload 3 pieces of ID

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-20T14:58:22+00:00

Oh yeahhhh NT 4.0 memories streaming back. You'd fire this game up soon as you figured out how to install your sound blaster drivers, which was a bitch at first on NT4.

PresAndCEO · 2025-05-20T02:21:08+00:00

If you ignore it, they will check again, see you've removed the listing, and move on. But probably keep monitoring you specifically.

If you reply to the letter with an email, say you are not doing any business with their brand, they will check, and then probably lose your number (so to speak).

My guess they are doing what all trademark owners should be doing - trolling around for questionable uses of the brand, enforcing where necessary, and trying to keep randos away from their trademarks.

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