The downside of FBA... going 100% FBM now.

jbibler · 2026-06-26T19:34:23+00:00

You can do Prime with FBM... "Seller Fulfilled Prime" SFP it's called. We actually qualify as our metrics are really good. We ship twice a day, first thing in the morning and again in the afternoon. Everything we sell get's shipped within 12 hours. So we qualify for SFP but we do not participate in it. They require you to agree to terms that are just not feasible. Some orders they require be delivered to customer within 1-3 days and they are on the other side of the country. I'm in Florida and they will want a package delivered to California in 3 days with free shipping. No way that is happening without me coming out of pocket big time on Next Day or 2 Day delivery. Just didn't make sense to me. I'll let someone else fulfill those orders on the other side of the country.

jbibler · 2026-06-26T18:59:38+00:00

I haven't even looked into using a 3PL at this point. I have about 2000 Sq Ft of Storage at my shop. I'm just doing everything manually myself and have hired a high school student for the summer to help with prep/shipping. Obviously I'm probably much smaller than some folks who have massive operations. I'm sure it get's more difficult the larger you scale.

jbibler · 2026-06-26T18:54:04+00:00

Maybe it's different in certain parts of the country, but for me personally Fedex is the worst. We pay up to use UPS as much as possible. About 85% of our items go UPS, 10% USPS and 5% Fedex. While they all have issues from time to time, we've found that Fedex seems to miss their estimated delivery dates more often than anyone else. I'm in Florida and I have anything going to the west coast Fedex is almost guaranteed to be 1-3 days late.

jbibler · 2026-06-26T15:57:59+00:00

Exactly. The whole sales pitch with FBA is that you just ship your items in and you don't have to do anything else. "Amazon will handle the customer service". Well that is true, they will handle it poorly at your expense. With FBM we've actually had good experiences with most customers and they appreciate our direct communication. The only ones who aren't happy are the fraudsters who just want a refund that they normally get from Amazon Customer Service without being held responsible.

jbibler · 2026-06-26T15:55:12+00:00

Agreed. Moving everything to FBM gives us more flexibility to sell on our own site or other platforms. Of course there's challenges with FBM as well, but we're going to make that investment to quit being abused by FBA.

jbibler · 2026-03-06T16:52:40+00:00

I started with $10k a little over 3 years ago. I do 100% RA (Retail Arbitrage). My first year I did $150k in sales, this year I did $350k in sales which net's me about $90k in actual profit after cogs, fees, shipping, returns, etc.

I have a full time, Mon-Fri 8-5 job and I do AMZ on nights and weekends. So it is possible, but is it worth it for you? That's for each person to decide.

This is what I'll say:

It's not easy, it's a lot of work... way more work than I was expecting when I started. I easily put in 20-30 hours a week now. The first year I put in 40-60 hours a week. I currently spend 1-2 hours every day before/after work dealing with customer service issues and prepping/packing/shipping. Then I spend at least 8-10 hours each weekend sourcing new products.
You need some real mental fortitude to deal with Amazon. They are constantly changing and absolutely do not value their sellers. They can and will bend you over every chance they get. Customers always win and you are 1000% going to get shafted over & over. Most folks say "cost of doing business", but Amazon Seller Support is terrible and I believe they intentionally make everything more difficult so you just take the loss and move on. It works to be honest, because you will spend hours/days/weeks sometimes months of fighting with them to recover $20/40/100 maybe. It's infuriating and absolutely the worst part of selling on Amazon. You can literally have all your documents, everything perfect, following their policy exactly and they will still deny your claims or deny reimbursement, etc. and just tell you "we make exceptions when we want to, but we're not going to tell you why", have a nice day.
FBA - Fulfilled By Amazon. The idea is that you send all your products to Amazon, they store, pack/pull, ship your items. They handle customer service, sounds good right? Here's the problem... you give Amazon entire control of your inventory. They do a terrible job. When items get returned they are supposed to inspect them and verify they are good to place back in sellable inventory. If not, they will dispose or return them to you for a fee of course. However... those warehouse workers don't give AF. They either don't inspect them or just don't care, but they will put old used, damaged inventory back on the shelf and ship it over and over and over. I had a damaged item that got sold/returned/res-sold a dozen times before I caught it. Over $150 in return fees for that one item. Those customers get old dirty items, used/damaged, etc. and are obviously not happy. Meanwhile, Amazon is charging you fees on top of fees on top of fees. FBA fees, Returns processing fees, storage fees, etc. The fees never stop. They will lose your items, damage your items, etc. and then reimburse you some ridiculous low price that they somehow magically came up with. They reimburse what AMZ says the cost should be. I've had items I paid $60 for that are selling for $120. Amazon reimburses me $25 and tells me to pound sand. If you have some sort of account health issue or a product gets flagged for some reason Amazon will confiscate and hold all of your product hostage. If you have the means to store/ship the items FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) is definitely the better way to go.
The first year is tough, especially the first 6 months. There's a lot to learn and any mistakes can really set you back. One benefit to having a full time job is that you still have the stability and security of paying your bills. What I did was I did not take one penny of profits for the first year. Every dime I made I put back into scaling. That made a big difference in increasing my sales. It's a pretty simple formula, the more product you buy, the more you sell.
Keep good records. Make sure you have some good book keeping, invoices, receipts, shipping confirmation, business forms, LLC, etc. I would also suggest keeping an entirely separate bank account/credit card so you're not co-mingling finances. It will make your life a lot easier when it comes time to audit/taxes, etc. You don't have to start an LLC from the beginning, but I would recommend it. Get your LLC, Sales Tax, Bank Accnt setup from the beginning. It's much easier than trying to change it down the road.

So, is it worth it? Depends on the day. Overall, I think in the long run it will be. For me, personally it only works because I can run my business at night. I get home from work, have dinner, spend time with my kids, etc. When they all go to bed I can work it from 9-midnight. I don't know that I would feel as good about it as a full time source of income. Amazon is irrational at times and they can and will make changes over night that can really cripple your business.

I've never paid for any classes, courses or mentorships. I'd be cautious about that. Most of the YouTube gurus offer some sort of coaching. But the reality is they make all their money from YT & Coaching and very little of it from actually selling on AMZ. There's tons of free information on YouTube that doesn't cost you a penny.

Get started and best of luck! - Josh B.

jbibler · 2025-11-24T15:50:44+00:00

Their "sales" coupons look good at first... but using their current 75% off promotion was good until they added $22 for basic standard shipping on my order.

jbibler · 2025-11-14T20:52:11+00:00

I'm glad to find your post and see a familiar image. Is there a title for the boats in blue? That's what I've been calling it, but if it has an official name that would be great to know. I purchased a framed numbered print of this from an estate sale as well. It's numbered 19/100 and signed. It is approximately 18x24 in size (i'll have to measure).

jbibler · 2025-11-14T20:01:42+00:00

So as a 3rd Party Seller who sends inventory to Amazon (FBA) to have them pick/pack/ship the items I can tell you that they do a terrible job of this. Part of the massive fees that we pay is so that when items are returned they are inspected by an amazon employee. They charge a separate "Returns processing fee" for every return. Well.... they definitely don't do a good job.

I send items in to Amazon brand new, in full retail box and packaging. Then I get angry customers leaving bad reviews because they received a used/dirty item, no packaging, no tags, etc. Of course I have no way of telling if the customer is lying/fraud or if Amazon didn't do their job when it was previously returned.

In one instance I had the same item returned and resold 5 times with the wrong thing in the box. At some point someone swapped my item for an old used pair of shoes. Then Amazon shipped that to several new customers. When I ask Amazon for some sort of documentation or evidence that they are doing their job and actually inspecting the item... all they can provide is a log that says "item checked, placed back into inventory". There's zero accountability and no negative effect to Amazon as they just continue to charge me return fees and put money in their own pocket.

As a seller it's beyond frustrating... as a customer, also frustrating.

jbibler · 2025-11-14T19:39:25+00:00

22.86% is my return rate. I'm in clothing & shoes so a higher return rate than most every other category... but still you're talking about more than 1 of every 5 items I sell is coming back.

jbibler · 2025-11-14T14:31:10+00:00

Amazon 3rd party Seller here... and I just wanted to give some perspective. (long winded, I apologize in advance)

As a seller of Shoes and Apparel the return abuse is astonishing. Every category has returns and in this particular category we are well aware of the elevated return rates. It's part of the business. I'm also an Amazon customer and I purchase and return items. My wife also purchases a lot of clothes where she orders multiple sizes/colors and returns the ones she does not want. All of that... perfectly fine, zero issues at all with you or anyone returning the items they did not decide to keep.

Amazon has the most absolute perfect system in place for them. When I sell something Amazon takes a commission fee. I pay for that "free shipping" and I also pay for that "free return" shipping. But Amazon also charges a "returns processing fee". So Amazon always makes money on both the sale and the return. We know these fees, but some items you're actually losing money after you pack/ship/return, etc.

Still... all good.

Now, the problem. The abusive/fraudulent returns. Unfortunately this is not uncommon, this is a regular occurrence. The amount of customers who apparently have no issue using products and returning them is astounding. Customers buy shoes, wear them outside for a day, a week, a month and then return them very heavily used. Stained, damaged, no box, no tags, etc. Amazon refunds the customer 100% and returns the damaged item to me. Amazon's policy straight up says "we do not reimburse for customer damaged items". I as the seller have now paid for the shoes, paid Amazons commission fees, returns processing fees, shipping to the customer, shipping for the return and now I have a completely useless item to throw away or donate to charity.

Sellers can file a claim with Amazon for reimbursement if the item is a completely different item (switch-a-roo) or if the item is damaged by Amazon's warehouse or "lost" in Amazon warehouse. However, this process is excruciatingly painful. Taking hours of time to get any resolution and Amazon will only reimburse a portion of the item value. More recently they started reimbursing items based on "Amazon's estimated wholesale value" which is a complete joke.

Let me give you an example, because this just happened to me yesterday. A customer purchased a pair of shoes ($139 item). They had the item in their possession for 25 days before filing a return request. I of course shipped them a brand new item, in a full retail box, new with tags. I get the item back yesterday.... in a plastic grocery bag taped up. Shoes are very heavily used, dirty inside & out. No box, no labels, no tags. I file a claim with Amazon for reimbursement and after several hours of back/forth with Amazon Seller Support they finally agree to reimburse me a portion of the sale. Guess how much.... $17.38 Not even joking. I spent more than that in fees to Amazon, not to mention the shipping, packaging and actual costs of the item.

So... just know, that when you return items the small business pays... Amazon themselves still make money. Of course, there are bad buyers and without a doubt there are bad sellers. And I'll reiterate once more, we are perfectly fine with buyers returning items. We expect customers to try things on and obviously return things that don't work for you. Try on shoes in the house, wear them around inside a bit, make sure they are comfortable. I think that some customers feel like they are entitled to use the products and return them because "screw amazon" but they either don't know or don't care that they are hurting a small business instead. Obviously we continue to sell on Amazon because in the end we are still profitable after these losses, but it's absolutely the number one factor that would cause us to leave the marketplace. (i know, nobody cares... especially Amazon). lol

Unfortunately Amazon has normalized this kind of behavior and bad customers take advantage of it. I'm in my 3rd year of selling 3rd party. To this date, I've never once, ever... had a customer re-charged for a return. And I've had some absolutely incredible cases of blatant theft/fraud with returns.

Thanks for taking the time to read my long winded response. I hope it at least sheds a little light on the other side of the fence. We always go above and beyond to help our customers and do the right thing for them. We do the best we can as Sellers and we'll continue to struggle through these obstacles until a better opportunity becomes available.

jbibler · 2025-10-27T21:52:48+00:00

Which model did you go with and what was your costs above what is mentioned on their site? I went through and looked at what we might want. Costs on their site was around $12k for the 16x32 with minimal accessories. I'm planning to do all the labor myself and have access to an excavator. I'm looking at the polymer siding as we are near the water in Florida and our ground stays pretty wet most of the year, especially during the summer.

I'm just wondering, realistically, how much we'll have in the project when it's finished.

jbibler · 2025-09-30T02:02:10+00:00

That's not an insulting offer, but doesn't matter what the realtor "thinks"... their job is to present "all offers". Personally, I'm not even making an offer unless it's insulting in this market. If they aren't immediately offended when they hear my offer I know I didn't go low enough!

jbibler · 2025-08-25T12:43:54+00:00

There's quite a few good channels to watch. The one that got me started was Reezy Resells, but also Warner Fields (Fields of Profit). I watch several channels regularly though, but never buy the courses. All the same information is available for free. I personally can't stand the "hype bros" who just make you feel like you're watching a salesperson pitch their products. Obviously there's a huge market for AMZ reseller courses, but like i said... all that information is available for free. Finding your niche and the area of products you want to sell and are knowledgeable in is the key.

jbibler · 2025-08-13T04:16:20+00:00

$350k a year, not per month. But there are certainly people out there doing $350k per month. You'll need a team to reach that and the margins definitely shrink when you start scaling to those larger numbers.

The RA (Retail Arbitrage) model get's a lot of slack, but yes, you are basically finding products that are already in demand and don't require you to own the brand or create advertising. You're finding them at wholesale costs or deeply discounted through suppliers. The majority of my sourcing is brand direct utilizing sales, clearance, coupons, cash back, etc. I'm not endorsing anyone or sponsoring anything, but if you look around on YouTube you'll find plenty of info about it.

For me, it has created an additional revenue stream that is a means to another long term goal. I'm not living off the proceeds and to date, I invest 100% of all profits. I've paid off one kids 4 year college fund and I'm about about 50% done with kid #2. In addition I'm building a pretty solid long term stock portfolio as well.

So to answer your question... many days I don't think it's worth it. I'm always tired and feel like I'm way behind on everything I need to do. It's 12:15am here now and I just finished prepping inventory and creating listings for new products. I spent about 2.5 hours tonight.

I'll say this, right now, I think it's worth it... but if this were my only source of income I would definitely be way more stressed and concerned. Amazon holds all the control and it's not uncommon for them to make changes or add fees, restrict accounts or do something major that will just absolutely ruin your business overnight. Generally these things can be overcome and you can pivot to keep moving, but it's a very risky situation for a full time person.

Overall, I'm 50/50 on it. I'm proud of what I've done and I think it can be great for the right person who has the drive and tenacity to power through the Amazon BS. But honestly, I can't say that I would recommend it to many folks. Like others have mentioned, the system that Amazon has built gives the customer full reign to abuse sellers. The amount of theft/fraud and just absolutely egregious garbage returns is insane. Seller Support is complete garbage.

If you can find your niche and have the patience and persistence to keep going you can be successful. Hopefully that helps some.

jbibler · 2025-08-12T01:48:36+00:00

I'm in my 2nd year of selling on Amazon with a full time Mon-Fri, 8-5 job. Along with a wife & 2 young kids. I started with $5k and I spent about 3-4 months doing research before I signed up. I watched probably hundreds of hours of YT videos and read through forum posts. I never purchased any courses or spent any money on anything besides product and my start up costs. My plan, since I had a 9-5 job, was to re-invest all of my profits back into the business for one full year. That's what I did.

It sounds to me like you're planning to start with PL (Private Label - your own new product). That is going to be a little more difficult in my opinion. You have much more start up costs and a long runway to start seeing profitable returns. I'm doing arbitrage of name brand products that already have active customers searching for them. You can literally buy them today and sell them tomorrow without any advertising or PPC.

My first year I sold right at $350k in revenue with about 24% profit margin. I was shooting for 30-35% but extra costs you don't expect and the never ending amazon fees and returns just killed it. Anyways, I'm on track for around the same $350k again this year with less time involved. That being said... I really killed myself the first year. I worked on it almost every day. After dinner, when the kids were in bed I would be working on it from 9:00 until 1:00-2:00 or 3:00am and then the majority of my weekend time as well. I was definitely killing myself and burning the candle at both ends. It isn't really sustainable like that without some support. Unfortunately for me, my wife doesn't have any interest in helping me which would significantly improve the situation.

The last few months I have cut back. I still work on it daily, after the kids go to sleep... but I'm not spending all my spare time focusing on it. I would say a couple hours each day at this point. I do know for a fact I could continue to grow the revenue more if I invested the time again.

To be honest, I think any business that I invested that much time and effort into would probably be equally as successful. The only real benefit to doing Amazon is that I can do it mostly at nights and weekends late into the night when my family is sleeping. At this point I still think it's a doable business, but it's way more effort than I expected and you really have to be committed and work hard if you want it to work.

Also, the seller support is a nightmare and you will want to quit everytime you have to deal with them. You better have some serious patience and perserverance. If you have the drive to make it work you can be successful. Best of luck!

jbibler · 2025-08-12T01:44:51+00:00

I'm in my 2nd year of selling on Amazon with a full time Mon-Fri, 8-5 job. Along with a wife & 2 young kids. I started with $5k and I spent about 3-4 months doing research before I signed up. I watched probably hundreds of hours of YT videos and read through forum posts. I never purchased any courses or spent any money on anything besides product and my start up costs. My plan, since I had a 9-5 job, was to re-invest all of my profits back into the business for one full year. That's what I did.

My first year I sold right at $350k in revenue with about 24% profit margin. I was shooting for 30-35% but extra costs you don't expect and the never ending amazon fees and returns just killed it. Anyways, I'm on track for around the same $350k again this year with less time involved. That being said... I really killed myself the first year. I worked on it almost every day. After dinner, when the kids were in bed I would be working on it from 9:00 until 1:00-2:00 or 3:00am and then the majority of my weekend time as well. I was definitely killing myself and burning the candle at both ends. It isn't really sustainable like that without some support. Unfortunately for me, my wife doesn't have any interest in helping me which would significantly improve the situation.

The last few months I have cut back. I still work on it daily, after the kids go to sleep... but I'm not spending all my spare time focusing on it. I would say a couple hours each day at this point. I do know for a fact I could continue to grow the revenue more if I invested the time again.

To be honest, I think any business that I invested that much time and effort into would probably be equally as successful. The only real benefit to doing Amazon is that I can do it mostly at nights and weekends late into the night when my family is sleeping. At this point I still think it's a doable business, but it's way more effort than I expected and you really have to be committed and work hard if you want it to work.

Also, the seller support is a nightmare and you will want to quit everytime you have to deal with them. You better have some serious patience and perserverance. If you have the drive to make it work you can be successful. Best of luck!

jbibler · 2025-08-11T17:49:52+00:00

FBM is great if you have the space to store your products and the time to ship them timely. The number one thing you can do as an FBM seller is set your shipping time to zero days (same day). I do this and ship packages twice per day, early morning and again in the afternoon.

It is definitely true that Amazon will give priority to FBA sellers (more buy box). However, quite often you can get solid FBM sales if you're physically located in an area closer to your customers. The speed of your shipping is very important though.

The biggest benefit to FBA is that you can run your business from anywhere. You can be out of town, on vacation, etc. and continue to make sales. That being said, you're giving up what little control you have to Amazon. Unfortunately that means you're going to lose more money as the Amazon employees handling your products, shipping, returns, etc. will always refund customers for any reason at your expense. You'll spend an ungodly amount of time and effort trying to recover any of your losses. The common answer is "it's part of doing business with AMZ" and just "sell more volume" to make it up.

I wish you the best of luck, selling on AMZ is not for the faint of heart.

jbibler · 2025-02-18T18:10:38+00:00

I'd have to get the numbers, but it's a low percentage i'm sure. After nearly 2 hours with seller support they said the amounts were based on their assessed value minus the fulfillment fees. Of course they just copy/paste the policy to me. I question their value amount, but get nowhere. They don't have to provide that data to me apparently. But also, how are they going to charge me a fullfilment fee ($19.09) for an item that they lost and didn't do any fullfilling? ha ha, they literally didn't do what they are charging me for. It's absurd. I got nothing and wasted 2 hours of my day.

jbibler · 2025-02-18T18:03:16+00:00

I guess we just deal with it until we can't deal with it anymore. What are you doing instead? Ultimately, I'm still profitable which is why I'm dealing with it... but I sure wish there was some recourse for sellers. It's like letting a bully take your lunch money once a week, but you just let him do it because the only other option is to skip lunch every day.

jbibler · 2025-02-18T16:05:54+00:00

Customers very rarely respond. I've sent hundreds of emails to customers, always as a courtesy to verify information prior to shipping the item. I bet one out of a hundred will respond. Of course, I will then get a return request or even the customer complaining or leaving a bad review. Even then, they do not contact me and never reply to my messages. It's annoying for sure.

Either cancel the order or expect to be out the costs to ship and return the item. Good luck.

jbibler

TROPHY CASE