The Amazon Marketplace Fee Structure

As I have mentioned in the past, I do most of my non-Craigslist reselling through Amazon Marketplace. I've recently become disenchanted with it due to some poor transactions: the returned graphing calculator and a more recent incident in which the buyer was apparently unable to properly insert the batteries leading to a return because the item "wasn't working."  Despite its flaws, the Amazon Marketplace is a good place for reselling items because you can delist an item any time, you can change an item's price any time, and you generally get more money than eBay (but partly because the shipping credit is so low and fees are higher).

Fees are broken down into three parts:

• A referral fee
• A variable closing fee
• A fixed closing fee

The referral fee is equal to six to twenty-five percent of the item's closing cost, less the shipping credit.  For most items, including books, music, software, DVD's, and video games -- the items most relevant to this blog -- the referral fee is 15%.

The variable closing fee is flat for six categories: books, music, software, DVD's, video games, and video game consoles.  The fee for music and DVD's is $0.80; the fee for the other four categories is $1.35. The fees for these six categories are the same for standard and expedited shipping.  For everything else, the variable closing fee is $0.45 plus $0.05 per pound of item weight for standard shipping and $0.65 plus $0.10 per pound of item weight for expedited shipping.

The fixed closing fee -- also referred to as the per-item fee -- is $0.99.  This is waived for Pro Merchant Subscribers but the fee for this service is $39.99 per month.  To make waiving the fee worth it you have to be a volume seller.

I, of course, am just summarizing the various fee tables listed on an Amazon help page.  For more information they can be found here.