The honest answer: it depends, and here is on what
We started selling on Amazon in 2021 with small consumer products, mostly on amazon.de and later on the other European marketplaces, almost all of it through FBA. Along the way we built our own brand, learned to read a fee statement, filled in compliance forms we had never heard of, and watched products come and go. We are not a large seller and we are not selling a course. That is the perspective of this article.
Whether selling on Amazon is worth it depends on three things:
- Margin. What is left of the selling price after Amazon's fees, advertising, returns, VAT and the cost of the product. If that number is thin on paper, it will be negative in practice.
- Ownership. Whether you sell your own product under your own brand, or an item anyone can buy from the same supplier and list against you tomorrow.
- Operations. Whether you keep stock in the right place, keep your account healthy, answer Amazon's requests on time, and know what happened in your shop today, not next week.
Everything else, the marketplace, FBA or FBM, the tools, follows from those three. Start with the part most people underestimate: where the money goes.
Where the margin goes: an Amazon sale in layers
Fee tables change and differ per marketplace, so treat the figures below as the order of magnitude and check Amazon's current fee page before you decide anything. Our article on how much it costs to sell on Amazon walks through a full example.
| Cost layer | What it is | Order of magnitude |
|---|---|---|
| Selling plan | Monthly fee for a Professional account | 39.99 USD a month on amazon.com, 39 euros a month plus VAT on the EU marketplaces; Individual plan 0.99 per item instead |
| Referral fee | A percentage of the sale, per category | Amazon's own fee page: most referral fees are between 8 and 15 percent; a few categories much higher |
| FBA fulfilment fee | Flat fee per unit for picking, packing, shipping and customer service | Based on product type, size and weight |
| Storage | Monthly fee for stock in Amazon's warehouses | Per cubic metre (EU) or cubic foot (US), higher from October to December, surcharges for stock that sits too long |
| Advertising | Sponsored ads, paid per click | Whatever you bid; on a new listing often the largest cost after the product |
| Returns and refunds | Refunded orders, damaged returns, disposal | Depends heavily on the category |
| VAT | Included in the consumer price on the EU marketplaces | Comes off the top before any fee |
| The product | Purchase price, shipping to Amazon, packaging, photos, compliance documents | The one number you fully control |
| Your time | Listings, stock planning, messages, account checks | Rarely counted, always paid |
Read the table from the bottom up and it explains most disappointment on Amazon. Sellers calculate the referral fee and the FBA fee, see a healthy margin, and forget advertising, returns and the VAT that was never theirs. The margin that matters is the one after every row. Put your own product through Amazon's revenue calculator with real dimensions and a realistic advertising cost per sale; that number, not the referral fee, tells you whether the product is worth listing.
What changed since 2021
Most of the mechanics from a "still worth it" article of a few years ago still apply. What changed is the room for error. Five things stand out on our own account.
Fee tables keep moving
Amazon adjusts fulfilment fees, storage fees and surcharges regularly, often per size band. A product with a comfortable margin at one fee table can lose it at the next. We now recheck every product's margin whenever Amazon announces a fee change, not once a year.
Advertising became the price of being seen
In 2021 a decent listing in a small niche could get its first sales without ads. Today a new product without a campaign is mostly invisible, and the cost per click in busy categories is a real line in the calculation. Treat advertising as part of the cost of every sale, not as a launch expense you switch off later.
More competition, more copies
Anything that sells well on Amazon is visible to everyone, including the factory that makes it. Copies with a lower price arrive within months. If your only advantage is that you found the product first, that advantage has a short shelf life.
EU rules: GPSR and packaging registration
Two regulatory changes hit small sellers on the European marketplaces hardest, because they cost the same whether you sell ten units or ten thousand.
The first is the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR). The European Commission's trade portal states that it is "applicable from the 13 December 2024" and that "a responsible economic operator in the EU (an EU manufacturer, importer, authorised representative or a fulfilment service provider) shall be entrusted with tasks relating to the safety of each product covered by the regulation". In practice you need a named responsible person in the EU for your products, and Amazon asks for that information on your listings. If you sell from outside the EU, this alone can decide whether the market is worth it for you.
The second is packaging registration. Germany's packaging register puts it plainly: "If you are distributing packaged goods in Germany, you have to be registered with the LUCID Packaging Register." Amazon enforces it: "If you send packaged goods to Germany or sell goods on Amazon.de in any form of packaging (product or shipping package), you need to provide your LUCID number", and listings without one get blocked. Other EU countries run their own producer responsibility schemes for packaging, electronics and batteries. The fees are manageable, but they are a fixed cost per country, and you have to know they exist before your listings go dark.
Stricter account verification
Amazon verifies who you are, and keeps verifying. On amazon.com the INFORM Consumers Act covers third-party sellers who, "in any continuous 12-month period during the previous 24 months, have sold 200 or more new or unused consumer products and have had $5,000 or more in gross revenues". Amazon verifies identity, bank account, phone, address, tax identification and email, and adds: "Every year, we will ask you to electronically certify that these six pieces of information are still accurate." Miss the deadline and "we may temporarily deactivate your selling account". The European marketplaces run their own identity and business checks. None of this is a reason not to sell. It is a reason to keep your paperwork clean and answer Amazon's requests the day they arrive.
Who still wins on Amazon
After five years we see the same four seller profiles doing well, on our own account and among the sellers we talk to.
| Seller profile | Why it works | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Own brand with a real product | You control price, listing and supply; copies compete on price, not on the brand and reviews you built | Brand registration, trademark clearance and photos cost money before the first sale |
| Niche and boring products | Fewer competitors, less advertising pressure, steady demand that does not follow a trend | Small volume; you need several such products, not one hit |
| Good operations | Stock in the right warehouse at the right time, healthy account metrics, no expired documents | Unglamorous, daily work |
| Sellers who watch their numbers daily | They see a margin slip, a stock-out or a copy within a day, not at the end of the quarter | Needs a routine and the right alerts, not more dashboards |
The last row we learned the hard way. For a long time we found out about FBA orders hours later, when we happened to open Seller Central, because the official Seller app sends no push notification for FBA orders. The full picture is in our guide to Amazon Seller app notifications. Knowing what happened today is the cheapest advantage on Amazon, and most small sellers do not have it.
What we measured
On 28 August 2026 we tracked our own account for a full day: 14 orders, none missed, a median of 200 seconds from the order to a cash register sound on the phone, with our own poller checking every minute. Two evening orders arrived in 155 and 136 seconds. Amazon sent no push notification for any of them while they were still Pending, and they stayed Pending for hours. That measurement became Agent ChaChing, the app we built for exactly this: one "Cha-ching!" per Amazon order, FBA and FBM, on every marketplace you connect. The timing is explained in our article on Amazon order notification speed.
Who loses on Amazon
- Arbitrage without margin. Buying at retail or from a wholesaler and relisting a few percent higher worked when fees were lower and shelves emptier. Today the referral fee, the FBA fee and one return eat that margin, and you compete with sellers who buy the same item cheaper.
- Copycats. Listing the same generic item as fifty others, with the same supplier photos, means competing on price alone. Someone will always go lower.
- Sellers who wait for the platform. Amazon brings the buyers; it does not sell your product. Listings without good photos, ads, stock planning or anyone checking the account do not grow, they fade.
- Sellers who skip the paperwork. Missing a GPSR responsible person, a packaging registration or a verification deadline does not cost a fee. It costs the listing, sometimes the account.
What we would do differently
If we started again in 2026, we would launch with fewer products and one clear brand, not a test catalogue. We would do the full margin calculation, with advertising and returns, before ordering the first batch, and walk away from anything that only works on paper. We would sort out compliance (GPSR responsible person, packaging registration, VAT) before the first shipment instead of catching up after a blocked listing. We would choose FBA or FBM per product from day one; our comparison of Amazon FBA vs FBM shows how we decide. And we would set up a daily routine in the first week: orders, stock, account health, one look at the numbers, every day. The sellers who see problems early are the ones still selling five years later.
Eight questions to answer before you start
Selling on Amazon is worth it when you can answer these honestly. If two or more answers are "I do not know", find out first.
- What is my margin per unit after the selling plan, referral fee, FBA fees, advertising, returns and VAT, using Amazon's current fee page and calculator?
- Is this my product, or an item anyone can list against me next month with the same supplier and the same photos?
- Who will buy it when it is not on the first page, and what will each click cost to get there?
- Which compliance work applies: GPSR responsible person, packaging and other producer registrations, safety documents, VAT registration in the countries I ship to?
- How much money is tied up in the first order, the shipment to Amazon and the first months of advertising, and can I afford to lose it?
- Which marketplaces do I start on, and do I understand the fees, taxes and language of each?
- How will I know about problems on the day they happen: stock-outs, blocked listings, verification requests, a sudden drop in orders?
- How many hours a week will the operations take, and does the margin pay for them?
If the answers hold up, start small, measure everything and expand product by product. Our guide on how to sell on Amazon covers the practical steps. If they do not hold up, Amazon is not the problem; the product or the margin is, and no platform fixes that.
Frequently asked questions
Does selling on Amazon really make money?
Some sellers make money on Amazon and many do not, and the difference is rarely the platform. It is the margin after all fees, advertising, returns and VAT, the strength of the product, and how well the seller runs the operations. Nobody can promise you a result; you can only calculate your own margin with Amazon's current fee page and test it with a small first order.
How much does Amazon take from a 100 dollar sale?
It depends on the category, the size and weight of the product, and whether you use FBA. The referral fee alone is usually 8 to 15 percent, so 8 to 15 dollars of a 100 dollar sale, and the FBA fulfilment fee, storage and advertising come on top. Amazon's revenue calculator gives the exact figure for your product.
Can I make 1,000 dollars a month selling on Amazon?
Nobody can promise you a fixed amount, and anyone who does is selling something else. What you can do is calculate: your margin per unit after every cost, multiplied by the units you can realistically sell per month at that price and advertising cost. If that shows a comfortable margin on a product you control, Amazon can become a real business. If it does not, the number in the question is irrelevant.
What is the downside of selling on Amazon?
You do not own the customer relationship, rules and fees change without your input, competition copies whatever works, and account problems can stop your sales overnight. Add regulatory work such as the GPSR responsible person, packaging registration and periodic identity verification. The upside is the largest reach in ecommerce and a fulfilment network you could not build yourself; the downside is that you live by Amazon's rules.
Is Amazon FBA still worth it?
FBA is still worth it for small, light products that sell steadily and need the Prime badge to compete, provided the margin survives the fulfilment and storage fees. It is not worth it for heavy, slow or very low-margin products. Decide per product, with the current fee table, not per account.
Sources
- https://sell.amazon.com/pricing
- https://sell.amazon.de/preisgestaltung
- https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-markets/en/news/eus-general-product-safety-regulation-gpsr-new-era-consumer-protection
- https://www.verpackungsregister.org/en/
- https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/e644a2d53a7d186e119caf652541479e
- https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/3f397093-fc95-478f-835b-8f80752600e8
- https://sellercentral-europe.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/f5866f24-e25d-4ef7-b86d-89c18a61cf54
