Amazon FBA for beginners: how Fulfilment by Amazon really works, from a seller since 2021

What Amazon FBA is, and what it is not

Amazon describes FBA as a service that lets you "outsource order fulfillment to Amazon". In practice it is three handovers. You send products to a fulfilment centre. Amazon receives them, stores them and, when someone orders, picks, packs and ships the parcel. After delivery Amazon also answers the buyer's questions and takes the return if there is one. In Amazon's own words, FBA covers "picking, packing, shipping and handling, customer service, and returns".

What FBA is not: a business. It does not find you a product, write your listing, set your price or bring buyers to the page. Everything before the carton arrives at the warehouse, and everything that makes a buyer click, remains your job.

It is also not the only way to sell on Amazon. The alternative is FBM, Fulfilled by Merchant, where you ship every order yourself from your own shelf. Many sellers who start small end up running both. We compare the two properly in Amazon FBA vs FBM; this article stays with FBA.

How does Amazon FBA work? Step by step

The process is the same on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and the EU marketplaces. Here is how a first shipment goes.

1. Open a seller account and choose a plan

You need a seller account with the Professional plan (39.99 USD a month on amazon.com, 25 GBP a month excluding VAT on amazon.co.uk, 39 euros a month excluding VAT on the EU marketplaces) or the Individual plan (0.99 USD, 0.75 GBP or 0.99 euros per item sold, no monthly fee). One European account covers amazon.de, .fr, .it, .es, .nl, .se, .pl, .be and amazon.co.uk; one North American account covers amazon.com, .ca and .com.mx. Since Brexit, FBA stock for the UK and for the EU is held separately. The full setup, including business registration and VAT, is in how to sell on Amazon.

2. Register for FBA and enrol your listing

FBA is switched on under your account settings in Seller Central. Then you create the listing, or convert an existing one, and set the fulfilment channel to Amazon. Some items cannot go in at all (Amazon names alcoholic beverages, tyres and hazardous goods among the restricted ones), and products with an expiry date have their own shelf-life rules.

3. Prep, label and pack

Every unit needs a scannable barcode: Amazon's own FNSKU label or, where allowed, the manufacturer barcode. Liquids get sealed, sets get one label per set, cartons stay within Amazon's size and weight limits. Amazon calls these its "packaging, prep, and labeling guidelines", and a shipment that ignores them is delayed or charged extra at the receiving dock. For our own small bottles and tubes this was the step we underestimated most: one label per unit, printed correctly, before anything goes into the box.

4. Create the shipment with Send to Amazon

In Seller Central the workflow is called Send to Amazon. You declare what is in each carton, Amazon assigns a fulfilment centre, you print the carton labels and book a carrier, either Amazon's partnered carrier or your own. Then you wait; Seller Central shows each stage from in transit to closed.

5. Amazon stores, picks, packs and ships

Once the stock is checked in, your listing shows as in stock with the Prime badge. From here Amazon does the physical work. You watch the inventory dashboard, keep enough units in stock and send the next shipment before the current one runs out.

Amazon FBA fees explained

Fees are the part every beginner underestimates, so here is the full set. Treat the figures as the order of magnitude on 29 August 2026 and check Amazon's current fee page for your marketplace before you buy stock. A deeper walkthrough with a worked example is in what it costs to sell on Amazon.

The referral fee

Charged on every sale, FBA or FBM. Amazon's UK and EU fee pages say most referral fees are between 8 and 15 percent; the US page lists rates per category, lower for some low-priced items and much higher for a few special categories. On a 20 euro product in a 15 percent category the referral fee is 3 euros. That is arithmetic, not a forecast.

The fulfilment fee

Amazon describes it as "a flat fee per unit, based on the product type, dimension and weight". Small and light is cheap; large, heavy or oversize is not. This one fee replaces your boxes, your postage, your customer service time and your returns handling. For a small bottle of beard oil it is a modest amount per unit; for a bulky item it can eat the margin.

Storage and the aged inventory surcharge

Storage is charged per cubic foot on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk (the UK page lists 0.62 to 0.76 GBP per cubic foot per month for standard-size items from January to September) and per cubic metre on the EU sites, where standard-size items in most categories are listed at 27.54 euros per cubic metre per month from January to September and 52.20 euros from October to December. A carton of small consumer goods occupies a fraction of a cubic metre, so that is cents per unit per month. Storage only bites when stock sits for months, and after 181 days (amazon.com) or 241 days (amazon.co.uk and the EU) the aged inventory surcharge comes on top. The rule we learned the hard way: send what sells in two or three months, not a year's supply.

Prime, returns and customer service: what Amazon does for you

The Prime badge. FBA listings qualify for Prime automatically. Amazon presents it as fast, free delivery for Prime members, and on a page with several offers the badge is often what decides the sale. FBM sellers can only get it through a separate programme with its own requirements.

Shipping and tracking. Amazon picks the carrier, prints the label and sends the tracking to the buyer. You never see the parcel.

Customer service. Questions about delivery, missing parcels and refunds go to Amazon's customer service, not to your inbox. For our FBA orders, buyer messages are rare.

Returns. The buyer returns the item to Amazon. Amazon inspects it, puts sellable units back into your stock and refunds the buyer under its own return policy; units that cannot be resold may qualify for a reimbursement. You see the result in your reports. You do not decide whether a return is accepted; Amazon does.

Cancellations. A buyer can cancel shortly after ordering. With FBA, Amazon handles later cancellation requests; you do nothing. We explain the details in what happens when an Amazon order is cancelled.

What Amazon does not do for you

This list is longer than most beginner guides admit.

• Product choice and sourcing.
• The listing: title, bullets, images, keywords and A+ content, which decide whether anyone finds the product.
• Pricing. Amazon only takes its fees from the price you set.
• Advertising. Sponsored ads are paid separately and are often the biggest cost after the referral fee.
• Compliance and tax. VAT registration where your stock is held, product safety rules, packaging registration in EU countries: yours.
• Restocking. Amazon warns you about low stock; ordering and shipping the next carton is on you.
• Telling you about orders. The official Seller app sends no push notification for FBA orders. More on that below, because it shapes your daily routine.

Your first week with Amazon FBA

A realistic first week, from our own experience with a small catalogue of grooming products on the EU marketplaces:

1. Day 1: seller account verified, Professional plan active, FBA registered in the account settings.
2. Day 1 to 2: listing created with a barcode (GTIN) and set to Fulfilled by Amazon. Product images and text ready.
3. Day 2 to 3: units labelled with the FNSKU, packed in cartons within Amazon's limits, shipment created in Send to Amazon, carton labels printed.
4. Day 3: carrier collects. In Seller Central the shipment shows as in transit.
5. Day 4 onward: Amazon receives and checks in the shipment. Units become available carton by carton and the listing goes live with the Prime badge. On our account this has taken from a few days to considerably longer in busy months.
6. First order. It appears in Seller Central under Orders, Manage Orders, first as Pending while payment is authorised, then Unshipped, then Shipped once the warehouse hands it to the carrier. What each status means is in your first sale on Amazon.
7. Payout. Amazon pays out on a 14-day cycle, holding a reserve for recent orders, with the first disbursement after account verification (Seller Central Help, page "Disbursements").

Two things nobody tells you: receiving takes longer than you expect, and the first order arrives when you are not looking.

How you find out about your FBA orders

Here is the part that surprised us most as beginners. You would expect the official Amazon Seller app to buzz when someone buys. For FBA orders it does not. An Amazon staff member, Dominic_Amazon, wrote on the EU Seller Forum: "There are no SMS push notifications for FBA, only for FBM. You can get an email every 2 hours summarizing recent FBA orders shipped, but no email as FBA orders are made."

So with FBA your options are refreshing Seller Central, a two-hourly email about orders that have already shipped, or an app connected to Amazon's Selling Partner API. The API's ORDER_CHANGE notification covers both fulfilment types (its FulfillmentType field is "MFN or AFN") and needs only the read-only role Inventory and Order Tracking. That is what we built Agent ChaChing on: a cash register sound on your phone for every order, FBA and FBM, on every marketplace you connect, usually two to three minutes after the order is placed and often faster. Cha-ching!

Whatever you choose, set it up before the first shipment is received. The alternative is what we did in 2021: find out about the morning's orders at lunch. Every way to hear about a sale, ranked by speed, is in how to get notified when you make a sale on Amazon.