Amazon Sellers Paying 30% More in Fees Since 2021 – Q4 Earnings Report
Amazon released its Q4 2023 earnings on Thursday revealing that sellers are paying more and more to Amazon for FBA fees and advertising fee. The report reveals that in Q4 advertising and seller fees represented 82.4% of Amazon's total ecommerce revenue.
Overall Highlights
Overall, revenue from online stores was up 9.3% to $70.543billion. Third party seller services (which includes referral and FBA fees) was up 19.8%. Advertising was up 26.8%.
| Source | Q4 2021 Revenue | Q4 2022 Revenue | Q4 2023 Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online Stores (ecommerce) | $66.075B | $64.531B | $70.543B (Up 9.3%) |
| Third-party seller services (FBA Fees) | $30.320B | $36.339B | $43.559 (Up 19.8%) |
| Advertising Services | $9.716B | $11.557B | $14.654B (up 26.8%) |
| FBA Fees as Percentage of Revenue | 45.9% | 56.3% | 61.7% |
| Advertising as a Percentage of Revenue | 14.7% | 17.9% | 20.7% |
Advertising was 20.7% of Revenue in Q4
Advertising on Amazon made up 20.7% of its ecommerce revenue in Q4. In very broad math strokes, one could equate the average overall TACoS of sellers to 20.7%. Now to be fair, total advertising revenue can consist of other advertising revenue sources for Amazon such as streaming ads on Prime Video. How significant is this? It's impossible to know as Amazon doesn't break this out more granularly (and in fact, didn't even break out advertising as a line item until very recently) but it's almost certainly a small fraction of what 3P revenue constitutes.
FBA Fees and Other Services was 61.7% of Revenue in Q4
Another highlight of Amazon's Q4 earnings was how much revenue Amazon received from “seller services” or, in other words, FBA fees (including FBA fees, referral fees, storage, etc).
Seller services (the vast majority of which are almost certainly FBA fees for things like fulfillment, referral fees, etc.) made up 61.7% of Amazon's ecommerce revenue. Again, Amazon does not granularly separate out service fees in detail but it does describe this line item as “Includes commissions and any related fulfillment and shipping fees, and other third-party seller services.”
Overall, in 2024 “service fees” were 61.7% of Amazon's overall ecommerce revenue. This is compared to 56.3% in 2022 and 45.9% in 2021.
Amazon Invests in Innovation Center Dedicated to Chinese Sellers
In other news, Amazon also revealed it continues to double down on Chinese sellers. In its Q4 earnings report, Amazon proudly boasted of expanding resources and tools for sellers in China, including a new Innovation Center just for Chinese Sellers.
In its earnings report it stated, “[Amazon] expanded tools and resources for Amazon sellers in China, including announcing an Innovation Center dedicated to sellers, introducing Supply Chain by Amazon for sellers in China, and establishing five regional global selling centers, all with the goal to expand opportunities for sellers to help them grow their businesses.”
Conclusion
The fact that Amazon is taking more and more from sellers in terms of FBA fees and advertising fees should come as little surprise to sellers. However, the fact the total percentage of revenue paid in these fees has jumped over 20 percentage points in just two years is startling.
Do you think it's still possible to make money on Amazon with their new higher fees? Let us know in the comments below.
Actually the issue is a little more complex and the article requires a rewording. AMZN does not use the phrase “revenue,” but “net sales” which AMZN defines as “Net sales include product and service sales.” The Total Net Sales for Q424 was $169,961 and that breaks into Product Sales of $76,703 and Service Sales of $93,258. The Product Sales is made up of Online and Physical Stores in which AMZN takes ownership and sells the product. The Service Sales, which are made up of Third Party Sellers, Advertising, Subscriptions, AWS ($24,204) and Other, does not. Your category of “e-commerce” naturally excludes AWS of 14.2% and also Physical stores of $5152 or 3.0% for a total of 82.8% (near your 82.4%) or $140,604. However, advertising of $14,654 is then 10.4% (not 20.7%) of “e-commerce” revenues (and that assumes AWS does not advertise). The same analysis goes for other costs. That said, your article points to a pattern with AMZN increasingly relying on Third Party Sellers and Advertising. Thank you for pointing that out!
Thanks for helping add more definition to the line items. This will be adjusted for Q1 earnings in 2024.
With that being said, I’ll have to let it marinate for a bit, but let’s say 1p sales are $76,703 and 3p sales are roughly $69,504. Many 1p sellers don’t pay advertising costs (some do, but a good chunk/most? do not) but rather have a ‘co-op’ fee deducted. If this co-op fee is not showing in ‘advertising costs’ then advertising as a percentage of 3p revenue could actually be higher as a percentage.
Regardless, the estimates are far from perfect given the lack of transparency for many of the line items and comments like this are extremely useful.
We are already seeing this and its hurting our margins and cash flow for new and existing products
We have paid over $90k in just storage fees alone, that’s about 15% of our total sales which does not even make sense at this point
How can we sustain and outperform these chinese sellers with shady tactics and dozens of accounts per seller dominating the search engine
At this point we feel really lost and as hard as it is for us, we might have to exit this brand this year and move on to some other businesses.
P.S. On a sidenote Dave been following you since last 2 years and appreciate your content, if you or anyone in your circle can help us audit our account to get some of our money back that we lost on storage fees will be a great connect at this point.
Thank you
Hi – you said this in your newsletter – sellers, on average, now pay over 82% of their revenue in FBA fees and advertising.
Also, I think at some point an earlier version of your article was saying something along the line of even if we sell a product for 4 times the purchase price, up to 80 or 90% of revenue is taken up with Amazon fees, as a seller, I’m super worried, could you please clarify how you arrive at this number?
Amazon making 61% of their marketplace revenue from 3P seller fees does not mean that individual sellers pay 61% to fees.
This is just straight wrong.
Yes, there was some poor choice of wording that has been adjusted. For better or worse, these broad line items make it impossible to determine a true average for sellers. More emphasis should have been placed on FBA fees/advertising being up 30% over 2 years which is a fair assessment of the impact on an average seller from a fairly opaque earnings report.
I am an Amazon seller since 2009. We pay 67% of our gross sales on Amazon to Amazon fees currently. This is up from 30% when we started. Amazon will be putting many US seller out of business in the next few years. This is straight correct.