Two Thirds of the entire population of the United States shops on Amazon. If you want to explode your online sales with your laser cut or engraved products, you might want to try selling on Amazon.

I’m going to show you how I’ve made hundreds of thousands of dollars on Amazon and break down the VERY REAL fees and product costs so you can get an idea of the type of profits you can actually expect. Let’s dive into it!

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Amazon Handmade

Etsy was pretty much the only handmade online marketplace when I started my laser cut jewelry business in 2014 and by that point, they were gaining some serious notoriety. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Amazon launched Amazon Handmade the same year Etsy shares hit the stock market in 2015. And I started selling on Amazon the very next year.

Last year, I sold just over $90,000 of my laser cut jewelry, which was 3x as much as I brought in on my Etsy shop. I ship out a good portion of my jewelry myself, but the majority is handled by Amazon warehouses. We’ll be getting into details on that soon.

There are a bunch of ways to sell on Amazon. You could open a regular shop and find things on clearance or even used in your hometown and sell it, or if you have wholesale accounts, some vendors allow you to sell on Amazon.

A regular Amazon store costs about $40 per month and there are additional fees on top of that depending on the product category.

However, Amazon Handmade has no upfront fees to start a shop. You get your own storefront and only pay fees when a product sells.

But… there’s a lot of buts. More buts than a music video for a rap song, so get ready.

Who Should Sell on Amazon Handmade?

First, if you are having a hard time selling anything online, whether that is on Etsy, or Facebook, or anything like that, Amazon is not a solution. If you find your online sales are minimal or non-existent, here is a crash course for some reasons why that might be.

If your product doesn’t solve a problem and is more of an impulse buy, it is best for in-person events. This would include things that are just pretty and can’t easily be connected to an emotion or a true need.

One example is a wall hanging. Maybe it’s super cool but if you are struggling to sell it on Etsy, on Amazon you’ll be up against cheap “Made in China” wall hangings, so good luck. We don’t want to be in competition with mass produced items if you want to hit any sort of profit goal. Utilize the fact you can make something truly unique with your laser.

If your product is a gift set, or is for gifting, you have a better shot. Think a magnet that says, “Best Sister-in-Law in the World”, and not a pretty magnet with a… dragonfly on it.

However! On Amazon you could sell pretty magnets in BULK! This transforms the purpose of the listing completely. You can then market them as “team thank you gifts” or you can market them to retail shops for resale in packs of 25 or so. This turns your generic seeming magnet into a solution to buy a bunch of gifts for sports teams, or work teams, or as an alternative to wholesale as a bulk buy for small gift shops.

I have a lot of tips and tricks to selling, so subscribe to my email list if you want me to keep throwing ideas at you!

I’m not saying the 230 million US shoppers on Amazon aren’t impulse buying, but your product is more likely to move when it’s useful in some way.

So, if you make tools, templates, craft sets, and/or specific gifts (and bonus points if they are aimed toward a specific niche) then it is worth a shot on Amazon! Plus, of course, if you have ongoing success selling a product on Etsy and such, move them over and see how they do!

Let me just go over the difference of selling methods that Amazon has to offer, then we’ll jump into the breakdown of fees and how much my takeaway was after generating $90,000 last year.

Ways to Sell on Amazon

There are 2 main ways to sell on Amazon:
FBM – Fulfilled by Merchant. This is like Esty. You have a listing and when it sells, you ship it out.
FBA – Fulfilled by Amazon. This is where you make things in bulk and ship them out to Amazon warehouses and they take care of shipping and customer service.

The best way to get started is to ship on your own with FBM. This will let you and Amazon have some time to get to know each other.

Just like anything else these days, there is an algorithm involved, so it can take a little while for Amazon to figure you out and match up your products with the right customers.

The biggest game changer for me has been FBA. Things were selling ok, but that exploded sales.

This is in big part because of the perks for the customer like Prime 2-Day Shipping and Hassle-Free Returns.

The biggest perks for us as sellers is TIME. The time it takes to prepare a shipment, go to the post office and handle customer service is completely taken care of. The only time you need to spend is making the product and sending it to the warehouses, which is all handled through the website. Easy cheesy.

I recently made a community post about how I made 150 pairs of some heart stud earrings from start to finish in about 7 hours. These will profit me about $955 after all the fees and cost to produce, so let’s get into what you’ve all been waiting for! Fees!

How Much Does It Cost to Sell on Amazon?

Fees are high, but the point of Amazon is to sell a bunch of whatever it is you make. Volume is the name of the game.

Let’s pull up those heart earrings again and break it down!

I only sells these around Valentine’s day, as you can see here when I switch this to sales in the last 12 month.

All the fees for FBA are listed here. Since I’ve run some sales, the average price is $14.17. Sold 314 units, 29 have been returned, so a total of 285 successful sales. After the returns, this means these brought in $4018.56.

There are a bunch of fees here. No need to just say a bunch of numbers. These are fees for the sales referral, storage, placement fees (like for distributing among warehouses) and so much more! So, after all these, we are left with $2143.17.

So far, the fees are about half to sales cost. A little over, but to quickly estimate your profit, let’s just say half. Fees will depend on your category so yours could be less or more.

But what about the cost of the product? One nice thing about this tool is we can also include that into this cost breakdown. These cost me about $1.12 for the earrings, packaging, all that good stuff.

This leaves us with $1,791.49 for the net profit, give or take of course. That comes to $6.29 profit for each unit.

That doesn’t seem like a lot, but like I mentioned before, we are going for volume sales. If you make one of a kind masterpieces, or products that you wouldn’t be able to make at least 20, 50 or 100 of in a short period of time, then FBA is not for you.

However, FBM still exposes you and your brand to a ga-gillion people, so that might be your best bet.

What are the fees for FBM? Still high, but much better. Let’s take a glance at an example.

Here is a listing that doesn’t sell a whole lot, so I just fulfil orders myself. These sell for $17.99, the fees Amazon took was $2.70. Easy breezy. BUT! I still have to account for the shipping fee. You can either charge shipping separate of your product price or offer free shipping, so the fees are in the cost of the item like in my example. I am going to estimate the cost of the earrings and put the average shipping cost in the miscellaneous section so we can get the takeaway profit on this one sale. $9.04.

The FBA example profit was 44% of the sales price, while the FBM example was 50%. These are low ticket, low cost to produce items. If you make cutting boards for $150, your numbers could actually be way better than mine.

I recommend finding an Amazon calculator and fiddling around to estimate what your numbers will look like.

So, all this to say, when I say I made $90,000 on Amazon last year, my takeaway is probably somewhere around $42-45,000. I don’t have an exact number yet, I’m procrastinating my taxes, as usual.

The Bottomline of Selling on Amazon

Selling on Amazon is a lot different than selling on Etsy. There are a lot of nuances, and it continues to change all the time. I’ve been selling there for 10 years now and finding success there has fundamentally changed the way I sell on all other platforms and has improved the overall health and credibility of my laser business.

That’s why I will be offering a LIVE Masterclass about selling your laser products on Amazon Handmade this coming Thursday, January 22nd. I will go over how to use FBM to determine FBA winners, as well as ways you can avoid annoying and costly returns, and what type of products sell the best. You just might find that you already have a winning product, it just needs to be properly positioned for maximum sales.

I have a link to sign up for that down below. Save 50% off the admission with code AMZ50. If you can’t make it live, there will be an option to view the recording afterward.

So, are you going to start selling on Amazon? Or perhaps you’ve been selling there already? I’d love to know your thoughts!

Happy Crafting!