Whether you’re just starting out or a recent change in events has caused you to change gears, we are covering the basics of how to merchant fulfill items on Amazon. COVID-19 shook up the world, and as most of you know, Amazon paused their FBA process. That’s when many sellers shift and focus on FBA (fulfilled by merchant).
We’re ready to help you skip the initial learning curve to set up your basic shipping template, choose good boxing options, list your FBM item, and ship it on its way! So let’s get started.
How to Merchant Fulfill Items on Amazon
Open up your Seller Central account portal on Amazon, and jump right over to the search bar. Sometimes this is the easiest option for finding what you need rather than scouring the menu for the exact navigation. At the search bar, input “shipping template” and search. The search bar will offer a few options, and you’ll want to select “shipping settings.”
It should be noted that if you’re using an individual account and not a professional account that you won’t be able to create a FBM shipping template.
How to Create a Basic FBM Shipping Template
Since you’re about to create your own basic FBM shipping template, you’ll want to start with the “create new” to end up at the prompts. This is just a basic template, and it should only cover domestic shipping. The key here is to create something as simple as possible for your default.
Name your template
Choose “Per item / Weight-based”
Unselect “free economy” (this is our recommendation because you won’t have to account for the shipping within your final product price)
Select standard shipping
Turn off everything else from expedited shipping to one-day delivery
For Standard Shipping, there are two different categories that will need your attention: continental US and Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico.
Continental US
Choose a base shipping fee that essentially covers most of the shipping. If you know your product pretty well, you can make a fairly educated guess. For our default template, our base shipping fee is $8.99 with .99 for every additional pound. You can choose anything from $5-$10 for the base shipping and .40-.99 for cents per pound.
Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico
Since these non-continental US locations will likely require air mail or something along those lines, it’s important to take that into consideration for the shipping. Therefore, you’ll want to choose a base price that is a little bit more. For example, we chose $13.99 for our base shipping price for non-continental US.
Save the basic template and select it as your default shipping template.
Later, when you’re listing items, if you’ve unselected “free economy”, your chosen price should not factor in shipping until Amazon automatically creates the shipping price via your default shipping template. Basically, a customer will see the listed item as $9.99 plus shipping.
How to Choose Your FBM Boxing Options
We know you know how to choose a box and ship it, but when you’re doing FBM, you want to have plenty of uniform boxes on hand. While you may want to have the perfect size box for every item you’re selling, this can be inefficient. The goal is to be prepared ahead of time with enough boxes to fulfill and ship your merchandise as soon as possible
For FBM boxes,we prefer the free USPS flat rate boxes, or if you need to purchase boxes, we like theboxery.com. The downside is that it takes at least a week for the USPS boxes to arrive (longer during unprecedented times like a pandemic), but if you plan ahead, their uniformity in size and price makes it particularly easy to input the correct shipping information for orders. In a bind, your local Walmart has great boxes.
Just a note, consider your priorities while completing FBM orders: do you want to save time or to save a few extra dollars? When you know the answer to this, that will help you make better decisions for your boxes, process, and budget.
While for FBA shipments, you can use any box, used, new, etc, with FBM you ship directly to the customer, so you need to use a new box that’s either plain or from USPS. TL;DR, don’t send your customer’s order in an upcycled diaper box.
How to List Your Merchant Fulfill Items on Amazon
Unlike Amazon FBA, we like to stick with Seller Central for listing our FBM items.
Okay, let’s pretend to list a box of Honeybuns to Amazon. You’ll want to start on your Seller Central home page where you can see the option to “List a new product.”
Paste or type the UPC into the box to “List a new product.”
In the results, choose the correct listing for the honeybuns product.
Note: You’ll want to make sure that the flavors, quantity, and other details of your honeybuns are the same as the listing description.
Select the button that says “sell yours.”
Choose the condition of the product, AKA new.
Set the price for your listing
Note: Once again, this can be a little bit tricky. To help in your price selection, check the product’s price history and choose something that seems reasonable.
Click “I will ship this myself.”
Select the quantity of your item and then “save and finish.”
Listing products for FBM is really easy, and you don’t need to worry about printing labels or polybags. In fact, we’ve found that there are a lot less steps for handling merchant fulfilled items on Amazon. Also, we know you probably know this, but never list an item twice on Amazon – this can get you in trouble.
How to Ship a Merchant Fulfilled Item on Amazon
You’ve done it! You’ve sold an FBM item, and it’s time to ship. Congratulations!
Open up your Seller Central account, toggle to the “Orders” menu option then select “Manage Orders.” Once you’re here, you’ll want to click on “order details.”
As you’re looking at this page, you’ll see on the right side the price that your customer has paid for the item and for shipping.
From here, it’s important to pay attention to how much of the item the person ordered. In the case of Honeybuns, if you chose a 2-pack listing and a customer selects a quantity of 3, this means that you’ll be shipping 3 units of 2-packs of Honeybuns, which is a total quantity of 6. Most of the time, it makes sense to ship all the items together in the same box.
Type the box dimensions into the prompted box.
Choose the appropriate package information along with the weight.
Once you’ve completed this information, Amazon will calculate your shipping options from this data. The shipping results will provide lots of options. However, if you’ve chosen to use USPS boxes, you cannot ship with FedEx. A generic box can use any of the shipping available. Again, if you use a free USPS box, you absolutely must ship through USPS.
When you know which shipping option you want to use (we just go with the best price), click “buy shipping” and you’ll be able to print out the shipping label. Pack that item to go, tape up the box, and schedule your package pick up (USPS has free pickup if you schedule it on their website).
You’ve done it! Welcome to the basics of merchant fulfilled items on Amazon! For even more details and to see FBM in action, take a look at Nate’s video tutorial below!
