Selling on Amazon via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) offers incredible scale, but the fee structure can be complex. To understand your true take-home pay, you must look beyond the selling price. This calculator accounts for the four major pillars of FBA expenses:
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): The manufacturing cost of your product plus any packaging.
Amazon Referral Fee: Essentially a commission (usually 15%) that Amazon takes for every sale made on their platform.
FBA Fulfillment Fees: The cost for Amazon to pick, pack, and ship your item. This is determined by the size and weight of the package.
Storage & Marketing: Monthly fees for keeping inventory in their warehouses and the cost of Amazon PPC ads required to drive traffic.
Real-World Example Calculation
Imagine you are selling a yoga mat for $40.00. Here is how the math breaks down:
1. Product Cost: $10.00
2. Shipping to Amazon: $2.00
3. Referral Fee (15%): $6.00
4. FBA Fee: $7.50
5. PPC Spend: $3.00 Total Costs: $28.50 Net Profit: $11.50 per unit Profit Margin: 28.75%
Strategies to Improve Your FBA Margins
If your results show a low margin (anything under 20%), consider these optimizations:
Optimize Packaging: Reducing the dimensions of your box by even half an inch can move you into a lower FBA fee tier.
Bulk Shipping: Use sea freight instead of air freight to lower your "Shipping to Warehouse" costs.
Bundling: Sell 2-packs or 3-packs. You pay the FBA fulfillment fee once for a higher-priced sale, significantly increasing your margin.
function calculateFBAProfit() {
var price = parseFloat(document.getElementById('fba_price').value) || 0;
var productCost = parseFloat(document.getElementById('fba_cost').value) || 0;
var inboundShipping = parseFloat(document.getElementById('fba_shipping').value) || 0;
var referralPct = parseFloat(document.getElementById('fba_referral_pct').value) || 0;
var fulfillment = parseFloat(document.getElementById('fba_fulfillment').value) || 0;
var storage = parseFloat(document.getElementById('fba_storage').value) || 0;
var ppc = parseFloat(document.getElementById('fba_ppc').value) || 0;
var misc = parseFloat(document.getElementById('fba_misc').value) || 0;
if (price = 0 ? 'profit-positive' : 'profit-negative');
document.getElementById('res_margin').innerHTML = margin.toFixed(2) + '%';
document.getElementById('res_roi').innerHTML = isFinite(roi) ? roi.toFixed(2) + '%' : 'N/A';
}