Amazon FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) COMPLETE Guide For 2024

Amazon’s merchant fulfillment program is a great way to make money selling products without having to worry about the complications of Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). 

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Instead of shipping inventory in bulk to Amazon, with merchant fulfillment you ship the products directly to the customer. In this free guide, I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know to get started with FBM as soon as possible.

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Let’s dig into:

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How Merchant Fulfillment Works

Why FBM > FBA

How Shipping Works For FBM

Estimated Shipping Costs

What Supplies To Use

FBM Shipping Templates & Settings

What Items Sell Best FBM

Best Times Of Year for FBM

Other FBM FAQ

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How Merchant Fulfillment Works

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Merchant fulfillment is the other way to sell on Amazon along with FBA.

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With FBM, you ship products directly to the customer instead of shipping them in bulk to FBA.

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So rather than big UPS bulk boxes it’s individual packages via USPS and UPS generally speaking. 

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When FBM > FBA

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There is a very bad myth out there that FBM doesn’t work or isn’t scalable. This is very false. I write this as somebody who has done multiple $50,000+ proift months off FBM orders alone, not even counting FBA.

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While Amazon does favor the FBA sellers on a listing in general, there are still so many cases where you can verifiably see FBM sellers getting BuyBox and making sales. Especially look for listings where right when you open it you see the seller in the BuyBox does not ship from Amazon, they ship from themselves.

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When FBM makes the most sense are two scenarios - lots of other people FBMing a listing or when that item is in high seasonal demand.

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If you see price going up and competition going down, they generally qualify an item as FBM friendly.

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Basically everything is FBM friendly in December during Q4 - the best time of the year for FBM.

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FBM lets you avoid check in times to Amazon as well as learn quicker, make sales quicker, and you can test items lighter, it’s a major win for new sellers.

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How Shipping Works For FBM

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For FBA, you print the FBA box labels and shipping labels on Boxem, then take them to UPS and ship them out.

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For FBM it’s a tad more complicated, typically for individual orders you’ll have lots of different items so it’ll be a mix of USPS and UPS.

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Luckily Amazon’s buy shipping portal makes this easy. 

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You bake the shipping into your cost and charge free shipping for standard and economy orders on Amazon…

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The reason this works is because with Amazon FBA you pay FBA fees but you don’t pay individual shipping but you do pay FBA fees, which are based on size and weight.

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When you do FBM you don’t pay FBA fees but you do pay individual shipping, which is based on size and weight.

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It’s pretty much the same thing in most cases. 

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Estimated Shipping Costs

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This is very important because it’s a huge mistake lots of new sellers make - not doing FBM numbers correctly on SellerAmp.

Instead of doing what they should be doing and scrolling down then toggling to the FBM numbers on SellerAmp, they simply subtract the FBM shipping cost from the FBA profit calculator numbers. Wrong.

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Scroll down and toggle to FBM numbers on SellerAmp to get the FBM calculator working, then use these estimates relative to weight:

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0-3oz $3.5-4.5

4-7 oz $4.5-5.5

8-11 oz $5-6.5

12-15oz $5.5-6.5

1lb-3lb+ $9-13

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Nice and easy and eventually you’ll memorize it!

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What Supplies To Use

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Supplies to use, don’t overcomplicate it!

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Most FBM orders I’ve sold go in a polymailer. I like the grey 9x12, 12x15.5, and 19 x 24 poly mailers from Amazon.

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For FBM you don’t need any FNSKU labels, just the 4x6 (or close) labels that you can get free from UPS or cheap from Amazon. Just look up “UPS free shipping supplies on Google”.

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Boxes I like to use Walmart and Uline ones, you specifically will know the sizes you need, start with Walmart then go to Uline to buy bulk.

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The nice thing is Amazon prime can get you supplies ASAP and Walmart rarely runs out, so you can get more on the fly if you need. 

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FBM Shipping Templates & Settings

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Shipping templates and settings can be confusing for beginners - no more though!

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For shipping templates, we recommend charging free shipping for economy and standard orders (remember for FBM there are no FBA fees, so it's basically the same) and just bake it into your costs.

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As well for the next day, 2 days, and expedited orders charge $30 + $1/lb.

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Occasionally, a customer will pay $32 for a 2lb expedited FBM order and Amazon will only charge you $12 if you buy the label fast, leading to lots of extra profit!

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Always buy whatever shipping is cheapest, which will primarily be USPS for under 1 lb and UPS for over 1lb. Buy shipping through Amazon but if it is randomly super expensive buy on Pirate Ship. This will happen occasionally. 

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0 day handling time is a major hack to get more BuyBox shares as well in shipping settings.

It’s more work to ship items out the same day if they’re before the handling time you set, but Amazon also gives you a lot more BuyBox. We highly recommend putting in the extra effort with 0DHT to get moving in the algo. 

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What Items Sell Best FBM

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Everything sells well on FBM, if you can see other sellers FBMing it. If its dominated by FBA sellers or entirely FBA sellers, it’s probably not a good item to FBM. 

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Learn to look at the BuyBoxStatistics on Keepa to gauge how FBM friendly an item is. 

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Purely on a math basis there isn’t much difference between FBM and FBA. But items that are above $20+ but below 1lb tend to be a little bit better FBM.

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The same goes for items that have multiple listings to list on, FBM gives you the flexibility to spread your stock around and move it back and forth as you get orders on the different asins. 

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Best Times Of Year for FBM

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The best times of the year for merchant fulfilled are during back to school and Q4 when all the holidays hit like Black Friday, Christmas, and Thanksgiving, because Amazon fulfillment center’s get so backed up with check in times, FBM get more and more share of the BuyBox. This is when it’s really time to capitalize with FBM. 

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Every item is unique and if you see other seller’s FBMing an item, you probably can too. All times of the year there are items that are seasonally seeing a demand increase, these items tend to be FBM friendly always, but once again, check the data.

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There is a simple magic of buying online pickup in store orders or retail arbitrage then listing the items the same day and getting sales during BTS and Q4. 

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We hope this guide was helpful for you guys, it’s our goal at Boxem to make selling products on Amazon simple and profitable.

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Other FBM FAQ

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How does pricing for FBM work?

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Same as FBA! Start out matching BuyBox. 

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How does listing for FBM work?

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List your FBM items via Boxem nice and easy. 

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Are there special labels for FBM?

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Nope! Nice and simple you just put the shipping label on the package, the item in the package, seal it up and you’re good to go. 

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What is vacation mode?

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If you’re going on vacation, vacation mode temporarily shuts down your FBM listings, not your FBA listings. 

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Can I do FBM and FBM at the same time, or even on the same listing at the same time?

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Yes and Yes!

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Can I do USPS and UPS pickups for FBM orders?

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Yes you can! Pirateship is a great place to do this.

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If you enjoyed this guide, check our out full Q4 guide to help you maximize your Q4 this year (Hyperlink to Q4 guide)

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Or our 6 hour free course for the whole free blueprint. 

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-Miles

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