Amazon is a great sales channel. Until you do the maths. What looks like growing revenue on the dashboard often turns out, after all platform costs, advertising, FBA fees and returns, to be a channel that adds nothing to your company margin. Sometimes even the opposite. And still we see e-commerce entrepreneurs invest more year after year in the channel that earns them less, simply because they do not measure it properly.
This is not just an Amazon problem. The same happens on Bol.com, on platforms like TikTok Shop, and even on your own webshop where advertising costs get out of hand unnoticed. The question missing in all those cases is the same: which channel really earns something after all costs?
How the Amazon bill quietly adds up
Selling on Amazon costs more than selling price minus purchase price. An average Amazon transaction has a whole series of cost layers that are not all visible if you only look at your sales dashboard.
Start with the referral fee, 8 to 15% of the selling price depending on category, often 17% on clothing. Then FBA fulfilment: on average €3 to €7 per shipment, depending on size and weight. FBA storage charges €0.75 to €2.40 per cubic foot per month, and in Q4 that can triple. Stock that sits for more than a year gets hit with long-term storage fees, so forgotten stock becomes surprisingly expensive. Advertising on Amazon (PPC or DSP) is practically mandatory, because without it you are hard to find. Average ACoS is between 15 and 25%, and often above 30% for new products. On top of that come returns, which are higher on Amazon than in your own webshop: 20 to 30% on clothing and electronics is normal, and every return costs you shipping, inspection and possibly repackaging. And if you take part in Lightning Deals, Prime Day or coupon promotions: not free either.
Add those layers up and a product that had a 35% gross margin on paper actually runs at a channel margin of 8 to 12%. Sometimes zero. On products that do not reach scale, sometimes negative.
The calculation nobody makes
A realistic channel margin calculation has three layers. First the gross margin per sale, then all direct platform costs, then the share of overhead that can be allocated to this channel. A fictional example for a product sold for €40 on Amazon.
- Purchase price: €18, gross margin €22 (55%)
- Referral fee (12%): -€4.80
- FBA fulfilment: -€5.20
- FBA storage (allocated): -€0.80
- Advertising (ACoS 22%): -€8.80
- Return costs (20% returns, €6 per return): -€1.20 on average per sale
- Net channel margin: €1.20 per sale (3%)
Three percent. On a product that looked like 55% at gross margin level. And your own company's overhead has not even been allocated yet. Compare that with selling through your own webshop: no referral fee, lower fulfilment, more efficient advertising, and the same product often reaches a 20 to 28% net margin. Almost ten times as much.
What you do with it next
The right conclusion is almost never "stop selling on Amazon". Amazon has value: reach, findability, FBA speed, customer trust. But Amazon should play the role it is strong in, not the role in which it hollows you out. Three kinds of decisions become possible once you know the real channel margin.
The first is product selection per channel. Some products (light, high margin, low return rate) are ideal for Amazon. Others (heavy, low margin, high returns) are only profitable through your own webshop. The second is price differentiation. Nothing obliges you to charge the same price everywhere. A higher price on Amazon in many cases offsets the platform costs without wrecking conversion. And the third is your advertising allocation. If your ACoS on Amazon is 25% and your conversion costs on your own webshop are 12%, every extra euro of marketing is better spent on the webshop.
One overview for all channels
At Strategie InZicht we connect your webshop, marketplace accounts (Amazon, Bol.com), bookkeeping and ERP. Net channel margin per SKU, per channel, per month, visible in real time. No more Excel work on a Sunday evening to figure out whether Amazon contributed anything this quarter.
A short self-test
Three questions that quickly tell you whether you steer on real channel margin or on revenue without a floor. What is the net margin per SKU on your best-selling Amazon product, after all fees and returns? How does that compare with the same SKU on your own webshop? And what percentage of your Amazon revenue goes on advertising, and is it rising or falling?
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