Is an Amazon Pro Merchant Account Essential?

*Click to read the affiliate disclaimer*

(Last Updated On: )

What is an Amazon Pro Seller Account?

There are individual Amazon sellers and there are professional ones. Just like eBay has personal and business accounts. The latter ones give sellers various privileges to help them increase sales, stock turnover and – most importantly – profit. This ranges from regular email insights about what your customers have in their wish lists and their shopping habits, to all-important Buy Box preference.

When I say that AMZ are offering privileges, I mean it. If you're selling things already listed in their marketplace, you can even the chance to get cash-boosting loans. They want the Pro Merchants to prospects, and here’s what you need to consider.

What Do I Need to Think About?

£30 per month is a lot to spend, if you're not sure about something. That's the price you're looking at for one of these plans. With Amazon, there's a whole learning curve you need to get over before you get the hang of making proper profit. That expense – as little as it may seem to some – is rather off putting for someone new to the field.

If you're using Amazon as a place to list and merchant fulfil your unsold eBay items, perhaps a basic, individual account is a better option. Remember: if you search for almost any product released with a barcode in the last 15 years, Amazon are probably ranking #1 for the term on Google. They will at least be in the top 5, if they stock it. Getting your potential customers to find your products is the hardest part. Once they've found it, it's easy to convert a competitively priced listing.

As a merchant fulfilled seller, your chances of earning the Buy Box are slim. It's pretty much impossible for new sellers to do so. This means you would have to undercut on price (lowering your margins) and it would have to be on a listing with low competition (which are usually slow-selling). Again, not ideal if you want to grow your business quickly.

Although you can do FBA with an individual account, you're margins won't look great if you're selling in low quantities. If your plan is to develop a proper Amazon business, through retail arbitrage, online arbitrage, private label or otherwise, a pro merchant account is essential.

Should I Trial a Free Account and Then Upgrade?

Here’s the outline of the fee structure.

Individual: £0.86 per item.

Pro Merchant: £30 monthly subscription.

This means that once you sell more than 34 products in a month, you’re saving money with the Pro one. Read on their site for more details. You can upgrade or downgrade between the two, but you’re more than likely only going to go from the individual to the Pro Merchant and stick there. By all means, wait until you get there, but there may be aspects of your business that you simply cannot improve until you do.

Individual plans mean you cannot bulk upload product. Essential when you’re in this game properly. You can't use third party sourcing or inventory management software. All sorts is locked off to you.

By committing to the subscription, you’re forcing yourself to properly take action. Unfortunately, they no longer give you a free trial period. Once you’re in. Game on.
You could, but the problem is that you don't get all of the benefits. The major advantages of Amazon vs other marketplaces are the amount of traffic the site gets (thanks to great and natural search performance) and its FBA programme (allowing you to sell without holding inventory). Without these factors, it may take you a while to make your first sales.

As someone who sold on eBay for years before moving to Amazon, the difference in stock turnover made me change my whole game plan. It's just so much faster to earn sales – and for higher prices – on Amazon. Certain product categories may do better than others, but that's the general rule. When you're new to this, you need that confidence booster – like selling items from your first FBA shipment in the first day – to motivate you to do more. If it doesn't happen, you might not continue, and you'll quit before you fully realise the potential.

So What's It Gonna Be?

Long-term, FBA is probably the only way to go for third parties to sell new goods on Amazon. This being the case, you're going to have to break off £30 each month to pay for it. That's just how it is. If that figure scares you, it's wise to find other means to build up capital beforehand. I wouldn't advise merchant fulfilling as a method, simply because the turnaround times tend to lag. Save up, time other money making methods, focus on eBay, do whatever's necessary to be in a comfortable position to have that expense beforehand.

For those that plan to make serious money through Amazon FBA – particularly retail and online arbitragers – ensure that you have accounted for these outgoing charges. Don't use all of your spare cash on stock. By all means, take action as soon as you can, but avoid reckless spending.