Amazon Handmade informed sellers that the monthly Professional Seller Account fee which was supposed to take effect on January 1, 2020, has been waived indefinitely. In an email sent to sellers today, Amazon Handmade stated that the $39.99 monthly fee waiver is intended to “make it easy for you to pursue your passion and grow your business on Handmade.” Amazon Handmade takes a 15% fee on each item sold.
When Amazon Handmade launched in 2015 the monthly fee was waived for sellers, but that waiver was supposed to only be temporary. It was extended in 2016, then annually ever since. Now, it looks as though Amazon doesn’t have any plans to charge artisans the same set of fees as it does typical Amazon sellers.
In the Handmade Artisan Advantage Facebook group, the official Facebook group that is moderated by Amazon Handmade, many sellers were overjoyed. One wrote, “This is great news! I have to watch every penny that goes into my items and the monthly fee would be enough to push costs over the edge.”
Tara Reid has been selling her jewelry on Amazon Handmade since 2015 through her shop Starletta Designs. She’s now an Amazon Handmade educator, teaching other creative business owners how to successfully sell on the platform.
“I’m really excited about the fee waiver news because it allows artisans to continue to try out the platform essentially risk-free,” Reid says. “This will also encourage the continued growth of the Handmade category which is a win for sellers, buyers, and Amazon.”
I’ve been following this topic for awhile, and it’s not out of line with Amazon’s approach to their better (less complained about) sellers; we’re going to charge you a fee except we’re not because we want you to stay with us (I also work for a company that sells on consignment with Amazon). It’s likely they will never officially drop the monthly fee AND never charge it.
Remember: if you sell with Amazon, you want to be proactive about managing your account and fees they may charge for what they perceive as irregularities in your shipments. You can make most of those fees (chargebacks) go away with some consistent pushback which will bypass their AI and go to actual human customer service operators.
Handmade is a window dressing line that makes their vast and irregular inventory look supervised. Managing your account with them is a minute or two out of the day, but it’s time well spent.