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Issue 98: What to do about FBA Inbound Placement Fees

By Rachel Go
Amazon Inbound Placement Fee

Hello, MyFBAPrep Sellers!

Today we’re talking about the infamous inbound placement fees, and the new inbound defect fee. MyFBAPrep has strategic Amazon partnerships that can help us reduce costs for our sellers. We spoke with multiple sources in and out of Amazon to get the best recommendations, which we’re sharing below.

Amazon Inbound Placement Fees: What They Are and How to Reduce Shipping Costs

MyFBAPrep can batch your inventory with other sellers that need to go to the same region or FBA warehouse to streamline operations. Shipping full truckloads with multiple customer goods can save on inbound fees as it’ll help you affordably take advantage of shipping to multiple areas.

FBA locations are split into various regions. This map is constantly changing, but a rough guide of area splits are:

  • Northwest
  • Southwest
  • Texas
  • Midsouth
  • Florida
  • Midatlantic
  • Northeast
  • Midwest
  • Great Lakes

Among these regions, there are cross-regional pairings. So that means we can send a full truckload shipment that covers multiple regions, further saving on costs.

For example, if your Amazon inventory plan asks you to send to two different regions in the Northeast, Southeast, and Central East groupings, we can send one full truckload to those regional pairs instead of two separate trucks.

Essentially, the goal is to maximize full truckloads. If they fall into region pairs, we can also strategically filter shipment creations to two or three splits, then regionalize it. So doing a few splits in the Eastern region means they can all go out on one truck with our Amazon partnership resources.

Learn our recommendations for reducing inbound shipping costs.

Start leveraging FTLs and the FBA cross-regional pairing strategy to save on your inbound placement fees

Contact MyFBAPrep

Amazon Search Suppressed: Tips to Avoid It and How to Fix It If It Happens

If you notice a sudden, significant drop in sales for one of your Amazon listings, you might be experiencing search suppression. This means shoppers can’t find your listing in search results, so they aren’t buying it. An Amazon search suppressed listing is a crucial issue that you must identify and fix right away to keep your business healthy, especially if it affects one of your top products.

In this article, you’ll learn why Amazon sometimes suppresses listings in search results, how to know if this happens to yours, and what to do next in that instance. You’ll also receive three effective tips for preventing search suppression from occurring.

Learn about search suppression on Amazon and how to avoid it.

How to Reactivate Your Amazon Seller Account

Logging in to your Amazon seller account should be a quick, routine check-in on your sales performance. But sometimes, that familiar click can lead to an unexpected surprise — a deactivated account. Maybe you took a break from selling, or perhaps you received a notification about performance issues. Whatever the reason, getting your account back up and running can be a frustrating experience.

But we’re here to eliminate some of the hassle on how to reactivate your Amazon seller account. This article will guide you through the process so you experience less headache and return to selling sooner. We’ll navigate you through the entire procedure, from understanding why your account was deactivated to crafting a winning appeal to get it reinstated.

Here are the steps to take to reactivate your Amazon account.

Amazon Advertising Tips: Best Sellers, Ads, and Pushing Slow-Moving Stock

Running successful Amazon ads can affect more than just your sales. They can impact how well new products perform, category performance, and even restock limits.

  • New products: You need to earn your first sales and collect product reviews to increase your rankings, as well as expand brand awareness.
  • Slow-moving stock: You need to increase visibility on your ASINs and liquidate your inventory to make room for newer items with higher demand.
  • Seasonal products: It’s important to make the most of holidays and seasons like Christmas, which generates a large portion of sales in Q4.
  • Competitive category: Use ads to leapfrog competition on search results pages and increase your odds of scoring the Amazon Best Seller Badge.
  • FBA restock limits: To increase restock limits for FBA, you’ll have to move more inventory.

Learn how Amazon PPC works and how to run successful campaigns.

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Top Industry News

MyFBAPrep Wins 2024 Excellence in Customer Service Award (MyFBAPrep Newsroom)
MyFBAPrep announced last week that it has been named a winner in the 2024 Excellence in Customer Service Award presented by Business Intelligence Group.The annual award honors the companies, executives, and products leading the way in the industry. 102 customer service stars who are shining bright and improving customer outcomes in today’s online-driven economy received the award.

China eCommerce Exports, Unreliable Red Sea Shipping Boost Air Cargo (FreightWaves)
Air cargo demand has grown by double digits for four consecutive months, while rates have risen steadily since late February. The strength of the market rebound after a prolonged downturn that bottomed out last August has surprised industry watchers. But the recovery is not lifting all regions equally and can be partly attributed to a weak 2023 that makes the comparison look better. Primary factors driving growth in air cargo are poor ocean shipping reliability and Chinese e-commerce players like fast fashion dynamo Shein, and online markets Temu and Alibaba sucking up outbound capacity from China.

MarketForce Winds Down its B2B eCommerce Arm (TechCrunch)
A mix of challenges — including aggressive expansion, a capital-intensive business model, razor-thin profit margins and a funding crunch after an investor reneged on their promise — made the business hard to sustain, leading to the closure.

Why Manufacturers Will Accelerate Digital Commerce Projects (Digital Commerce 360)
Manufacturers are back to a slightly faster production and sales pace after a sluggish 2023. Product makers also are putting digital commerce — and transformation — on a faster development track, according to data and analysis from the newly published 2024 Ecommerce in Manufacturing and Distribution Report from Digital Commerce 360. Last year’s total manufacturing sales grew 3.6% to $6.829 trillion from $6.591 trillion in 2022, based on Digital Commerce 360 analysis using monthly data from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Alibaba Will Struggle to Knock Temu off eCommerce Top Spot (Financial Times)
Every day, ecommerce platform Temu and Chinese fast-fashion group Shein send about 600,000 packages to the US, according to a congressional investigationEditSign published in 2023. Global demand for products from these platforms is causing capacity shortages at airlines and freight forwarders, and raising airfreight costs. Uniting individual Chinese sellers and offering direct mailing to customers around the world has given Temu its global growth and the scale to pose competition to multinational companies. Temu’s model of low operational costs and lower spending on warehousing and inventory gives it an edge.

Cognizant Partners With Shopify as eCommerce Platforms Challenge Amazon (PYMNTS)
Shopify is calling in reinforcements as eCommerce solution providers aim to equip brands and retailers to hold their own against Amazon.Cognizant, which provides digital solutions, technology consulting and IT services to various industries, is partnering with Shopify and Google to help brands and retailers upgrade their online shops. The collaboration combines Shopify’s online selling platform with Google Cloud’s system and the expertise of Cognizant’s retail technology specialists.

Air Cargo Boom: Global Trade Reshaped by E-commerce Surge and Shipping Disruptions (Global Trade Magazine)
This surge in demand has outpaced the growth in airfreight capacity, leading to fierce competition for available space on outbound flights from China and Hong Kong to key destinations like the United States and Europe. As a result, logistics providers are grappling with capacity constraints, with some warning of sold-out commitments for the remainder of the year. This scarcity of space is making it increasingly challenging for freight forwarders to secure consistent capacity for their shipments, posing logistical challenges in an already complex global trade landscape.

Amazon Had a Secret Operation to Gather Intel on Rivals like Walmart and FedEx, Reportedly Called Big River (Business Insider)
The tech giant started a company called Big River Services International as part of “Project Curiosity,” a 2015 effort to understand how Amazon’s rivals in retail, logistics, and related fields ran their businesses, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Big River sold items like t-shirts, shoes, and beach chairs on competitors’ platforms. Its goal was to get information from rivals that Amazon could then use to inform its own business decisions, according to the Journal.

Until next time,
Rachel Andrea Go
Marketing Director, MyFBAPrep