Lesson 2 of 10
What a sale is actually worth
Two Amazon fees come out of every order before you see a cent of it, and revenue is counted the moment the order is placed, not when the fee lands.
Revenue is what a buyer paid. It is not what Marleigh & Rowe kept, and the first gap between the two opens before a box is ever packed: two fees Amazon takes on every order, win or lose, listing by listing. Referral fee is Amazon’s cut for the sale happening on its marketplace at all. The fulfilment fee — FBA, for Fulfilment by Amazon — is what it charges to pick, pack and ship the order out of its own warehouse. Both are subtracted before revenue ever becomes anything a seller can spend.
Every row pays both, and pays them differently
Neither fee is a flat rate applied once to the whole account. Both are charged order by order, and how much of revenue they take moves with the product, the marketplace and the price it sold at. The table below is every trading row again, low margin to high, with each fee broken out on its own rather than folded into one “Amazon’s fees” figure.
| SKU | Marketplace | Units | Revenue | Referral fee | FBA fee | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MR-98UZB1A1 | Amazon.ca | 4 | $525.56 | -$70.47 | -$65.73 | 33.8% |
| MR8511-2 | Amazon.co.uk | 12 | $287.62 | -$28.00 | -$66.08 | 35.4% |
| 11x17_Mat | Amazon.ca | 14 | $769.61 | -$120.04 | -$150.01 | 36.6% |
| MR8511-2 | Amazon.ca | 56 | $1,737.74 | -$267.56 | -$340.20 | 38.3% |
| MR8511-2 | Amazon.com | 458 | $17,361.38 | -$2,904.67 | -$3,065.65 | 41.4% |
| 11x17_Mat | Amazon.com | 17 | $1,211.36 | -$199.50 | -$194.55 | 41.6% |
| CB-160M-2U0K | Amazon.co.uk | 1 | $142.84 | -$18.45 | -$24.43 | 46.4% |
| 11x17_Mat | Amazon.co.uk | 6 | $244.40 | -$18.89 | -$32.52 | 48.2% |
| MR-98UZB1A1 | Amazon.com | 13 | $2,609.25 | -$402.70 | -$329.71 | 49.6% |
| CB-160M-2U0K | Amazon.ca | 1 | $291.97 | -$46.48 | -$52.98 | 49.8% |
| CB-160M-2U0K | Amazon.com | 8 | $1,519.81 | -$227.20 | -$209.54 | 56.9% |
| MR-98UZB1A1 | Amazon.co.uk | 3 | $206.35 | -$12.99 | -$13.45 | 57.6% |
Revenue is counted order-side
Revenue for an order is known in full the moment it is placed. The fee against that same order is not always filed by Amazon that quickly — for the most recent days of a window, some fees may still be in transit, and the app fills the gap with an estimate built from the rate it has already seen, rather than pretend the fee is zero and show a margin that is not real. Revenue moves the instant a buyer clicks buy. Fees follow on Amazon’s own timetable, not the seller’s. That gap is one reason revenue, payout and profit — the three numbers lesson 1 told apart — never move in lockstep.
Neither fee is what the product itself cost to make or land. Both are what Amazon charges for selling it. What it actually cost to get one unit to the shelf it sold from is still to come.