Selling on Amazon with FBA

The claim

“My student Stephen hit $25k/mo profit with Amazon FBA (as a college kid)”

@flips4miles, 17 July 2023, 51,964 views¹

This page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted.

The sums

FBA means “Fulfilled by Amazon”: Amazon stores, packs and ships your stock for a fee on every unit³. Most big numbers in the tweets are sales (the money customers paid), not profit (what the seller keeps)¹.

Amazon’s commission is 15% in many categories². Packing and shipping costs $4.60 for a “large standard” product priced $10 to $50 and weighing 12 to 16 ounces, says SellerApp, a seller-software company⁴. On a $25 item Amazon’s two fees are $8.35, or 33% (our estimate)²⁴.

Jungle Scout, which sells software to Amazon sellers, surveyed 1,064 sellers with a live listing between 1 December 2023 and 3 January 2024⁸. The middle seller reported keeping 11% to 15% of sales as profit (the margin), on our reading of its table⁸. Our sums at 10% to 20%:

The survey is self-reported and leaves out people who gave up⁸.

What happens to most people who try

In the survey, 48% sold $1,000 a month or less, in sales, not profit⁸.

A second measure is higher: Marketplace Pulse, a research firm, estimates that 43% of the Amazon.com sellers it tracks sell $100,000 or more a year⁴⁸. We could not reconcile the two. Both leave out sellers who stopped⁸⁴⁸.

Most new sellers make a sale: 73% of those who registered on Amazon.com in the previous 12 months⁵⁰. But fewer than 30% of sellers who registered in 2023 were still active in April 2025, on the same firm’s estimate⁵¹.

The upside

People do build real businesses here. The figures are almost all sales, not profit.

• The research firm estimates that about 51,000 sellers on Amazon.com pass $1 million in sales a year⁴⁸. That is about one in ten of the roughly 500,000 active sellers (our division)⁴⁹. Of these, 57% are Chinese companies and 39% American⁴⁸. No one publishes profit for this group.
• Stall Mates, a wipes brand, took in more than $3.8 million of revenue in 2025, mostly through Amazon, about 11 years after listing there; CNBC reviewed documents for the revenue, the profit amount was not disclosed, and the founders say they pay themselves $100,000 salaries⁶⁷.
• One own-brand product listed by the broker Empire Flippers shows stated net profit of $95,943 on revenue of $224,431, about 16 months after its first sale; the broker marks it “Verified” and earns a commission⁵⁸. That is a 43% margin (our division), far above the usual. Only businesses good enough to sell are listed, and the seller may not be a beginner.

Every verified outcome we found is a seller’s own brand. We found none for arbitrage (reselling discounted goods), which the most-viewed tweets teach¹.

A realistic good result in the first two years (our judgement) is to be still selling and reordering, with a few thousand dollars of sales a month. At $5,000 a month and a 10% to 20% margin that is $500 to $1,000 a month of profit.

What it takes to compete

• Years. Half of the top 10,000 sellers in July 2026 had registered before 2019, down from over 60% in April 2025¹⁸⁵¹.
• Buying well. To keep 20% of the selling price as profit, a reseller’s stock must reach Amazon’s warehouse at about 40% to 45% of that price, and an own-brand seller’s at about 30% (our estimates)⁵.
• Money you can lose, and cash to wait. Most surveyed sellers began with more than $2,500⁹. At $200,000 of sales a month, about $80,000 to $100,000 sits in stock at any time (our estimate)¹. Advertising costs about $7.72 to $10.99 per ad-driven order on one ad-software company’s figures⁷.
• What your way of getting products needs. An own brand needs a trademark and advertising skill⁶⁸⁷³. Wholesale (buying a brand’s goods in bulk to resell) needs a real supplier with invoices²⁴. Arbitrage needs time every week¹⁰.

How to tell early (our judgement). Work out one unit before buying: price, minus Amazon’s two fees, the product and shipping²³. If under 15% to 20% of the price is left before advertising and storage, the product is unlikely to make money.

Who else makes money from it

Amazon. It is paid from the first month and the first sale, whether or not the seller profits².

The accounts that tweet. Of our 46 tweets, 31 offer something free by direct message in return for a reply, comment or like¹. We checked no income claim against proof.

Sellers of ready-made stores. Some companies set up and run a store for you; one charged $30,000 to $80,000³⁹. The US Federal Trade Commission has taken several to court^38394041. These are the worst cases, not the typical. None involves an account in our tweets.