Selling on Amazon FBA in the US From Abroad

Step by step

1. Choose the selling plan before you registerIndividual charges $0.99 per item sold, Professional a flat $39.99 a month. Below roughly 40 items a month the per-item plan is cheaper. You can switch later, so decide for your first 90 days, not for your target.
2. Register the Amazon.com account and finish the tax interviewRegister for the US marketplace, pass the identity verification, and complete the tax interview. An account that sells before the interview is finished is an account with a withholding problem later.
3. Price the unit with the fees that carry a dateTake the referral percentage for your own category from the Revenue Calculator, add the size-tier fulfillment fee, and add storage at $0.78 per cubic foot for any month between January and September.
4. Create the listing and label every unit with its FNSKUEach unit needs its FNSKU label on the outside of the item before it ships to a fulfillment center. A missing or unreadable label is what turns a received shipment into a reconciliation case.
5. Build the inbound shipment and keep the box content fileDeclare what is in each box and keep your own copy of the shipment contents. If units go missing on receipt, that file is the evidence, and nobody will ask you for it until you need it.
6. Check Historical Days of Supply before every reorderThis is the column that decides the low-inventory-level fee. Amazon says more than four weeks of inventory relative to sales keeps you out of it, so read it before you place the purchase order, not after.Inventory > Manage FBA Inventory
7. Put the 14th of each month in your calendarSellers report that removal or disposal orders submitted before 11:59 PM PT on the 14th keep those units out of that month's aged inventory surcharge, even if they have not physically left yet. Confirm it in your account before you rely on it.

Selling on Amazon FBA in the US from abroad comes down to two decisions, not one: which selling plan you pay for, and how much of each sale Amazon keeps once a unit ships out of a US fulfillment center. The second decides your margin, and Amazon publishes most of it with a date attached. This guide follows the order a new seller on Amazon.com actually works through, and prices each step with the figure Amazon put in writing.

What FBA in the US actually covers

FBA means Amazon stores your units, picks them, packs them, ships them and handles customer service and returns for that order. You still own the inventory, you still set the price, and you still pay storage while it sits. If the model itself is new to you, what Amazon FBA is and how it works covers the mechanics before the money.

Two things make a US launch different from a European one. Registration is a single Amazon.com account instead of a group of European marketplaces, and the fee schedule quoted to you is the US one: Pan-EU placement rules, EPR numbers and VAT registrations do not apply to it. The order of the steps, though, is the same one in our step by step guide to selling on Amazon FBA.

Which selling plan to pick for the US marketplace

Amazon runs two. Individual charges a $0.99 per-item fee when something sells. Professional charges a flat $39.99 monthly subscription fee. An Amazon community manager put the dividing line at the point where "your volume of sales exceeds 40 items per month": below that the per-item plan is cheaper, above it the subscription is.

Those two numbers come from a post on Amazon's own seller forums, not from a help page we could open, so read them as the published figures and confirm them in your own account before you commit.

The referral fee is not one number

Amazon keeps a referral fee on every sale and sets the percentage by category, not by seller. The only US percentages we can quote from an Amazon announcement are the apparel ones: Amazon cut apparel referral fees from 17% to 5% for items priced under $15, and from 17% to 10% for items priced between $15 and $20, effective January 15, 2024.

For any other category, read the rate off the Revenue Calculator for your own ASIN instead of using a round number you half remember. Every FBA charge and the date it starts lists the ones that are dollars per unit rather than a percentage, which are the ones that hurt a cheap product.

Which SKUs are paying rent right now?

See my inventory

What storage costs, and when that changes

The monthly inventory storage fee for standard-size units is $0.78 per cubic foot from January through September. That is the rate Amazon set when it lowered non-peak storage fees from an average of $0.87 per cubic foot, a change that applied starting April 1, 2024. The fourth quarter costs more, which is why October is the wrong month to find out how much of your warehouse is slow stock. The full table is in our FBA storage fee breakdown.

Two charges stack on top of storage, and both are avoidable:

• The low-inventory-level fee, which applied starting April 1, 2024. Amazon's own wording on staying out of it: "Sellers can avoid this fee by maintaining more than four weeks of inventory relative to sales."
• The aged inventory surcharge. Sellers on the Amazon forums report it is assessed on a monthly snapshot on the 15th, and that a removal or disposal order submitted before 11:59 PM PT on the 14th keeps those units out of the charge even when they have not physically left. That timing is seller-reported, not confirmed on an Amazon page we could open, so check it in your account before you plan a month around it.

A full example, in dollars

Take one standard-size apparel unit that sells for $18, measures a third of a cubic foot, and sits in a US fulfillment center for all of May:

• Referral fee: 10% of $18, so $1.80, using the apparel rate for items priced between $15 and $20.
• Storage: a third of $0.78, so $0.26 for that month.
• Running total: $2.06, before the size-tier fulfillment fee, which depends on the unit's weight and dimensions, and before advertising.

The total is not the point. The point is that two of those three numbers are published with a date, so the calculation can be run before you reorder instead of after the statement lands.

Keeping a new US account out of trouble

A US account that sells is also an account that can be flagged. At Accelerate 2026, announced on September 29, 2026, Amazon said it is adding a program called Listing Protection, where "the listing stays live while the seller resolves it", reaching all Account Health Assurance sellers in the US by year-end and worldwide in 2027. For a new seller that matters for one reason: the cover follows your account health record, and a record takes months to build. Start it before you need it.

What to do with all of this

Price the unit with the referral rate for your own category and the $0.78 storage figure, decide the plan against your honest first-90-days volume rather than your target, and put the 14th of the month in your calendar from the day your first shipment is received. Everything above either has a date on it or is flagged as needing one.

“Sellers can avoid this fee by maintaining more than four weeks of inventory relative to sales.”

— Amazon Selling Partners ↗

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