By now you probably have heard about the new Amazon limitations on FBA shipments.
Amazon stated that they:
“Are temporarily prioritizing household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products coming into our fulfillment centers so that we can more quickly receive, restock, and deliver these products to customers.”
Unless you are dealing in products related to medical supplies or household staples, this means that you cannot ship new inventory to Amazon for FBA through at least April 5.
What Amazon Products Can I Ship for FBA Now?
Amazon states that allowed products must be within one of these categories:
- Baby Products
- Health & Household
- Beauty & Personal Care (including personal care appliances)
- Grocery
- Industrial & Scientific
- Pet Supplies
And don’t try to be tricky about this either, as they also noted:
“Listing products in an inaccurate category is a violation of our listing policies and may result in account suspension.”
Note that as of now this restriction only applies to US and EU marketplaces.
You can get more detailed information on what Amazon FBA products they will or will not accept.
What Can You Do About This?
Three weeks or more of not being able to replenish your Amazon inventory could be a huge issue for many Amazon sellers.
What can you do about your Amazon FBA business?
One clear strategy to keep the wheels moving would be to work out a way to sell on Amazon Merchant instead of using the Amazon FBA program.
You can list your new Amazon Merchant inventory on Amazon right now and have it populated on Amazon.com nearly immediately.
While many of our customers are FBA sellers, JoeLister does fully support Merchant listings as well.
You can just as easily list your Merchant inventory on eBay just like you do with Amazon FBA products.
Once you list your items do keep in mind that it helps to promote your eBay listings to fuel sales.
How JoeLister Sales of Merchant Listings Works
There are some differences beyond that, so let’s dig deeper into the changes when you sell Amazon Merchant items on eBay using JoeLister.
1. You will get an email from JoeLister about the order. Note: This is a good time to make sure you have email alerts turned on within your JoeLister advanced settings.
2. Since this is not an FBA order, the delivery process is no longer automated — meaning you need to pack up the item and ship it. The first step would be to open up eBay order details from your JoeLister eBay sales page and pack up the item.
Click on the eBay order link for order information.
3. Once you have shipped the item, mark it as shipped on eBay.
4. When you have tracking information, enter the tracking number within the eBay order.
Sometimes We are Forced to Adapt
2020 is proving to be a very interesting and challenging year. While I personally prefer selling on Amazon with FBA, I will be using this strategy myself to keep listing new products on my Amazon account throughout these next few weeks.
Some extra sales visibility on eBay for your new Amazon Merchant items hopefully will keep your sales volume up during these troubling times.
Be safe everyone.
* Please note we may include affiliate links in some posts. But only for products we use personally and have deep faith in.