On November 17, Amazon released the "2022 US Sales Commission and FBA Logistics Fee Changes List" announcement on the official website of Seller Central. (Click " Read the original text " at the end of the article to learn more about the announcement)

Source: Screenshot of the official website of Amazon Seller Center
In the detailed rules of the announcement, the rates of 5 aspects will be raised:

Shipping rates will increase by an average of 5.2%;

For all large standard-size products (except apparel), Amazon will use the greater of product weight or dimensional weight to determine its shipping weight;

Amazon will increase removal and disposal fees;

Amazon will increase low-season monthly storage fees for standard-sized and oversized items (January-September), and peak-season storage fees (October-December) will remain unchanged;

Amazon will introduce a tiered rate structure for long-term storage fees;

In the announcement, Amazon also recommends sellers to check the overage inventory and take corresponding steps [such as reporting deals, clearance or product promotion (Ads)] to avoid paying these additional fees .
In the face of high freight and storage costs, as well as limited storage capacity, a clearance plan for slow-moving products is essential. Today, Cathy sorted out the inventory clearance methods inside and outside Amazon for everyone, and helped sellers reduce costs and increase efficiency through multi-channel cooperation.

0 1 What are the methods for clearing inventory in the station?

01 -Outlet Deal (Free)

Outlet Deal is an official way provided by Amazon to clear unsalable inventory. Sellers can apply for participation in the background.
Click [Inventory Control Panel]–[Manage Redundant Inventory]–[Create Outlet Limited Time Promotion] in the background to submit a promotion with a minimum discount of 20%. The selected promotion will be in a fixed period of one to two weeks displayed on the Amazon Outlet page.
Note: There is a maximum price limit, and the maximum promotional price will be based on the lowest price given by the seller of this product as the reference standard.
This method is officially provided by Amazon for free, but its threshold is relatively high . To be eligible for the Clearance Program, the following criteria need to be met:
in sellable condition; with a sales history and a rating of at least 3 stars; in as-new condition; complies with Amazon's customer product review policies and pricing policies; not enrolled in the Subscribe & Save program;

02-Amazon Official Clearance Program (Paid)

Amazon launched a bulk clearance program for sellers this year.
How to operate? When creating a removal order, select the removal method as "Batch Clearance" and fill in the removal quantity.
Source: Amazon seller backstage screenshotAmazon will charge two separate fees for items cleared through the program: ▲ Item Handling Fee: Per item, the specific fee for each item depends on item size and weight ▲ Referral Fee: Per FBA category referral fee Proportional charge
How much can the cost be recovered?

Amazon entrusts a third party to carry out the recycling of the goods, and the official claims that the third-party wholesale clearer will purchase this inventory based on the total recycling value, which accounts for about 5% to 10% of its average selling price (up to 20% for European sites). But this ratio is for reference only. The feedback provided by one of Cathy's seller customers is less than 5%.

Source: Amazon seller backstage screenshot
The picture above shows the actual cashback situation of an official inventory clearance plan for a product priced at US$12.99 provided by Cathy’s customer. After deducting the Amazon commission of US$ 0.3-0.4 for each transaction, the product can only get a refund of US$0.6 in the end. 5% of the price.

03-Disposal (fee charged)

For some long-term unsalable products with quality problems, direct disposal may be the most appropriate choice, which can avoid various problems such as later return, storage, customer complaints, etc., but additional disposal costs need to be paid.

04-Drain traffic through A+ and joint purchase discounts ( free)

① Put slow-moving products on the compare items section of other brand products A+ to get free traffic.

Source: Screenshot of the front desk of Amazon sellers
② Set up virtual bundled product promotions to increase joint purchases. Source: Screenshot of the front desk of Amazon sellers


05-Create Post Drainage Clearance (Free)

Create multiple product related posts and get free Amazon traffic. How to create a post, please poke: A new free traffic section appears in the Amazon front desk? Is Amazon going to become a WeChat circle of friends?

06-Clear through Social Media Code (free)

Create free social media discounts through background advertising-manage promotions-social media promotion codes. Remember to check Amazon influencers and affiliates. After checking, Amazon will publish discount information to all its influencers and affiliate members for selection. If If you are selected by influencers, you can get free influencer traffic.

Every day, Amazon Affiliate Celebrities find suitable deals from the background deal recommendation section and share them on their social media to promote product sales.

Source: Screenshot of Amazon Alliance Backstage

Advice on setting up social media discounts: 1. Gradually test the discount strength that influencers are interested in , first set 30% off, 3-5 days, if the effect is not good, then increase to 35%-40%-45% and gradually increase. 2. If a product’s social media discount works well, immediately add the asins of other unsalable products to the product list of this product, and at the same time extend the validity period of the discount to drive the sales of other products. 3. When submitting social media discounts, post the discounts to the Facebook influencer group to increase the popularity of the discounts and help the discount information to be selected by more influencers on the homepage.

4. Set about 10% small coupons and social media discounts to be superimposed , which will help to be selected by more influencers, and at the same time increase the conversion rate and coupon traffic on the site. Pay attention to setting the coupon budget in advance and stop coupons in time.

PS: Only the US website had this function before, and the seller account had to have a brand record.

07- Clearance by displaying the promo code at the front desk (free of charge)

For sellers without brand registration, you can create a promotion-purchase discount path to create a common discount code, and at the same time, in the third step of specific deal creation, check the text displayed on the product details page, so that the discount information and code will be displayed on the product In the details page, the conversion rate of orders is increased, and the handling fee of 0.6 US dollars is reduced compared with coupons.

0 2 What are the methods for clearing inventory outside the station?

01-Off-site deal website

Publish your own products through the Deal website to attract buyers to buy, such as Slickdeals, Groupon, LivingSocial, Vipon and other well-known Deal websites with high traffic have high thresholds and high Code requirements. Different products have different suitable deals websites. There are already many professional tutorials on the Internet, so Cathy will not repeat them here.

02-Facebook deal group

The Facebook deal group is a very high-quality and efficient inventory clearance channel. However, the Facebook platform is full of hundreds of thousands of discount groups of different types. The number of fans ranges from a few thousand to millions. The quality is uneven, and the fee for each post is also different. , the time cost is too high and it is difficult to guarantee a stable deal effect.
Cathy's team has summarized a set of quick judgment indicators in the process of working with hundreds of groups.

For more details about dry goods, please click: Amazon Facebook deal must-see guide before launch! ! !
Cathy listed a total of 9 different methods of clearing inventory on and off the site . Each method has different advantages, disadvantages and scope of application. We need to make a reasonable choice according to the actual situation. Comparison of advantages and disadvantages of different inventory clearance methods:
No matter which method of clearing inventory is used, it is a temporary solution, not the root cause. How to optimize the supply chain from the source, reasonably control the stocking quantity, and improve the inventory turnover rate are more important than clearing the inventory!