How to Sell on Amazon: Beginner Guide for Ireland & UK 2025

Thinking about selling on Amazon but not sure where to start? You’re not alone — the marketplace draws thousands of new sellers every year, yet the actual process of getting your first product live can feel like wading through fine print. This guide walks you through everything from setting up your account to choosing a fulfilment method, with specific numbers for the UK and Ireland in 2025.

Amazon UK Seller Benefits: over £42,000 · Typical Monthly Earnings Potential: $1,000 · Seller Account Types: Individual and Professional · Fulfillment Options: FBA and Dropshipping

The table below summarises the essential details you need before registering as an Amazon seller in the UK or Ireland.

How do you start selling on Amazon for beginners?

Starting on Amazon involves six core steps that apply whether you’re listing from Ireland or the UK. Most beginners find the setup surprisingly straightforward once they know the sequence.

• Step 1 — Establish a legal entity: You need to be registered as a sole trader or a formal business before Amazon will approve your seller account (Wise (UK FBA beginner guide)).
• Step 2 — Register your account: For the UK, you’ll need bank details, a credit card, government ID, and a phone number via sell.amazon.co.uk. For Ireland, provide your business name, email, phone, tax information, and bank details at sellercentral.amazon.ie (Wise, Salt Marketing).
• Step 3 — Choose your selling plan: Individual costs £0.75 per item in the UK (€0.99 in Ireland) and works well if you expect under 35 sales per month. Upgrade to Professional at £25/month in the UK (€39/month in Ireland) once you cross that threshold — the breakeven lands around the 34th sale (Amazon UK Seller Central, Amazon IE Seller Central).
• Step 4 — Select and research your products: Target high-demand items with a strong best-seller rank, favour impulse-buy products and compact items, and avoid restricted categories entirely (Wise).
• Step 5 — Create your listing: Write a keyword-rich product title, detailed description, add high-quality images, and set competitive pricing (Salt Marketing).
• Step 6 — Choose your fulfilment method: Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) means Amazon stores, packs, and ships your products — and your listings become Prime-eligible. Merchant Fulfilment (MF) means you handle all of that yourself.

Is it free to sell stuff on Amazon?

No — selling on Amazon always costs something, though the amounts differ depending on which marketplace you use and which plan you choose.

Individual vs Professional plans

The UK Individual plan charges £0.75 per item sold, while the Professional plan costs £25/month excluding VAT. In Ireland, the Individual plan is €0.99 per item and the Professional plan is €39/month excluding VAT (Amazon UK Seller Central, Amazon IE Seller Central).

Referral fees

Amazon takes a percentage of every sale you make — referral fees typically range from 8–15% depending on the product category (Salt Marketing). For UK sellers, there’s also a low-price FBA structure: 5% on items priced up to £15, 10% on items between £15–20, and 15% on items above £20. For FBA items with a total price above £40, the rate is 15% on the portion up to £40 and 7% on anything above that threshold (Amazon UK Seller Central).

FBA fees

FBA costs stack on top of referral fees. You pay storage fees (monthly or aged for long-stay inventory) plus fulfilment fees per item based on category, size, weight, and sales channel. Added extras include returns handling, prep services, and labelling. Amazon changed its FBA fulfilment fees on 1 February 2025, specifically updating parcel-size product rates to simplify and lower costs (Amazon Seller Central Europe, Kwick Metrics).

Media items in the UK incur a closing fee of £0.50 for most media and £1.00 for books (Crunch (2025 UK FBA fee breakdown)).

Can I sell on Amazon without having products?

Yes — two main approaches let you sell without holding inventory yourself: dropshipping and using Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) prep services.

Dropshipping

Dropshipping means you list products you don’t own, and when a customer buys, your supplier ships directly to them. Amazon does allow dropshipping, but you must be the seller of record — meaning your name and address appear on packaging and invoices. You cannot use a third party’s branding in a way that obscures who the seller is.

FBA prep

Some sellers buy products in bulk, then pay Amazon to receive, inspect, and relabel inventory before it goes into fulfilment centres. You still own the stock, but Amazon handles the hands-on logistics from that point.

Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA)

FBA is different from true no-inventory selling — you ship bulk inventory to Amazon’s warehouses, and they handle storage, packing, and shipping when orders come in. The critical difference from Merchant Fulfilment is that Amazon takes on customer service, returns, and Prime eligibility for your listings (Salt Marketing).

The implication: FBA shifts the labour of logistics to Amazon in exchange for higher fees. For beginners unsure whether they want to manage shipping themselves, FBA is often the more practical starting point despite the added cost.

What products sell best on Amazon?

Amazon’s best performers share a few recurring traits: they’re compact, relatively inexpensive, and solve an immediate need. The platform rewards products that convert quickly in the checkout flow.

High-demand products

Categories that consistently perform well include consumables (shampoos, supplements, snacks), everyday essentials (cable accessories, phone cases, kitchen gadgets), and items tied to seasonal or event-driven buying patterns. The key metric to watch is best-seller rank — products ranking within the top 100 in their subcategory tend to move reliably (Wise).

Trending items 2026

Health and wellness, sustainable living products, and home organisation continue to gain traction. Compact items that can ship in standard-sized parcels benefit from lower FBA fees, making margin calculations more forgiving. Avoid restricted categories — anything requiring safety certifications, hazmat approval, or brand authorisation will add layers of compliance before you can sell (Wise).

The pattern: the best-selling products on Amazon aren’t necessarily the most unique — they’re the ones that solve a specific problem quickly, ship reliably, and don’t carry hidden compliance burdens.

What to avoid selling on Amazon?

Avoiding the wrong products saves more beginners from losses than any winning product pick ever could. The two biggest categories of problems are restricted products and VAT non-compliance.

Restricted products

Amazon maintains a long list of categories requiring approval — hazardous materials, medical devices, food items requiring refrigeration, and products subject to brand authorisation all require pre-approval before you can list them. Selling restricted items without clearance can result in account suspension. Beginners should check the Amazon UK Seller Central restricted products page before committing to any category (Wise).

VAT requirements

UK FBA sellers must register for UK VAT if they’re storing products in Amazon’s UK fulfilment centres — this applies regardless of where in the world the seller is based (Wise). Irish sellers who exceed €37,500 in annual sales must register for Irish VAT, and may also owe VAT on UK and EU sales depending on where customers are located (Salt Marketing).

What this means: spend an hour understanding VAT obligations before you list a single product. The cost of non-compliance is fines, suspended accounts, and potentially losing access to the marketplace entirely.

“To simplify our fees and lower your costs, we’re updating the way that we calculate Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) fees for parcel-size products.”

— Amazon Seller Central Europe (Official Announcement)

“If you sell over €37,500 annually, you need to register for Irish VAT.”

— Salt Marketing (Expert Guide)

For beginners in Ireland or the UK, the choice between FBA and Merchant Fulfilment comes down to how much time you want to spend on logistics versus how much you’re willing to pay for Amazon to handle it. FBA wins on reach — Prime eligibility alone can lift conversion rates — but MF keeps more of each sale in your pocket if you have the operational capacity to fulfil orders yourself.