If you’ve watched some of my videos about how to make money online, you’ve heard me say Amazon FBA and Amazon FBM, or sometimes just “FBA” and “FBA”. FBA stands for “fulfilled by amazon” and FBM stands for “fulfilled by merchant”. Fulfillment means shipping the item you sold out. So FBA items are shipping out by Amazon and FMB items are shipped out by the merchant. There are a lot more details and examples that contradict what I said, but for 99.99% of people who don’t know what FBA and FBM mean, my answer is satisfactory.

When I talk about items I sold FBA, it means I listed it using InventoryLab, prepped it following the FBA rules, and sent it to Amazon. If I sold an item FBM, it means I listed it on Amazon, stored it in my warehouse, and sent it to the customer myself when they purchased it. In some cases, if I am using a third-party logistics firm (3PL), I would be sending them the information about where to send the item. This is still FBM, even though the merchant (me in the example) isn’t physically sending it out. As a general rule of thumb, I recommend beginners start off learning how Amazon FBA works by selling used books. In my opinion, it is the lowest risk way to learn the ropes. If you want to learn how to make an FBA shipment, I’ve got content on that too.

If you want to learn more of the basics about how to make money online, I’ve created this helpful FAQ that you can read.