Selling on Amazon: a practical guide for SMEs in Italy

This guide is about selling on Amazon’s Italian marketplace (Amazon.it) and the Italian rules that apply to it. B2C ecommerce in Italy passed 66.6 billion euros in 2026, growing by 6%, with 35 million active digital consumers. A huge share of this market goes through a single channel: marketplaces. Selling on Amazon means reaching millions of people who search for a product directly on the platform, before they even go to Google. But opening a seller account isn’t enough: you need a pricing strategy, logistics management and cost control that many businesses underestimate. In this guide you’ll find every practical step for selling on Amazon: from choosing a selling plan, to selling on Amazon with an Italian VAT number, to the levers for growing sales on the most widely used marketplace in Italy.

Why selling on Amazon (almost) always pays off

Anyone selling online in Italy soon runs into one problem: getting found. A new ecommerce site, however well built, starts with zero traffic and zero reviews. Selling on Amazon solves this problem at the root: it brings with it tens of millions of users who open the app already intending to buy, not just to browse.

The data confirms it. In 2026 product ecommerce in Italy is worth 42.6 billion euros, up 6% on the previous year, according to the latest survey by the Digital Innovation Observatories of the Politecnico di Milano. A significant slice of that value goes through the Amazon marketplace, which remains one of the first places Italians search for products, ahead of Google and the internal search engines of individual online shops.

For an SME, selling on Amazon also means something else: joining an ecosystem with ready-made logistics (Fulfillment by Amazon), managed payments, buyer protection and native advertising tools. The flip side is competition: on every product page you often compete with dozens of sellers offering the same item, sometimes even with Amazon itself, and you only win the Buy Box if your price, availability and seller performance stand up to the comparison.

Which products to sell on Amazon: choosing the right category

Not all categories are equal when it comes to selling on Amazon. Electronics, home and clothing have very high search volumes, but also ruthless competition, often with margins already squeezed by big players and by Amazon itself.

Sellers of niche, artisan or strongly branded products start with an advantage: fewer direct competitors on the same listing and more chance of building a recognisable catalogue. Before choosing what to sell, it’s worth checking how many offers are already competing on the same product and at what price, using the platform’s internal search as you would a keyword research tool.

How to start selling on Amazon: the practical steps

Before uploading your first product, there are choices that affect everything else: the selling plan, the order fulfilment method and the product category.

Individual or Professional plan

Amazon offers two plans for selling on Amazon in Italy. The Individual plan costs 0.99 euros (excluding VAT) per item sold, plus category fees: it’s designed for people who sell fewer than 40 items a month. The Professional plan costs 39 euros a month (excluding VAT), again plus category fees, and pays off from that volume upwards; it’s also mandatory for some categories that require approval. Amazon’s official fees and plans page for sellers gives up-to-date details of every item.

FBA or FBM: who handles logistics

With FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) you send your products to Amazon’s warehouses, and Amazon takes care of storage, shipping, returns and customer service: it costs more per unit, but frees up time and gives you access to the Prime badge. With FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant) you handle logistics yourself: higher margins, but also a heavier operational load and less visibility in Prime-related filters.

For a business selling a few high-value items on Amazon, FBM may be enough. For those aiming for volume, FBA is almost always the choice that pays back the investment.

Selling on Amazon with an Italian VAT number: what the rules say

One of the most frequent questions from people considering selling on Amazon in Italy is exactly when registering for a VAT number (partita IVA) becomes mandatory. The answer doesn’t depend on turnover but on the nature of the activity.

When selling is organised on a habitual, ongoing basis, a VAT number is required regardless of how much you take. People who sell occasionally, for example clearing out a cellar or reselling second-hand items, have no specific tax obligations, because the activity isn’t professionally organised.

Then there’s a second level of attention, linked to checks. Since Italy transposed the EU DAC7 directive, platforms such as Amazon must report to the Agenzia delle Entrate (the Italian Revenue Agency) the details of sellers who exceed 30 transactions or 2,000 euros in payments in a year, as set out on the Agenzia delle Entrate’s DAC7 page. Above that threshold, moving to a professional activity, and therefore to a VAT number, becomes almost inevitable: carrying on without regularising your position exposes you to penalties and retroactive tax claims.

For those opening a VAT number from scratch to sell on Amazon, Italy’s flat-rate scheme (regime forfettario) is often the simplest choice in the first few years, with a reduced tax rate and fewer obligations. It’s worth checking the requirements with an accountant before uploading your first product, because Amazon fees and VAT on intra-EU sales follow specific rules.

How much does selling on Amazon cost: real fees and margins

The cost of the selling plan is only part of the expense. The biggest item is the referral fee, calculated as a percentage of the selling price and different for each product category.

Some concrete examples: electronics pays 7%, clothing ranges from 5% to 15% depending on the price band, books 15%, home and kitchen between 8% and 15% above 20 euros. Almost every category also has a minimum fee per item, usually 0.30 euros. From January 2026 Amazon reduced some of these fees, for example for clothing and pet food under 10 euros, which went from 15% to 5%: extra margin to recalculate category by category before setting prices.

Let’s do a real calculation. A home product sold at 25 euros, with a 15% referral fee, costs 3.75 euros in fees. Add the Professional plan fee (39 euros a month, spread across orders) and, if you choose FBA, storage and fulfilment costs: from a starting gross margin of 40%, it’s easy to fall below 20% net if you haven’t calculated every item before setting the price. People who start selling on Amazon without doing this sum often discover the problem only at their first quarterly accounts.

Amazon Ads: boosting visibility with sponsored advertising

Uploading a product isn’t enough to get it bought: in the first few weeks, with no reviews and no sales history, the listing is almost invisible in search results. Amazon Ads, and Sponsored Products in particular, are there to fill exactly this initial gap.

The logic is similar to Google Ads: you pay per click, target by keyword or by competing product, and monitor ACOS (the ratio between ad spend and revenue) rather than cost per click alone. Sellers who approach Amazon in a structured way always set aside an initial budget for sponsored advertising to speed up the first orders and reviews, then gradually reduce it as the product scales organically. If you already run paid campaigns on other channels, it’s worth applying the same optimisation discipline here too: we cover this on our PPC campaigns page.

Selling on Amazon B2B: when the customer is another business

Amazon Business is the version of the marketplace designed for purchases between businesses: buyers register with their VAT number, see volume discounts and automatically receive invoices showing VAT, without having to request them from the seller.

For businesses selling industrial materials, components, office consumables or technical supplies on Amazon, this channel opens up an audience different from B2C: corporate buyers who compare quotes, look for larger quantities and assess delivery times and supplier reliability even before price. Activating business prices and quantity-tiered price lists requires dedicated setup in the seller account, but for those already working with B2B customers it’s often one of the easiest extensions to test.

Where Amazon fits into your strategy

A common mistake is treating the Amazon marketplace as a channel in its own right, isolated from the rest of the digital strategy. In practice the opposite works better: Amazon is one more sales channel, to be connected with your own website, social media and other marketplaces.

Food producers, for example, often first build a sales funnel on their own website, as we describe in our article on food ecommerce, and use Amazon as a second channel to reach people who search directly on the marketplace without going through the producer’s site.

The same goes for social channels. Social commerce in Italy is growing fast on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, and platforms such as TikTok Shop are replicating the same mechanism that made Amazon a point of reference: product discovery and purchase in the same place, without leaving the app. For an SME present on several channels, the right question isn’t whether to choose Amazon or social media, but which mix of channels best reaches the customer throughout the buying journey.

How to optimise product listings to sell more on Amazon

If you want to sell on Amazon consistently, you need to treat every product listing as you would a page on your own website: with an SEO mindset, adapted to Amazon’s A9 algorithm rather than Google.

Some elements matter more than others:

• Product title: main keyword in the first few characters, brand and distinctive feature (size, quantity, colour).
• Backend search terms: the hidden search fields in the seller account, where you add synonyms and variants that aren’t in the title.
• Images: at least 6-7 images, a white background for the main one, details and usage context for the others.
• Bullet points: concrete benefits, not just technical features.
• Description and A+ content: for Brand Registered sellers, space to tell the product’s story with images and formatted text.
• Reviews: always reply, even to negative ones, and never buy them: Amazon suspends accounts that do.

The same logic used to optimise a website applies here, just with different platform rules. If you want to explore the own-website side, before or alongside the marketplace, you’ll find a dedicated guide to ecommerce SEO in 2025.

Amazon within a wider digital marketing strategy

Selling on Amazon works best when it’s part of a wider plan, not when it stays an isolated experiment. Businesses that get steady results usually work on three fronts in parallel: the product listing, sponsored advertising to speed up visibility in the first weeks, and brand positioning outside Amazon, which builds trust inside the marketplace too.

If you don’t yet have a structured SEO strategy for the rest of the business, that’s a good place to start before pushing on the marketplace: our SEO agency works on both fronts, your own website and your presence on marketplaces. You’ll find more on selling on Amazon and other channels in the e-commerce section of our blog.

Common mistakes when starting to sell on Amazon

The first mistake is setting the price before calculating fees, logistics costs and the plan fee: you only discover the problem when the real margin at the end of the month is half what you expected. The second is taking care over the images and copy on your own site while neglecting your Amazon listings, as if they mattered less: for buyers they matter just as much, and a poor listing converts worse for the same product.

A third common mistake is letting stock run out: as well as losing sales, an out-of-stock product loses its position in search results and takes weeks to recover it even after restocking. The fourth concerns negative reviews: ignoring them, or worse still buying fake ones, exposes you to account suspension, with consequences for the whole catalogue, not just the single product.

Finally, if you sell an own-brand product and don’t register the brand with Amazon Brand Registry, you risk imitations: without that protection, it becomes harder to get duplicate listings removed or to deal with third-party sellers who attach themselves to your listing with products different from the originals.

In short

Selling on Amazon in Italy in 2026 means entering a market worth tens of billions of euros, but also competing in a crowded space where margins and rules change category by category. Before you start, choose the right selling plan, check whether and when you need a VAT number, and calculate the real fees before setting prices. Then work on your product listings with the same care you’d give your own website, and build Amazon into a strategy that also includes your other sales channels.

If you want to understand where to start selling on Amazon with your business, without improvising, book a call: in 30 minutes we’ll review your situation and the concrete priorities for the coming months.

FAQ

Is it better to sell on Amazon or open your own ecommerce site?

It isn’t an either/or choice. Selling on Amazon gives you immediate access to traffic a new website doesn’t have, but your own site remains the only channel where you really control margins, customer data and brand. The strongest businesses use both.

How much does it cost to start selling on Amazon?

The minimum cost is the chosen plan (0.99 euros per item or 39 euros a month), plus category fees. On top of that, where needed, come the costs of producing product listings and an initial sponsored advertising budget.

Can you sell on Amazon without a VAT number?

In Italy, only if the activity is genuinely occasional. As soon as the activity becomes organised and ongoing, a VAT number is mandatory, regardless of the turnover generated.

How long does it take to see the first results?

With an optimised product listing and a Sponsored Products budget, the first sales often come in the first few weeks. Building a solid track record of reviews, however, usually takes a few months of consistent work.