A plain-English look at the last seven Amazon payouts (Feb 20 – May 29, 2026). No Amazon jargon required.
Amazon pays Bare Bones roughly every two weeks. The most recent deposit was the smallest since March — but most of that isn't a sales problem. Two big things happened: a savings-account-style hold that Amazon had been releasing back to us finally ran out, and this period got hit with the largest shipping-into-Amazon bill of the whole stretch ($20K). Underneath, sales did soften a bit too. Scroll down — each piece is broken out below.
The blue bars are what Amazon actually deposited each period. They swing wildly — but a lot of that swing has nothing to do with how much we sold. It's about a reserve: a chunk of money Amazon held back and then released later (think of it like a security deposit being paid back in installments).
Units shipped and the gross dollar value of products sold, period by period. The average price per unit has been slowly drifting down all year.
For the latest period, here's what happened to each dollar of product we sold on Amazon. Amazon's fees take roughly half, and advertising takes another ~12¢ on top (paid by credit card, outside the payout). What's left — about 40¢ — is what remains before the cost of actually making the broth.
The unusual, the lumpy, and the trends quietly moving in the wrong direction.
The latest period had the biggest "inbound freight" charge of all seven (vs $0 the period before). These bills are lumpy — they appear whenever we send a big inventory shipment — and this one alone explains most of the gap to the prior payout.
Through April, payouts were padded by Amazon repaying a held reserve (up to +$265K in one period). That's fully unwound now. Future payouts won't get that boost — May's three deposits are the new "clean" normal.
Price per unit has fallen every step from $5.76 to $5.02 (−13% since March). Small per-unit, but it compounds across ~100K units. Could be product mix, discounting, or fee-driven repricing — worth a closer look.
Fees as a share of sales rose from 33.7% to 34.9% across the period. Not alarming alone, but combined with falling prices it squeezes margin from both sides.
Feb–April unit counts zig-zagged (117K → 59K → 107K → 45K) before settling near 100K+ each period in May. That pattern lined up with the reserve cycle and smoothed out once it ended.
Customer refunds held around 2% of sales every period (one blip at 3.2% in mid-April). Low and stable — a good sign for product quality and customer satisfaction.
The deposit Amazon sends to our bank, roughly every two weeks, after subtracting all their fees from our sales. One settlement statement = one payout.
Money Amazon temporarily holds back (like a security deposit) to cover potential refunds or claims, then releases to us later. It makes individual payouts look bigger or smaller than actual sales until it's paid off.
Fulfillment by Amazon. We ship our product to Amazon's warehouses; they store it, pack it, and ship it to customers. They charge a per-unit fee for that service — our single biggest cost.
Amazon's cut for letting us sell on their marketplace — a percentage of each sale (~12.5% for us), separate from the FBA shipping fee.
The cost of trucking our inventory into Amazon's warehouses. It's lumpy — it only shows up when we send a shipment — so it can make one period's payout look smaller.
We pay for Amazon advertising on a company credit card, so it never appears on the settlement statements. The advertising slice is pulled separately from the Amazon Ads console (year-to-date spend vs. sales) and added here as an estimate, so the "where each dollar goes" picture reflects this real cost rather than ignoring it.
Advertising Cost of Sales — ad spend divided by the sales those ads generated. A 29% ACoS means we spend 29¢ on advertising for every $1 of ad-driven sales. Lower is more efficient.
Return on Ad Spend — the flip side of ACoS. A 3.42× ROAS means every $1 of advertising brings back $3.42 in attributed sales.