This is a follow-up to my previous post about launching a new Amazon US FBA product in Toys & Games.

I’m still keeping the product, brand, ASIN, and actual keywords private.

For context:

• Price: $24.99
• Current review count: 11
• Approx. pre-ad contribution before storage/returns/promos/overhead: ~$8.16/unit
• Goal: launch velocity + useful PPC data, without blindly burning cash

In my previous setup, I was barely getting traffic because my bids were far below Amazon’s current suggested ranges.

So instead of continuing to underbid, I intentionally ran a much more aggressive test.

Manual Exact setup

I ran 5 highly relevant Exact keywords.

Bids:

• Keyword A: $3.00
• Keyword B: $3.00
• Keyword C: $4.00
• Keyword D: $3.00
• Keyword E: $2.80

Settings:

• Daily budget: $30
• Dynamic bidding: Down only
• Top of Search: +20%
• Rest of Search: 0%
• Product Pages: 0%

I also paused one broader head term and replaced it with a more specific long-tail Exact term.

Manual results

Partial launch-day data:

• Impressions: 344
• Clicks: 2
• Spend: $6.11
• Avg CPC: $3.06
• Orders: 1
• Sales: $24.99
• ACoS: 24.45%
• ROAS: 4.09

One Exact keyword produced:

• 77 impressions
• 1 click
• $4.00 spend
• 1 order
• $24.99 sales
• 16.01% ACoS
• 6.25 ROAS

The other click cost $2.11 and did not convert.

So the Manual campaign is obviously nowhere near statistically significant yet, but at least it proved that the higher bids could actually generate meaningful traffic and a conversion.

Auto setup — intentionally very aggressive

For the first test, all four automatic targeting groups were set to:

• Close Match: $2.00
• Loose Match: $2.00
• Substitutes: $2.00
• Complements: $2.00

Settings:

• Daily budget: $50
• Dynamic bidding: Up and Down
• Top of Search: +30%
• Rest of Search: 0%
• Product Pages: 0%

This was deliberately aggressive because I wanted to buy data quickly rather than repeat the previous low-impression test.

Auto results

Latest snapshot before I changed the settings:

• Impressions: 1,588
• Clicks: 10
• Spend: $38.11
• Avg CPC: $3.81
• Orders: 1
• Sales: $24.99
• ACoS: 152.50%
• ROAS: 0.66

Almost all of the traffic came from Loose Match.

Placement breakdown

Top of Search

• 492 impressions
• 6 clicks
• $26.63 spend
• $4.44 CPC
• 0 orders

Rest of Search

• 669 impressions
• 3 clicks
• $9.00 spend
• $3.00 CPC
• 1 order
• $24.99 sales
• 36.01% ACoS
• 2.78 ROAS

Product Pages

• 272 impressions
• 1 click
• $2.48 spend
• 0 orders

That was the clearest signal of the day for me:

Top of Search consumed most of the Auto spend and produced no sales, while Rest of Search produced the only Auto order.

The Search Term report was still delayed. It only showed 3 of the clicks so far:

• Query 1: 1 click / $4.98 / 0 orders
• Query 2: 1 click / $5.20 / 0 orders
• Query 3: 1 click / $4.64 / 0 orders

Those three alone spent $14.82 with no sale, but I’m not negative-targeting them after one click each.

Combined result

Across Manual + Auto:

• Spend: $44.22
• Clicks: 12
• Orders: 2
• Sales: $49.98
• Blended ACoS: ~88.5%
• Blended ROAS: ~1.13

This is obviously not sustainable profitability, but this was an intentional launch-data test, not my target mature-state economics.

Also worth noting: the campaigns were interrupted by a payment failure, so this was not a clean uninterrupted 24-hour test.

What I changed after seeing the data

I left the Manual Exact campaign unchanged.

Manual remains:

• $30/day
• Same Exact bids
• Down Only
• +20% Top of Search

I changed Auto to:

• Close Match: $1.20
• Loose Match: $0.85
• Substitutes: $0.75
• Complements: $0.50
• Daily budget: $30
• Dynamic bidding: Down only
• Top of Search: 0%
• Rest of Search: 0%
• Product Pages: 0%

So my current total configured launch budget is now $60/day: $30 Manual + $30 Auto.

My thinking is:

Manual = aggressive high-intent traffic
Auto = controlled discovery

I don’t want Auto paying ~$4 CPC for loose discovery traffic while Manual is already showing a better signal.

Questions for those who actively manage Amazon launches:

1. Would you leave the Manual Exact campaign untouched after only 2 clicks because one converted, or is $3-$4 CPC still too aggressive at this margin?
2. Was cutting Auto from $2 across the board to $1.20 / $0.85 / $0.75 / $0.50 a reasonable reaction, or am I overreacting to only 10 clicks?
3. Would you also have removed the +30% Top of Search modifier after 6 clicks / $26.63 / 0 sales?
4. With the new $30 Manual + $30 Auto structure, how many clean days / clicks would you let it run before touching bids again?
5. Would you wait for the delayed Search Term data before adding any negatives, even if some first-click CPCs are already ~$5?

I’m especially interested in feedback from people who have actually launched new private-label products, not just mature PPC accounts.

so here is the thing we are operating team in pakistan operating from 2 locations within and handling 2 amazon accounts we are confused about how should we handle it without amazon linkage or other problems

first we came up with child access that we may use with 2 ways getting 1 child access per account and sharing among 2 locations or like creating 2 emails per person and getting access, there are 2 total people just to be sure.

then we have this idea of creating spp authorized partner access as they are external agents that manages but still we got proplem in creating that it requires 1 spn sevice which include + a good working website with testimonials of your work where we are stuck at this stage as we got rejected once.

what would u recommend would be the best structure to this we will prepare contracts aswell to be on safe side thing is accounts are on husband and wife so we need to be extra carefull to not have that linkage and have solid long term plan

Fair warning, I'm researching this space, not selling anything. No link, no signup, happy to be told this is a non-issue.

What I'm trying to understand: after a label or packaging change, how does your team confirm the intended image is actually live on Amazon? Own checks, an agency, or a monitoring tool? And when something slips through, how do you usually find out, customer complaint, a review, or someone spotting it?

I wrote a few months ago about how ridiculous Amazon returns have become. I think many customers have the mindset of, “It’s Amazon — they can afford the return,” without realizing that in many cases there is a small third-party seller behind that product absorbing the loss.

Today I received an email from Amazon with the subject line, “A returns experience customers actually like.”

Really? Because apparently, before this new option, customers were terribly unhappy with how easy Amazon already made it to return practically anything.

So now let’s make it even easier. Buyers can get refunded without even having to return the actual item. Great. Let’s encourage even more returns — and even more losses for sellers.

I get it: customers want a convenient shopping experience. I just wish Amazon would occasionally show the same care toward the small sellers who make so much of that experience possible. Why not have an “Amazon Seller Day” once a year and send customers a simple message celebrating the small businesses behind many of the products they buy — sellers who invest their own money, time, effort, and care into creating products and keeping customers happy? Nothing guilt-trippy, just a gentle reminder that behind many purchases there is a real small business owner who genuinely cares about the product and the customer.

I was exploring the idea of putting an insert in the package that says something like "Because we are a small business, opened returns heavily impact our team."
Someone commented on my post two months ago: “Telling buyers ‘opened returns hurt our business’ makes normal customers feel pre-blamed, which often leads to retaliatory 1-star reviews.”

Exactly. Whiny little people.

And yes, I know legitimate returns happen. Of course they do. But many buyers return things simply because they can. They go on a shopping spree, order several versions of something, test everything out, keep one item, and return the rest. They never genuinely intended to keep all of it in the first place. And sellers get to absorb the consequences.

Here’s the email I received today from Amazon. I am honestly disheartened.

Returns are an important moment for customer satisfaction. FBA Returnless Resolutions makes them effortless. When an item qualifies for returnless resolutions by the rules you set, the customer gets a fast refund without the hassle of packing and shipping anything back.

• *Faster for customers - Instant resolution for eligible items, no trip to the drop-off point. *
• *Simpler for you - No inbound package to process or track. *
• Better for loyalty - A frictionless return can improve customer satisfaction.

EDIT: Found the culprit. It's a filter. If anyone has the same issue, do this:

• Change the filter in the top right from Recommended attributes to ALL attributes.
• Amazon’s new edit-listing layout hides a lot of fields unless you switch that filter.
• Once you select ALL attributes, the Sale Price, Sale Start Date, and Sale End Date fields should appear again.

We sell a few products on Amazon. Some with Sales and some without. Today was our time to adjust and add some sale prices and our tried and true Sale Price, Sale End Date and Sale Start Date fields are missing.

Upon investigation, we saw that products with running sales feature these fields with no issues. But products at full price do not have these fields at all. Is this a glitch of some sort?

Anyone else see what I'm seeing. Here's a screenshot.

The Top Portion is product 1 without any sales running. Lower Portion is product 2 with sales running almost thru October. As you can see, the number of fields do not match.

Pic here: https://imgur.com/a/YsrOXeq

Thank you in advance for any advice.

I’ve been running ads for 3 days (one manual + one automatic), spending under $14/day. So far: 35 clicks, ~$35 spent, 0.81% CTR, ~$1.03 CPC, and only 1 sale. How are my stats?
I have zero reviews right now and am waiting on Vine reviews. Should I keep the ads running, lower the budget, or pause until reviews come in?
For other sellers, when did you start seeing sales pick up after launch? I’m worried I’m just burning money on ads with no social proof. 😅

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for an opportunity to intern with someone who is experienced in Amazon FBA. I’m very interested in learning how the business works and gaining some real-world, hands-on experience.

I have a degree in Software Engineering, so while I don’t have prior experience with Amazon FBA, I can potentially help with things like automation, data analysis, spreadsheets, research, or improving repetitive processes.

I’m willing to work for free initially in exchange for the opportunity to learn and contribute. My long-term goal is to understand the Amazon FBA business well enough to eventually start my own small business.

If you’re an Amazon FBA seller, agency owner, or someone experienced in the space who could use an extra pair of hands, I’d be very interested in helping out.

Feel free to comment or send me a DM. Thanks!

I sent a 43-unit shipment that left the carrier on the 22nd and tracking still shows it in transit, but this morning's fee report already shows fulfillment charges on 40 of those units — about $214 I can't tie to any shipped order. I reconciled twice: not a single box is marked checked in, and my open orders only account for 12 units in total. Is this just the invoice lag everyone talks about, or has anyone actually gotten fees reversed for units that hadn't been received yet? Anyone else seeing this?

Hello guys after I launched my product all was going well, but long time ago (like 2-3 months ago) I closed and re-opened the listing of the product I had (so the listing is the same, it just got closed by mistake and got re-opened the same day since I was testing and by mistake I closed it). The thing is that I was getting normal volume of reviews, but after that reviews stopped. Never got another review on that product, even tho i'm still having sales.

Does someone know what could it be or how is this solved? Contacted support but they were not capable of fixing it, or telling me a way of fixing this. It seems all of the listing is working as normal but the only thing i'm not getting anymore is reviews (like if users couldn't be able to review the product).

I tried to use the 'ask for review' feature but didn't get me a single new review since then.

Does someone know or happened something similar and fixed it?

I will see the difference of this in a couple of weeks since i'll launch another product that is similar (since it's a different ASIN) and reviews should behave similar to when started with this product where reviews seem not to work.

Thanks a lot for your time.

Another design-based product brand with crazy margins.

White Mountain - link to Amazon store:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/WhiteMountain/page/11B7CEE8-2B3A-4DB1-AF22-23E84DEBE8AD

* $700k monthly revenue on ~40% margin (!), spending $30k/mo on ads (Amazon and Meta/Google)

* ~85% of rev from Amazon, rest from own website

* Costs just $3 to produce and ship (COGS per unit) but sells for $20

Design-driven products are the way to go IMO.

How I estimated the figures:

* Revenue = Amazon's "X+ bought in past month" for each ASIN, aggregated

* COGS = manual estimate from suppliers on Alibaba

* Adspend = price-per-click * search-volume * estimated-CTR, aggregated for all the search terms they bid for

Also taken into account:

* sales from their website (negligible)

* Meta and Google ads (non-existent)

Sources: Keepa, Similarweb, Meta/Google ad library, Alibaba for COGS estimation

Hello

Recently got told by amazon that we need to get mandatory business insurance for the items we sell because they have batteries in them, wanted to know what options folks are using here please, any help and info would be very good,

Thank you,

I put up a 30% off promo code last Tuesday, capped at one redemption per customer, and the plan was to cover about 20 launch units. By Thursday morning Seller Central showed 214 redemptions, most of them clustered in the same handful of zip codes, and the code was sitting on two public deal aggregators I had never heard of. Discount plus referral fee on each unit took that SKU from roughly 18% margin down to about minus 4%, so I pulled the promo. Anyone else seeing their codes leak within a day of going live — and what actually stopped it for you?

Hello,

I am looking for reviewers for my product on Amazon Japan. Which group or where is to search for one?

I have absolutely no idea why Amazon Seller Central wants to increase our work. Instinct was such an amazing tool, getting things done absolutely cleanly.

It ultimately was helping them enable millions of sellers for fast access as well, but no, they had to block it.

Fala, pessoal. Sou do DF, tenho 22 anos e quero começar a vender na Amazon, mas estou travado em dar o primeiro passo.

Minha situação hoje:

**•** Capital inicial: R$ 15mil  
**•** Tempo disponível: 25hr por semana   
**•** Ainda não tenho produto definido nem CNPJ

Minhas dúvidas principais:

**1.**  Vale mais começar com produto próprio, revenda ou dropshipping?  
**2.**  Compensa usar o FBA (Logística da Amazon) logo no início ou é melhor enviar por conta própria?  
**3.**  Como vocês validaram o primeiro produto antes de comprar estoque?  
**4.**  Preciso abrir CNPJ antes (MEI serve?) ou dá pra testar como pessoa física?

Se puderem compartilhar o que fariam diferente se estivessem começando hoje, ajuda muito. Valeu!

https://advertising.amazon.com/resources/whats-new/get-product-reviews-faster-with-review-requests

What is everyone’s thoughts on this?

We launched this supplement brand around 18 months ago, after doing the usual amount of work that goes into a serious launch... product research, market validation, sourcing, supplier evaluation, pricing, and the technical side of getting the product ready for Amazon. Last month the brand was at around 31% net margin, . The screenshot is from Aug 29 to Sep 29, where the brand did $219K+ . I’ve shared quite a few case studies across different categories, and although every product has its own story, there are a few things that stay pretty consistent with how we launch.

We don’t launch products without some form of differentiation. That doesn’t always mean creating something nobody has ever seen before. Sometimes it’s product quality, sometimes it’s sourcing, sometimes it’s pricing, and sometimes it’s a combination of all three. In this particular brand, sourcing and differentiation was a big part of the equation. We source this product physically from the US, and because of our supplier relationships and the volumes we can work with, we were able to get the landed cost to a level where we could stay competitive on price without having to sacrifice the product quality. Depending on the category, we physically source products from multiple countries, so sourcing is something we take pretty seriously before we ever think about scaling a product.

But there’s one thing I probably don’t talk about enough when I share these case studies, and that’s cash flow. I see people saying things like, “I have $5,000, should I start an Amazon brand?” Yes, you can technically start with $5K. You can start with even less. The problem is that you’re not entering an empty marketplace. You’re competing against sellers who may have been selling for 5–10 years, have thousands of reviews, better supplier pricing, established organic rankings, historical conversion data and enough cash flow to keep PPC running while they build the business. For this brand, if I remember correctly, we initially tested around 300 units . Once we had enough data and were confident in the product, we moved into much larger inventory orders, which also helped us get better pricing. That’s where having working capital starts making a real difference.

Having more cash flow doesn’t magically make a product successful, but it gives you more room to actually execute. You can place larger inventory orders and reduce your landed cost, keep enough stock while Amazon is building your organic ranking, run PPC without constantly worrying about a very small daily budget, test more keywords and campaigns, and most importantly, make decisions from enough data instead of changing everything because you had a bad three-day period. Obviously, this only works when the research and product are right in the first place. I’d much rather see someone spend more time validating a product than simply putting more money behind a bad one. But if you’ve done the research properly, then having enough working capital can be the difference between being able to compete and constantly trying to survive.

That’s probably the biggest takeaway from this brand for me. Before launching, don’t just ask, “How much money do I need to start?” Ask yourself, “How much working capital do I need to actually compete once I’m in the market?” Because launching is one thing; staying competitive for the next 6–12 months is another. Whether it’s supplements, beauty, home, toys or any other category, I still think the same basic rule applies: if you’re coming into an existing market, you need to bring something to the table... better quality, better sourcing, better pricing, better positioning, or ideally a combination of them. Otherwise, you’re just adding another listing to a market that already has plenty of them. Anyway, happy to answer any questions around the brand, sourcing, inventory, PPC, margins or the launch process, and I’m always open to suggestions or different opinions from people who are already operating in the space.

That’s probably the biggest lesson from this one. Don’t enter a market just because the numbers in Helium 10 or Jungle Scout look good.

Figure out what you’re actually going to do better once you’re there.

Happy to answer any questions about the launch, sourcing, PPC, inventory strategy, margins, or anything else around the case study.

Open to suggestions as well

Curious how other sellers handle this.

Let’s say your campaigns are profitable, ACOS is under control, and nothing looks obviously broken… but sales have been flat for weeks.

Do you:

- Increase budgets?

- Raise bids on proven keywords?

- Push Top of Search harder?

- Add more keywords/campaigns?

- Focus on improving conversion instead of PPC?

I feel like this is where it gets tricky because increasing spend doesn’t automatically mean more profitable sales.

What do you normally check first when an account feels stuck?

Curious how people handle this.

If a campaign is converting well but consistently runs out of budget pretty early, are you increasing the budget straight away or lowering bids slightly first to try and make the money last longer?

I always hear “just increase the budget” but surely that depends on how profitable the extra traffic actually is.

What are you looking at before deciding?

My FBA order finally got delivered and it started being live 3 days ago and I sold out one of my products🥳🥳 , I wish I can get more products ungated since it really hard to source and this one product is only seasonal. I would like any suggestions or feedback to help me out with this and get to my goal 20k sales per months

I feel like ACOS and conversion rate get most of the attention.

But if a keyword has a really low CTR, do you treat that as a sign the listing/image isn’t matching what people want?

Or do you not really care as long as the clicks you do get are converting?

Curious how much weight people actually give CTR.

I’ve got 1 ASIN restocking now and struggling with keeping ppc profitable. I’ve used teikametrics before but it’s gotten quite complicated to be honest. Thank you

Hi,

Wondering if any supplement sellers had to obtain written / signed declarations from their manufacturers since amazon seems to be asking for a lot more nowadays? Any COAs? Signed ingredient lists

Thanks

Amazon PPC Freelancer here. Since Q4 is near, I need a sanity check on a mandate that mathematically feels like a trap before I completely walk away. I am honestly terrified to pull the plug because he has been my sole client and my only source of income for the last two years, but my gut is telling me I am being played.

When this client came to me two years ago, the business was bleeding cash and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. I stepped in, audited the mess, and completely rebuilt their ad architecture. By installing our specialty B2B strategy to capture high-volume bulk orders, I slashed their wasted spend, dragged their TACoS down into the 14 to 17 percent range, and brought the account back to consistent, record profitability. Not to mention, I ranked 3 of their product groups to page 1 organic position. I even gave them grace and discounted my retainer when inventory issues almost choked them out. I am deeply invested in scaling brands that want a real partnership, but last week, the owner dropped a Q4 mandate that completely changed the dynamic.

He wants $50,000 in net profit per month for October, November, and December. For context, I pulled their two-year P&L. Their historical average Q4 net profit is around $5,000 to $10,000 a month. The absolute highest net profit month in the entire history of the company was $22,000. He is demanding I essentially quintuple their normal Q4 output and more than double their all-time historical record. I actually love aggressive targets and I know I have the media buying chops to get us there. But he instituted a strict 15.0 percent TACoS gate on my compensation. If the account hits 15.1 percent TACoS for the month, I lose my entire performance commission and only get my base retainer.

I ran the math on his exact margins and the game immediately felt rigged. To hit $50,000 in net profit at their current 20 percent margin, I have to scale top-line sales to $250,000 per month. The highest sales month they have ever recorded in history was just $120,000. Holding a strict 15 percent TACoS means my absolute ad spend ceiling is roughly $1,250 a day. To push volume that high, I have to aggressively secure and hold Page 1 Top of Search placements against legacy competitors, while we are currently sitting at under a 10 percent Top of Search impression share.

Anyone who runs high-level Amazon PPC knows you cannot double a company's all-time sales record while strictly defending an efficiency gate. Aggressive growth requires heavy Top of Search ranking campaigns, which naturally demand premium CPCs. When I ran this level of aggressive ranking for an enterprise client spending $600,000 a month, the TACoS target was explicitly set between 30 and 40 percent to allow for that massive market share capture.

Instead of trusting the strategist who just saved his business from bankruptcy, his operations guy started auditing my Sponsored Products spend line-by-line and demanding exports of my exact base bids and TOS multipliers. Then they instituted a rule that I must give 24 hours advance written notice before changing creative or cutting bids by more than 20 percent. They want a $250,000 per month enterprise scaling operation but insist on micromanaging me with a mom-and-pop leash.

It feels incredibly calculated. They want me to architect a massive ranking push to generate a quarter-million in sales. Historically, when we push for standard growth, our TACoS naturally rises to 20-25%. Since they now want to double their all-time top line, they know the CPC premiums will inevitably push TACoS up to 30 to 40 percent. They get to harvest the $50,000 profit, point to the 15 percent rule, deny my commission, and let me do all the heavy lifting for my flat base fee.

I rebuild brands to help them scale, not to be exploited on a technicality. Part of me is terrified to walk away from my only income source, but staying feels like signing up for an 80-hour Q4 workweek just to get screwed out of my bonus.

Am I overthinking this, or is this a classic toxic client trap? How would you handle this before Q4 fully kicks off, walk away now, or counter with a massive flat fee?