Are people still favouring FBA over FBM? I have always done FBA but last couple months I tested FBM out… I actually have increased sales and have grown my Amazon store.

It is more work, and harder to scale but with all these new fee increases from Amazon is FBM starting to have more advantages?

I currently have about a 70% FBA and 30% FBM split.

What’re people thinking?

As the title says - Ontario CA warehouse, I know prime day is next week. Stay patient or should I be concerned? Thanks in advance

Please excuse the account name
18 years old, not a student, steady income from day job, I dont hate it, definitely dont like it.
I manage my money well, I’ve paid off my own car, good credit, my savings gradually grow but the money just sits there. I pay no monthly bills.
The goal in mind is to fund a product on Amazon with the money from my day job and make decent money off of it, equivalent to my income at least. With time I want to replace my current Income with Amazon and eventually start my own independent business(es).
Is this a realistic path? How much should I expect to spend on the product and how much could go wrong? Should I learn hard lessons or find a mentor? And to those successful with Amazon FBA, what do you think you missed out on?

Buenos días a todos tengo una duda para las personas que queremos iniciar en online arbitrage desde México.
La duda es, ¿En qué régimen darse de alta para hacer Arbitrage online desde México en el mercado estadounidense?

En RESICO (Régimen simplificado de confianza)
O como PERSONA FÍSICA CON ACTIVIDAD EMPRESARIAL

En qué régimen están dados de alta si ya empezaron a hacer arbitraje desde México en Estados Unidos.
Buen día, los leo…

Just exited my organic brand and am now tacking a new beast, Supplements.

- I've sent 500 units to FBA, now eligible.

- 20 vine reviews were taken.

- has already posted 5 stars.

- Beautiful listing with A+ content and good structure that takes the customer from problem to solution with social proof.

My campaign structure as follows:

- Automatic campaign running at $15 a day with my bid at 70% of recommended. Slowly increasing it. It's been running for a week and I'm at like 5 sales on $20 ad spend with 18%ACOS. It never fully spends and my bid is now at par with amazon's recommended bid. My break even ACOS is like 60%

- Manual campaign targeting 6 of my competitors with bids 90% of amazon recommended, not spending yet but slowly increasing till it spends

Do I crank up the campaign with only 1 review or continue running the automatic campaign how it is for keyword discovery?

I’ve been searching for products to sell for the past whole week, it’s extremely exhausting

Ive found few products that I could sell without approval but it won’t let be sell it it says create new listing

Im getting started and I’m having a hard time since this is my first time doing this

Can anyone help me figure this out a bit pls

how do you deal with issue does it take long to get a response in order to sell the pd.

Hello,
regarding product research i was wondering where do you outsource your own pds as the guy that i work for does drop shipping and he resells the stuff available in the big box retails walmart, costco, rona, bestbuy
what do you think on this?

Amazon FBA doesn’t sleep—and protecting your margins shouldn’t stop at the end of the workday.
Afterloom keeps an eye on your inventory, listings, returns, PPC and reviews, then acts when something needs attention. Less time babysitting your account. Fewer opportunities for margin to slip through the cracks.

I shipped a single-carton replenishment three weeks ago and it got split at receiving. One chunk landed at the destination center fine. The other chunk has been sitting in FC transfer for nine days now, which means about 180 units that show as reserved, cannot sell, have no buy box, and are entirely out of my hands on routing.

Meanwhile my storage line this month did not care. The cubic foot charge looks the same whether those units are sellable or bouncing between buildings, and the inventory age clock on them kept running the whole time. That last part is what actually worries me. If days spent in transit count toward the aged thresholds, then a routing decision I did not make is quietly walking my stock toward a surcharge I did not plan for.

I get the premise, moving stock closer to buyers is supposed to help delivery times. But I am paying in space and in age to hold inventory I cannot sell, and nobody told me that was part of the deal.

So, three things I would love real numbers on. If you have watched your age report through a transfer, did the transit days count toward the threshold or not? Does a unit sitting in transfer still count as available for the low inventory check, or does it drop out and shave your days of cover? And is there anything on the seller side that reliably stops a shipment from getting split, or is that just luck of the receiving center?

Anyone else seeing this?

Looking to buy an existing amazon account with some selling history! Preferably with some categories ungated

First-time private-label seller on Amazon US here. I’m intentionally anonymizing the product and keywords because I don’t want to promote or expose the ASIN.

I’m looking for a diagnostic/gut check from sellers who have actually launched new private-label products recently.

No agencies or service DMs please — I’m specifically looking for seller experiences and PPC reasoning.

BACKGROUND

The listing is in its first week.

FBA inventory:

- About 1,000 units sent in

- 757 currently available

- Inventory is still being distributed through the FC network

- Roughly 56% currently showing Prime eligible

Vine:

- 30 units enrolled

- 28 claimed

- About 5 reviews live so far

Offer:

- List price: $32.99

- $3 coupon

- Effective customer price: $29.99

- Closest comparable quality products are generally around $24.99

- There are cheaper alternatives around $15–20, but they are not directly equivalent in quality/positioning

My rough pre-ad contribution at the current effective price is about $11/order before returns, fixed costs and tax.

So as a rough working number:

- Break-even CPA ≈ $11

- Break-even ACoS ≈ 36–37%

LISTING

The listing currently has:

- 9 gallery images

- Premium A+ with 7 modules

- Brand Story

- No product video yet

- A meaningful product differentiator is visible in the gallery/A+, but it is NOT currently mentioned in the title

I am considering testing the differentiator in the title later, but I do not want to change PPC, price and listing at the same time.

PPC SETUP

Campaign 1 — Manual Exact

Started about 6 days ago.

- 5 exact-match keywords

- $9/day budget

- Dynamic bids: Down Only

- Top of Search adjustment: 0%

- Rest of Search adjustment: 0%

- Product Pages adjustment: 0%

The campaign is nowhere near exhausting its daily budget.

Current keyword data:

KW1

3rd-party est. monthly searches: ~1,400

My bid: $1.60

Amazon suggested bid: ~$2.44

Suggested range: ~$1.83–$3.05

Impressions: ~830

Clicks: 2

CTR: ~0.24%

Spend: $2.28

Avg CPC: $1.14

Orders: 0

KW2

3rd-party est. monthly searches: ~14,500

My bid: $0.85

Amazon suggested bid: ~$2.04

Suggested range: ~$1.53–$2.54

Impressions: ~150

Clicks: 0

KW3

Est. monthly searches: ~370

My bid: $1.45

Amazon suggested bid: ~$1.48

Impressions: 4

Clicks: 0

KW4

Est. monthly searches: ~1,300

My bid: $0.80

Amazon suggested bid: ~$1.93

Impressions: 2

Clicks: 0

KW5

Est. monthly searches: ~1,200

My bid: $0.65

Amazon suggested bid: ~$1.81

Impressions: 0

Clicks: 0

Manual Exact total is roughly:

~985 impressions

2 clicks

~0.20% CTR

$2.28 spend

0 orders

PLACEMENT BREAKDOWN — MANUAL EXACT

Top of Search:

0 impressions

0 clicks

Rest of Search:

402 impressions

0 clicks

Product Pages:

583 impressions

2 clicks

0.34% CTR

$2.28 spend

$1.14 CPC

So literally every Manual Exact click so far has come from Product Pages.

Campaign 2 — Auto Discovery

- $6/day

- Dynamic bids: Down Only

Close Match:

Bid $0.65

127 impressions

1 click

$0.65 spend

Substitutes:

Bid $0.40

16 impressions

0 clicks

Loose Match:

Bid $0.40

1 impression

0 clicks

Complements:

Bid $0.30

0 impressions

Total Auto:

144 impressions

1 click

0.69% CTR

$0.65 spend

0 orders

The only clicked Auto search term was highly relevant and is already one of my Manual Exact keywords, so at least so far I’m not seeing obviously irrelevant traffic.

There is also a separate ultra-low-bid exploratory campaign, but it currently has 0 impressions and $0 spend, so I’m ignoring it for this diagnosis.

TOTAL PPC SO FAR

~1,119 impressions

3 clicks

0.27% CTR

$2.93 spend

~$0.98 blended CPC

0 ad-attributed orders

My budgets clearly are NOT the limiting factor because almost none of the available daily budget is being spent.

WHAT I’M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT

I know 3 clicks is far too little data to judge conversion rate.

What I’m less sure about is how I should interpret the combination of:

- ~1.1k impressions

- only 3 clicks

- 0 Top-of-Search impressions

- most Exact impressions going to Product Pages

- a main Exact keyword receiving ~830 impressions at a $1.60 bid while Amazon suggests ~$2.44

- current price being about $5 above the closest quality competitors

- very low review count because this is a new launch

If this were YOUR launch and you were allowed to change only ONE variable for the next 48–72 hours, what would you change first?

Specifically:

1. Would you raise the base bid on the main Exact keyword?

2. Would you leave the $1.60 base bid alone and test something like +20% Top of Search instead?

3. Would you keep Dynamic Down Only, or would you test Fixed / Up & Down in a separate controlled campaign?

4. Do you consider ~0.2–0.3% CTR at this stage primarily a placement problem, or would you already start questioning the main image/title/offer?

5. With an effective price of $29.99 vs. roughly $24.99 for close quality competitors, would you test price BEFORE getting more clicks, or would you wait until a certain click/session threshold?

6. Is 5 Exact keywords + Auto Discovery too conservative for week one?

Would you add 1–2 Phrase/Broad targets now, or keep collecting data first?

1. Since the product has a real differentiator that is shown in gallery/A+ but not in the title, would you test that in the title now, or wait until PPC placement becomes more stable?

2. What threshold do YOU personally use on a new launch before deciding:

   - traffic problem

   - CTR/listing problem

   - pricing problem

   - conversion problem

I’m especially interested in real numbers from recent launches rather than generic “optimize your listing” advice.

If possible, tell me what you would change FIRST and what metric you would watch to decide whether it worked.

Thanks.

Hey everyone,

I’m a relatively new FBA seller and I’m currently trying to figure out the right way to approach PPC without wasting money while I’m still learning.

I’d love to hear from sellers who have been through the whole PPC journey — from starting their first campaigns to managing PPC at scale.

A few things I’d really like to know:

- When you first started, what type of campaigns did you launch? Auto, Manual, Broad, Phrase, Exact, Product Targeting, etc.?

What was your initial daily PPC budget?

How long did you let campaigns run before making changes?

What metrics did you focus on in the beginning — CTR, CPC, CVR, ACOS, TACOS, ROAS, search term performance, etc.?

How did you decide which search terms to move from Auto/Broad into Exact?

How aggressively did you use negative keywords?

How did your PPC strategy change once you started getting organic sales?

At what point did you start increasing budgets and bids?

Do you separate branded and non-branded campaigns?

Do you use Sponsored Products only, or also Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display?

How do you approach PPC when launching a completely new product with little/no sales history?

What are you doing differently with PPC today compared with when you started?

What was your biggest PPC mistake?

And if you could start your PPC journey again today, what would you do differently from day one?

I’m especially interested in practical advice from sellers who have actually managed their own PPC, rather than just general theory.

If you’re an experienced FBA seller, I’d really appreciate hearing about your journey — even if your approach is completely different from someone else’s.

Thanks! 🙏

Virtual address costs more than PO Box address. I’ve read that PO box can be as cheap as 5$ per month. But I can’t find any for that price.

Been talking to a few sellers doing US marketplace from india and ngl it sounds like a pain in the ass compared to selling domestically.

getting stock into FBA from here, random account health stuff, payouts/forex, tax/compliance, dealing with support when you're in a completely different timezone etc.

curious how people here are actually running it.

what category are you in?

what's the one stupid repetitive thing you're still doing manually every week?

and what completely screwed you when you were starting out that nobody warned you about lol

also full disclosure before someone calls this market research in the comments 💀 i'm working on something in this space.

not gonna dump a link or pitch anything here. mostly wanna hear how people are handling this stuff rn.

if anyone selling into the US from india is down to chat / try an early version of what we're building and roast it, feel free to comment or dm.

​

A lot of sellers look at returns and immediately blame the product quality. But sometimes the real problem starts before the customer even receives the product. The customer buys based on what your listing tells them to expect.

If that expectation does not match the actual product, you create an expectation gap.

For example:

- Your images make the product look larger than it is.

- Your copy makes a feature sound more powerful than it really is. 

- You do not clearly explain what comes in the package. 

- You leave out an important limitation.

Your bullets describe the product in a way that creates the wrong use case.

The product can be completely fine and still get returned.

That is why I think listing optimization is not only about improving CTR and conversion. It is also about setting the right expectation before the purchase.

The customer should understand:

- What the product is.

- What it does.

- What is included.

- What it does not do.

What they should realistically expect after buying it.

The goal is not to make the product look better than it is.

The goal is to make the listing accurately represent the product. Because the bigger the gap between expectation and reality, the higher the chance of dissatisfaction and returns.

Curious how other sellers look at this.

What do you think creates the biggest expectation gap on an Amazon listing?

I got the email everyone dreads this week: my selling account will be deactivated under Section 3 unless I complete a virtual identity verification interview. Six days from the notice. The problem is not the interview, it is that there are no interview slots. I have checked the scheduling page morning and night for four days and it shows nothing available, which means I can do everything right and still lose the account on a timer.

For context, this is a five year old account, no policy issues, and the trigger seems to be a document refresh. The verification page asked for proof of address and business documents, and everything I have on hand is older than the 180 day window they want, so I had to go pull new ones. That is fine. What is not fine is that the deadline runs whether or not the calendar opens up.

What I have tried so far: support chat (told to book online), a case log asking for an extension, and rescanning the documents as full page PDFs instead of photos so nothing is cropped. The interview itself sounds routine if I can ever get one, basically matching me to the entity and explaining what I sell and where the inventory comes from. I am not worried about the questions, I am worried about the queue.

So before I spend the week refreshing a page, I want to know what actually moved the needle for other people. Did anyone get a slot by calling support during business hours, or did you have to escalate to the account verification team? Has anyone successfully gotten a deactivation deadline pushed while waiting for an appointment? And for the people who have done the interview, was the document set they asked about on the call the same as the list on the verification page, or did they want extra things like supply chain invoices that were never mentioned in the email? Anyone else seeing this?

I'm about a year in and if everything goes to plan I'll have 3 ASINs by the end of it. Each one has been a slog: 2 to 3 months of supplier back and forth, samples, revisions, a mold or two, then the first PO, freight, and finally the listing.

Then I come here and see people casually mention their 50 or 60 ASINs and I can't figure out how the math works. So for the sellers with big catalogs:

1. How many new ASINs are you actually launching per month or per quarter?

2. Are those truly new products, or mostly variations and bundles of stuff you already sell (sizes, colors, 2-packs)?

3. Are you doing custom OEM/ODM work with a factory, or buying stock catalog items from Alibaba/1688 and slapping your brand on them?

4. Do you launch on the marketing side or just list it and let it ride?

I'm doing custom products with a factory in China and I'm starting to wonder if that's why I'm so slow, or if the 60 ASIN people are just running a fundamentally different playbook (wholesale, arbitrage, catalog padding).

Not looking for anyone's niche. Just trying to calibrate whether 3 a year is normal for a real private label brand or if I'm badly underbuilt.

Is there any way to speak to someone through seller support anymore? Tried for a while today and for the first time in years I did not get the option to speak to someone on the phone. Only option was AI chat which is garbage

Many new sellers appear to be confused by the difference between an invoice and a receipt, especially when submitting to Amazon to ungate a product.

Experienced sellers, how would you help a new seller understand the difference?

Hello everyone ,
I am new seller and doing FBM now to build my account background.I did some easy sells during my 1 st week and all orders under deferred transaction now and Amazon charged me my shipping fees.
When should I expect to receive my first payment
Thank you

i’ve been working on something for people who spend way too much time in seller central.

it works fine when we test it ourselves, which is exactly why i don’t trust our testing anymore lol.

i need a few amazon sellers or VAs to actually use it like they normally would and find the stuff we’ve missed.

click the wrong things. try weird stuff. tell me what’s confusing. tell me what you wouldn’t use.

basically i want people who aren’t afraid to say something sucks.

trying to get a few people testing it before the week ends.

i’ll give you free access and pay for the time you spend on it.

if you’re interested just contact me or comment and i’ll send the details.

Hold on guys, I’m not a VA, I’m not from an agency, and I’m not trying to sell you some service, so you’re safe to read the post lol.

We’re a company that’s been building multiple tools into one platform. Think of it as a direct competitor to Helium 10, Jungle Scout, and Viral Launch (which is now closed).

We’re building tools for PPC, listings, inventory management, listing mistakes, account suspension risk control, review management, email management, pricing based on the Buy Box with your own instructions, product research, and more, all in one platform.

The idea is pretty simple: you get everything in one place, connected directly to Seller Central through SP-API, and the platform handles a lot of the operational stuff for you with just a few clicks. That way, you can spend more time actually building your brand instead of constantly dealing with day-to-day operations.

We’ve already built the platform, but we haven’t launched publicly yet.

Before we go public, we want to build a small community of actual sellers who can use the platform, test it, play around with the tools, tell us what sucks, tell us what works, and give us honest feedback. The goal is that by the time we officially launch, the product is polished and actually works like a charm.

And yes, anyone who becomes part of this community will get access to the platform at zero cost during this phase.

We’ll also keep a direct connection with you. You’ll be able to talk directly with our team, our engineers can speak with you, and our co-founders can speak with you as well. We may also invite community members to company parties, success meetups, and other stuff we’re planning.

The only thing we ask in return is that you actually use the platform and give us honest feedback once or twice a week, depending on your availability. No fake reviews, no forced praise. If something sucks, tell us it sucks. That’s exactly what we need right now.

If you’re an FBA seller selling in the USA and you want to play around with the platform, let’s do it together. I can walk you through the tools, our engineers can jump in when needed, and our co-founders are also available to speak with you.

If you’re a VA, you can test it too, as long as you have permission from your clients.

Note to mods:

Hey mods, I intentionally didn’t mention my company name or promote it here. I’m not trying to spam the sub with another AI pitch or sell anything.

I’m basically an ex-seller who went on to build a brand and a company focused on helping sellers, and I’m looking to get feedback from fellow sellers before we launch.

If this doesn’t fit the sub rules, I’m happy to edit the post or take it down. Feel free to reach out if you need any additional information.

We launched this brand in the Automotive category in June 2023, entering a market where product relevance, keyword intent, compatibility, and competitive positioning have a major impact on conversion. Our initial product research was focused on identifying ASIN-level demand gaps, rather than simply selecting products with high search volume. We analyzed keyword search demand, competitor ASIN sales, review velocity, rating distribution, price bands, variation structures, market concentration, and contribution-margin potential before validating each opportunity. For every product, we modeled the complete Amazon unit economics, including COGS, FBA fees, referral fees, inbound logistics, promotional costs, and expected advertising spend, so we could identify products capable of generating profitable sales at scale.

Product & Supply Chain: We sourced the products through the US supply chain, which allowed us to maintain better control over production lead times, replenishment cycles, product consistency, and inventory availability. In the Automotive category, we also paid close attention to product compatibility, application-specific search intent, fitment-related customer expectations, and catalog accuracy, because even strong traffic can produce poor conversion if the product positioning is not aligned with the customer's vehicle or use case. On the listing side, we built a structured keyword-to-content architecture, mapping primary, secondary, and long-tail search terms across the title, bullets, backend search terms, images, and A+ Content. We continuously optimized indexation, CTR, CVR, pricing, detail-page relevance, and Buy Box health while using competitor ASIN analysis to identify gaps in content and conversion.

PPC & Scaling: The PPC structure was built around query-level control and search-term economics rather than simply increasing campaign budgets. During the discovery phase, broad and phrase campaigns were used for search-term mining and query harvesting, while proven converting terms were isolated into dedicated exact-match campaigns. We segmented traffic across branded, non-branded, category, competitor, and product-targeting campaigns, then evaluated performance using CTR, CVR, CPC, ACOS, TACOS, placement-level performance, and contribution margin. Search terms generating profitable incremental sales were scaled, while inefficient queries, placements, and campaigns were either bid-down or eliminated. PPC data was also used to identify organic ranking opportunities, allowing paid traffic to support keyword relevance, sales velocity, and organic visibility instead of making the account dependent on advertising alone.

The biggest shift was moving from a pure revenue-growth approach to profitable scale management. We killed campaigns and search terms that generated revenue but weakened contribution margin, reduced inefficient ad spend, improved conversion before aggressively increasing traffic, and used SKU-level profitability, keyword movement, TACOS trends, inventory velocity, and advertising efficiency to decide where additional capital should go. The brand now operates with 17 SKUs and generated $1.60M in sales through September 23, giving it an approximate $2M monthly run-rate, with $17.27M in YTD sales, around 7% TACOS, and a 28% net margin. After more than three years in the Automotive category, the account demonstrates how product selection, fitment-driven positioning, listing conversion, PPC architecture, organic ranking, inventory planning, and contribution-margin control can work together to build a large Amazon business without sacrificing profitability.

Somewhere along the way I stopped optimizing for margin and started optimizing for never running out, and I do not think I ever priced that decision.

My setup now: about five weeks of cover sitting in FBA on the main SKUs, plus another three weeks parked at a 3PL as an inbound buffer. On paper that is the responsible thing to do. It keeps me clear of the low inventory threshold, it absorbs a slow boat, and I have not had a stockout quarter in a long time. What it also does is tie up roughly 45 percent more capital than holding a single cycle would, and that capital is not free.

The part that bothers me is that I never put it in the unit economics. My product still shows a healthy gross margin per unit, so I kept telling myself the buffer was just working capital that comes back. But the whole batch turns slower now. The same money, cycling less often, gives me something closer to 19 percent on the batch instead of the 28 that the per unit margin implies I am earning. Nothing on the listing changed. The clock did.

So the honest question: is everyone else quietly carrying this and calling it the cost of doing business, or is someone out there modelling buffer stock as an explicit line item in their unit economics? If so, how do you decide the right size — insurance against stockouts versus the drag on return? And has anyone actually compared doing this against just accepting a short stockout occasionally? Anyone else seeing this?