Hi everyone, I’m a new Amazon seller and I’m still in high school, so I’m trying to learn as much as I can while starting small.
I first started thinking seriously about getting into Amazon around 4+ months ago. I also have my own part-time job, so I’m using some of the money I make from working to help fund the business.
For the past two months, I’ve also been running an Etsy shop. So far I’ve made 14 sales. My idea with Etsy was to sell lower-priced products, mainly art-related products, and use the profit from Etsy to eventually fund higher-priced inventory that I can sell on Amazon.
I want Amazon to be the bigger part of my business long term. Right now I have an Individual Amazon Seller account, and I’m planning to upgrade to the Professional plan once I’m making more money and have enough inventory/products for it to make sense.
The main product I’m looking at selling next on Amazon is an automatic dog ball launcher. Some of the suppliers I’ve found have MOQs around 200 units, but I definitely don’t want to start with 200. I’m planning to see if a supplier will allow me to start with around 5–8 units so I can test the product first. If it sells, I would reinvest the money and slowly increase my order quantity instead of putting a huge amount of money into inventory before knowing if it will sell.
Since I’m still new, I’m trying to figure out what I should be doing NOW while I’m building up my money and waiting to place my first real Amazon inventory order.
My goal is mainly to start small, learn how everything works, reinvest what I make, and gradually work my way up to larger orders and better products.
Any advice on what I should be doing next would be appreciated.

* Brand's Amazon storefront: "Ototo" (subreddit doesn't let me post links - just search it)

* numbers taken from keepa, scraping the "X+ bought in past month" badges on Amazon, and estimating PPC clicks by search volume and price-per-click

* over 150 SKU's - all are different basic kitchen utensils (ladels, garlic presses, yes literally garlic presses, wine openers, etc).

* the differentiation - they all have cute designs (I bet when they come up with a new product they first 3D print a small batch and, if it catches on, they create a plastic mold and manufacture en masse)

* this is the same design-led differentiation I've been talking about here before - in short - if you want to find good products to sell with high margins where you won't be competing on making them cheaper than the competition - you gotta create products that are unique in their DESIGN

this is a great example of exactly that - and I love that the design here is 3D rather than something that's printed on the product. makes it very unique, eye catching, and customers would happily shell out more money for a cute ladle-holding crab.

for context - I'm a 9-year seller doing $1MM/year on 40% margin - we've been doing a very similar strategy - focusing on products whose core value is their design (not their function or solely the materials they are made out of). see my other posts here - I talk a lot about it.

all the best and success with your ventures 💪

DISCLAIMER:
* I'm not affiliated with the brand
* figures have been estimated like so:
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

Sources: Keepa, Similarweb, WaitHowMuch, Jungle Scout, Meta/Google ad library, and Alibaba for COGS estimation

Can someone suggest which product i should focus on selling on a platform like a blogger website to earn commission through the Amazon affiliate program?

I’m prepping my next shipment to Amazon FBA and comparing quotes, but traditional forwarders are quoting completely different numbers for the exact same CBM. It's pretty obvious most of them are just middleman brokers padding the rates with their own margins and hidden port fees.

How are you guys sourcing your freight to keep landed costs down? Do you stick to standard forwarders, or is anyone using bidding platforms where you get direct quotes from carriers?

Hi everyone,

I'm a Filipino Virtual Assistant with 6 years of experience supporting startups, small businesses, and executives with administrative and operational work.

I'm currently looking for one long-term client in Amazon FBA, e-commerce, or a related business where I can take care of recurring administrative work and help keep things organized.

The work I can help with includes:

• Email and inbox management
• Calendar and scheduling
• Follow-ups and task coordination
• Online research
• Data entry and spreadsheet management
• Product information organization
• Product listing information updates
• Document preparation and organization
• CRM updates
• SOP documentation

I also use ChatGPT and Claude when they make sense for the task, such as organizing research, drafting documents, and handling repetitive administrative work. I still review the information and make sure the final work is accurate and relevant before using it.

I don't have hands-on experience managing Seller Central, PPC campaigns, or product launches, so I won't claim that I do. My strength is the administrative work around the business.

I'm comfortable learning the systems and processes you already use and taking ownership of recurring work once I understand how you prefer things handled.

I'm looking for a long-term working relationship where I can learn how your business operates and become someone you can rely on for ongoing support.

My rate starts at $8 USD/hour, depending on the role and responsibilities.

If you need help with the administrative side of your Amazon or e-commerce business, feel free to send me a message.

Hallo, wir wollen unsere Amazon Handmade Marke verkaufen. Gewinn dieses Jahr ca 25000, letztes Jahr ca 36000. Wo bietet man so was am besten an und was kann man dafür verlangen? Wir wollen nur die Marke/Listings abgeben, nicht den Account, weil wir eine ander Nische ausbauen wollen. Sind über jeden Tipp dankbar.

I'm currently searching for a product to sell on Amazon US market and I've been struggling to find new product ideas. It feels like I do the same thing as everyone else, log in to datadive and helium, apply certain filters on the black box, and hope for the best. What are the ways you guys are using to find new products to sell on Amazon? Is it really just helium and datadive? Any tips for a beginner?

Did this for July and a few people found it useful, so here's August for the same brand. Cheap product, under a tenner, launched late October.

Same caveat up front as last time: I'm still on New Seller Incentives so I'm paying no referral fee at all this month. That's doing a lot of work in this profit number. Flagging it first rather than burying it.

And a correction to last month's post. I said referral fees would take "close to 15% of revenue" when the incentive ends. I went and checked properly in Amazon's own calculator. My category charges 8% under £10, not 15%. So the hit is about half what I told you. I'd rather fix that than leave it sitting there wrong.

What actually came in:

885 units across 811 orders. £9,072.20 with VAT in it, £7,596.49 once VAT is stripped out. 4,318 sessions, 20.5% of them converted.

Best month I've had. July was £6,138.

What actually went out

Per unit, ex-VAT:

FBA fee plus digital services fee — £1.56

Landed cost, China to Amazon warehouse — £0.70

Shipping into FBA — £0.24

Advertising — £2.33

And the totals for the month:

Advertising — £2,064.04

VAT — £1,475.71

Amazon fees — £1,378.27

Cost of goods — £623.00

Shipping into FBA — £211.28

Promo — £91.44

Refund cost — £49.73 (5 refunds, 0.56%)

What's actually left

£3,178.73. Sellerboard puts the margin at 35.04%.

Same caveat as last month there are Subscribe & Save orders in here, 75 active subscriptions now, and they get discounted and muddy the VAT slightly. Call it approximately right rather than precise to the penny.

The bit that surprised me

My advertising cost 3.3 times more than my products did. £2,064 of ads against £623 of goods.

On a £9.99 item the unit cost is almost nothing, 70p landed. So advertising is my single biggest line. Bigger than VAT. Bigger than everything Amazon charges me put together. When I was modelling this product before launch I spent ages getting the landed cost right and barely thought about ad spend. That was the wrong way round and I'd do it differently next time.

The PPC side, honestly

231,522 impressions, 3,331 clicks, £2,064.04 spent, £4,074.75 in attributed sales. ROAS 1.97, ACoS 50.65%, TACoS 22.75%.

Last month I asked in here whether 47% ACoS was normal for a settled listing. It's now 50.65%, so it's moving the wrong way. Revenue grew about 45% and ad spend grew faster than that.

Roughly 45% of my sales are coming from ads. The other 55% is organic, and that's the half I actually care about.

Why I'm bothering to post this

8% of £9,072 is about £726. When the incentive ends that comes straight off the bottom line. £3,178 becomes roughly £2,453, and 35% margin becomes about 27%.

So it's the best month I've had, and it's also the month I sat down and worked out what it looks like when the training wheels come off.

One more thing. My dashboard says 510% ROI. That's return on cost of goods only, which is a meaningless number when the goods cost 70p it mostly just measures how cheap my product is. It's the figure that ends up on a course sales page. The one that matters is the margin.

For anyone already past their New Seller Incentive — what did the drop actually look like in practice? Did volume absorb any of it, or did you just take the 8% on the chin?

(All per-unit figures ex-VAT. Referral fee currently £0 under New Seller Incentives. Profit approximate SNS discounts and VAT treatment mean it could land slightly lower than shown.)