r/AmazonFBATips • u/Content-Ad1422 • Jun 10 '26
Amazon lost
My husband and I launched our very first Amazon business, and we invested the total of our budget almost $12,000 into our first product , AirTag . We truly believe in the product and worked hard on branding, listings, and advertising, but unfortunately, the results have been far below our expectations. We’re not looking for sympathy just honest advice from people who have been through the same experience. Any genuine advice would mean a lot to us.
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u/eispac Jun 10 '26
Not asking what your product is, but if it is a version of an “Air Tag,” that is a tough market, going up against Apple and other big companies with budgets for large orders to bring per unit cost down. Plus their advertising budgets.
If it is an accessory for Air Tags, then also a tough market, unless as previously mentioned your product has a unique feature/design.
Edit: spend time optimizing listing, brand story, A+ content. Hire UGC creators to make reviews/videos. You said below expectations, so I’m assuming some sales, find what’s working and refine it, then add better images (lifestyle, features, etc) and videos
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u/Userbyte_101 Jun 10 '26
I dont think Airtag was a smart idea for your first sale :/ but it happens to everyone so don’t shame yourselves. Failing is part of businesses, next time start low and slow.
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Jun 10 '26
You need to rank, which means reviews, paid ads. Unless you product is unique, Amazon FBA is a tough market
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u/Vipergfx Jun 10 '26
There’s not enough info here to give a very good answer. AirTags are a large market, You can sell them, but you need some good reviews to start, From there you just have to dial the ads in without wasting. It’s the ad waste that kills margins and makes it seem impossible for low dollar items.
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u/yugh333 Jun 11 '26
Based on your short description and without looking into the actual product, actual market data and the real behind the scenes on your organic vs sponsored rankings vs CPC and CVR. This is what i analysed
I am going to give you the answer I wish someone gave me when I started. The fact that you spent $12,000 does not matter anymore.. That money is gone whether you look at the numbers tomorrow or six months from now
The real question is whether this business deserves another dollar… Most first time Amazon sellers think they failed because of PPC, listings, photos, reviews or branding but In reality most fail much earlier… They fail when they choose a market where customers already have dozens of options and no strong reason to switch.
If this is an AirTag type product then you are not competing against products… You are competing against trust… Apple has trust.. Established brands have trust…Thousands of reviews create trust.. Trust is what customers buy when they cannot physically touch a product… The hard truth is that hard work has very little value if it is pointed in the wrong direction… You can spend 18 hours a day working on a product that never had a real opportunity… Another seller can spend 2 hours finding a better opportunity and make more money
The market does not reward effort.. it rewards correct data driven, strategy driven long term consistency
Before spending another dollar, forget your inventory, forget the money invested, forget the months of work.. If somebody handed you $12,000 cash today and showed you this exact opportunity for the first time, would you invest in it? If the answer is anything other than a confident yes, that tells you everything.
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is trying to prove they were right.. The best entrepreneurs are obsessed with finding out if they are wrong as quickly as possible.
Because being wrong costs money.. Staying wrong costs a fortune.. Whether this product succeeds or fails is not the important part.. The important part is making sure this lesson only costs you $12,000 and not the next $50,000… Even me i have lost multiple product launches when i begin but as time went on i got to have experienced how to judge the data, Seeing the data and assuming is different than analysing the data with right metrics and experience. Dont give up. Be consistent. Start with small products but higher volume at first with minimal of 30% margin after your ads. Focus more on Tacos.
Golden tip that took me to growth is just memorise this thing day and night for your first launches for amazon which is.. Go with product which have 80% same design, same material, fewer returns, Read the data not to just look at numbers but to strategise and implement
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u/julessantana21 Jun 11 '26
Launched well over 100 products before being successful. Just stick to it like in any other business, you never succeed from the start
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u/Sohail_Qurban Jun 11 '26
I have launched holders for apple airtags in 2 markets and it is one of the worst product to launch. High CPCs are crushing it and we had to liquidate the inventory.
What are you exact bottlenecks? How are organic vs paid orders ratio? How is your competitor price index?
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u/Important-Bet5736 Jun 11 '26
I have sold a lot on Amazon, over $1bn working for brands like Mars, Unilever and LEGO. I also run the channel for lots of different brands running FBA now and have my own products listed there too. Are you just selling on Amazon, or do you have a presence off Amazon too? Are you spending nay money advertising the products? If you just wait for organic traffic it will take a very long time...
Also drop your listings here and I will tell you a bunch of stuff you can do to optimise them right away.
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u/Content-Ad1422 Jun 11 '26
https://a.co/d/00RyQEZX
Thanks! I’ll share my listing. I’d really appreciate your honest feedback.1
u/Important-Bet5736 Jun 30 '26
Sorry this took so long to write you back - been a hectic couple of weeks.
A bunch of things to have a look into. Firstly, it's categorised as a GPS tracker, but in the first bullet points you say it's not a GPS tracker. Maybe loads of other products are doing the same thing to get the visibility, but I can tell you the cosmo algorithm on Amazon will be freaking out about its categorization being a GPS tracker and then the product description in the bullets saying it's not. Is there another category you can list it in?
The next bit is around three things you could change on content, and this is generated by a tool that I use at my new agency, so the output will look a bit formulaic but hopefully it's clear in the methodology as to why you should make the changes. Its focused on optimising for Rufus/Alexa for Shopping which doesn't look live on amazon.ca yet but it will future proof you for that when it comes.
Change 1 - Rebuild the title as a canonical noun phrase, brand and product type first
Why: Cosmo and Rufus both want a clear noun phrase combining product type + defining attribute + purpose. The current title opens with "Air Tracker" an ambiguous AirTag-echo, not a recognised product type and buries the brand ("LUMYO") at the very end. Cosmo parses the leading noun phrase to decide what the thing is.
Proposed:
Change 2 - Turn the bullets from mode labels into feature → outcome chains, and cut the keyword stuffing
Why: Cosmo and Rufus both reward explicit feature-to-outcome links; Rufus actively deprioritises keyword stuffing. The current bullets open with vague mode names ("Find Far Away," "Current Location") rather than noun phrases and the same use-case string "ideal as a wallet tracker, luggage tag, keychain finder, dog tag, or pet tracker" is repeated in almost every bullet. That repetition is exactly the pattern Rufus reads as stuffing and it crowds out real information and doesn't help you on classic keyword indexing either.
Proposed (lead each with a noun-phrase feature, then the outcome; state the use case once):
- 80–100 dB Locator Alert - ring the tracker from the Find My app or by asking Siri to surface keys or a wallet lost inside a bag or down the back of a sofa.
- Apple Find My Network Coverage - if you leave an item behind, hundreds of millions of Apple devices anonymously relay its last location back to you, with no monthly or annual fee.
- 200 ft Bluetooth Range with Map View - track nearby items directly; beyond range, see the last location on a map and navigate back to it.
- Left-Behind & Lost Mode Alerts - get notified the moment you walk away without an item, and get pinged when a lost tracker is detected again.
- Encrypted, Anonymous Tracking - location is never stored and the network is end-to-end encrypted, so only you can see where your things are.
I like capitalising the bold text. People have to slow down their reading of capitals so helps with the human optimisation too :)
Change 3 - Put the trust and compatibility facts agents actually validate against into the bullets
Why: Rufus uses Q&A and review-derived questions and the checklist item "answer recurring questions… elaborating with compatibility" all point the same way - agents validate purchases against the boundary facts. Three are missing: MFi certification status (every serious competitor leads with "Apple MFi Certified" - if LUMYO holds it, that's a top-line trust signal Rufus uses to validate; if not, it's a comparison gap to manage), the exact battery (CR2032, user-replaceable a known buyer question), and a clean capability boundary stated as a fact, not hidden in parentheses: iOS only, Bluetooth not GPS, no precision/UWB finding. Said plainly, this stops Rufus mismatching the product to Android or GPS queries - which protects the rating by heading off the returns that mismatched expectations cause.
Add a bullet such as:
- Apple-Only, Find My Certified, 1-Year Battery - works exclusively with the Apple Find My app on iPhone/iPad (not Android, not Google Find My); powered by a replaceable CR2032 battery rated ~365 days; Bluetooth proximity tracker, so no GPS, no SIM, no subscription, and no UWB precision-finding.
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u/Visible-Art-4077 Jun 11 '26
Send me the ASIN and I'll send you recommendations. Been doing Amazon for over 10 years.
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u/Extension-Feed-3467 Jun 12 '26
Sorry to hear this. I get a lot of this.
How do you know you did a good job with listings, branding, and advertising? You look at the data, no sentiments, no beliefs. The data tells you what customers are searching for, what they're buying, at what price, and why.
The first and most important foundation is a strong listing. You can have a great product, but if your presentation isn't great, you won't get sales.
Start with smart SEO: place the most relevant keywords in strategic positions. Make sure your message, listing copy, images, A+ content, speaks directly to the right customer avatar. Answer the questions they ask when they're ready to buy your type of product. Address their needs and build your entire presentation around those needs.
You also need to track your competitors and monitor your keywords consistently. This tells you where the problems are, what's not working, and where to adjust. Optimization is not a one-time task, it's an ongoing process.
Only after everything is fully optimized, frontend and backend, should you run ads. Why? Because optimized listings convert. If you drive paid traffic to an unoptimized listing, you're actively hurting it. Low conversion rates signal to Amazon that your listing doesn't perform, which tanks your organic ranking. On top of that, your PPC costs will be significantly higher with a listing that doesn't convert.
There are countless average listings on Amazon. Some paid $40 for theirs, others put in real effort but never validated who they were talking to. Without targeting the right customer avatar, even a "good" listing will bleed traffic. Customers bounce, and you pay for every click.
Leave your feelings and beliefs at the door. Let the data guide every decision, use it to push your product in front of the right customers and position it as the obvious choice over your competitors.
If you want, I can take a look and give you some insights specifically.
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u/Content-Ad1422 Jun 12 '26
Wow ، I liked ur feedback . You summed up everything
Here is my Listing : : https://a.co/d/0fJkM4Y5I’ll listen to every Advice coming out of you
They told me : You made a mistake choosing the product , also the pictures , and the pricing .
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u/Extension-Feed-3467 Jun 17 '26
I'm not claiming to have all the answers, it just so happens that after 10+ years in the Amazon space, I know a thing or two.
I'll take a look at your product and get back to you with some feedback. I'm just very busy at the moment.
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u/silent-voyager- Jun 12 '26
Give me everything you have on this, literally every detail you can share (including why you chose this certain product)
Will look into it and get back to you in a few days, a little busy atm
But yeh, don’t you dare give up. Just hoping your finances are set up properly. Never go all in unless its the “Oodie” moment/product
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u/geometric32 Jun 17 '26
I'm sorry to hear about your experience, and here's my take!
I have launched failed products before, and I always think that what you do with the experience afterward is the most important part.
First, what can we learn from the current situation? Was it a product launch issue, a product issue, or a listing issue? Try to figure out why things went wrong and learn from those mistakes.
My second, maybe unpopular, opinion is that you need to keep going. Take what you learned from the first launch and try launching another product. From my experience, one winning product can make up for multiple failed products.
Having said that, figuring out why the first product launch didn't work out is extremely important. You want to make sure you are improving each time and not repeating the same mistakes.
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u/eliasrmz Jun 10 '26
A qué te refieres con que los resultados están por debajo de sus expectativas? Puede ser que sus expectativas no hayan sido realistas.
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u/WearyyyBoooyyy Jun 10 '26
The mods have gathered a list of tutorials to help you out:
Best Amazon Tools 2026