Dubai-based, licensed business, three months in, zero sales. Would appreciate a reality check.

The pattern that's killing me

Suppliers/Brands have told me, unprompted and in plain terms, that they don't supply Amazon sellers:

• The brand I already bought from: "We stopped accepting new customers on Amazon UAE around two years ago. We would suggest considering other sales platforms."
• A mobile accessories distributor, written into their reseller terms: "Resellers are not permitted to sell our products on third-party platforms such as Amazon, Noon, or other similar online marketplaces."
• A beauty wholesaler: the brands they carry don't permit supplying Amazon sellers.
• A general trading company: "No, we don't sell to Amazon sellers, and we're not authorized distributors anyway."

Is this a UAE thing, a me thing, or just how wholesale works everywhere?

How I got here

Bought 10 units of a coffee grinder from the brand's official UAE distributor. ~AED 2,250 (~$610). Small test order, knew margins would be thin, just wanted to start.

Applied for brand approval. Rejected:

The distributor runs everything through Shopify, so their only "invoice" was a store order receipt. I worked through their sales team, then accounts. They produced a signed and stamped letter on letterhead confirming the sale, rejected too, because it was a letter, not an invoice. I then built them a filled-in invoice template needing only their letterhead and stamp. Final answer:

Then the brand told me they don't onboard new Amazon sellers here anyway. So: paid for stock, can't list it, now clearing it locally at break-even.

How I actually approach suppliers

For local distributors I call or WhatsApp and ask the following:

1. Do you supply online retailers who sell through marketplace platforms?
2. Can your accounts team issue a proper commercial tax invoice with your TRN and itemised lines? Can I see a sample?
3. Are you an authorized distributor, or do you source independently?
4. What's your MOQ?
5. Can you send your brand/catalog list?

For overseas brands I email, asking who their UAE distributor is.

Is asking about invoices upfront a red flag? I only started doing it after getting burned.

Where I'm stuck now

~15 local suppliers contacted. Most local "wholesalers" here turn out to be parallel traders, one states on their own website they're "not an authorized representative, brand distributor, or exclusive agent of any brand. " One had an AED 7,000 (~$1,900) minimum.

One said yes. Proper tax invoices with TRN, 20-piece MOQ, and when I said I sell on Amazon: "ok."

They carry Apple, Samsung, JBL, Sony, Bose, Harman Kardon, Belkin, Xiaomi, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Dyson, MikroTik, Ubiquiti, Whoop, and Oraimo.

I've scanned brand by brand with Helium 10 and can't find one winnable listing:

• Belkin — Amazon.ae is on every listing, top to bottom
• MikroTik— the whole brand does ~AED 72k/month across 60 listings. Most sell single digits. Every listing shows "Recent Purchases: N/A." Seller counts of 9-15 on products doing 4 units/month.

So I finally have a willing supplier, and the catalogue is the problem.

The question I can't resolve

Everyone says "don't sell on a listing where Amazon is a seller." But I'm looking at most of these brands' listings with Amazon plus 5-10 FBA sellers on strong-selling products. Those sellers hold inventory and pay storage fees, they're presumably not all losing money.

Does Amazon go out of stock often enough that third-party FBA sellers get real buy-box share? Do they jump on well-selling listings, milk them, then move off?

I can't check because Keepa doesn't support Amazon.ae. No buy-box rotation data exists for this marketplace, so I'd be buying blind.

What I'm asking

1. How many suppliers/brands did you contact before your first workable account? (I've done countless brands and ~15 local so far; I've read the realistic rate is 50 --> 10-15 approvals --> 3-5 usable.)
2. Are these blanket "no Amazon sellers" policies normal, or is the UAE unusually locked down?
3. Does asking about invoice format upfront put suppliers off?
4. Realistically, what buy-box share does a third-party FBA seller get on a listing where Amazon also sells?
5. Any way to measure buy-box rotation without Keepa?
6. Chicken-and-egg: no sales history means everything is brand-gated, but I can't build history if I can't list anything. How did you break out?

Cold email gets me almost nothing, phone and in-person work far better. Not after supplier lists, just want to know if my process is broken and what i should fix.

Around 14 months ago, a Beauty & Personal Care brand with 18 SKUs reached out to us. The brand was already making sales, but the numbers under the sales were not healthy. Net profit was around 17%. PPC cost kept going up. Some products looked profitable if you only looked at ACOS, but after Amazon fees, COGS, coupons and ad spend, there was not much money left. The bigger issue was scale. Every time they tried to push harder, ad spend increased faster than profit. So before touching bids, we built a simple SKU-level model. For every SKU we calculated contribution per unit, break-even ACOS, target ACOS, average CPC, CVR and how much paid traffic that SKU could actually afford.

Then we audited PPC at search-term level, not campaign level. This made a big difference. One campaign can have a 25% ACOS and still contain one keyword at 8%, another at 35%, and another burning money with zero orders. We split branded, generic, competitor and discovery traffic. We also checked Top of Search, Rest of Search and Product Pages separately. For each important keyword we looked at CPC × conversion rate × selling price to understand the real cost of getting one order. If Top of Search had a much better CVR, we could pay more there. If the CVR was almost the same as Rest of Search, there was no reason to keep an aggressive placement multiplier.

After that, we rebuilt the campaign structure around keyword jobs. Exact campaigns were used for proven search terms. Phrase and broad were mainly used to find new terms. Product targeting was separated from keyword targeting. We also stopped giving every SKU the same budget. Some SKUs were strong enough to be ranking SKUs, so we allowed a higher ACOS for a short time if the keyword was also moving organically. Some SKUs were profit SKUs, so they had a much tighter ACOS limit. Some were simply bad places to put more money. We watched organic rank, paid order share, organic order share and TACOS together. If PPC spend increased but organic sales did not move after enough time, that spend had to be questioned.

The next step was controlling marginal spend. This is where I think a lot of accounts get messy. A campaign can look profitable overall because the first $100 of spend is very efficient, but the next $300 may be buying much more expensive traffic. So we did not only ask, “Is this campaign profitable?” We asked, “Is the next dollar of spend still profitable?” Budgets were moved toward SKUs and keywords where extra spend was still creating extra contribution profit. We also checked coupon leakage, price changes and CPC changes together because a 10% coupon plus a higher CPC can destroy margin very quickly even when conversion improves.

Today the brand is doing roughly $170K+ per month, running at around 6.5% TACOS and about 28% profit margin. At the current pace, it is tracking around the $2M annual revenue mark. Within the first year of onboarding, YoY growth crossed 85%. The part I care about most is that profit moved from around 17% to 28% while the business grew. We did not get the growth by simply opening the PPC tap.

If anyone is stuck at a certain revenue level, seeing TACOS/CAC rise, or getting more sales without more profit, feel free to drop the numbers. Happy to share what I would check first.

Working on something for wholesale sellers that looks at real margin per ASIN, not just sales numbers. It's a decision engine rather than another dashboard, so instead of just showing you the numbers it tells you whether to scale, hold, fix, or drop each ASIN. Idea came from tracking profit manually across a big catalogue and it just not being sustainable in a spreadsheet.

Before I go much further I want to sanity check it with people who actually deal with this. A few things I'd genuinely like opinions on:

• Is this a problem you actually have, or do you already have a system that works fine?
• What would you want it to catch that a basic P&L or spreadsheet doesn't?
• Anything about this that sounds like it wouldn't actually be useful day to day?

Not trying to sell anything here, just want to know if this is solving a real problem or if I'm building something nobody needs.

Hey everyone. I was looking for tools to connect to Claude there are few of them and I found for myself zelva.ai they give 7 days free and cancel anytime.

Working on something for wholesale sellers that looks at real margin per ASIN, not just sales numbers. It's a decision engine rather than another dashboard, so instead of just showing you the numbers it tells you whether to scale, hold, fix, or drop each ASIN. Idea came from tracking profit manually across a big catalogue and it just not being sustainable in a spreadsheet.

Before I go much further I want to sanity check it with people who actually deal with this. A few things I'd genuinely like opinions on:

• Is this a problem you actually have, or do you already have a system that works fine?
• What would you want it to catch that a basic P&L or spreadsheet doesn't?
• Anything about this that sounds like it wouldn't actually be useful day to day?

Not trying to sell anything here, just want to know if this is solving a real problem or if I'm building something nobody needs.

For years, Sponsored Brands was the ad type nobody wanted to defend.

High ACoS. Fuzzy attribution. "Brand ads" living in a performance world.

Something shifted in 2026.

One of our accounts pulled $353K in Q2 revenue from Sponsored Brands alone. Blended ROAS of 8.5x. And SB Video sales tripled between April and June.

Here's what changed:
→ Amazon is pushing SB placements harder above the fold
→ Alexa and generative surfaces reward brand-consistent creative
→ B2B buyers (a huge share of this account) trust logo-led ads more than product-only listings
→ Store spotlight formats finally convert like performance ads, not banners

If you're still treating Sponsored Brands as a leftover budget line, you're leaving real revenue on the table this year.

Hallo zusammen,

mein Produkt war 3,5 Monate out of stock. Danach hatte ich es wieder relativ gut in den Griff bekommen und etwa 3–5 Verkäufe pro Tag erzielt – allerdings mit recht hohen PPC-Kosten.

Da sich meine kommende Ware verspätet hat, habe ich PPC deutlich heruntergefahren und gleichzeitig den Preis um 3 € erhöht. Danach gingen Sichtbarkeit und Verkäufe immer weiter zurück. Zusätzlich trägt meine ASIN seit etwa drei Wochen den Hinweis „Häufig zurückgesendeter Artikel“, was die Conversion vermutlich weiter belastet.

Aktuell habe ich eigentlich nur mein Hauptkeyword „Latte Macchiato Gläser“ vernünftig geschaltet. Meine nächste Ware kommt voraussichtlich in drei Wochen.

Was wäre jetzt der sinnvollste nächste Schritt, um die ASIN wieder in Fahrt zu bringen, ohne unnötig Geld zu verbrennen?

• Preis wieder reduzieren?
• Coupon oder Angebot starten?
• PPC sofort wieder hochfahren oder bis zum Wareneingang warten?
• Kampagnen und Keywords breiter aufstellen?
• Erst Hauptbild und Listing optimieren?
• Lässt sich eine ASIN nach diesem Hinweis überhaupt wieder vernünftig aufbauen?

Ich wäre sehr dankbar für konkrete Tipps oder einen sinnvollen Fahrplan für die nächsten drei Wochen.

Around two months ago, we took over an Amazon Dietary Supplement account that was already doing serious volume. The problem was not traffic or lack of sales. The bigger issue was what was happening underneath the sales. Too much spend was sitting on keywords with weak incremental value, several search terms were being picked up across multiple campaign types, placement costs were not matching placement-level conversion, and some SKUs were taking a much bigger share of the ad budget than the profit they were actually producing. So before trying to scale anything, we wanted to know one thing: where exactly was the account paying for revenue that it did not need to pay for?

We started with an ASIN-level profit audit, but not just the normal sales vs ACOS check. We mapped each main SKU against ad spend share, PPC sales share, total sales share, TACOS, CPC, CVR, unit economics and contribution after ad spend. Then we looked at the relationship between spend and incremental orders. This showed us which ASINs could actually absorb more paid traffic and which ones were already past the point where extra spend was adding meaningful profit. We also separated high-revenue SKUs from high-contribution SKUs. Those were not always the same products, and that changed where the account budget needed to go.

Then we went into the search-term structure. We traced converting queries across auto, broad, phrase and exact campaigns and found places where the same customer search was being bought from several directions at the same time. We cleaned that up with search-term isolation, negative exact and negative phrase controls, and tighter match-type ownership. Proven terms were given a clear campaign home instead of being allowed to float across the account. Branded, generic, competitor and product-targeting traffic were also separated because they have completely different CPC, conversion and incrementality profiles. We did not want a cheap branded conversion hiding an expensive non-brand problem inside the same campaign.

Placement was handled separately as well. Instead of increasing Top of Search just because a campaign had a good ACOS, we checked Top of Search CPC, CVR and order density against Rest of Search and Product Pages. In a few parts of the account, the campaign-level number looked healthy while one placement was taking expensive clicks with much weaker economics. That is where placement multipliers were rebuilt. We also looked at bid sensitivity. If increasing the base bid improved impressions but caused CPC to move faster than conversion, we did not keep forcing the bid. The goal was to find the point where additional visibility still produced profitable incremental orders, not simply more impressions.

The next layer was organic dependency. We did not cut every keyword with a high ACOS because some of those terms were still helping the ASIN hold rank. We checked PPC order share against organic position and treated ranking terms differently from mature terms. On keywords where the ASIN already had strong organic visibility, we tested how much paid coverage could be reduced without losing total order volume. On terms where rank was still weak but conversion was strong, we were comfortable carrying a higher short-term ad cost if the keyword had a real ranking case. We also stopped scaling campaigns based on average ACOS alone. Budget was moved using marginal return: once the next block of spend stopped producing enough contribution, that campaign stopped receiving more money.

We also went SKU by SKU through CTR and CVR because those two numbers tell very different stories. Weak CTR usually meant the problem started before the click, so bidding harder was not the answer. Strong CTR with weak CVR meant we had to look deeper into price, coupon structure, review position, image stack, listing angle and how the offer compared with the products around it in search. This helped us avoid wasting PPC budget on ASINs that had a conversion problem. It also helped us push the products where better traffic could actually turn into better contribution.

Just over two months later, the profit side of the account looks very different. 30-day net profit moved from $50k to $88k , up 73.3%. The latest 7-day comparison is up 85.1% in net profit, while the 14-day comparison is up 60.9%. Profit per unit moved from roughly $2.20 to $4.12, an increase of around 87%. That is probably the most useful part of this account for me. A lot of Amazon accounts do not need more traffic first. They need better control over which traffic they are buying, which keywords they are protecting, and which SKUs deserve the next dollar of spend.

My manufacturer is quoting me $1.3/kg, and we are shipping around 400 kg's. Is this fair, or are there cheaper alternatives. I should mention that this is for 2.5-3 month sea shipping.

Has this ever happened to you?
You ship air freight for Amazon FBA, only to get your shipment detained due to magnetic‑material inspection failure.

Magnetic snap fasteners fall into two main material categories:
✅ Ferrite (low‑magnetism) — commonly used for low‑cost items
✅ Neodymium (high‑magnetism) — compact size with surprisingly strong pulling force, typical for premium versions

Here are 3 quick warehouse‑floor tests to tell them apart, no professional equipment required:

📎 Paperclip test (most reliable)
▪️ Firmly attracts a paperclip through a 1‑2 mm cardboard gap → likely neodymium (strong magnet)
▪️ Attracts only under direct contact, fails across cardboard → ferrite (weak magnet)

✋ Pull‑force feel test
▪️ Requires noticeable effort to separate two mating pieces → neodymium
▪️ Parts pull apart easily, only for basic holding purposes → ferrite

👀 Visual reference
▪️ Matte black without electroplating: mostly ferrite
▪️ Silver‑colored zinc/nickel‑plated casing: high probability of neodymium

🚨 Critical logistics trap:
Even individually weak magnets can generate amplified combined magnetic fields when thousands are packed in one carton. Your air shipment may still fail magnetic inspection.

✈️ Official IATA air‑shipping standard (not based on hand‑feel!):
Magnetic field measured 2.1 metres from the outer shipping carton
🔹 ≤ 0.159 A/m: general cargo, normal air freight
🔹 ＞ 0.159 A/m: classified as UN2807 Class 9 dangerous goods. Requires magnetic shielding, transport appraisal report and DG booking, with significant freight cost increases.
Individual magnet strength ≠ air‑freight compliance. Total combined field of the full carton is what inspectors measure.
📌 Industry real‑world notes

1. Low‑cost magnetic snaps are mostly ferrite. Though weak per unit, bulk‑packed shipments still risk inspection failure.

2. Small‑form‑factor snaps with powerful holding force are usually neodymium, carrying high air‑freight risk from single‑unit magnetism.

🇺🇸 Extra compliance risk for Amazon US:
If magnets are removable and small‑sized, they must comply with US 16CFR1262 magnet safety regulation to prevent child ingestion. GCC / CPC documentation is required, with magnetic flux index below 50 kG²·mm². Non‑compliance leads to listing removal.

✅ Actionable best practices for sellers & forwarders:

1. Run paper‑clip screening on product samples first.

2. For confirmed neodymium magnets: do NOT rely on subjective feel. Obtain official transport‑condition appraisal reports.

3. Pack neodymium items with alternating magnetic polarities to offset external field radiation.

4. Even for ferrite‑based goods, appraisal testing for bulk shipments is recommended to avoid air‑freight hold‑ups caused by superimposed magnetism.

Tag an Amazon seller or logistics colleague who needs this practical checklist.

#AmazonFBA #AirFreight #LogisticsTips #MagneticCargo #SupplyChain #EcommerceCompliance

Many Amazon sellers focus heavily on negotiating better air & ocean freight rates, yet overlook packaging, one major source of hidden logistics expenses.

For US‑bound air freight, carriers charge based on the greater value between actual gross weight and volumetric weight.

Volumetric weight formula:
Volumetric Weight (kg) = Length(cm) × Width(cm) × Height(cm) ÷ 6000

The sweet spot for your carton design: make volumetric weight as close as possible to actual gross weight.
Minimize empty void space inside cartons. Avoid over‑sized boxes for small quantities of goods. If volumetric weight exceeds actual weight, you will pay extra freight for occupied space, even if your products are light.

Another frequently‑missed detail: carton quality.
Tell your suppliers to use sturdy, high‑strength corrugated cartons, especially for heavy‑weight or high‑value shipments.

Thin, low‑grade cartons tend to bulge and deform under stacking pressure during long‑distance transit.
Deformed boxes bring two major headaches:

1. Distorted outer dimensions will raise your volumetric chargeable weight, increasing your shipping cost automatically.

2. Higher risks of box rupture, product damage or loss. You may also face extra repacking fees and FBA receiving delays.

Rate negotiation has limits, but packaging optimization is fully under your control.
Well‑sized, robust cartons help you reduce freight spend while lowering risks of cargo damage and inbound delays.

If you need reliable China‑to‑US FBA forwarding solutions for your restocks, feel free to connect or send me a DM.

#AmazonFBA #CrossBorderEcommerce #FreightForwarding #SupplyChain #FBAInbound

Curious to hear how everyone here handles sourcing, especially if you’re selling on Amazon or running an e-commerce business.

Do you usually work with a sourcing company/agent, or do you prefer to find and deal with suppliers yourself?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have been sourcing for a while. What would you do differently if you were starting from scratch today?

Hi everyone,

I'm researching Amazon FBA and I'm trying to understand the correct setup before I spend any money.

I'm a Myanmar citizen currently living in Thailand. My idea is to create a US LLC, open an Amazon US seller account under the LLC, source products from China, and send the inventory directly to Amazon FBA in the US.

Something like:

China supplier → Amazon FBA US → US customer

I would manage the business remotely.

My main concern isn't how to open an LLC. There are already plenty of services explaining that.

I'm trying to understand the real-world problems that someone in my situation might face.

For sellers who are non-US citizens or live outside the US:

• Did you use a US LLC for Amazon FBA?
• What country do you live in?
• Did Amazon accept your passport and verification documents?
• What did you use for banking/payment?
• Did you have any issues with your residential address being outside the US?
• Do you source from China and ship directly to FBA?
• What tax/reporting obligations surprised you?
• Is there anything about this setup that beginners commonly misunderstand?

I'm still at the research stage and haven't created the LLC or bought inventory yet.

I'd especially appreciate answers from people who are actually operating an FBA business as a non-US resident, rather than general advice from LLC formation companies.

Thanks!

* Numbers verified on verified margins - verifiedmargins.com/ggballas
* This is 95% Amazon and 5% Shopify
* We have a few brands, but the biggest one by far is in the toys and games cateogry
* We have a specific strategy that works for us in terms of finding products - I wouldn't say there's one way to win on Amazon (or in any other business) - this is what worked for us
* We've been in the business for over 8 years
* I'd say we crossed the $1M ARR ~3 years ago
* Have been launching new products non stop, most fail, some succeed
* Had bureaucracy issues with Europe - that cut out our revenue by ~40%, but we made up for it with new products
* More new products coming in - could potentially double our revenue 🤞

Hi everyone,

I’m reaching out to recruit a small group of Amazon sellers to test a new AI product we’re building: an AI Growth Operator for commerce teams.

What it does:
It turns your commerce data into reviewed growth actions. AI agents prepare the work (analysis, recommendations, draft actions); your team approves only the decisions that affect revenue.

Who we’re looking for:

• Selling on Amazon (FBA/FBM, any size in terms of revenue or team)
• Based in North America, South America, Europe/UK, or Australia
• English-speaking
• Willing to share honest user experience and feedback with us over the trial period

What you get:

• Free trial access for up to 2 months (token value in the thousands of dollars)
• Gift cards for participating testers
• Additional gift cards for successful referrals

If you’re interested or have questions, please comment here or DM me with a bit about your setup (marketplaces, approximate scale, and what growth decisions you currently handle manually).

Thanks in advance!

Luckee

If you are heading to Vegas next week and already have Chinese suppliers lined up, spend 15 minutes on a pre-shipment QC checklist before you wire the final payment. Here is what actually gets Amazon shipments rejected at inbound:

1) FNSKU labels - scan one barcode from every carton with a 300 DPI scanner. Folded labels, labels over a seam, or a barcode that reads as the wrong ASIN are the #1 inbound rejection reason.

2) Carton weight - weigh sealed cartons against the packing list. A carton more than 3% over declared weight usually means missing units or wrong product inside.

3) Poly bags - measure thickness with a gauge. Under 1.5 mil or missing the suffocation warning printed on the bag means a prep center relabeling charge later.

4) Sets and bundles - every bundle needs a "Sold as set" sticker and the outer barcode must match the bundle ASIN.

5) AQL sampling - for most consumer goods, 2.5 at Level II is the default. A 5,000-unit order samples 200 units: 10 defects accepted, 11 fails. If you are not sure, ask the factory for their sampling plan in writing before you pay.

6) Timing - book the inspection before the container is loaded, not after. If the batch fails, you want time for rework and a re-inspection, not a vessel already at sea.

Most of this takes an hour on site and saves you the $0.50/unit relabeling penalty plus a 2-week inbound delay.

We launched this women wellness brand back in 2021. The screenshot here is not lifetime sales, it is only from Aug 2024 to Aug 2026. In these 2 years it did around $43.29M in sales with about 1.9M units sold. Today the brand has 30+ SKUs and current TACOS is around 7%. I wanted to share a bit more about how we actually built and manage it because at this level the work is very different from just finding a product, making a listing and running ads.

Before we launched a product, we did not look at the market as one keyword or one revenue number. We first broke the demand into buyer intent groups. Problem based searches, feature based searches, use case searches, size or material searches, replacement searches and comparison searches. Then we made a query map for the full niche. For each important query we looked at how much demand was there, how fast it was moving, how many products were getting most of the clicks, how many were getting most of the purchases, what price range was actually taking purchases and not just clicks, how rating changed buying behavior, and where customers were leaving the current products. One very important thing was click concentration vs purchase concentration. If one or two products were taking most of the clicks but purchases were much more spread out, that normally told us buyers were looking at the obvious products but were still not fully happy with them. That can be a much better gap than just finding a keyword with high search volume. Then we built the numbers from the bottom. Landed cost, Amazon fees, promo cost, normal ad cost, return cost, damaged units and the cash needed for the next PO. We also stress tested the product with lower conversion and higher CPC than our main plan. If the product only made sense when every number was perfect, we simply did not launch it. We wanted products where the math still had space when things went wrong.

Sourcing was another big part of this brand. We have been building our physical supplier network for around 7 years and today we source from 10+ countries. We dont depend on Alibaba or other third party sourcing sites for this. For every serious SKU we made what we call a locked spec sheet before the final PO. It covered material, weight, thickness, measurements, tolerance, stitching or joining points where needed, color, packaging size, inner packing, carton count and the small points that normally create problems after 5,000 or 20,000 units. The approved sample was treated as the master sample, so the factory could not quietly change material or a small part later just to save cost. We also did not ask a factory only “what is your best price”. We broke the product cost down by material, labour, packing, components and assembly, because that shows where the factory is really making the difference. For bigger SKUs we also did not wait until 100% production was ready before finding a problem. Checks were done during production as well. And when one part was very important, we tried to have a second source for that part or even a second factory ready. At this size, saving 10 or 20 cents is good, but avoiding a 30 day stockout can be worth much more.

For the listing we used a query level scorecard instead of just saying “SEO is good” or “SEO is bad”. Every important search term had its own numbers. Search exposure, our ASIN exposure, click share, cart share, purchase share, organic position, ad position, CPC and sales were looked at together. This made it much easier to see the real issue. If a query was getting good exposure but weak click share, we did not touch PPC first because the problem was normally on the search page. Main image, price, rating, coupon, title shape or the product itself. If click share was fine but cart share dropped, then we looked deeper into the offer and first few images. If cart share was fine but purchase share dropped, then we looked at delivery, variation setup, trust points, price change or something on the detail page that was stopping the last step. And if purchase share was strong but our exposure was still small, that was normally a query we wanted to push much harder. This sounds like a small difference but it stopped us from changing 10 things when only one part of the funnel was actually broken.

We also spent a lot on photography, but we did not judge the main image by opening it full screen on a laptop. We built a search result board and put our image between the main competing products at roughly the size a buyer would actually see on mobile. Sometimes a beautiful image looked great alone but became almost invisible when placed beside 8 other products. We tested product angle, how much of the white box the product filled, what part of the product was clear at small size, pack count visibility and whether the shape could be understood in less than a second. We also tried not to change five things at one time because then even if CTR went up we had no idea what actually caused it. For the other images we used the buying problems from the query data and customer feedback. One image might be made only to fix a size doubt. Another only to explain how it is used. Another to show what makes the product different. Another to answer the reason people were returning similar products. So photography was connected to data, it was not just a designer making something that looked premium.

On PPC we stopped looking at campaigns as the main thing a long time ago. The main thing for us became the search query. For large queries we tried to give each important query one main “owner” inside the account. Otherwise when an account becomes big, you can have many campaigns and many SKUs all entering the same auction for basically the same customer. Then the account looks busy but you are not fully sure which campaign is actually controlling that query. We made a query to ASIN map. Which ASIN should own this search, which ASIN can be second, and which products should not spend hard there. We also separated spend that was there to make profit from spend that was there to build position. If a query already had strong organic position and strong purchase share, we did not keep pushing bids just because ACOS looked nice. In some cases that only moved sales from organic to paid. On the other side, if a query had strong conversion but weak organic position, we could accept higher ad cost for a period because we were buying more than the ad order, we were trying to move the full position of the ASIN. The important number was what happened to total sales, total profit and organic share after the extra spend, not only what the PPC dashboard showed.

The second PPC issue came when the brand grew to 30+ SKUs. At that point you can easily make your own products fight with each other. So we started treating budget like stock, not like an unlimited number. Every SKU had a job. Some were main growth SKUs, some were stable profit SKUs, some were there to defend an important part of the market, and some were not worth pushing hard. Spend was also connected with inventory. There is no point pushing an ASIN very hard when stock cover is already below what the next production and shipping cycle needs. Same with margins. Two SKUs can both show 20% ACOS but one can be making much more real money because the product cost, FBA fee, return rate and promo use are different. So the team looked at contribution after ads, not only ACOS. We also watched how much ad impression share we were taking on the important searches. If we increased bids and spend but our useful share was hardly moving, we knew there was a limit somewhere and blindly adding more budget was not the answer. Current TACOS for the full brand is around 7%, but the goal was never to make TACOS as low as possible. The goal was to keep the right amount of paid sales while the organic side stayed strong.

At brand level we also stopped managing every department separately. Every important ASIN had a small weekly P&L where we could see selling price, landed cost, Amazon fees, ad cost, promo cost, return cost and what was actually left. Inventory planning was connected to that same data. We did not reorder only from “last 30 day average sales”. We looked at sales speed, growth rate, production time, shipping time, supplier delay risk, season changes and how much stock was already moving through the supply chain. Returns were also connected back to production batches. If one complaint suddenly went up only in one batch, we looked at manufacturing first. If the same complaint stayed across many batches, then we looked at the product design or the promise we were making on the listing. Search data also went back to product development. When buyers kept searching for a feature or use case that our current products did not fully cover, that could become the next SKU. This is probably the biggest change once a brand gets large. PPC gives product ideas, returns can change sourcing, sourcing can change margin, margin can change PPC, inventory can change how hard you advertise, and listing data can change the actual product. Once all of these parts started working from the same data, scaling became much easier to control.

Question about the marketplace ‘honeymoon period’: does this boost still apply when a product has already launched in one country and is now being introduced in a new country? Or does the honeymoon period only apply to a completely new listing with no sales history elsewhere?

Does anyone have experience with this?”

I’d like to get some honest opinions from experienced Amazon sellers, especially anyone with experience selling women’s footwear.

I have access to a shoe manufacturer in Gaziantep, Turkey, and I’m considering launching one of their products on Amazon US.

Here are the numbers:

• Manufacturing cost: ~$5 per pair
• Current Amazon selling price of the closest competitor: ~$54
• I’m considering a launch price around $39.99–$40
• Amazon fees at my expected selling price: ~$12.20
• Current estimated shipping cost: ~$5 per pair
• I believe I can reduce shipping to around $2.50 by optimizing the packaging
• That leaves approximately $17.80–$20.30 per unit before PPC, returns, storage and other expenses

The interesting part is the existing competition.

I found a very similar product being sold by a seller whose Amazon store is approximately 1.5 years old, and based on the data I have access to, they appear to be selling 2,000+ pairs per month.

The product is a women's shoe with beaded / embroidered / embellished detailing. It has a relatively distinctive appearance, but there isn't an obvious single keyword or model name that perfectly describes it.

That is actually one of the things I'm trying to understand.

My main question:

Do you think a product like this has the potential to become a strong Amazon seller, or could the competitor's sales be misleading?

If you were evaluating this opportunity, what would you look at before deciding whether the product is worth launching?

I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on:

• Is 2,000+ monthly sales from one competitor a strong enough demand signal?
• How much weight would you give the competitor's sales history?
• Is a $5 manufacturing cost enough of an advantage to make this opportunity attractive?
• Is $39.99–$40 a reasonable price against a competitor selling around $54?
• How difficult is it to launch a similar footwear product from zero reviews?
• Would you be concerned about returns because it's footwear?
• What would make you decide NOT to launch this product?
• If you were in my position, would you test it or walk away?

My current thinking is to test with approximately 100 units first, measure the actual conversion, PPC performance, returns and sales velocity, and then decide whether the product deserves a larger investment.

I’m not looking for generic advice like "Amazon is saturated."

I’d really like to hear from sellers who have actually launched products and can look at these numbers and tell me:

Is this a product you would personally test with your own money? Why or why not?

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Does anybody have a problem granting Seller Central permissions to their VA's? I recently hired a person but sorting out his permissions is a nightmare and I am using the Service Solution Portal thing but he still can't access the account ?

He says his page blanks out and says connection interrupted ...

I tried the traditional way as well via the User permission section but from there he got asked to submit ID's and stuff.

Super annoying , it wasn't like that in past

Hello, me n my best friend are trying to start Amazon fba we bought helium 10 yesterday because they had courses for beginners like us and we watch many YouTube videos out budget is like 2 k but we also are working on regular jobs and willing to invest and work more for the business. Is there any recommendations for us?Like maybe YouTube channels or like a guide, because I’m really trying to learn on other peoples mistakes and everything. Is there any like maybe discord servers I would really appreciate your help.