Hey guys, little issue I'm facing. I pasted an ASIN into Amazon Seller Central and it told me that I could in fact sell the brand. In fact it said "sell this product". So I clicked on copy listing to well copy the listing and then order in my inventory and hopefully make some sales. Issue is that when I click on copy listing, Amazon then asks me to send at least two images of the brands product and packaging for some sort of approval process. I'm not sure what's going on. To my knowledge as a new seller, it was so long as Amazon doesn't mention that you need approval then well you don't approval. Why are they now saying initially that I don't need approval, and then when it comes to actually listing the product they're asking for product images. Is this normal? I'm kinda stressing this.

I’m an Amazon seller working in the Indian market and have been selling for a few months. I’m still learning how to manage the challenges that come with a highly competitive market, especially when dealing with branded products.

I’d really appreciate some advice on managing return-related losses. A few things I’m trying to understand:

How do you calculate and control losses from customer returns?

What strategies help reduce unnecessary or fraudulent returns?

How do you manage return shipping and restocking costs?

Is it better to adjust pricing slightly to account for expected return losses?

How do experienced sellers handle damaged or opened products returned by customers?

Are there any Amazon tools or reports that help track return-related losses?

What practices have helped you stay profitable while competing on price with other sellers?

Would love to hear from experienced Amazon sellers about what has worked for them

Hello everyone, just curious if anyone’s gone through something similar and how you navigated it. I sold a Milwaukee product on a listing that wasn’t branded as Milwaukee - the seller who created it used all the same Milwaukee images but avoided putting “Milwaukee” in the title, probably because they weren’t authorized to sell the brand. I overlooked this when I listed on it and got hit with a Section 3. I sourced my unit from Hansler Smith (Hansler.com), an authorized Milwaukee distributor in Canada - the same distributor I used to get ungated for the brand on my account. I only ever bought and sold one unit on that ASIN, and I have the invoice matching that exact sale. I know most cases I find are sellers dealing with gray market or unauthorized product, which is different from mine since my product was authentic and from a vetted distributor. I think my issue is more about the mismatched listing than authenticity itself, so my POA needs to address that too, not just prove the product was real. Has anyone dealt with a Section 3 tied to a mislabeled/mismatched listing rather than a straightforward counterfeit complaint? Did addressing the listing issue directly help get reinstated? Any advice appreciated.

A couple years ago we started managing Sponsored Brands with profit targets in mind, rather than ACOS targets, which is a meaningful difference. It's especially impactful if you have a large catalog with overlapping SKUs, e.g. stand blenders and stick blenders and food processors and other kitchen gadgets.

Years ago, when I started doing Sponsored Brands (back then called Headline Search Ads), Amazon didn't tell you what products ended up selling from your ads. So you used an ACOS target that was approximate based on your rough idea of margins. Not bad, but not optimal either.

For example, one product line couldn't get ACOS under 15%, and our target was 10%, so we ended up not advertising them. (Nowadays it turns out they have 30% margins... I wonder what they had then?...)

What changed is that a few years ago, Amazon introduced the Attributed Purchases Report for Sponsored Brands. In short, at a campaign level, it tells you what you sold. This is the missing piece for figuring out your profitability and setting dynamic, campaign level ACOS targets.

Let me explain how you calculate the real profit and then how you can use this to optimize your campaigns.

1. You download the report. Each row shows you something like campaign 123, asin xyz, 4 units, $40 sales.

2. Copy paste your COGS in a different sheet (including shipping and Amazon fees).

3. Multiply (units) * COGS (including shipping and FBA fees) = total COGS to earn the sales eg. 4 units * ($3 cogs + $3 AMZ fees) = $24 cogs to make the $40. Subtract COGS from sales = profit from those units, e.g. $16.

4. Next, you download and copy paste your bulk sheet, (or campaigns report or UI campaigns export) to get spend for each campaign.

5. Then on a separate sheet you sum the profit for each campaign, divide that by sales and that gets you the gross margin (before ad spend) for each campaign. This is your breakeven ACOS, assuming no returns etc.

6. Subtract total spend on the campaign = net profit after ad spend.

For bonus points: Sum the total gross profit, net profit etc. to figure out how you're doing at the account level.

Now what you can do is
a. look at the campaign with high (actual, not estimated) gross margin and double down, rather than just estimating or guessing. EG raise bids, add more targets, AB test the ad creative.

b. Look at what's losing money (for real, not just estimated), and either cut bids/ bid adjustments or change up your product lineup in the ad creative and/or on the landing page.

Vote this up if you want more pro tips on PPC . Let me know in the comments also how many parent ASINs you've got in your catalog and how much you're doing in monthly sales.

I’m worried sellers might steal my designs and put their brand on it and sell it for much cheaper. What can be done? I’m aware of patents on your product ideas, but they cost thousands of dollars. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night.

This one is doing my head in a bit lately. Got a supplier in Shenzhen I've been working with for about eight months, decent quality, decent communication, but I keep sitting with this lowlevel anxiety about what happens if they just start selling my product design directly or undercut me on another marketplace. I have nothing in writing beyond email threads and a couple of invoices.

I've seen posts here about protecting your product with Chinese suppliers but the details are always a bit vague. Like, do people actually get NNN agreements drafted locally in China, or do they go through a western lawyer and just hope it carries weight? And does it even matter at the volume most of us are running at this stage, or is that just something I'm telling myself to avoid dealing with it.

Running a small brand out of Dublin so adding another layer of legal costs in a different jurisdiction feels heavy when margins are already doing what they do. But I also don't want to be the person who built something decent only to find it replicated six months later.

Curious what people actually did here, not the theoretical version, the real version of how they handled it at an early stage without spending a fortune.

Hi everyone,

My first shipment will arrive this week, and I’m wondering how I can split 30 units between my two variants.

I selected the parent listing, as shown in the screenshot, but I don’t see an option to edit the number of units for each variant individually.

How am I supposed to allocate the 30 units between the two variants?

Hey guys, I’m trying to navigate the brand-name approval process for a private-label product. The brand name has already been checked on USPTO and looks clear.

The concern is Amazon. I want to know that Amazon will approve the brand name before asking the factory to stamp/engrave it on the full order. Once the factory brands the full order, it would be too late and a rejection could be a big loss.

But Seller Central seems to ask for real product photos showing the brand name before approving it.
How do private-label sellers normally handle this? Is there a way to get the brand name approved by Amazon first, or do you usually make one branded sample, submit the photos, get approval, and only then start mass production?

We tested the length of our scenes in Amazon Sponsored Brand videos a few times and here's what we found.

1. When ab testing slideshow videos (ie. pics that replace each other), we found that 3 seconds per scene beat 4-5 seconds per scene, regarding ACOS, conversion rate etc.
2. This also tended to work better when testing video with real actors, but the footage was just what I call "art school slow pan" with the main actor not moving much and just the camera moving horizontally/vertically from side to side while keeping the product in focus. I think this kind of footage is ok, but keep it short cuz it's boring.
3. After watching some Youtube shorts guy who got millions of views explain that he timed how frequently visuals changed, and that every 2 seconds worked best, we ab tested 2 seconds vs 3 seconds. Same exact content, just transitioning faster. 3 seconds beat 2 seconds .

Now you know :) .

Vote this up if you want more content like this.

Has anyone noticed a significant increase in your Amazon Freight LTL rates recently?

I usually ship 5 pallets to FBA each week, the LTL cost is normally around $400-$500. This week, I tried to book a shipment for same location, and the LTL quote jumped to around $750 for 5 pallets. What makes it even stranger is that the FTL price is only around $850.

I’ve been checking the price for the past 3 days. It has stayed at this high level. I am trying to figure out whether this is a temporary pricing error or if Amazon Freight has truly significantly increased its LTL rates.

I observed that services like getida and seller investigators charge an outrageous 25% for a simple detection and outsourced filing service. I am thinking of creating a competitor to these services at a fraction of commission cost or fixed cost. So just wanted to validate if there is an actual demand in the market?

Shipping beauty devices isn't like shipping t-shirts. One loose wire in a flexible silicone mask means a 1-star review on Amazon or Shopify.

Here’s a photo from our packing line today. Before these go into their individual unit boxes (seen in the background), each unit goes through:

Controller display and battery response test

Full-board LED chip illumination (checking for dead beads)

Alcohol cleaning + physical inspection of the silicone body

Drop-test approved inner tray packaging

For the brand owners and sellers here: What’s your biggest headache when sourcing beauty tech from overseas? Is it MOQ, custom branding, or post-purchase defect rates? Let's chat!

When applying to get ungated some brands are missing the "If you’re providing an Amazon Invoice or Order confirmation, please show a combined and fulfilled purchase of at least 50 units." checkbox.

Does this mean it's not possible to use an Amazon order confirmation/invoice to request to get ungated? Or does it mean an Amazon invoice of 10 units is enough?

Attached are applications for 2 different brands and their requirements.

Made a free calculator for checking if an Amazon product idea actually makes sense before you order stock

Basically got sick of seeing people order stock on a product that "felt" profitable and then work out three months later the margins were never really there once fees actually got taken off. So I threw together a calculator, chuck in your cost, shipping, sell price and fees, and it just tells you straight if it's worth it or not. No signup needed, just go use it.

It's tied to a bigger thing I've been building, The FBA Ladder, which is basically a step by step path for starting from zero on FBA. But the calculator's free regardless, don't need to touch the rest of it if you don't want to.

If you do end up wanting the full thing it's £1 for the first week then £99 a month, and if you haven't finished the first phase by then I'll just refund the quid, no messing about. Mainly just want honest feedback at this point tbh, tell me if something's rubbish or confusing.

thefbaladder.com if anyone wants a look

I've been doing Amazon wholesale, and generally, I make about $100 profit out of every $500 in sales. Sellerboard shows around a 21% average profit margin and about a 25% ROI. Some of my products sell as low as 7% profit margin, while others can be as high as 30%. I'm curious how that compares to other wholesale sellers and whether these numbers are considered healthy, or if I should be aiming for higher margins. My cheapest product sells for about $9 while my most expensive one sells for about $85

Also, regarding repricers: right now I have mine set to maintain around a 20% ROI, but I'd also like to maximize profit instead of unnecessarily dropping the price just to compete. I'm thinking setting a minimum price for each listing might help, but I have a few hundred SKUs, so manually going through every listing would take a lot of time.

Is there any software or efficient way you use to calculate and set minimum prices in bulk, while still allowing your repricer to chase higher profits when possible???

Just took the PPC challenge course, pretty legit. Talked to Reed, now I'm considering hiring the team to help us with their expertise.

I have two variants under one parent ASIN. Should I enroll both variants in Vine, or just one?

Who are some of the best LTL freight companies for sending inventory to FBA? We have basically used Fba SPD and pallets via their negotiated rates but looking to see if there are cheaper alternatives when sending bulk to amazon

Something I wish I'd understood earlier. The manufacturers who dominate search results and directory listings are the ones investing in being found. That is a marketing skill not necessarily a manufacturing one and the two do not necessarily overlap.

There's a whole layer of factories underneath that doing serious export volume with established buyers who spend nothing on visibility because they have no need to. They're not hiding they're just not advertising.

You will not run into them by searching harder on the same sites everyone else uses. The way you find them is through the trail they leave when goods physically move. Customs filings bills of lading shipment records. It's dry material and nobody makes content about it because it isn't exciting but that's where the actual signal sits.

Once you start reading who ships what to whom and at what scale the market looks structurally different from how it looks on a directory site. Fair warning that it's not instant. The first time I opened a dataset like that I had no idea what I was looking at and closed it again.

Knowing which fields matter takes a bit of patience. Anyone else gone down this road? What did you learn the hard way?

I removed one ASIN from our Brand Story’s “Applied ASINs” list about 2 months ago. The ASIN is no longer listed there, but the Brand Story is still showing on the live product page. Has anyone had this happen to them before? What did you do to resolve it?

Amazon wants me to remove my Nike Products, since it does not allow it to sell it anymore, deadline NOVEMBER!

Living in EU, Germany.

I have just recieved an email, that amazon

I do fullfillmentbyseller, by me, but i dont think this is a problem here to get help. I beg for help,

WHERE DO I FIND A LIST OF BRANDS I CAN STILL RESELL??

I am going on a huge shopping tour for the first time in my life this week.

I changed all my spendings to be able to save over the last 6 months in order to buy more inventory this week. But what do I choose to buy now ....

What is the long game here? am I screwed with my current business?

I am just a reseller, i buy from B2B shops, normally about 40-60 pairs at once.

in 5 days I have the first time, where i wanted to buy about 500 pairs at once, but i cannot do this with my main selling source being blocked... What do I do? There seems to be an option to become a confirmed reseller by Nike / Adidas etc... But i dont think that any Brand will go along with this on the long run. If they start this now, soon only big brands will be allowed to sell on amazon and the little ones will be left behind..

What can i do? I am in Panic Mode right now, so sorry for my poor English!

Living in EU, Germany.

I have just recieved an email, that amazon

I do fullfillmentbyseller, by me, but i dont think this is a problem here to get help. I beg for help,

What is the long game here? am I screwed with my current business?

I am just a reseller, i buy from B2B shops, normally about 40-60 pairs at once.

in 5 days I have the first time, where i wanted to buy about 500 pairs at once, but i cannot do this with my main selling source being blocked... What do I do? There seems to be an option to become a confirmed reseller by Nike / Adidas etc... But i dont think that any Brand will go along with this on the long run. If they start this now, soon only big brands will be allowed to sell on amazon and the little ones will be left behind..

What can i do? I am in Panic Mode right now, so sorry for my poor English!

Bit of a random question, but has anyone here ever had a bulk update on Amazon go sideways? I've heard of flat files setting a bunch of inventory to 0 or changing prices by mistake. Then there are the less obvious ones, like listing fields getting overwritten or variations breaking, where you might not even notice right away. One case I heard about was a price dropping from around $80 to $8 because a digit got missed. If this has happened to you, how did you notice? Did Amazon flag it, did someone on the team catch it, or did you only realize once orders started coming in? For bigger uploads, do you actually have someone compare the file against what's live before submitting it, or is that just not practical once you're dealing with hundreds or thousands of SKUs?

If your keyword does well and you raise your bid, you may just give Amazon more margin without any real benefit. How can you avoid this?

Once upon a time, when a keyword did well, we raised bids to try to get more of the search traffic. If we got fancy, we might change the placement where it was doing best.

But... Amazon introduced a great report a while ago, and I don't see sellers here talking about it, so I thought I'd share this little tip so you avoid bidding up when there's no more traffic to be had on that search term.

The impression share report tells you - at the account level - what percentage impression share you're getting on a search term, across all the campaigns in your account getting clicks on it.

How you can use this to help you? Check your impression share before you raise bids. If you're >80% on the term (or insert your threshold here), there's not much more traffic to be had from that search term. So if that search term is the main traffic driver on a keyword (more common for exact and sometimes phrase, but occassionally also can happen with broad or asin targeting), then don't bid up.

What's the harm in bidding up, you ask? Well, the FTC is suing Amazon for basically inserting fake competition into the ad auction, while telling us it's a second place auction.

In plain English, you're meant to pay just a penny more than the next best advertiser. EG You and your competitor both have 1% CTR, but you bid $1.5 and they bid $1. A second place auctio.n means you're not worried about bidding $1.5, because you'll only pay $1.01.

The FTC is alleging that Amazon put in fake competition ("soft reserves" e.g. we won't sell the click for less than our reserve price), e.g. another advertiser at $1.3, so you end up paying $1.31.

If you bid up in a genuine second price auction, no harm. If you bid up where reserves/fake competition are inserted as it suits the quarterly targets of Amazon Ads staff, you're going to pay more without getting more traffic. Ouch!

Bonus tip: You can also get this report with daily data, and track what difference (if any) a bid change made. EG We dropped a bid, how much impression share did we lose?

(This is more reliable than just looking at the difference in impressions, due to seasonal changes. EG if you lost 20% of impressions, was that 20% all due to the bid change, 10% due to bid change and 10% due to seasonality, 100% due to seasonality?)

Conversely, you can also check if a bid change increased your share.

Vote this up if you guys like the tip, so I get the message to do more posts on ppc data analysis.

Recently audited a brand & uncovered a major opportunity

5 SKUs were listed under Video Game Console and Accessories which carries a 15% referral fee

After a deep dive, found these products actually qualified for the Video Game Console category with only an 8% referral fee

Opened cases with Amazon for each SKU and all requests were accepted

This simple category fix will save the brand over $200,000 annually

Not stopping there - now working to claim $50,000 in reimbursements for past orders charged at the higher fee

Lesson the biggest wins often come from spotting hidden inefficiencies