Straight answers, no gatekeeping
The questions Amazon sellers actually ask, answered properly. No email required, no download, no course.
PPC
Why is my Amazon ad spend high but I get no sales?
High spend with few sales almost always means you are paying for clicks from shoppers with the wrong intent, or sending the right shoppers to a listing that does not convert. Pull your Search Term report and check the ratio of clicks to orders per term — if terms with many clicks and zero orders dominate spend, it is a targeting problem; if your conversion rate is below your category norm across the board, it is a listing problem.
ReadHow do I find and negate wasted search terms on Amazon?
Export the Sponsored Products Search Term report, filter to terms with zero orders, and sort by spend. Any term that has spent meaningfully more than your average cost-per-click without producing a single order is wasting money. Add those as negative exact keywords at the ad group level, and negate the obvious irrelevant patterns as negative phrase.
ReadWhat is search term harvesting in Amazon PPC?
Search term harvesting is the practice of finding customer searches that have already produced orders in your broad, phrase or automatic campaigns, and promoting them into their own exact-match campaigns where you control the bid directly. It concentrates budget on proven converters instead of leaving them mixed in with untested traffic.
ReadHow do I lower ACOS without losing sales?
Lower ACOS by removing spend that produces nothing rather than by cutting bids across the board. Negate zero-order search terms, move proven converters to exact match, reduce bids only on keywords that convert below your break-even, and improve conversion rate on the listing. Across-the-board bid cuts lower ACOS by lowering sales, which is not the same as improving efficiency.
ReadShould I use automatic or manual Amazon campaigns?
Use both, for different jobs. Automatic campaigns are a discovery tool — they let Amazon find search terms you did not think of, at a low budget. Manual exact-match campaigns are where you put real money, on terms already proven to convert. Running only automatic means paying Amazon to guess forever; running only manual means never discovering anything new.
ReadWhat is the difference between Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display?
Sponsored Products promote a single listing in search results and are where most accounts should concentrate spend, because intent is highest. Sponsored Brands promote your brand and a set of products with a custom headline or video, and require Brand Registry. Sponsored Display retargets shoppers on and off Amazon and is best used for defence and remarketing rather than primary acquisition.
ReadWhat is brand defense on Amazon and do I need it?
Brand defense means advertising on your own brand name and your own product pages so competitors cannot capture shoppers who are already looking for you. It is usually cheap, because your relevance on your own brand is high, and it protects sales you would otherwise lose to a competitor's ad placed directly on your listing.
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SEO
How does Amazon search ranking actually work?
Amazon ranks listings primarily on relevance and sales performance. Relevance comes from whether your listing is indexed for a search term through title, bullets, backend keywords and A+ content. Performance comes from click-through rate, conversion rate and sales velocity for that term. A listing cannot rank for a keyword it is not indexed for, no matter how much you spend.
ReadHow do I rank on page one of Amazon?
Page-one ranking requires being indexed for the keyword, converting well when shown, and sustaining sales velocity for that term over weeks. In practice that means a listing optimised for the exact search, a competitive price and review position, and targeted advertising on that keyword to generate the velocity Amazon uses as evidence. There is no shortcut that bypasses conversion.
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Metrics
What is a good ACOS on Amazon?
There is no universal good ACOS — the only figure that matters is your break-even ACOS, which equals your profit margin before ad spend. If your product carries a 35% margin after all Amazon fees and COGS, then a 35% ACOS is break-even, anything below is profit, and anything above is bought at a loss. Most established sellers target 15–25%, but a launch may run 60% deliberately.
ReadHow do I calculate my break-even ACOS?
Break-even ACOS equals your pre-advertising profit margin. Subtract COGS, Amazon referral fees, FBA fulfilment, storage, and a returns allowance from your selling price; divide the remainder by the selling price. If a $30 product leaves $9.60 after all costs, your margin is 32% and your break-even ACOS is 32%.
ReadWhat is the difference between ACOS and TACOS?
ACOS is ad spend divided by ad-attributed sales, so it only measures advertising in isolation. TACOS is ad spend divided by total sales including organic, so it measures what advertising costs your whole business. A falling TACOS with steady revenue means organic rank is carrying more of the load — that is the healthiest signal in an Amazon account.
ReadWhat is a good conversion rate on Amazon?
Amazon conversion rates vary widely by category, but many sellers operate somewhere in the 10–20% range, which is far higher than typical ecommerce because Amazon shoppers arrive intending to buy. The useful comparison is not a global benchmark but your own category and your own historical rate — a sudden drop is far more diagnostic than an absolute number.
ReadWhy did my ACOS suddenly increase?
A sudden ACOS rise usually has one of four causes: a competitor started bidding on your terms and pushed CPCs up, your conversion rate dropped, your campaign structure changed and budget shifted to weaker terms, or you lost the Buy Box. Check CPC and conversion rate separately — ACOS is a ratio, and knowing which side of it moved tells you which problem you have.
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Strategy
How long does Amazon PPC take to work?
Wasted spend can be cut within two to three weeks, because switching off losing terms takes effect immediately. Genuine gains in rank and organic sales usually take 60 to 90 days, since Amazon's ranking responds to sustained sales velocity rather than to any single change. Anyone promising a transformation in days is describing budget cuts, not growth.
ReadHow much should I spend on Amazon ads?
Budget should follow proven efficiency rather than a fixed percentage of revenue. Once a campaign converts below your break-even ACOS, additional spend on it is profitable and should be increased until efficiency degrades. For a new product, a common starting approach is a modest daily budget held long enough to gather statistically meaningful click data before judging anything.
ReadWhat reports do I need for an Amazon PPC audit?
Three exports cover almost everything: the Sponsored Products Search Term report for at least 60 days, the Business Report by ASIN for sessions and conversion rate, and a Bulk Operations file for the full campaign structure, bids and negatives. Together these show what you paid for, what converted, and how the account is put together — without needing account access.
ReadDo I need an Amazon agency, or can I run PPC myself?
You can run Amazon PPC yourself, and at low spend you probably should — the work is mostly disciplined weekly maintenance rather than secret knowledge. An agency becomes worth its fee when spend is high enough that a few points of ACOS exceed the retainer, or when the weekly cadence is not happening because nobody has time for it.
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