[Case Study: Part 3] First Results & Time for PPC!

It has been almost a month since we started this case study and it is time for Part 3! Just as a quick recap you can check out part 1 & part 2. Here is our product launch strategy & what we have done so far:

The Amazon Product Launch Checklist

  1. Lower price – Done
  2. Setup follow-up email – Done
  3. Product giveaways ( while staying within Amazon TOS ) – Done
  4. Early reviewer program – Done
  5. GO HARD on PPC
  6. Increase price
  7. PROFIT?!?!

Product Giveaways Results

We have received an enormous response from our e-mail list and got loads of people interested in our free product ( not that surprising right? ). So last time I gave away 15 coupons. However, only 12 people used the coupon. Therefore I decided to giveaway more coupons this week. So I gave away an additional 15 coupons, to really speed up to process.

Early Reviewer Program Results

So far the Early Reviewer Program has delivered us no reviews yet. No biggie, it’s only been 3 weeks and from my previous experience, this program will take a while before it will get any results.

So yeah we will just leave this as it is, and check back next update.

First reviews!!

So we got the first 2 reviews in. Most likely they are from the giveaways since the Early Reviewer Program has got us 0 reviews.

Both reviews are five stars, so this is an amazing start. I expect that more reviews will soon follow.

First rankings!

More great news! Our product is showing in the Amazon search results! I personally use Sellics as my dashboard. I can just enter my keywords for this product and it will track the ranking for each keyword for me every day. This is great as I am very lazy and don’t want to search for my products every day to find out how it is ranking.

Now, the ranking isn’t that great yet. The blue keyword you see ranking on top is an extremely long tail keyword ( consisting of 9 words, lol), and I am probably the only one with that whole keyword in the title. So, I don’t expect to get any organic sales from this ( yet! ). However, it is still awesome to see the product beginning to rank in the Amazon search results!

Pay Per Click (PPC)

At this point, I think it is essential to keep going strong and increase the sales velocity even more. We made a great start, getting our first sales and reviews. But now we have to increase our sales even more! For this, I will use Amazon Pay Per Click ( PPC ).

PPC can be pretty difficult when you are just starting out. But I’m not going to explain PPC in every detail in this post. If people are interested in learning more about PPC, they can leave a comment. Meanwhile, I have written a PPC Strategy Guide.

Amazon PPC ads are the listings you see that have the sponsored tag. These sellers Pay Per Click for this type of advertising. For my launch strategy, I will set up 2 PPC campaigns:

  1. Auto campaign: This is a great method for Amazon to collect any possible new keywords I didn’t know about yet.
  2. Manual broad campaign: Here, I enter the keywords I have found myself for this product.

For both campaigns, I will set my max bid on $1 and a maximum budget on $20 per day. My goal right now is not to get an extremely low Acos but to set up a profitable PPC campaign. I want to generate a crazy amount of sales, and these campaigns will definitely help with this.

Next update

Ok so for now, there is nothing more to do, except to wait. I will just leave it for another 10 – 14 days. Hopefully, by then more people have left us a review. And more importantly: more people have bought our product! Like I explained before: I am a big believer Amazon ranks products based on your average 7, 30 & 90-day sales. So it is extremely important to keep those sales numbers up!

Click here for part 4

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27 Comments

  1. Amazing. WhatvI observed is you used many tools such as jungle, selics, scrapping software, so on…how do you cover the cost of these tools? Jungle is bit costly. Do we need to have web app or crome extension.

    Also please give detail about ppc.

    Few more questions
    1. What seller need to pay to amazon? Monthly fee? Warehouse charges?

    2. If product not selling can we get return from amazon?

    1. Not to brag but I make between $15-$20k per month with my Amazon business. So yeah I would gladly pay for those tools if it helps my business.

      1). Yeah you pay $40 monthly fee for Amazon & storage fee.
      2). Yes

  2. 1. That’s amazing. May i ask what initial capital you started with? And whats your current capital investment to get this profit?

    2. So amazon charge $40 monthly fee. So whats storage fee, and how much it will be? Is it per month ?

    3. Where i can read all amazon tos including fees ?
    4. Can i open seller account but not start the business ? Amazon start charging me immediately after opening?
    5. To list your tools jungle scout, selics to track your ppc and profit, jump email to send emails. Any other i missed, how to get email id’ s?
    6. I am based in Australia. If i need to start based on how much capital required to start with, could you please guide me on skype or whatsapp on agreed cost?

    Thank you for all the good work you are doing.

  3. Thanks for this post….very educative. Please i want to see a detailed post on PPC…I’d appreciate that. And also, how long does it take on average between launching a new product and making profit taking your steps in all parts 1-3? Another question. I have a little over a thousand dollars, is it enough to start sellimg on amazon? Thanks for your answer in advance.

    1. Sure, I’ll see when I have some time to write a PPC post. So it usually takes 3 months to produce & ship the products, then 1 month to launch, after that you will start making profit.

      Yeah $1k is enough to start.

  4. When you started the PPC was your price still the lowered price of $15 or did you raise it at this point?

  5. 1. That’s amazing. May i ask what initial capital you started with? And whats your current capital investment to get this profit?

    2. So amazon charge $40 monthly fee. So whats storage fee, and how much it will be? Is it per month ?

    3. Where i can read all amazon tos including fees ?
    4. Can i open seller account but not start the business ? Amazon start charging me immediately after opening?
    5. To list your tools jungle scout, selics to track your ppc and profit, jump email to send emails. Any other i missed, how to get email id’ s?
    6. I am based in Australia. If i need to start based on how much capital required to start with, could you please guide me on skype or whatsapp on agreed cost?

    Thank you for all the good work you are doing.

  6. Hey mate – amazing content ! Im launching my first product in the next couple of months and tbh its quite scary. I just wanted to ask you:

    1) I heard PPC sales do not contribute to sales velocity with the same weighting as organic sales – is this true ?

    2) I heard that reviews you get from sales where you’ve discounted your product below 50% or used 50% (or more) coupons result in ‘unverified’ reviews – how do we go about getting verified reviews at the beginning ?

    3) Have you ever used a launch service ? I’ve heard if you use a launch service with the use of a Super URL for your target keywords its the best way to build up that initial sales velocity to land yourself on the first page (although expensive) ?

    Can i also ask out of your 18 SKUs how many have you managed to rank on page 1 ?

    Thanks again and looking forward to your future content !

    1. No worries man.

      1). I believe PPC count same as organic sales
      2). You answered that one yourself; Get reviews from people who paid 51% – full price lol
      3). I don’t think super urls work anymore.

      Out of the 18 I’m running 17 profitable ( all ranking top page ) , and 1 unprofitable; selling it at breakeven just to get rid of the stock.

  7. Can you talk about taxes? How do you collect it, where do you see it on the amazon seller central platform, and how do you pay it? Am I missing anything?

    1. I think this is one of the aspects I should not advice you on and people should only listen to a real tax consultant. However, I use Taxjar to keep track of my VAT.

  8. ok, hello guys!
    My name is Francesco I’m Italian and I made the decision to learn how to do online commerce on the Italian market and gradually earn a living.
    For me it’s time to act and then I’d like to do a kind of case study in the comments, perhaps the first of its kind, I know that in this blog I can find some incredible material and a ready help … what do you think ?! then, what I have learned so far: our showcase is the listing on amazon that must be the most professional, possible compiled looking at the customer needs with good photos and obviously the key words in the title and description, my mission is to do the best possible listing for that product.
    Find a product that has no difficulty to be shipped, does not need customer service, is present on Amazon with front page competitors who have a decent number of sales and not too many reviews, stay within my budget by calculating all costs also customs.
    Implement the necessary strategies to earn reviews and get on the front page …. ok more or less.
    this is my plan to start: 500 euros budget, so I want to start buying 100 units with a production cost that is between 2.5 and 3 euros, I will estimate better once identified the product, look for a product sold at about 8 or 10 euros and make the first reasoned order on Alibaba. monday I subscribe jungle scout which plan do you recommend? Will you support me? Do you have any advice to give me?
    Updates in the next days

    Ciao and thanks

    1. Hi mate,

      Great to hear you are taking action. Yeah my plan is to cover every aspect that you need to know when you start selling on Amazon on this blog. If you have any questions let me know

  9. Please do a post with more details on PPC. How many keywords are you running in a PPC campaign? How much did it cost you on average per day during this launch?

  10. Great series, enjoying reading each post.

    One question, are you still finding that the reviews from giveaways are sticking?

    As I’d heard that people trying to leave reviews from purchases with a 30%+ discount are not able to.

  11. How much do you typically spend on PPC when launching? And is there a minimum you would suggest? Thank you!

    1. I usually start with a $5-10 daily budget. But you can start with $1 a day if you like

  12. Great resource, thanks. Found you via a Reddit thread in FBA and had a question. You say you have 18 skus, 17 of which are profitable.

    How many skus have you had fail to date?

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