First customers on Amazon FBA
You buy your first sales. A new listing has no history, so the launch is paid traffic until the traffic pays you. Run three campaigns together: an automatic campaign at a low bid, a manual exact-match campaign on your five to ten best keywords, and a second automatic at normal bids as the discovery engine. Every week, move converting search terms into manual and cut what clicks without buying. Benchmarks: cost per click $1.18-1.22, healthy ACOS 30-32 percent with launches hotter, TACoS settling at 5-15 percent when the launch worked. $1.20 clicks at a 10 percent conversion rate put launch ACOS near 48 percent on a $24.99 product, a deliberate $2.70-a-sale loss while the product buys rank. Cap the launch budget before day one, your inventory cost spent over six to eight weeks. Reviews: two legal lanes only, Vine (up to $200 per parent product) and the request-a-review button on each order. The structure is your launch, inverting the first-ten method.
Pricing on Amazon FBA
Unit economics before you order, or you are gambling. Shortlist three to five factories; one shared note: "Hello, I am launching a private label brand in the US and evaluating suppliers for my first order of [product]. Could you send: your price per unit at 300, 500, and 1,000 units..." Landed cost first: unit price, packaging, freight across units, a duty buffer that is never zero (de minimis ended in May 2025), inspection share. The worked example: $24.99 price, $6.00 landed, $3.75 referral (15 percent), $5.00 fulfillment, $1.00 storage, $4.00 ads, leaving $5.24 a unit, 21 percent net. Return on inventory cash is margin over landed cost, about 87 percent per loop; the lean floor taught here is 60-80 percent, and below it you renegotiate, lighten the product, or kill it. Break-even ACOS is margin before ads divided by price, 37 percent here. Total fees reach 30-50 percent of price; average net margins run 15-20. The calculator is vetting the numbers, the fee stack what the money actually looks like, the logic the pricing method.
Rules on Amazon FBA
The shell: LLC, EIN, business checking, business card, opened in one sitting, every dollar through them. GS1-validated barcodes only; cheap resold UPCs die at listing. Trademark at about $350 per USPTO class, then free Brand Registry; search the name before you sample, file when the product proves itself. The lines that end accounts: never manipulate reviews (incentivized, swaps, friends and family, insert-card offers), never open a second account, respect gated categories, and check performance metrics weekly forever. Suspension is survivable, not preventable: keep inventory records off-Amazon, a supplier you could redirect, separated finances, and appeals written as short, factual plan-of-action letters. Amazon collects sales tax as marketplace facilitator; note economic nexus for a first-quarter accountant talk. The rulebook is account, entity, and the rules inside the legal setup framework.
Money on Amazon FBA
The cash-conversion cycle is the spine. Samples at $50-100 each, a deposit of around 30 percent, two to six weeks of production, ocean freight of about forty days (air runs 5-15 days at three to five times the cost), receiving, a launch month, then Amazon's fourteen-day settlement holding funds seven days after confirmed delivery. Two to three months of cash out before it returns; the first loop runs longer. Inspection runs $100-300 a visit; skipping it is a false economy. The budget rule: split it in thirds, setup, inventory and freight, ads and reserve, and never put your last dollar into an order, because undercapitalization is the meta-failure. One seller documented a potential $50,000 loss on a suspended account, funds reserved and inventory accruing storage fees; about 30 percent of sellers ever clear $50,000 in lifetime profit. The clock is the cash-conversion cycle, the failure modes the ways this business eats people, the wiring the money system.
First hire on Amazon FBA
The course has no first-hire content; past the first loop its three directions are a second product, an owned channel, or the exit. Any hiring decision routes to the first-hire module.
Everything here is condensed from the full course, which adds the product-research gates, the listing build, and the reorder loop.