"Must money be thrown around to launch new products? To what extent do we need to burn money for natural ranking?" — When a seller from Shenzhen, who works part-time on Amazon, raised this set of questions in the "Speak Freely" community, he didn't just touch on one person's predicament, but the common nerve of an entire layer of "part-time/small funds/no resource advantage" sellers.

After practicing for two months, the most glaring number on the books is ACOS 126%

The poster said that he only started in February this year. He first "practiced" with two 3C electronic products: after FBA to the warehouse, each sent out 10 Vines, and collected 7-8 reviews (basically five stars) respectively. Then he turned on automatic + manual broad, and from 0.2, he kept increasing the bid to 0.6 before seeing exposure. He continued to raise the manual main word to about $1, "not even enough for advertising fees". By the time he posted the data, the total cost was about $233, sales were about $184, ACOS was about 126.8%; overall CTR was about 0.22%, and ad conversion rate fell to about 4%; nearly 175 search terms burned more than two hundred dollars but zero output, and the real orders accounted for only a very few. The price is benchmarked against the competitor's $23, the other party's monthly sales are about 1K, while his volume mainly comes from advertising, and natural orders are few. So he asked the simplest and heaviest question: "Is it still necessary to continue with these two products?"

Source: Speak Freely

Common response: Don't rush to discuss "whether to hold on", first answer "is this style worth holding on"

The reason why this post circulates repeatedly in the seller circle is that it lays out all the pits that many newcomers have stepped into at once: bidding - exposure - click - conversion, that funnel, leaking at every level.

The responses didn't stop at "chicken soup to discourage", but broke down the problem into an operable judgment framework:

• First, see if the traffic is accurate: A large amount of exposure/clicks are eaten by irrelevant big words, you must do a search term report, do negation, and concentrate your budget on a few highly relevant words or long-tail words, instead of continuing to use the broad group to "cast a wide net".

• Then see if the page and price can undertake: The base of comments is small, but the price is aligned with strong competitors, the conversion rate is naturally at a disadvantage; some people directly say "competitor's $23 doesn't mean you can sell $23", it is suggested to use price/small discount to first cash in sales and signals, then do addition.

• Finally, make an "affordable stop loss line": For small fund individual sellers, the most dangerous thing is not to give up a style, but the serial set of "test style barely passable → prepare large goods → can't push → inventory + advertising fee sink together"; a more realistic path is to run the smallest closed loop with a small budget, don't use the imagined "give it another shot" to replace cost accounting.

Old sellers also speak very directly: Amazon has long been "not picking up money by launching products"; CPC going up, category infighting, the pressure of inventory and warehousing fees, make the equation of "burning advertising = natural position will inevitably rise" often not hold, especially for standard products/3C this kind of battlefield that needs both conversion and comment thickness to snowball.

Why it can resonate: What everyone empathizes with is not "losing two hundred dollars", but the uncertainty of "am I promoting products, or buying exposure"

The value of this post lies not in giving standard answers, but in tearing open the three things that beginners are most likely to deceive themselves: Traffic ≠ Effective Traffic, Exposure ≠ Undertakable Exposure, A Few Orders from Advertising ≠ Link Running Smoothly. For the platform, advertising is certainly important; but for sellers, what's more critical is - every dollar you spend, is it accumulating data for a "replicable system", or simply renewing anxiety.

As the subtext that was repeatedly verified in the responses: Launching new products does indeed require money, but it can't only have "throwing money" as the only strategy. When the natural position is long overdue, ACOS has been breaking a hundred for a long time, what should be asked more is not "whether to add budget again", but "is this set of matching relationships (product/price/page/keyword/bidding structure) worth continuing to invest in".

The above content is based on the relevant posts and public response discussions in the "Speak Freely" community, presented only from the perspective of industry exchange, and does not constitute operational advice.