Profit before share.
A share metric is never reported without the profit figure for the same period beside it. Impression share can rise while the account loses money, and a report showing only the share flatters the change.
Method
How an account is taken on, and the rules every change follows after that.
What arrives, and when
The first week is three dated deliverables. After that there is no next phase to wait through: changes go live as you sign them off, and the log moves the day each one does.
Engagements run month to month, or as a 90-day package. The 90 days is how long the method needs to show contribution moving, not how long it takes to start.
01 — Day 1
The account is pulled
The fee report per ASIN, and sixty days of ads and sales — both pulled to the same dates, so they can be read against each other.
02 — Day 3
The numbers
Contribution per order for every advertised SKU: what one order leaves you after the referral fee, fulfilment, tax and what the stock cost, and the highest CPC each SKU can pay for.
03 — Day 7
The diagnosis
The one constraint holding the account back, the evidence for it, and the changes proposed to lift it, each with what it is expected to do.
Then, for as long as we run the account
- The day it is made
Every change, in the log
The log updates when a change goes live, not at the end of the month: what changed, why, what it was expected to do, and what it did. The ones that did not work are in it too.
- Every week
The written report
Contribution per SKU rather than ACoS, against the bid ceiling each SKU is working to, so the question is whether the account made money and not whether a ratio moved.
On every plan
A dashboard, instead of chasing an inbox
Every plan includes a dashboard for your account: one place to see what has been done, what is proposed, and what it is expected to earn.
Access runs for the whole period you have paid for, month to month or the 90-day plan, and for three days after it ends.
- Actions
- Every change as it goes live, not emailed at the end of the month: what changed, why, what it was expected to do and what it did.
- Recommendations
- What is worth doing next on each SKU, and the contribution and bid-ceiling figures the recommendation rests on, so it can be argued with.
- Approvals
- Proposed changes wait for your yes or no on the dashboard. Nothing goes live on an unanswered email.
Rules every change follows
These are not a sequence. They apply to every account, every week, and they are the reason a report from us reads differently from the one you are used to.
A bid has a ceiling with a reason.
The maximum CPC for a SKU is its contribution per order multiplied by the conversion rate of that search term. Bids above it lose money on every order they win. The calculator on this site does that arithmetic.
Two reports, one window.
The advertising bulk file goes back sixty days and no further, while the business report will go back considerably further. Read against mismatched dates, ad spend is divided by traffic it never bought, and every SKU looks cheaper to advertise than it is. Both files are pulled to the same window before a single number is computed.
Fees are pulled, never assumed.
Referral fees are set by category, fulfilment by weight, size tier and channel. Two products at the same price in different categories pay different rates, so each is pulled per ASIN from the fee report.
Word order carries intent.
Negatives are written as ordered phrases. Negating a single word removes good searches along with the bad, because the same word means different things depending on where it sits.
A failed test is reported at full cost.
Gross spend and net contribution are logged separately, so a change that did not work reads as what it cost and what it taught, rather than quietly disappearing from the next report.
Transfer the method, not the conclusion.
What worked on one product is tested again on the next. Every SKU has its own economics, and a conclusion carried across without testing is a guess wearing evidence's clothes.
Where the rules came from
Every one of them was learned on our own Amazon account, usually by getting it wrong first.
The founder of Shelf Pilots runs MeAyurv, an Ayurvedic powder brand on Amazon.in. The rule about reporting profit beside share exists because a bid change there raised top-of-search impression share and the account was worse off for it. That is the kind of result most agencies never show a client.
Start with the diagnosis
The free audit is the first part of day one: what is constraining the account, and the evidence for it.