Amazon PPC Guide: Run Your First Profitable Campaign

Amazon PPC Guide: Run Your First Profitable Campaign

Launching your first product on Amazon FBA?
You’ll need more than a great listing—you’ll need visibility. That’s where Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click) comes in.

PPC is how your product gets discovered, ranks on page one, and starts making sales. But it can also be where new sellers lose money—fast—if they treat it like a guessing game.

At Flapen, we help first-time sellers launch with confidence by building PPC strategies that are structured, data-backed, and focused on profitable growth—not just clicks.

This guide walks you through how to set up your first profitable PPC campaign from scratch, with a clear plan for discovering high-converting keywords, tracking results, and scaling what works.

Table of Contents

1. Why Amazon PPC Matters for First-Time Sellers

2. Start with Keyword Research: Use Amazon Opportunity Explorer

3. Set Up Your First Campaign: Auto + Manual

4. Choose a Launch Strategy: Conservative vs. Aggressive

5. Track Performance and Harvest Keywords

6. Optimize Your Campaign Weekly

7. Final Thoughts

1. Why Amazon PPC Matters for First-Time Sellers

When your product is new, it has no:

• Reviews

• Organic rank

• Sales history

Amazon PPC is the tool that fixes all three. Done right, it helps you:

• Drive visibility instantly

• Generate early sales and reviews

• Discover real buyer keywords

• Build rank to drive long-term organic sales

📌 No PPC = No traffic. No traffic = No data. No data = No growth.

That’s why Flapen builds every launch around PPC—from Day 1.

2. Start with Keyword Research

🔍 Use Amazon Opportunity Explorer

Before you spend a dollar on ads, you need to know what customers are searching—and what actually converts.

Amazon’s Opportunity Explorer gives you real-time data on:

• Monthly search volume

• Search conversion rate

• Sales volume by keyword

• Top-clicked ASINs (your competitors)

Here’s how to use it:

• Search by product category

• Filter for keywords with strong sales and 10k+ monthly searches

• Look for terms where the top competitors have fewer than 500 reviews

These are your high-opportunity keywords—use them to build your manual campaigns and track which ones convert.

3. Set Up Your First Campaign: Auto + Manual

🛠 Start with Both—They Work Together

Flapen recommends starting with two campaign types:

Auto Campaign

• Amazon chooses which keywords to target based on your listing

• Great for discovering search terms you may have missed

• Helps generate initial traffic

Manual Campaign

• You select keywords based on your research

• Use Exact match for high-control terms

• Use Phrase and Broad match to test keyword variations

Budget: Start with $20–$30/day per product across both campaigns
Goal: Get traffic, gather data, and start building rank

4. Choose a Launch Strategy

📈 Pick the budget approach that fits your goals

Option 1: Low Bids, Scale Up Gradually

• Start with conservative bids (e.g., $0.50–$0.75)

• Increase bids slightly every day until you get impressions

• Focus on getting the lowest cost-per-click during discovery

Best for: Sellers with leaner budgets who want maximum control

Option 2: Launch Fast, Optimize Fast

• Start with higher bids and a more aggressive daily budget

• Let Amazon collect data faster across a wide set of keywords

• Identify what’s working, then cut what’s not after 5–7 days

Best for: Sellers who want fast ranking and are ready to optimize quickly

5. Track Performance and Harvest Keywords

📊 Keyword Harvesting = Discover, Test, Control

Once your campaigns are running, your auto campaigns will start revealing which keywords actually convert.

Here’s what to do next:

• Run campaigns for 7–10 days

• Download your search term report

• Identify converting keywords

• Transfer them to your manual campaign (Exact match)

• Adjust bids based on performance

This process is called keyword harvesting—and it’s how you go from discovery to profitability.

6. Optimize Your Campaign Weekly

🧠 Small changes, big results

Amazon PPC is not set-and-forget. Every week, you should:

Review:

• Click-through rate (CTR): Is your ad getting attention?

• Conversion rate (CVR): Are clicks turning into sales?

• ACoS: Are your ads profitable?

Adjust:

• Add negative keywords to block poor-performing search terms

• Lower bids on expensive, low-converting keywords

• Raise bids on keywords with strong conversions and low ACoS

• Pause any ad groups or ASIN targets that aren’t working

Frequency: Check your campaigns every 3–5 days during launch.
Tools: Flapen uses Kapoq to monitor real-time profit and ad performance.

Final Thoughts: Profit from Day One—Not Just Clicks

Amazon PPC isn’t just about getting traffic—it’s about making smart decisions with every dollar.

When you:

• Start with strong keyword research

• Run Auto and Manual campaigns together

• Choose the right launch strategy

• Harvest winning keywords

• Optimize weekly

You go from spending blindly… to scaling profitably.

At Flapen, we manage every step of this process for our sellers—from launch to optimization—so they can build real brands, not just products with ads.