Hey everyone,

I’m stuck in a pretty common seller rut and could really use some hands-on advice.

My Current Situation

I have over 200 listings in my store. I’ve sorted them and focused on my profitable ones, but most of the rest struggle badly:

  • Low-priced items with very high CPC

  • Low-price listings that get no sales

  • Mid-low price points with barely any orders

Most new listings have zero reviews or ratings.

When I run fixed-bid auto campaigns, I get clicks but no conversions. Search terms are relevant, but clicks are scattered. I might get 1–2 sales a week, but ACoS spikes to nearly 200%, so I have to pause and restart campaigns.

I switched to Up & Down bidding for auto ads – same result.

Category traffic is healthy.

My prices are already very low because sales are weak.

Images and A+ are decent.

Listing is properly keyworded.

What should I do next?

My Ad Struggles

For some newer ASINs (7-day data):

  • Almost all sales are ad-driven, zero organic orders

  • Sales come from top of search and product detail pages

  • Most clicks are from other search positions

  • I’m not bidding up for the first page

Should I increase bids for the top of search?

My Strategy & Confusion

I’ve been selling for just over a year, and I still struggle to build truly mature, consistent listings.

Some rank top 10 in subcategories but never hit Best Seller. They’re profitable but completely dependent on constant ad spend.

Assuming I can maintain ratings:

How do I build a complete, sustainable ad structure?

This is what I currently do:

  • When new stock arrives, I launch one auto campaign

  • Sometimes I run manual campaigns for targeted non-big keywords:

    • One fixed-bid campaign

    • One Up & Down campaign with bids increased for top and other search positions

I put the same keywords into multiple campaigns early on to chase AC badges and expand traffic.

But if performance is terrible – ACoS over 80% – should I just turn them off?

Also:

Should I launch broad and phrase match for core big keywords when new inventory arrives?

I see experienced sellers recommending this, but my tests performed horribly. Should I still do it for future launches?

Budget Control Nightmare

I have way too many listings and a very tight budget.

Every morning I start by setting all ad budgets to $1,

then raise them by $1–2 only after they get sales and hit budget.

Is this severely limiting my ad performance?

But if I set higher budgets, some campaigns just burn through spend with clicks and no orders.

I’m starting to doubt if this method even makes sense.

Once a listing hits top 10 and gets organic traffic:

Should I lower ad budget or switch to Down only bidding?