December is the perfect time to pause and look back at how your Amazon account has really performed in 2025. In this short episode, I walk you through a simple, practical way to review what worked, what didn’t and where your time and energy should go in 2026.

We’ll look at key areas including performance metrics, listing health, customer feedback, ads and fulfilment, all in a way that feels doable in under an hour.

If you’d like extra support making sense of your numbers or improving your listings, an Amazon Listing Audit or Power Hour can give you clarity before the holidays or as a strong start to 2026.

Useful links:

• Amazon listing audit: https://vickiweinberg.com/amazon-account-audit/
• Book a Power hour with me: https://vickiweinberg.com/amazon-training/
• Download my free audit checklist: https://checklist.vickiweinberg.com/audit

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Welcome to the BRING your product idea to Life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started.

Hello and welcome to this week's episode.

Of BRING your product idea to life.

I am so excited to be talking to you today, as always. So December is the perfect time to take stock of how things have gone on Amazon so far this year. I say so far this year.

We're almost at the end of the year, aren't we?

I know it's a really busy, really busy time for you, but hopefully you'll get some downtime, even if it's towards the end of this month, maybe in that little bit between Christmas and New Year where there's not always things going on. So just have a look at how things have been this year and start to make some plans and priorities for next year. I know the feeling, by the way.

I know things are super busy, and for that reason I'm going to be aiming to keep this month's episodes as short as possible. There's also going to be a little bit of change to the episodes from January onwards, so do keep listening to find out more about that.

So I think doing a little review of how you've, how you performed on Amazon this year is really important because it's really easy to just get caught up in the numbers. So what, you know, what are your sales like, what sort of profits are you making?

Which is great, particularly when they're good, and I hope they are good. But what's also important is to look at what's driving them, and I think sometimes we can forget that piece.

But by taking a little look back over the year and seeing what's worked for you, what hasn't worked for you, you can probably make some changes that will actually help to improve your sales for next year as well.

And also, if there were any things that went wrong, anything you tried that didn't work out, sometimes when things are quite far behind us, it can be easy to forget. So have you ever done something like, let's keep an as an example.

So have you ever tried a particular ad, let's say, just as a silly example, and you ran it and it didn't make a lot of money and you closed it down, you forgot about it, what you don't want to do in a year or two, or whenever is to go, oh, do you know what? I'm going to try doing whatever it was you did before, because you can forget that you've done it. Is that only me who does that?

Hopefully hope maybe it is just me, but you sort of see what I mean? It's really important. My point here is to really take track of what you've done this year, what's worked and what hasn't worked.

Because doing this now means that you'll be able to start the new year knowing where to focus your time and money. Because as we know, Amazon can take a lot of time and a lot of money. And the way to get there most efficiently is to have a bit of a plan.

And remember, when you're doing this, don't look, just look at quarter four, look back over the entire year. So did you have a project product that sold really well at Easter?

Well, if so, then you'll need to remember to make sure you've got enough stock for the next Easter. If that's something you're still, you're still selling. Maybe you want to switch ads on before then.

Maybe you want to update your imagery to make it more appropriate for that season. You see this kind of thing, I mean, so. Or did switching on ads before January payday really help you last year?

Did you take a break after Black Friday and then end of, end of January, switch your ads on and things went really well? If so, it could work again for you this year. Of course, things change and things won't always be the same year to year because there's lots of.

What's right word, lots of factors that outside of our control.

However, I do think just having a little look, whether it's just spending half an hour of a cup of tea thinking about what you did this year, that's gone well for you, what's gone not so well. And making some plans is a really good thing to do, as you're probably doing for the rest of your business as well.

So I'm just going to give you a really structure, simple structure of what you can review to make it feel really doable. So the first thing I would suggest looking at is your performance metrics.

So look at your sales, but also look at your conversion rates and your return rates. So in terms of sales, what's selling, what's, you know, what's selling well and what isn't, do certain products sell better at certain times of year?

Do certain products only sell when you're driving ads to them? This is the kind of Thing that's really worth finding out.

For example, if you find out that actually one of your products only sells when you're driving ads to it, that would show that perhaps it could be a bit better optimized to come up in text organically so you don't always need to be driving traffic. Also, look at conversion rates.

If you've got products that are getting good visibility but they're not converting, then that would tell you there might be something in the listing that you need to tweak week to help with that. Also, do you have products that sell better at certain times of year? Like an example I gave you earlier?

Because if so, it might be that, especially if you're using fba, you don't need to have the same level of stock year round, because obviously you're paying for that.

Maybe you just send in more stock for the time when you know that you need it, the time when last year or historically you've been making more sales and for the rest of the year just keep a minimal level of stock just so you don't go out. But remember you're paying for it. And every product you have, every bit of space you take up, obviously it's costing you more money.

So perhaps you can be strategic about that. If you look at what sold well then and you do your forecasting based on that. Other things you can look at are your listing health.

So are your listings still relevant? Do they need any keyword or image updates? When was the last time you updated them?

Remember if you updated your listings for Christmas or like gifting season? So let's say you added some festive imagery or you spoke a bit more about gifting and added different keywords into your listing.

You might want to revert back as soon as the season is over, so make a note to do that now if you haven't already. Another thing I think is great to look at is your customer feedback. So check your reviews and your messages for recurring themes.

Are your listings missing any key information? Are there things customers aren't understanding?

Are you getting a high number of returns on any products or more returns than usual, or just returns in general? And if so, can you work out why that is? Is there something that customers aren't understanding about the product?

And so anything that you could update in your listing to make it a bit easier and reduce that for yourself? Have you looked at your seller feedback recently? So you might not know that you have seller feedback?

It's under the performance section and this is feedback on you as a seller, rather than being product specific.

Something you might not know is if you have negative seller feedback about shipping or storage or the condition your product arrives in and you're using fba, you can actually get that feedback struck through. So it's well worth doing. That feedback is more relevant if you're fulfilling orders yourself because.

Because it's meant to be on the sort of the customer service side, the fulfillment side of your business. However, customers don't understand this and they will often give you a negative feedback.

You know, even if you're using FBA because a parcel comes damaged, obviously you don't want that affecting you. So this could be a really good thing to take a look at and see if there are any issues there. And how about voice of the customer?

So this is also under your performance section.

I don't know if you've looked at it before, but it basically gives you an overview of what customers think of your products beyond just the reviews that they're leaving. So this can also be really useful and give you ideas for things you can do to maybe enhance your listings.

Or perhaps you've got products that your customers love that you're not driving enough traffic to, whether that's organically or paid. And you can take a look at that as well. I would also suggest taking a look at your ads performance.

So which ad campaigns were profitable, which weren't? What products aren't you advertising but could be.

So as I say, have you got some products that maybe convert really well but you're not driving traffic to. So that could be worth doing. Did you try anything new this year?

And if you did, what worked best for you, having a quick review of what you tried, what worked and what didn't is really, really helpful because as we know, ads are always about testing. And if you find something that works, maybe a certain type of ad worked for one product, it might well work for another and vice versa.

If something didn't work for you, then you know, perhaps to leave that as we come into this year. And then the final thing I think it's worth having a look at is your stock and fulfillment. So have you had any issues of FBA fe, for example?

Have you got products that aren't selling as fast as you'd hoped and they're costing you in long term storage and perhaps being overstocked. Have you got products you keep going out of stock on?

So this may be telling you that perhaps you might want to send in either more stock for FBA or maybe you want to turn on FBM option as well, if you can, so that you're never going out of stock and you've got a bit of a backup if the FBA isn't working. This might help with your forecasting for how much stock to send in for next year.

If you are using fbm, particularly if you, if FBM is all you're using. Are all your metrics okay? Is there anything you can do to improve delivery speed? For example, is your trackability rate okay?

Is there anything you can do to make the shipping cheaper? Whether that's for the customer or hopefully for you also for yourself?

All of these things are worth taking a look at as we get into the end of this year. So to summarize, because as I said, I'm keeping these episodes super short because December, it's really busy for all of us.

I'm actually recording this in November. November, also really busy, it turns out. So just to wrap up, the things to focus on are what works and not what, just not just what didn't work.

So I'm not suggesting here that you tear your business apart, your Amazon business, and you say, oh, this was terrible and this didn't work and this listing isn't converting and this one is improving. I mean, it's great to identify things that you might want to change as we go into next year, but also notice the things that do well.

You've likely got products that are selling really well. That's amazing, ads that are performing really well for you. Maybe all your metrics are looking fantastic, your account health is looking great.

All of these are to be celebrated. So please just don't focus on the negatives.

And if there are things you've identified that you could improve, please don't try and fix everything at once. Just choose one or two priorities, work out what's, you know, what's most important to you, and then plan to do those.

Also, hopefully if you've gone through the entire year, you will have identified some things that you want to work on later in the year.

For example, so maybe you've got certain products that sell better at certain times, so you know that actually you can look at improving those listings or sending in more stock or whatever it is at that time of the year. So maybe make a little bit of a plan for yourself of what you're going to do and when you're going to do it.

And hopefully the insights you've gathered from just having a little look, just half an hour of a cup of tea going over your account will really help you plan for next year. I really would encourage you to set aside the time to do that if you can.

If you would like any help reviewing your listings or understanding your results, maybe you've done this and you're like, okay, I can see some problems, but I'm not sure how to fix them. You can book a power hour with me and I'll make it.

I'll put a link set in the show note or you can have an in depth Amazon account audit, which can be a great way to give you some clarity. So I'm going to put both the links both of these in the show notes for this episode.

I also have a free Amazon audit checklist and that also might be good because the pings I've spoken about here have really been specific to this time of year. But the audit checklist is something goes a bit more in depth and can be done at any time.

And this is looking at your the health of your entire account really. So that's something that might find useful.

So as I say, I'm going to link to every all everything I've just mentioned in the show notes for this episode. Really looking forward to speaking to you again next week.

Thank you so much for listening right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the Fullback catalogue and lots of free resources on my website vickyweinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.