Once you’ve been selling on Amazon for a while, it’s easy to feel unsure what to focus on next. Should you scale your listings? Expand internationally? Invest more in ads?

In this episode, I help you identify the next best step for your business — based on your goals, capacity, and where you’ll get the biggest return.

We’ll talk through:

• How to decide what you want Amazon to do for your business (sales channel vs brand visibility)
• The importance of optimising existing listings before scaling
• Expanding to new marketplaces (EU and US) — and what to know
• How to add new product lines, bundles, or test virtual bundles (coming soon to the UK)
• When to revisit your ads strategy or your balance between FBA and FBM

I also share real examples from the sellers I’ve worked with — from improving listings to expanding to Germany — and what made each strategy successful.

If you’re planning your next phase on Amazon or looking ahead to 2026, this episode will help you create a clear direction for your business.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Book a Power Hour to plan your 2026 Amazon roadmap

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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.

Hi, and welcome to another episode of.

Bring your product idea to Life. This is going to be another fairly short episode.

You might notice the episodes are getting.

Shorter as we get more into November, and it's because I know that you're going to be super busy and I'm sure you don't have unlimited time to be listening to podcasts at the moment. So I'm going to keep this brief, but also, as always, really informative and practical as well.

And if I do do something, what, well, what will I focus on? Maybe you've been on Amazon for a while and you've kind of just let it run.

You know, you haven't been actively doing anything and you're just thinking, what, what could I do? What should I do to increase my sales? I'm going to give you now a couple of options and things to thinking, think about.

Because I know especially if you've been selling for a while, it's easy to feel a bit stuck. It's easy to feel that there are so many things you could be doing.

It's also EAS on other areas of your business, particularly if those need more of your time and attention. If Amazon's going well and things are ticking over, it's really easy to kind of just let it run in the background.

I personally am Predicting December to be a time for me and my clients of mainly planning, because by December, all of your stock should be in Amazon already if you're using fba. And if you're not, you know you should have all your stock. However you're planning to sell your listing should all be ready.

But let's look ahead because we're almost at the new year. Can't quite believe I'm saying that. So let's talk about some of the things that you could be doing.

And I'll also say that if you are relatively new to Amazon, something to think about here as well is in terms of what you might do next is think about why you are on Amazon in the first place.

And I say this particularly for newer sellers, because when you start on Amazon, I think you have to make a decision as to whether Amazon is going to be a channel you're really looking to grow. Whether you're getting on Amazon because you want to be the first in your category.

Maybe you want to be the first seller of your particular product because you're worried maybe that resellers might start getting on there. Maybe it's because you know that your customer's already looking for you on Amazon, so you want to make sure they can find you.

Or maybe you're using Amazon as a way of reaching new customers.

So, for example, you're using Amazon as a way for customers to discover you, but ultimately you kind of like them to come over and buy on your website at some point. So in terms of what you do, the reasons why you're on Amazon in the first place is something to think about.

So here's a few things that you can think about doing to improve scale, just change up, just see different results on Amazon for next year.

First thing I'll say though, is that before you do anything, whether that's scaling up, whether that's adding new products, whether that's going on new marketplaces, we're going to talk about all of these things. Make sure your current product listings are really well optimized. That always has to be the priority. That's for me, it's always the basis.

And make sure that what you have on Amazon now is as good as it can possibly be. So things you might need to think about are when did you last look at your listing?

Text if you haven't looked at your listing text for a while, you might want to give it a refresh. You might want to do some keyword research and just make sure all the keywords you're using are still the correct ones.

They're still going to drive traffic to your listing. You might want to look at your images and think if they need refresh.

You might want to look at your A content, particularly if you created that a long time ago when the only really option was to use these really old fashioned templates or you had to drop text and images into different boxes. If that's the kind of A content that you've got, perhaps you might want to upgrade your A content.

I've spoken before, the way I really like to do it is to create images and sort of stack them so look really cohesive. You can use your own colours, your own fonts. That can look really, really nice. That's definitely something to consider.

I would also have a look at your brand store. If you don't have a brand store than creating one. Particularly if you have. If you have one product, maybe it's still good to have.

But if you have any more than one product, I definitely think that you need to have a store. It's a great place for people to see all of your products in one go.

You can add some information about you, the brand, whatever it is you want to communicate to people. I think that's definitely something to put on your list if you haven't done already. And with your A content.

Again, comparison tables, if you're selling more than one product, they're a really great way of customers seeing your range. And I've said this before, but please don't use them just to talk about the different colors your product comes in or the different sizes.

Unless of course you only sell one product in different color and sizes. But if you sell a range of products, your comparison table is a really nice way to get people to know what you all the things that you sell.

If you don't have videos on your listing and you have some great videos, that's another thing that you could think about adding. Let's say you're a small business but you don't have the small business badge, I would definitely raise a case and get that.

Let's say you are energy efficient brand and you don't have that listed, I would definitely go and get that badge. So think about the small things you can do to enhance your existing listings before you do anything else.

Once you've done that, some of the other things you could think about are your advertising. So let's say you've been running ads on Amazon for a while, but you haven't maybe seen the results that you want.

If you've been setting and forgetting, by the way, first thing to do is actually review your ads, see how well they're doing, see if you can make any tweaks. You might also want to try some different types of ads.

So if you were wanting to do one thing this year, in fact I spoke about this a few weeks ago, and we're possibly getting too late now, is you might want to add Christmas in Madrid to your listings. You might want to do a Christmas or gifting based ad.

January and February, lots of sellers will turn off their ads. Ads are going to get more expensive as we're recording now because we're going into Black Friday, Cyber Monday, gifting season.

All of that ads are going to get a bit more expensive. They generally get a bit cheaper earlier in the year because lots of people turn them off.

So for you, that could be a good opportunity to try something different, whether that's a sponsored brand ad, whether that's a display ad, whatever that might be. So that's definitely something you could look at. You could also look at your fulfillment.

So for example, if you're currently only offering fbm, you might decide that next year is an opportunity to trial fba, maybe on just one of your best selling products and just see what that does for sales. Equally, it might be that you've been using FBA and you're deciding it doesn't work for you and you think you're going to try, try switching to fbm.

I'm actually doing that work for a client right now.

And they had been selling on fba, but for various reasons, mainly to do with damages, they've decided that they're going to switch to FBM and see how that works out. So that's definitely something else that you can think about.

There might be products that you don't have listed on Amazon yet and maybe you've been considering it, maybe you've been holding back. Adding new product lines can be a really good, nice thing you can do. Maybe you can add some bundles.

I've mentioned virtual bundles a few weeks ago, which is where you can list a Product which is a bundle of existing products you're already selling on Amazon. And Amazon will package them as a bundle and send to customers something they're doing in the US so should be coming to the UK soon.

But it might be that you want to bundle together existing products for amaz, might be that you want to think about offering some kind of deal.

So for example, if you have products that go well together, you might want to offer some sort of deal where you say if you get buy two products you get 5% off, if you buy three, you get 10% off and have that advertised in your listings as a way of encouraging multi buys. So promotions like that can be great for doing that.

I think anything to share with customers that you have more than the one product they happen to be looking at right now is always really, really key. Another thing you might want to think about is expanding to new marketplaces.

So whether that's one of the EU marketplaces or whether that's the us, of course you need to be aware of tax implications, of tariffs, of the VAT implications, depending where you're holding stock. That's something not to decide to do on a whim because there's a lot to consider.

If you are looking to expand to Europe and you're listening and you're selling in the UK now, that's one of the slightly more straightforward options and there are different ways you can do that.

Something to know, actually first of all is that you need to make sure you get your listings translated for the language of the country you're going to set into. Amazon will also translate for you. But how good those translations are, you know, don't know.

But let's say you're going to be selling, you decide actually Germany would be a good market for you.

I have a client who expanded to Germany, which we'll talk about a little bit later when I give you some examples of things that my clients have done this year. And you have a couple of different fulfillment options so you can fulfill your listings in Germany yourself.

So maybe you are going to ship from your own warehouse in the UK to Germany. Maybe you have a warehouse in Germany or in Europe where you can ship to customers in that location.

If you're using fba, you can also use the FBA stock held in the UK to ship to Germany to customers over there. And Amazon will handle all of the customs and things for you. Or you can also send stock into a distribution center in Germany.

So we just use in Germany as an example. However, then there will be VAT implications because you're holding stock in that country. So there's a lot of things to think through.

But selling in a different marketplace can be a great place, can be a great way to expand.

What I would say though, if you're thinking actually that sounds like something I might want to think about, do get some financial advice because I can certainly help you with the practicalities of how to do this on Amazon, but I am not an expert in vat. I'm not an expert in taxes.

You need to work with somebody who is to tell you what you need to register for, what you need to be, what you need to pay, how you'll be paying it, when you'll be paying it. That's all of course, really, really important to think about.

So I hope this has given you a few ideas of things that you might want to put on your plans for next year. I'm going to give you a couple of examples of things that have worked for businesses I've worked for this year.

So I worked with someone over the summer where we updated her product listings. We updated the list text, the A content.

We merged her listings into variations because they were actually standalone despite being variations of the same thing. And we also updated her store. This has seen a really big uptake in sales without any ad spend. There's been no ad spend at all, which has been crazy.

So this her products were already selling. So it wasn't like we've gone from zero to these amazing sales, but sales have certainly increased.

Reasons I think is that obviously the listings have been optimized so they're probably coming up higher in search. I think the new text and images is a bit more compelling.

I think having the variations will have made a difference because previously there were one or two products that were doing. So she has quite a range and there were one or two that were selling really, really well.

But by merging as variations, she's starting to see sales of products or skus that weren't selling before, some not at all and some not well.

And I think it was just a case of visibility that the best selling products were the ones Amazon was showing and particularly because she wasn't running ad. So Amazon in the search results was continuously showing the products that have been proven to sell.

And because the listings weren't merged, customers couldn't see the other options. So I Think that's made a real, real difference. So that's great. I also worked with a brand who expanded to sell their products in Germany.

I'm going to be very honest, there were a couple of teething problems. We initially started out holding stock in the UK and then German orders were fulfilled from there. That didn't actually work so well.

So we decided to actually send stock into a distribution center in Germany. And once we understood the shipping process, because that changed, that actually changed.

Now you can send them to the uk, to a UK fulfillment centre, who then send them on to Germany. And once that process got set up, that's gone really, really well. That marketplace is doing as well as the UK now, which is brilliant.

It's also given us the opportunity to sell into Ireland and because Ireland is a new marketplace that came online earlier this year and you can actually use the stock in Germany to fulfill orders in Ireland as well. So that's been really good.

And plans for next year will be to think about maybe expanding into some of the other European marketplaces, because once you've got stock held in Europe, so, for example, we've got stock in Germany, that stock could be used to fulfill orders in the Netherlands or France or somewhere else as well. So now that big hurdle is over, you know, that big hurdle of getting stock over there, which is a no. Which was a big hurdle.

It does present challenges and it does open up some more options for next year as well. And finally, I've worked with a brand who decided that due to returns on some of their products, they were offering just fba.

They've now decided to offer a mixture of FBA and fbm. So some of the products where he was getting a high number of returns, we've decided to switch to fbm.

And I'll be honest, the product still has returns, but that is a lot easier to manage because they're coming back to him. So that's a really. That's a real positive.

Also, the problem is, if you are have an FBA product that has a high number of returns, Amazon have actually started putting a high returns badge on the product listing page. I don't know if you've seen this, hopefully not on your own products, but you might have been done.

When you're shopping, Amazon actually flag a high number of customers who bought this product. I want to return it, which isn't great.

So because of that we've, you know, had to make this change because obviously if you're doing fbm, Amazon don't know how many people are. Well, I suppose they do know, but they're definitely not flagging it. So it makes a big, big difference.

And I guess that was a change we made to address a specific problem. But it's still something that's had a positive impact, which is why I wanted to share with you.

So those are just some of the things that you might want to think about if you're looking forward to next year and you're thinking, I still want to grow on Amazon, but I'm not sure exactly what, what to do and how to go about it. So those are just some ideas.

If you think there's something I've missed, if there's something you want to ask me about, but you know, you think I haven't covered, you can always get in touch vickiweinberg.com and if you want to have a chat about your, your business, where you are and you know, you're not sure, you're still not sure of all the things that I've spoken about. And of course there are others I haven't covered. If you're still thinking, actually, I don't know how to grow my sales on Amazon.

I'm really not sure what to focus on next year. I just know that I do want to, of course, get in touch with me and we can spend some time together and we can look at this for your particular brand.

Because of course, all the advice I give on here has to be, you know, fairly generic because I'm speaking to everyone. And if you want advice that's, you know, just for you, please do get in touch and we can spend some time together and we can do that.

And I will put a link to my one to one power hours in the show notes.

So thank you so, so much for being here as always, and I will see you again next week for an exciting episode where I'm going to be answering some of the questions I've got asked the most this year so far.

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.