The Systems Behind Predictable Amazon Sales And Margin with Jon Klein

Amazon can make your sales chart look healthy while your bank account tells a different story. We sit down with John Klein, CEO and lead Amazon strategist at Online Brand Growth, to get brutally practical about what it takes to scale profitably on Amazon without relying on hype, hacks, or endless ad spend. 

We dig into what separates strong Amazon brands from the ones that slowly fade: building demand beyond Amazon through omnichannel marketing, keeping a steady cadence of meaningful new product launches, and measuring the few metrics that actually move the needle. John explains why sessions and conversion rate are the early signals, how buy box loss and unauthorized resellers quietly drain revenue, and why stockouts and compliance downtime are margin killers you have to design systems around. We also talk about using business intelligence tools to see true SKU-by-SKU profitability, plus quick audit wins like reimbursements Amazon may owe you and inventory age management that avoids expensive storage and low-inventory penalties. 

On the paid side, we break down a lifecycle approach to Amazon PPC that keeps you from living on a breakeven treadmill. John shares the logic behind a healthier organic-to-paid mix, how Search Query Performance data guides smarter keyword decisions, and TACoS benchmarks that help you protect profit as you grow. We close with where AI is already useful in modern e-commerce operations, from research and listing optimization to reporting and automated account health checks. 

If you want a cleaner, more predictable path to Amazon growth, subscribe, share this with a seller friend, and leave a review so more operators can find it. What’s the one Amazon metric you’re going to start tracking weekly?

How to connect with Jon?
Website: https://www.onlinebrandgrowth.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@onlinebrandgrowthYT

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onlinebrandgrowth/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Online-Brand-Growth/61579553361931/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-klein-5489724b/

Ready to scale your Amazon business? Click here to book a strategy call.  https://calendly.com/firingtheman/amazon

Transcript

Welcome And What You’ll Learn

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Welcome everyone to the Firing the Man podcast, a joke for anyone who wants to be their own boss. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive industry in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs, David Schomer and Ken Wilson.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Welcome to the Firing Demand Podcast, the show for entrepreneurs and business builders ready to scale beyond the hustle and step into ownership that actually grows with systems. I'm your host, David Shomer, and today's guest is someone who lives in the trenches of one of the most competitive marketplaces in the world, Amazon. Joining us today is John Klein, a growth consultant and CEO and lead Amazon strategist at online brand growth, where he helps brands and manufacturers increase sales and profitability through a systematic data-driven approach to predictable Amazon growth. John and his team support partner brands generating over$30 million in annual revenue. And they're constantly testing new strategies to stay ahead, both on and off the marketplace. John also brings deep experience in customer acquisition and retention across multiple channels, including paid search, SEO, influencer and affiliate marketing, social media, email marketing, and display advertising, making him the kind of strategist who understands the full ecosystem of modern e-commerce. But what makes John stand out is his mission-driven approach. He genuinely enjoys brand owners, helping brand owners win, and he's known for giving actionable advice without the usual fluff or sales pitch. In today's episode, we're diving into what it really takes to scale profitably on Amazon, the systems behind sustainable brand growth, and how operators can build an edge in a marketplace that keeps getting more competitive. Welcome to the show, John.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Thanks for having me on, David. Super excited to chat with you today.

John’s Path From Finance To Amazon

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Absolutely, absolutely. So to start things off, can you share with our audience a little bit about you and your background?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah. So I um started off my career in finance. Um I left uh the finance industry around a little after 2008, the you know, financial crisis, everything like that, and and really wanted to try my hand at entrepreneurship. Um I got right into digital marketing. I started um kind of on the affiliate side, learning, you know, customer acquisition, retention, um, sort of the nuts and bolts of um, you know, how to sell online, and then had the opportunity in 2015 to launch my own brand on Amazon. Um backtracking a little bit, we we met a uh a world-renowned chemist. Um and uh my my dad was a dentist. We were trying to make an oral rinse um that was specific to his technology, ended up pivoting into skincare, uh launched our brand, which is called Neutralize, which we still uh run today. It's a seven-figure brand. Um, and through the process of like um trying and failing uh at you know growing my own brand and then succeeding when we came over to Amazon in 2015, um, you know, just really learned uh what worked on Amazon, right? So fast forward to 2019, um started doing a little bit consulting, just kind of born out of demand, um other other people asking for you know help uh growing their businesses on Amazon, um, had some you know interesting consulting experiences, some wins, some losses. Um, and for the past three years, we've evolved into a full-scale um uh agency. So we manage 30 million a year in um in total revenue on Amazon. We have 12 partner brands, and we work within the Amazon accounts of those partner brands to help them grow um their businesses in terms of sales and profitability.

What Separates Winners From Faders

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Well, very nice. Very nice. That's an awesome background and really looking into diving into some of these topics. Now, through managing as many brands as you do, you probably have a really good perspective on what are the good brands doing that help them be successful on Amazon? And what are, or I better said, what what separates a well-operating Amazon brand versus one that's destined to fail?

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah, so I'd I'd say a couple different things. You know, what makes uh you know a real brand is you know one that's not generally not relying totally on Amazon. They are um consistently uh you know pushing in in retail, e-commerce, uh, you know, with TikTok, Facebook, they have another channel um at least that is that is working for them and that they're creating visibility in. Um and the other component I would say is new product launches, right? Um you know, consistently releasing new products that are that are adding value to the marketplace that are not Me Too products, um, right? And when you're doing those two things um, you know, together, a lot of magic happens. We do have you know some clients who are Amazon only that that have success in spite of not being omnichannel. Um however, they're really good at you know identifying new products to release, um, you know, creating them with something special and and and rolling them out. So I'd say that those are like the two main components. And then the other secret sauce is like passion, right? Yeah, you see some some brand owners really have a lot of passion behind what they do, they make content, you can you can feel it. Um, and so I think that that's like the magical driving force behind a lot of this.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

So one of the things that uh when I was prepping for this, uh I was doing a little research on you and your company, and and one thing that stood out was the data-driven process. And as a retired CPA, I really like that. My brain is organized into rows and columns, and and uh I I really like when possible to make data-driven approaches. And so what are some things, and if you maybe could sprinkle in some examples of of what your data-driven approach looks like and and how you're helping your brain succeed on Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Yeah, absolutely. So I I was taught by my early mentors if if it can't be measured, it can't be grown, right? So I think you know, measurement and and uh you know having a good handle on business intelligence is absolutely essential if you want to grow an e-commerce business. Um, so for Amazon, we use um third-party tools for business intelligence. We love um sellerize, seller board, and um those you know, pull in from Amazon's API because Amazon does a really poor job of um, you know, uh helping you determine if you're profitable, right? They're really good at showing you the top line uh revenue, but they don't help you do a good job to determine uh profitability, which is why a lot of sellers don't make money. Um and even you know, successful uh brands and manufacturers we work with, they may have a vast product catalog and be surprised that they're losing money on certain um skews or certain uh parts of their catalog. Um so the the metrics that we kind of obsess over are you know, obviously skew by skew uh profitability. Um the the two biggest metrics that that uh come into that are gonna be um uh sessions, which is visibility, page views, um, and conversion rate, right? Those are kind of like the early indicators. Um you could also look on the PPC side at clicks as clicks and impressions as leading indicators of those. Um another one that's really important on Amazon is the buy box. Um, a lot of brands will have, especially as you become omnichannel, you'll have um unauthorized resellers and people kind of jumping onto your listing, um, uh eating a piece of your pizza pie. Um so that's another really important metric to look at. Um and then overall downtime, like out of stocks, are an absolute killer. Um, or if your products go down on Amazon for some kind of compliance reason, which happens all the time. So essentially you you want to be in stock all the time with 100% buy box, with your listing uh, you know, uh having good visibility and conversion, and when all those things are working in unison, then um then things are good. Okay.

Breaking Plateaus With Smarter Niches

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Okay. What would be your advice to uh people that have been selling on Amazon for a while, say you know, three, five, seven years and feel like they've hit a plateau. What are some things that that they should look to do to to break through that plateau and take to the next level of growth?

Product Strategy For 2026

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Um, are we talking about private label brand owners? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Um, so for private label brand owners, I would say like you really need to get ahead of markets, right? Amazon has become a really saturated place. And if you try to launch a product that is in a niche where there are dozens of competitors that are either are entrenched with you know thousands of five-star reviews, or um you're dealing with competition directly out of China and trying to compete with manufacturers who have a better cost structure than you. Um, those are you know really big challenges and and you know, generally killers. Um and even if your product is a little better, um, it's it's gonna be really, really hard to enter those niches. Um so we try to educate our clients to use Amazon's product opportunity explorer um to find up-and-coming niches, uh, niches that have uh maybe increased in um search volume in the past 90 days. Um, you know, being mindful of seasonality and and you know, not um going crazy when you're looking at it in January and looking at all the stuff that was selling in Q4. Um but when you find things that are kind of on the rise and you could kind of hop on the on the wave early with an innovative product, um, that's gonna be where you know the magic really happens.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

Okay. Okay. Let's let's go down that path of of launching new products and and sourcing new products. Um when I started on Amazon, I took a bunch of courses, and it seemed like a lot of people would say, find a product on Alibaba. It's under 20, you can sell for under$20 that fits in a backpack. It's easy to ship. Um and what I've found is from products that I'm personally selling, um, is those tend to be very competitive markets, just generally speaking. And by the time the referral fee, the FBA fee, your say 10 or 15% tacos for your ads, um it it eats up a lot of your profits. And so what would be maybe it's the size, maybe it's the price point, but if people are looking to launch products in 2026 and beyond, uh where do you see the big opportunities?

Supplier Moves That Reduce Risk

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Yeah, so I would say that you generally want to sell products that are 30 bucks and up uh in today's day and age rather than 20 bucks and lower because that leaves more room for margin. I mean, you can you can you know certainly do well with something at 25 or even the low the low 20s, but getting much below 20 becomes a real challenge uh you know for the reason that you said with all the fees and stuff. Um another thing to be really careful of is um oversized products. Um so we recommend with oversized products that you do uh fulfilled by merchant because um FBA fulfilled by Amazon, when you're um looking at oversized products, it's generally um you know adds too much fees um in order to be worth it. There are exceptions, um, but just as a general. Um and then yeah, just as you said it, like when there's one prevailing methodology, everybody is sort of coming to the same conclusion and selling the same uh products, right? So that's something to kind of avoid. Um and then, you know, China has just become such a behemoth, especially with um the rise of AI. You know, we used to have uh a bit of a moat as far as being better marketers than them, but I don't think that really exists as as much anymore. Um and they all know about Amazon, and Amazon is courting them, and so um they're just coming in and they're they're swallowing whole categories. So if I was launching a new brand today, um I would avoid something out of China unless it's very, very um uh protectable, right? Um, you know, you uh and there's a big barrier to entry. Maybe you have a unique mold that's expensive, and and uh, you know, it might be uh you know, a Chinese manufacturer may not want to to you know to do that. Um but yeah, in in general, like those are all things that are gonna be challenges. Um or or competing in markets against against really big brands that have these tremendous advertising budgets, right? That's another kind of um you know thing that could that could make it hard.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Yeah. Um no, that that makes that makes sense. And and the competition from China has been it's something I personally have run into recently. I had a supplier who I thought I had a great relationship with. Um and they ended up competing against me under a a new name. And um I it seems like it's tough because if from a dollars and cent standpoint, um oftentimes sourcing from China or abroad and ship you know, shipping it overseas will be cheaper than doing it in the US. Uh however you run into those those issues. And so um what would be, you know, in terms of finding suppliers uh for your products? Any pro tips there?

PPC As A Four Phase System

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Yeah, um I would you know recommend if you if you're sourcing abroad, working with a sourcing agent um that uh you know is you have to avoid these trading companies, which are essentially uh middlemen, right? It could be good maybe for your first order, but you know, long term you want to be with a manufacturer, not a middleman in China, um if you're going China. Um, you know, same is is is true in you know other geographies, right? I mean, I I think right now is an you know the world's a big place. Um and there's a lot of manufacturing in in in you know different places that's up and coming. So I think there's you know big opportunities to source, you know, from from Europe, um to source from South America, um, to source in in places where you know people aren't aren't necessarily looking um and find yeah, find up and coming products in in those geographies. Um in the US it's hard. Um it's um it's in the US uh you know I I don't you can you can find a manufacturer's rep um but generally you're on it on uh on your own in the US. Um but yeah, that's that's you know generally what I would do is to you know try to find a a sourcing agent to really minimize mistakes.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Okay. Okay. No, that's that's really helpful and and good advice. And I I fully agree on on looking at places outside of China. Um I recently have had some really good luck in Mexico, um, Taiwan. Uh I think China does a great job of making themselves available for outreach. Alibaba is, you know, uh madeinchina.com. I mean, there's a lot of examples of of these platforms that put US buyers uh in front of Chinese factories. And uh it, you know, I found like my Mexico contact took a little bit more legwork, but they make outstanding products and uh from uh fulfillment time, um, we're all in North America. And so uh, you know, getting products here is a heck of a lot faster than putting them on a boat in Shenzhen and waiting 45 days and then things getting hung up in port. And so uh yeah, I I think that's really, really good advice. So um let's let's chat PPC. So I when I get my credit card statement every month, I look at what I spend on PPC and I'm always kind of bummed out. Uh I'm paying what for keywords. Um and and so uh but it it seems to be a pay-to-play platform, just you know, something that you have to do if you want to sell on Amazon. And so what uh what's working in PPC uh in 2026?

TACoS Targets And Breakeven Traps

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Yeah, so you know, I'll speak about PPC from a high level. I don't you know directly uh get you know hands-on with um with management of campaigns anymore, um, but I think it's it's most useful to think about it from a high level. Um so you know, pay-per-click, you don't want to be totally reliant on pay-per-click. If you're um if you're a really healthy Amazon business, I would say is um around 70% organic or 60% organic, 30 or 40% pay-per-click. Um it can it can be the inverse for a lot of um D2C brands who have higher price points um and have another successful channel. And so when they come over to Amazon, they want to keep the you know the prices in line with D2C. Um so that you know, you're if you're not price competitive, you're not gonna be able to achieve that sort of golden ratio that I mentioned earlier. Um so that's one thing that I always like look at um is is kind of like that ratio. Um another thing that we sort of believe in is viewing PTC in a life cycle. So you have different phases. You have your launch phase where you're investing to you know build relevance around your core keywords. Um, and you know, the KPIs are essentially you want to uh rank organically and you want to increase sales. And as long as you're seeing organic ranks increasing and sales increasing, then that's good. You're meeting the KPIs. Once those kind of top out, we bring it into our phase two, which is trimming. Um, we re-optimize it based on looking at the SQP data, the search query performance data, which tells you um your conversion rate on keywords relative to the market. Um, Amazon's ranking is all about conversion rate. So if you outconvert your competitors on a given search term, you should be ranking and you should be pushing harder on those keywords. So we'll, you know, when we initially optimize the listing, we're using um, you know, we're we're attempting to seed it with the most relevant keywords based on our research. But when you know you have a little bit of time in the market, now the the second time around, when you re-optimize it, you're doing it with real market data based on what you're out converting on. So we'll we'll reseed the listing with the right keywords, um, launch some new campaigns, and this is moving into phase three, where we um, you know, go after those keywords where we're out converting the market, give up on the keywords that you're not. And then, you know, phase four is cash cow. Phase four is like, all right, this thing has done everything. It's it's it's ranking for everything that it's gonna rank for. It's time to pull it back and get it to you know the optimal um, you know, kind of profit level. Um, and there's no need to continue to push. That's why there's like certain um softwares um out there that that don't work in these phases and they just continue to push no matter what. Um and you know, we don't we don't like those softwares. The other um thing that I would kind of point out is you don't really need to advertise every single product in your catalog. If you have uh you know a hundred products, um you may only be advertising your uh your heroes, the top 10 or 15% of your catalog, and then the rest of them are back end products that people you know you know buy and they don't really work with PPC. Or maybe that number is you know as high as 30% you advertise or 50% you advertise. But there are some products where it's okay to you know give up on PPC. PPC is not really working for this product. Um, it's a uh uh you know a small seller and it just is gonna be what it's gonna be profitably instead of continuing, you know, banging your head against the wall and losing money on it.

Using AI For Research And Ops

SPEAKER_02 24:15

Yeah. What what in a I'm sure the correct answer to this is it depends on the products, but uh just generally speaking, looking at tacos, which uh for our listeners would be your ad spend divided by your revenue, for a healthy established Amazon brand, what would you expect a healthy tacos to be?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Super healthy, eight to twelve, uh still healthy, fifteen to eighteen, anything above that is starting to get a little less than ideal. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Okay. Um that makes yeah. I that makes sense. That that makes sense, and uh, and I would tend to agree with that. It seems like there's a lot of Amazon sellers that sell at breakeven and they're kind of like a hamster running on a wheel. And uh it seems like PPC tends to sometimes create that scenario. What do you think about that?

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Yeah, a hundred percent. Uh I think a lot of people just do it because they feel like they're supposed to do it, they're they're not really tuned into their data. Um, and so yeah, I I totally agree. Or maybe they're there a uh you know a Chinese seller that is uh doing a Taobao strategy and is just willing to break even for five years to eat your lunch, right? So that's another uh possibility.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk AI. AI is a hot topic right now, and it seems to be changing by the day. What are some things that you're using AI for in your business and and what kind of results are you getting?

Quick Wins During An Amazon Audit

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yeah, so I would say um it's it's been really helpful for you know market research, um, you know, listing optimization, um, really good for idea generation around um imagery. Well uh while it's not uh totally a great designer yet, we still have um you know graphic designers today. Um you know, uh reporting um has been really big for us in the agency and just pulling data in in a really clean and uh easy to understand way. Um so I'd say that's that's probably my favorite so far. Um you know, and then just I would say project-based things, um, you know, like we said, new new uh product development, um, it could be helpful for. Um and then it's getting to the point where you know we're we're deploying AI agents with um, you know, using Claude code and co-work that are replacing a lot of the functionalities of our Filipino uh-based virtual assistants, right? Um just things that they would check on a day-to-day basis, like account health checks, um, you know, making sure nothing's wrong. Um, you know, things that are kind of like repeatable and and robotic. Um we're you know, building out agents that kind of do those things. Um but we don't yet have uh a complete role that it's totally replaced yet.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

Okay. Okay. Yeah, that that that makes sense. And it's interesting the we're starting to see the changing of workforce. Um where, you know, that was kind of the scare was what, you know, is AI gonna take our jobs? And and I would say six months ago, my opinion on it was no, it's gonna be like putting a rocket on your back, and you're gonna be able to be incredibly, you know, a lot more efficient. Um and the quantity of work that you're gonna be able to get done in an eight-hour shift is is gonna exponentially grow. Um as it continues, we're uh I've noticed that in my own business where yes, the tasks go a lot faster. Uh, you know, an account uh health check may have been 30 to 60 minutes, and and now it can be done in five. And uh so you're looking for more projects for those people, but yeah, absolutely. Um when you're looking at uh a brand, um, say doing an audit on a brand, what are some uh things that you tend to notice um that will result in quick wins for for a brand?

Who Online Brand Growth Works With

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah, well, uh uh one of the you know first things we look at is are there any reimbursements available or is there any money that Amazon owes them? That could be an easy conversation during an audit if we find money for them. Um sellerize, again, is a great tool for that. Um another thing is the skew by skew profitability that I mentioned. A lot of um you'd be surprised how many brand owners and manufacturers are um uh shocked to hear that some of their products are losing money on Amazon for one reason or another. Uh we look at inventory age, which is you know, are you doing a we we try to you know keep inventory levels um ideally between like uh you know 60 to 120 days because once you go past 180 days, you're paying long-term storage fees. Under 30 days, um, you're you're paying low inventory fees, and then of course stockouts are bad. So um, you know, looking at the inventory age, and then kind of the other things we're talking about. What, you know, are is their ratio healthy of organic to paid, and then you know, are the PPC campaigns structured proper uh properly? Are the listings good? Um is kind of an obvious one, right? I mean, it's like you're at the end of the day, you're running a race and your car is your listing. Um so if you're in a slow car, then you're not gonna be able to win the race, regardless of if you do the other things right. Um yeah, I'd say that those are you know generally the things that we're that we're looking at.

Fire Round And Founder Mindset

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Okay, okay. That makes sense. All right. Well, can you tell us a little bit more about online brand growth and what type of clients you work with?

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Yeah, so we work with uh brands and manufacturers, we don't work with um uh Amazon resellers. Um and we ideally it's a brand that's doing at least a half million on the platform, but we do work with startups if they have a track record of um success in another channel, whether it be e-commerce or retail, right? Because then there's kind of proof of concept that when you come over to Amazon, um it it could work, and they're uh hopefully some you know branded search there that could that could help coming from those other channels. Um and then you know, we really want to work with um clients who are who are um you know involved in their e-commerce business. It's not a you know, not a side project, they're committed, um, they're willing to do what's necessary to to execute. Um and you know, just just have good communication because I think if the communication kind of breaks down with any agency and the expectations are not clear on either side, that's when things can you know go really.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

All right, John, uh, we've got four questions at the end of every show that we ask every guest. Uh call it the fire round. Are you ready? Yeah, let's do it. All right. What's your favorite book?

How To Connect With John

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Um, Who Not How by Dan Sullivan? Great one. That's a great one. What are your hobbies? Um I like uh scuba diving, um uh watching sports, um long walks on the beach.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

Very nice, very nice. What is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man?

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Um I do not miss uh having to be on on somebody else's time and um yeah, missing my kids' soccer games and and everything like that.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Yeah, agree, agree. And final question what do you think sets apart successful e-commerce entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Yeah, I think that a big one is never get started. You know, you have to be willing to look stupid. Um, you have to be willing to fail, um, and you have to be um relentlessly hopeful um because you will probably have to pivot several times. Um but if you have you know continued hope and continued drive, you'll you'll find something that works.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

Very good. Very good. Now, John, if people are interested in getting in touch with you, uh what's the best way to do that?

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Uh you could come to our website, onlinebrandgrowth.com. Um we do a free strategy session for anyone. Um, you know, whether we're a good fit to work together or not, I'm happy to help out. Um you could also find me on X, John Midas1, um and LinkedIn, John.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Outstanding. Outstanding. I'll post links to all that in the show notes. John, thank you so much for your time today and looking forward to staying in touch.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Yeah, likewise, David. Really enjoyed our conversation and uh thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Absolutely.