Ten thousand dollars wasted! It’s too difficult to launch new products on Amazon

"It's so difficult to launch new products on Amazon this year!" many sellers lamented.

In the context of increasingly fierce competition, many old products rely on price cuts and reduced profits to survive, and the space for new products to survive is imaginable. The traffic of many new products fluctuates, and orders plummet. Some sellers promote them with gritted teeth, but the investment ends up in vain. Currently, Amazon's US, European and Japanese sites are all showing a trend of difficulty in promoting new products. Based on the current situation, the subsequent trend does not seem optimistic.

It’s so hard to launch new products on Amazon this year

Recently, a group of sellers have been stumped by new product launches. They suffer from a lack of traffic for new products and unstable orders. After finally getting a certain amount of orders, they fall directly from a certain height to the bottom, watching a pile of stock with no one interested in buying. Sellers jokingly call this a roller coaster ride for new products.

Many people have the following intuitive feeling: all the links they have put up this year are very turbulent and exhausting. The situation of one seller may represent the current situation of a large number of sellers: none of the new products have been successful, the advertising costs are not enough, the click-through rate is extremely low, and they have tried many ways but still cannot promote them. The specific problems of promoting new products are as follows:

First, the platform suddenly stopped promoting traffic. The new product rating was controlled at 5 stars, and large discounts were always available. Without any operation, there was suddenly no natural traffic.

New product ads are not exposed, and the click-through rate is decreasing every day. Some sellers bid much higher than the recommended price, and the CPC is very high. Sometimes the ads exceed the budget, and sometimes they can't be spent at all, and the ads can't be promoted at all!

A seller wrote in the Zhiwubuyan community: "A new product that was just launched in early May suddenly stopped being promoted on the platform after about two weeks of promotion. It was almost the number one new product, but it suddenly became unpopular." Many peers replied that they had encountered the same situation. One of them said that there was also a new product that performed well in the first two weeks, but the conversion rate and visits were very poor in the third week.

Suffering from the lack of traffic on the site, some sellers will consider doing off-site activities. Even if the off-site effect is fast and can reach BS, if the off-site effect stops, the traffic will continue to drop.

If some peers are too dependent on off-site sales, the fluctuations are relatively large. However, the recent situation with new products seems to have nothing to do with this. Many sellers did not sell new products off-site, but relied entirely on the platform to promote new products, only to find that the traffic suddenly disappeared.

Second, the order volume fluctuates greatly. When many new products are first put on the shelves, they rely on automatic advertising to place orders, but after a while, they stop placing orders. This kind of feedback is not an isolated case. In the case of one seller, the new product sold 30 to 40 sets in the first week, so he quickly prepared a large amount of stock, but after the goods were shipped, there was only one order or zero orders per day.

Another seller pointed out that the orders for new products were like a roller coaster, with 57 orders the day before yesterday and 21 orders yesterday. The advertising conversion rate was half of what it was today. There were also some competitors whose products were selling well, but the order volume was halved, and it dropped by two-thirds in the past two days.

Sellers are facing the same problem: the new product is good at the beginning, but it is not selling well after the restock. At this moment, many people can only bite the bullet and push hard, constantly increase the advertising budget or do off-site promotion, but the money is spent, and the new product still does not improve.

New products cannot be promoted, and there are still stocks in stock. Many peers suffer losses as a result. Some people have lost hundreds of thousands of yuan on new products but are still persisting. Some people have invested hundreds of thousands of yuan in a link, but failed to promote it. Their investment was wasted and they can only rely on old products to maintain their business.

Third, new product launches are facing difficulties on multiple sites. The recent difficulty in launching new products is not only reflected in the US site, but also in the European and Japanese sites.

For example, there is a new product from Europe that has no negative reviews and no ads adjusted. It had a conversion rate of about 20% before, but suddenly stopped converting last week. A watch seller on an Italian site reported: "I'm promoting new products recently, but the ads have been exposed but not converted. After the off-site ads stopped, the orders have been dropping."

According to the seller on the Japanese website, the new product cannot be promoted at all. The product itself is in a red market. More than 20 products were tested in a week, and only 3 orders were made. From the analysis of price and page, there is no big problem with the product. The keywords are all around the 4th page. The picture quality is good. The price is also the low price in the market. No matter how big the discount is, no orders are made. The CPC of the advertisement is more than 100 yen, and there are 166 clicks but no orders are made.

Unfavorable policies, platform traffic is diverted

The current situation where new products are difficult to promote is a headache for many sellers. Some peers believe that this situation is related to the overall market environment and various factors.

First of all, the competition for old products on the Amazon platform has been extremely fierce this year, with price wars everywhere and internal competition escalating. New products are definitely having a hard time. Especially in recent times, the orders of many Amazon sellers have begun to drop sharply, and the traffic and orders of old products are unstable.

Secondly, the traffic of the Amazon platform was diverted. In late May, Walmart, Target, and TikTok Shop offered substantial price cuts for Memorial Day, trying to gain competitive advantages in advance and get a share of Amazon Prime Day. In addition, since the beginning of this year, as Temu entered the European and American markets and seized the minds of consumers with its low-price advantage, many people's attention was attracted, and this platform has repeatedly received news of user growth and traffic explosion.

Finally, some of Amazon’s policies this year do not seem to be friendly to the promotion of new products. For example, the recent crackdown on merging variants. Once the merging variants are caught, the seller’s account is at risk of being suspended, and many people have already been caught. Sellers who merge variants will receive warnings, and it is unknown where the reviews of the new products come from. Some people can’t help but question, “New products dare not report vines, can they only rely on advertising and large discounts?”

However, discounts can also encounter obstacles. This year, Amazon implemented new rules for coupons. In order to use coupons, sellers must not only offer a discount between 5% and 50%, but also have a sales history, and the promotional price should be lower than its "historical selling price" or the lowest price in the near future. Based on this, new products cannot be couponed, and only after one order has been placed can a reference price be obtained, which is not conducive to the promotion of new products and increases the difficulty for sellers to promote new products.

In response to the current difficulty in launching new products, a colleague consulted the Amazon advertising manager, who responded: 1. Check to see if there are any copycats or if any colors and sizes are out of stock; 2. Amazon's new algorithm is online, so there may be some changes; 3. Other sellers have been squeezed out by their high CPCs, so increase bids appropriately; 4. Do not rely on only one delivery method and continue to increase advertising activities.

The difficulty of launching new products on Amazon is affected by various factors. Many sellers are under great pressure to launch new products. Not only do they need good products, but they also need sufficient funds. Even if they have both, they may still need a certain amount of luck. According to the current situation, Temu is growing rapidly, and competitors such as Walmart are cutting prices to grab market share. The shopping craze in the United States is losing momentum. It will only be more difficult to launch new products on the Amazon platform in the future.

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