u/Necessary_Map_8847

Just wrapped up my second month on FBA and wanted to share some real numbers and get feedback from people who've been at this longer.

Revenue was around $22K across both months combined. TACOS is sitting at 11%, which I know is high. Net margin after FBA fees, PPC, and COGS is around 9%. Not losing money, but not where I want to be.

A couple things I'm trying to figure out. My conversion rate on my main listing is around 8%, and I genuinely don't know if that's acceptable for my category or something I should be fixing aggressively. Also, my return rate jumped to 4% in month two. No idea if that's a red flag or just normal variance.

I came from logistics, so the supply chain side felt comfortable from the start. PPC and listing optimization are still pretty new territory for me.

I have been location independent for about 14 months now and honestly the first few months felt nothing like what I expected going in. I had read every guide, watched every YouTube video, joined every subreddit, and still got blindsided by some pretty basic stuff.

For me the biggest surprises were around the social side of things. I thought I would naturally build community everywhere I went but the reality of constantly being the new person in the room gets exhausting in a way that is hard to explain until you live it. The tax situation across multiple countries is also genuinely more complicated than most content creators make it sound.

I also underestimated how much time I would spend on logistics. Finding good accommodation, reliable wifi, figuring out banking, managing time zones with clients. It adds up fast and can eat into your actual working hours if you are not careful.

Curious what caught you off guard after the honeymoon phase wore off. Whether you are six months in or five years in, what do you wish someone had told you before you started. Looking for the honest version, not the highlight reel. Drop your real experience below.

i finally committed to prepping a full week of meals and it went better than i expected, but i also ran into a couple of problems i didn't think about beforehand

the biggest one was texture. by the middle of the week my vegetables had gone soft and the rice wasn't nearly as good as it was on the first day. i also realized how quickly eating the exact same flavors every day gets old, even if i still liked the meal itself

the one thing that helped was making a couple of different sauces and adding them later instead of mixing everything together from the start. it made the same ingredients feel like completely different meals

for those of you who've been meal prepping for a while, what little tricks have made the biggest difference? how do you keep meals tasting fresh through the end of the week without spending twice as much time cooking?

Just finished my second month on Amazon FBA and wanted to share where things stand and get some honest feedback from people further along than me.

Combined revenue across both months came in around $22K, TACOS hovering around 11%, and net margin sitting somewhere in the 89% range after FBA fees, PPC spend, and COGS. Tighter than I'd like, but the product is in home goods, reasonably competitive, not completely saturated.

My main question is which metrics actually matter most during the early launch phase versus what I should be watching once the listing stabilizes. Right now I'm tracking TACOS, conversion rate, sessions, and BSR pretty closely. What I keep going back and forth on is whether to stay aggressive on PPC to push rank even if it compresses margins short term, or pull back and protect profitability.

Also curious how others have handled review growth. I enrolled in Vine and have 11 reviews so far, but I'm wondering whether that's enough to lean on or if I should just let sales velocity carry things from here.

Would love to hear from anyone who launched in a competitive category and how their numbers looked at this stage. Was there a point where things just clicked and the listing started working on its own?