A free written audit of your listing and your ad account.
Title, images, bullets, A+ content and backend search terms, rebuilt for the query.
Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and display ads, with ACoS and TACoS targets set against your margin.
Price, stock and account health, watched every week.
A monthly report on sessions, conversion and TACoS.
What an Amazon agency does
On Amazon, a product competes on one results page against every other seller in the category. Where it ranks depends on relevance and sales history. Whether it gets the click depends on the main image, the price, the rating and the badge. Whether it converts depends on the listing itself: the images, the bullets, the A+ content, the reviews, and whether you hold the Buy Box. An Amazon agency works on all of those at once, because they feed each other.
Shelfcrest is a full-service Amazon agency for private label and DTC brands selling through Seller Central. That means the listing, the advertising and the account are handled together by one person who can see all three, instead of a listing freelancer, a PPC contractor and a support ticket that never talk to each other.
| Job | What gets worked on | What it moves |
|---|---|---|
| Listing | Title, image stack, bullets, A+ content, backend search terms, variations | Search rank and conversion rate |
| Advertising | Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, display ads, bids, negatives, budgets | Visibility, sales velocity, TACoS |
| Account | Account health, inventory, pricing, Buy Box, catalog errors, reimbursements | Whether the other two can work at all |
Services
Amazon PPC management has its own page with the full scope and the process. The others are named here and get a page of their own as each one is written. Prices are on the pricing page.
Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and display ads, built around your margin instead of a generic ACoS target.
Keyword research, then a listing rewritten so the terms shoppers actually search are in the places Amazon indexes.
Listing, advertising and account run together, with one monthly report and one person accountable for all of it.
Variation families, flat file uploads, suppressed listings and catalog errors fixed and kept clean.
Brand Registry setup, unauthorized sellers, hijacked listings and infringement reports.
Lost, damaged and miscounted inventory found in your reports and claimed back from Amazon.
Restock timing, capacity limits, inbound placement and stranded inventory, planned before they cost you rank.
A Brand Store built around your catalog and your Sponsored Brands traffic.
A second opinion on a launch, a stalled product or an agency you already pay, delivered as a written plan.
Routine Seller Central work handled on a fixed weekly schedule.
Listings, Walmart Connect ads and account setup for brands already working on Amazon.
Who it is for
The free audit
You get a document, not a sales call. It lists what is costing you rank, clicks and margin, in order of how much each one costs, and it is yours to keep whether or not you hire anyone.
| Finding | Why it costs you | Fix | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backend search terms repeat four words already in the title | Those bytes index nothing new; 61 of 249 bytes are wasted | Replace with synonyms and use cases from the search term report | High |
| Exact match campaign has no negatives from the broad campaign | The same search terms are bought twice at two bids | Add converting terms as exact, negate them in broad | High |
| Image 2 repeats the main image on a lifestyle background | A slot that could answer the size question shows nothing new | Size and dimensions graphic in slot 2 | Medium |
How it works
You send an ASIN or a store link. You get the written audit back, with the findings ranked.
From you A link. Nothing else.
If you go ahead, you authorize Shelfcrest as a service provider in Seller Central, with access to only the tools the work needs. You get a plan for the first 90 days: which ASINs, which changes, in which order.
From you User permissions, never your password. Your margins per ASIN.
Keyword map first, then the title, bullets, backend terms and image brief. You approve copy before anything is published.
From you Approval on listing copy, product facts only you know.
Campaigns rebuilt by match type, negatives added, bids set against break-even ACoS. Search terms are reviewed every week.
From you A monthly ad budget you are comfortable with.
Once a month: sessions, conversion rate, ad spend, ACoS, TACoS and organic rank for your main terms, with what changed and why.
From you Half an hour to read it and ask questions.
The numbers we manage to
Every report uses the same definitions, so a number means the same thing in month one and month twelve. The example below is illustrative.
ad spend / ad sales
How much advertising costs per dollar of sales it drove. Judged against your break-even ACoS, never on its own.
ad spend / total sales
Advertising cost against all sales, organic included. Falling TACoS with steady sales means ads are building organic rank.
ad sales / ad spend
The inverse of ACoS. Used when a brand reports the same way across Amazon and other channels.
profit margin before ad spend
The ACoS at which a sale from an ad makes zero profit. Above it, every ad sale loses money.
units ordered / sessions
Amazon's conversion rate, from the Business Reports in Seller Central.
| Ad spend | $1,200 |
|---|---|
| Ad sales | $4,800 |
| Total sales | $16,000 |
| Margin before ad spend | 32 percent |
| Sessions / units ordered | 2,000 / 240 |
Pricing
| Model | How it works | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly retainer | A fixed fee for a defined scope | A scope vague enough that the fee buys less every month |
| Percent of ad spend | A share of what you spend on ads | The agency earns more when you spend more, whether or not it pays off |
| Percent of revenue | A share of total or incremental sales | How the baseline is set, and fees on sales that would have happened anyway |
| Hybrid | A base fee plus a performance share | Two moving parts that make the real monthly cost hard to predict |
Shelfcrest charges a flat monthly fee per plan, with the scope written down and the price published. The fee does not rise with your ad spend.
Keyword map, listing rewrite, backend terms and image brief for your ASINs.
Published at launch
Campaign rebuild, weekly search term work, bids against break-even ACoS, monthly report.
Published at launch
Listing and PPC together, plus account health, inventory and Seller Support cases.
Published at launch
Choosing an agency
The person on the sales call is often not the person in your campaigns. Ask for a name.
Campaigns, reports and listing copy should stay yours if you leave.
The right answer is no. Seller Central has a route for exactly this: you authorize a service provider in User Permissions, tool by tool.
A target without your margin in it is a guess.
Revenue claims without a named brand or a screenshot you can check are marketing.
Number of ASINs, campaigns, listing rewrites and reports per month.
Notice period, handover of campaigns and files, and what happens to anything you prepaid.
A good agency will tell you what is outside its scope and what nobody can promise.
Illustrative listing teardown
An example product: an insulated stainless steel water bottle. Every finding below is a pattern that shows up again and again in public listings.
Amazon now caps titles at 75 characters including spaces, because phones cut long titles short. Brand, product type, key attribute, size: the rest belongs in the bullets.
At thumbnail size the bottle is a thin line. Amazon allows the product to fill most of the frame.
The most common question for a bottle is whether it fits a cup holder. One dimensions graphic answers it.
Five bullets that restate the title give a shopper nothing new. Each one should start with a short header and add a feature or use the title had no room for.
Words already indexed from the title add nothing. The bytes should hold synonyms and uses.
On a phone the text is unreadable. Modules should carry one idea each at a readable size.
If buyers complain the lid leaks, the listing should show how the lid seals.
Guides and tools
Every fee and policy in the guides links to its Amazon source, with the date it was last checked.
Founder-led
Marko Ristić
Founder, Shelfcrest
Shelfcrest takes on a small number of accounts at a time, so each one gets real hours instead of a slot in a queue. There is no account manager between you and the campaigns: the person who writes your audit is the person who changes your bids.
The name comes from the digital shelf, the ecommerce term for everywhere a brand appears on a marketplace, and the crest, the top of it. The job is to get your product there and keep it there.
Marketplaces
Brands based in New Zealand usually sell through amazon.com.au, since Amazon has no New Zealand marketplace.
Questions
An Amazon agency is a company that manages a brand's selling on Amazon: listing optimization, Amazon advertising, and the account itself, including inventory and account health. A full-service Amazon agency handles all three together instead of one piece.
It depends on the pricing model: a flat monthly retainer, a percentage of ad spend, a percentage of revenue, or a hybrid. Compare the total monthly cost at your current ad spend and sales, not the headline number. Shelfcrest publishes a flat monthly price for each plan on the pricing page.
It is worth it when the work the agency does earns more margin than it costs. That is easiest to judge with numbers: your break-even ACoS, your TACoS trend and your conversion rate before and after. The free audit exists so you can judge that before paying anyone.
Advertising changes show up in spend and ACoS within weeks. Organic rank from listing changes and sales history usually takes longer, often a few months, and depends on the category. Anyone promising a date for a ranking is guessing.
No. Amazon controls its search results, and no agency can promise a position. What can be promised is the scope of the work, how often it is done, and an honest report of what changed.
You authorize Shelfcrest as a service provider in Seller Central and confirm access tool by tool, for example advertising and inventory. You never share your password, and you can remove access at any time.
No. Shelfcrest works with brands selling through Seller Central, including brands considering a move from Vendor Central to Seller Central.
A good ACoS is one below your break-even ACoS, which equals your profit margin before ad spend. With a 30 percent margin, an ACoS of 20 percent is profitable and an ACoS of 35 percent loses money on every ad sale. During a launch a brand may choose to run above break-even for a set period to build sales history.
For most of this work, yes. A+ content, Sponsored Brands, Brand Store pages and brand protection tools all require Brand Registry, which requires a registered or pending trademark.
Yes. A launch plan covers keyword research, the listing, images, launch campaigns and review generation through Amazon's own programs, planned before the product goes live.
A written review of your listing, your advertising and your account health, with each finding ranked by what it costs you and a fix for each. It is a document you keep, not a sales call.
No. Shelfcrest is an independent agency and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Amazon.
Written, not a sales call.
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