Should I hire an Amazon consultant or agency?

For execution — account setup, listings, advertising, supplier negotiation, catalogue operations — a good consultant is worth paying for. What they should not be asked to decide is whether the product is worth launching at all, because an honest answer to that question can cost them the contract.

What should I know before briefing an Amazon agency?

Whether the product clears its own fees in your category and marketplace, whether the price sits in a fee dead zone, how hard the cash works over a year, what advertising cost the product can carry, how far the price can fall, whether it suits 3P seller FBA or 1P vendor, and what exiting the stock would cost.

Does knowing the numbers first make an agency engagement cheaper?

It makes it better scoped. Arriving with the go/no-go settled means you are buying execution rather than paying for discovery, and the economics set the scope rather than a proposal doing it.

Before you hire a consultant or an agency

Never ask the person who will build it whether it should be built.

This is not an argument against consultants. It is an argument about which question you are entitled to ask them — and one of them is structurally unfair, however honest they are.

The conflict is structural, not personal

A consultant or an agency is paid to execute: to set up the account, build the listings, run the advertising, manage the channel. That is the service, and good ones are worth every euro of it.

But “should I do this at all?” is the one question whose honest answer can be “no, and therefore you do not need me.” You are asking someone to argue themselves out of a contract. Most will answer honestly. It is still not a fair question to put to them, and it is not a fair position to put them in.

That includes the people behind this tool. Consulting is part of what we do — it says so on our About page — which is precisely why we built something that answers the go/no-go without us in the room.

What to settle first, and what to buy afterwards

Settle this before the conversation

Does the product clear its own fees in this category and this marketplace?
Is the price sitting inside a band where Amazon’s fee structure punishes it?
How hard does the cash work over a year, at this cost and this stock level?
What advertising cost can it actually carry at launch?
How far can the price fall before it stops working?
Is this a 3P seller FBA product or a 1P vendor product?
If it fails, what does it cost to get the stock back out?

All seven are arithmetic against published tables. None of them needs an opinion, and none needs an agency.

Now buy the expertise

Account setup, brand registry and the compliance minefield
Listing copy, imagery and the things that actually convert
Advertising strategy, structure and ongoing management
Supplier negotiation and terms
Catalogue and inventory operations at scale
Vendor negotiations if you go the 1P vendor route

This is the work worth paying for, and none of it is what a fee table can tell you.

It makes you a better client, not a cheaper one

You brief on evidence

“This product clears at $X per unit in Germany but fails on price structure in France” is a brief. “I want to sell on Amazon” is a discovery project you pay for.

You can price the work

Knowing the contribution per unit before you start tells you what the launch can actually afford in fees and advertising — so the scope is set by the economics rather than by a proposal.

Good consultants prefer it

A client who arrives with the go/no-go settled is a client buying execution, not reassurance. That is the engagement a good agency wants, and the one least likely to end badly for either side.

Settle the seven questions first

Free, across 11 marketplaces, with no account and no call to book. Then go and hire someone for the part that genuinely needs a human.

Run a verdict free I am an agency or consultant