A disclosure first, since it changes how to read this. ZonHack manages Amazon advertising. We are an
interested party, and we are not going to publish other agencies’ rates as though we had verified them.
To hire an Amazon PPC expert well, the thing to evaluate is not their case studies. It is whether they
can describe how they would decide something on your account with information they do not yet have.
Anybody can present a screenshot of a good month. Very few can explain what they would do if your
best keyword stopped converting next week, and that answer is the whole signal.
This page is the evaluation framework we would use if we were hiring, including the questions we would
find uncomfortable.
The four engagement models
Each has a shape, and each distorts behavior in a predictable direction.
Freelancer, hourly or monthly retainer. Cheapest, and the quality range is enormous. Works well when
you know exactly what you need done and can judge whether it was. Fragile when the person is unavailable,
since there is no bench.
Agency retainer. More expensive, more continuity, and you may not get the person you met in the sales
call. Ask who actually works on the account and what else they handle, because that answer separates
a named specialist from a shared queue.
Percentage of ad spend. Common and worth scrutinizing hardest, since it pays more for spending more of
your money. It can work with a firm efficiency target attached. Without one, the incentive points the
wrong way and I’d say so plainly.
In-house hire. Best long-term economics above a certain spend level, and a real management burden.
Below that level you are paying a salary for a part-time job.
On what any of this costs, we are deliberately not publishing figures. Rates vary by market, scope,
and seniority, and an earlier version of this page carried specific ranges for freelancers and agencies
that we could not substantiate. Ask three providers for written scope against the same brief. The spread
tells you more than any published number.
The questions that actually separate people
Twelve, and the later ones matter more than the early ones.
- What would you look at first on my account, and why that? A real operator has an opinion before
seeing the data. A weak answer is “we’d do a full audit”. - What is my break-even cost per click? They cannot know it, and they should ask you for the inputs.
If they never mention margin, walk away. Our guide to
Amazon bid types and strategies covers why that
figure governs everything. - How do you decide when a keyword has enough data? Anything under 10 clicks is noise, and somebody
who pauses on 3 clicks will quietly shrink your account. - What is your campaign structure philosophy? One ASIN per ad group is the answer you want to hear.
- How do you handle negative keywords after harvesting? If they do not mention negating harvested
terms in the source campaign, they have not run a clean account. - What reporting will I get, and can I see a real redacted example? A template is not an example.
- Who owns the ad account and the data? You. In writing. This is the most common source of painful
separations and it is conceded surprisingly often. - What happens in the first 30 days, specifically? Vagueness here means no process.
- Can I speak to a current client in my category, and one who left? The second half produces the
revealing silences. - What would make you turn down this engagement? Best answers are the most honest.
- Do you use any tactic Amazon would consider a violation? Ask directly. Review manipulation and
ranking schemes are routes to suspension, and our guide to
appealing an Amazon policy violation
covers the aftermath. - What do you do when the product is the problem, not the ads? The best answer is that they tell
you and stop spending. In our experience that answer is rare and it is the strongest single signal on
this list.
Red flags
Five, roughly in order of seriousness.
Guaranteed results. Nobody controls Amazon’s auction or its ranking. A guarantee is either
meaningless or it implies manipulation.
No interest in your margins. An advertising decision without a margin figure is a guess dressed as
expertise.
Case studies with no context. “We cut ACoS from 45% to 18%” tells you nothing without knowing whether
sales collapsed at the same time. Ask what happened to total profit, and watch what happens to the
conversation.
Reluctance about account ownership. Any hesitation here is disqualifying.
A structure they will not explain. If they cannot describe how they organize campaigns in two
sentences, either they do not have a method or they are hiding a mess.
Testing them before you commit
The step almost nobody takes, and the most useful one.
Give a paid trial task. A PPC audit of your existing account, scoped and paid, before any retainer.
Our guide to conducting an Amazon PPC audit sets out
what a competent one contains, so you can judge the output against something concrete.
What you are reading in their deliverable: do they group findings by cause rather than listing every
instance? Do they rank by cost rather than by count? Do they end with a handful of decisions rather than
thirty observations? Do they mention your margin at all?
A good audit costs a fraction of a month’s retainer and tells you more than three sales calls. I’d
insist on it, and I’d be suspicious of anyone unwilling.
What a good first month actually looks like
Useful as a benchmark, because “we will optimize your campaigns” is not a plan and you deserve one.
Week 1: read only. A competent operator changes almost nothing in the first week. They pull the search
term report, the bulk file, and your cost figures, and they ask questions. Anybody restructuring your
account on day two is guessing, and they have also destroyed the baseline needed to prove their own
work later.
Week 2: structural fixes. Separating mixed ad groups, adding the negatives that are obviously missing,
correcting campaigns that were bidding against each other. Unglamorous and the highest-value work
available.
Week 3: bids against your numbers. Now that structure is clean and they have your margins, bids get set
from break-even rather than from Amazon’s suggestions.
Week 4: a report you can argue with. Not a dashboard export. What changed, why, what it cost, and what
they expect next month.
If month one looks like a flurry of bid changes and a screenshot of ACoS trending down, I’d ask what
happened to total sales over the same period. In our experience an ACoS improvement with falling revenue
is the easiest result in this business to manufacture and the least valuable to receive.
The conversation that tells you most
One question, asked at the end, that I have found more revealing than any other.
“What is the most likely reason this engagement fails?”
A weak answer blames the client in advance: unrealistic expectations, insufficient budget, poor listings.
A good answer is specific and includes something within their own control. Somebody who says the risk is
that they misread your margin structure early and set bids wrong for a month is telling you they have
thought about failure honestly.
I’d hire that person over somebody with better slides.
Do you need an expert at all?
Worth asking honestly, since the answer is frequently no.
Under a modest monthly ad spend, the fee consumes the gain. Learning it yourself is the better trade,
and the mechanics are genuinely learnable: our guides to
campaign structure and
negative keywords cover most of what a
small account needs.
If your listings do not convert, advertising spend amplifies an existing failure. Fix the listing
first, which our guide to
Amazon Brand Analytics covers
diagnosing.
If one specific thing is broken, buy that fix as a project rather than a retainer.
An expert earns their fee at scale, in a complex catalog, or when nobody internally has the time to do
it weekly. That last one is the most common honest reason, and it is a perfectly good one.
Where we fit
ZonHack manages Amazon advertising as part of
account management and as a
standalone PPC engagement. We are an Amazon Ads
partner and an Amazon SPN Verified Partner, and we quote against written scope rather than a rate card.
Ask us the twelve questions above. If the answers do not satisfy you, they should not.
FAQ
What should I ask an Amazon PPC expert before hiring?
Start with what they would look at first and why, whether they ask about your margins and break-even cost
per click, how they decide a keyword has enough data, their campaign structure philosophy, who owns the
ad account, and what they would do if the product rather than the advertising is the problem.
How much does an Amazon PPC expert cost?
Rates vary widely by market, scope, and seniority, and published ranges for third-party providers are
rarely verifiable. Ask three providers to quote against the same written brief and compare scope
alongside fee, since the spread is more informative than any figure published elsewhere.
Is paying a percentage of ad spend a good model?
Only with a firm efficiency target attached, because otherwise the model pays the manager more for
spending more of your money. It is the arrangement worth scrutinizing hardest before signing.
What are the warning signs of a bad Amazon PPC manager?
Guaranteed results, no interest in your margins, case studies quoting ACoS improvements without saying
what happened to total profit, reluctance about who owns the ad account, and an inability to describe
their campaign structure in two sentences.
Should I hire a freelancer or an agency for Amazon PPC?
A freelancer suits a defined scope you can judge, at lower cost and with no cover if they are
unavailable. An agency gives continuity at higher cost, but you may not get the person from the sales
call, so ask who works on the account and what else they handle.
How can I test an Amazon PPC expert before committing?
Commission a paid audit of your existing account before any retainer. Judge whether they group findings
by cause, rank by cost, end with a few decisions rather than many observations, and mention your margin
at all. It costs a fraction of a month’s fee.
Last updated: August 31, 2026. Disclosure: ZonHack manages Amazon advertising, so this page is written
by an interested party. An earlier version published specific fee ranges for freelancers and agencies;
those figures have been removed because we could not substantiate them.
