A consultant selling into the UK marketplace bills for advice, and someone in your own account still has to execute it. Price both halves before you hire anyone. The figure that decides whether either half pays for itself is your ACoS target at each product stage, not the monthly fee you were quoted.
The short version
- Advice and execution are two separate costs. A quote usually prices the first one and leaves the second sitting with you.
- Your ad spend is normally the larger number. So the target governing that spend decides more money each month than any fee does.
- A new product and a mature product need different ACoS targets. One number held across both stages loses margin on one side or the other.
- Our managed pricing is published for comparison. One product is $800 a month and five is $2,400, with all 50+ services included and no commission.
- The tiers above are quoted in dollars. A UK seller converts at whatever rate their own bank gives on the day.
The two invoices hiding inside one consulting quote
Advice and the work that follows it are separate lines, and most quotes price only the first. Write the fee down. Then write down the hours somebody in your business will spend turning that advice into changes inside the account.
The sellers who reach us are usually one to three products in at $5K to $30K a month, and they open with the same sentence. I'm spending money on ads but don't know if it's working. A document does not answer that sentence, because somebody still has to go into the campaigns and change them.
Our managed clients spend about 2 hours a month with us once onboarding is done. While a launch runs, that becomes 4 to 6 hours a week. That is the workload an advisory arrangement hands back to you, so price those hours before you compare any two proposals.
Now run the sum with your own numbers. Take the monthly figure the consultant quoted and add the hours you expect to spend implementing it. Multiply those hours by whatever an hour of your own time is worth, so only that total is comparable to a managed fee.
The other side of the comparison is fixed and public. One product costs $800 a month here, three costs $1,500, and five costs $2,400. Every tier includes all 50+ services, with no commission, no revenue share, and no onboarding fee.
| Cost line | Your number | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|
| Advice | the monthly or hourly quote you were handed | the consultant |
| Implementation hours | your hours, times what an hour of your time is worth | you |
| Managed alternative | $800 a month at one product, $2,400 at five | published, all services at every tier |
| Media | no hard minimum, about $1,000 a month recommended | the auction in your category |
| Ad efficiency | the ACoS target attached to each product stage | whoever touches the campaigns |
Flapen figures as of September 2026. The implementation row is your estimate, never ours.
What the ACoS target moves that the fee never will
Put your monthly ad spend on the line beside the consulting fee and compare the two. At one to three products the spend is almost always the bigger of the pair. So the target governing that spend decides more money every month than the fee does.
The reason the target has to move is the stage the product sits in. A listing without rank yet has to spend hard to win one. A listing that already holds rank only has to spend enough to keep it.
Hold a single number across both stages and you are either underfunding the launch or overpaying at maturity. Fifty operators here run about 70 brands by hand across all 23 Amazon marketplaces. A stage-blind target is the most common thing we inherit from an advised account.
On GrillX, the account we run moved ACoS from 88% to 32%. The results page does not date the move, so read it as where the account landed rather than a monthly rate.
The mature end of the same argument sits on Tiny Tinker, running at +41% year-over-year pace. Our results page puts the whole of it in one sentence.
Three years in, the account runs ahead of last year on less ad spend, and the hero product moves 500+ units a month.
So the arithmetic that matters is not the fee against another fee. It is your current spend against the same spend under two targets, one for launch and one for maturity. Ask any candidate for both numbers in writing before money changes hands.
What a consultant will not tell you about the fee
The fee is seldom the largest line in the deal, and one pass of the arithmetic shows why. Stack the capital already committed to inventory and the media budget underneath it. The advice sits on top of both and is the smallest of the three.
One product launch needs $8,000 to $15,000 of capital before a fee is counted, and a brand of five needs $25,000 to $50,000. Phase 1 validation runs 200 units and $5,000 to $10,000, spent before anything about the product is proven.
| What you are paying for | The number | How often it lands |
|---|---|---|
| Advice | the quote you were handed | monthly, for as long as you are engaged |
| Phase 1 validation | 200 units and $5,000 to $10,000 | once per product, before any scaling |
| Launch capital, one product | $8,000 to $15,000 | once |
| Launch capital, brand of five | $25,000 to $50,000 | once |
| Managed fee, one to five products | $800 to $2,400 a month | monthly, every service at every tier |
Flapen figures as of September 2026.
The second unsaid thing is who earns while nothing changes. An advisory retainer is paid whether the advice reaches the account or not, so the stop rule has to be written by you and dated.
Hold us to the same sum. The agreement runs month to month with 30 days' notice.
You keep the Seller Central account, every campaign, the creative files, and a written handover on the day you leave. If the total says run the account yourself, run it yourself.
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One free thing to do this week, for the seller running one to three products at $5K to $30K a month. In your own account, write each product's launch date beside the ACoS target its campaigns carry today.
Any product long past its launch phase still carrying a launch target is spending your margin every week. Changing that target costs nothing and needs nobody's permission.
For a written read on those targets and the campaigns under them, the free audit comes back inside 48 hours from Flapen.
