Pushing a product forward costs money and attention, and both are finite. **Spreading them across eight products means none of them gets enough of either.**

**So if you are doing under about $20–30k a month, work on two or three parent ASINs at a time — even if you have twelve.**

**And then do something explicit about the rest**, which is the half people skip.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-focus-explainer-4a8c5913.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? One hundred and fifty-five seconds on why the number is two or three, diagnosing which parents are bleeding and why, and the four options for everything you are not working on.*

## **Why the number is two or three**

**More investment per product means a higher chance that product works.** That is the whole argument.

**For scale: eight-figure sellers launching new products work on five or more at once** — with a full team behind them, deep pockets, and a process they already know.

**Assuming a smaller operation can match that is not ambition, it is arithmetic that does not work.**

**Once you have run three products through the full process and know it properly, duplicating it across the rest is much easier.** The constraint is not the products; it is you.

**This only applies if you have more than three parent ASINs.** With three or fewer there is nothing to choose.

## **Step 1: find the best opportunities**

**Put every parent ASIN through the comparison table** — see [**The Product Comparison Table**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/the-product-comparison-table).

**That gives you the two or three strongest opportunities on offer strength, margin, review position and headroom.**

**Do not commit yet.** The next step frequently changes the answer.

## **Step 2: find what is bleeding**

**Open your P&L, make sure landed costs and advertising costs are complete, and look at last month** — or month-to-date if you are past the 15th.

**Group by parent ASIN, sort by profit, and list every parent that lost money.**

**Then work out why, for each one.** There are only two answers:

**TACOS too high** — you are overspending on advertising relative to what the product returns.

**Gross margin too low** — and then the follow-up: is the price too low, or is COGS too high?

![Profit by parent ASIN, with the reason visible](/kb-assets/shot-prod-table-6c206b.png)

**Grouping by parent, sorting by profit and reading TACOS and gross margin beside it is the whole diagnostic** — see [**Understanding Business Reports**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/understanding-business-reports) and [**Where Your Margin Actually Goes**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/where-your-margin-actually-goes). Reconstructing a per-parent P&L from settlement reports and ad exports every month is exactly the task that stops happening in a busy quarter.

## **Step 3: choose**

**You now have both halves: where the opportunity is, and where the money is going.**

**Pick on two criteria:**

**Highest likelihood of success.**

**Highest upside if it works.**

**The comparison table's winners usually get picked** — unless there is an inventory situation that makes pushing one impossible. There is no point launching a product you cannot keep in stock; see [**Deciding Your PPC Daily Budget**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/deciding-your-ppc-daily-budget).

## **Step 4: deal with everything else**

**This is the step that actually frees the resources**, and it is the one that gets skipped.

**For every product you are not focusing on, do one of four things:**

**Cut most of its advertising spend.**

**Pause its advertising entirely**, so it cannot lose money.

**Raise its price** until it is at least breaking even — see [**Raising Your Price Safely**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/raising-your-price-safely).

**Discontinue it**, if the opportunity is weak and cash is tight.

### **The rule underneath all four**

**The only products allowed to lose money are the ones you are actively working on.**

**A loss on a focus product is an investment with a plan attached. A loss on an ignored product is just a loss.**

**The exception is a product you have a clear plan for** — a relaunch scheduled, a new variation coming, a supplier change landing. **Then a deliberate loss is fine.** What is not fine is a product quietly losing money because nobody looked.

## **Common mistakes**

**Choosing focus products from the comparison table alone**, without checking which products are bleeding.

**Picking four or five** because they all look promising.

**Doing steps 1–3 and skipping step 4**, so the resources you were freeing up are still being spent.

**Ignoring the inventory position** on a product you intend to push.

**Discontinuing too fast**, before checking whether price or COGS explains the loss.

**Never revisiting.** When a focus product stabilises, it leaves the list and something else comes on.

## **Related**

- [**The Product Comparison Table**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/the-product-comparison-table) — the opportunity half of the decision.
- [**Where Your Margin Actually Goes**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/where-your-margin-actually-goes) — diagnosing why a product loses money.
- [**Setting Target TACOS per Product**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/setting-target-tacos-per-product) — how the non-focus products get held at breakeven.