A rough percentage template for allocating a fixed launch budget across an Amazon FBA product launch, demonstrated live in Scale Stories against a $10,000 budget: ~40% product/inventory cost, ~15% shipping & logistics, ~15% branding & photography (e.g. a 99designs logo contest plus product photography), ~20% launch advertising, and the remainder (~5-10%) held as buffer.
Concretely: ~800 units at $5/unit landed cost (~$4,000), ~$2/unit shipping (~$1,500-1,600), ~$1,500 branding, $2,000 ad spend, ~$1,000 buffer.
Tariffs on Chinese-sourced goods were cited as adding roughly 30% to the product/inventory line specifically — a factor to weigh when choosing supplier country, since it shifts the whole split without changing the other categories' absolute cost.
Distinct from PPC-specific budgeting tools like Campaign Planner (Pre-Launch Budget Worksheet) or the New-Launch Ad Budget Formula (CPC ÷ CVR × Target Sales), which size only the advertising slice — this is the whole-business budget those tools' outputs should slot into.
An independent case study confirms the standard band: ~40% product/inventory, ~15% shipping/logistics, ~15% branding/photography, ~20% launch/advertising, with the remainder held as buffer rather than allocated up front. See Inventory Budget Formula (Days × Daily Sales × Unit Cost) for how the product/inventory line itself gets sized, and Per-Unit Shipping Cost Gauge (~$2/Unit Heuristic) for the shipping line.