Ok so I have a product (a) that is doing well. It has a particular design. I was thinking of created a variation product asin (b) with a different design but otherwise the same, and thus I suppose means the two products will be competing. But my reasoning is that some customers might like product a’s design over product b. Is there a good reason or rule not to do this? I know it’s against amz rules to have two asins for the same product but as I say the design would be different. I could I assume create product b as a variation of a on the same asin but wondering what’s best. I don’t want to really fiddle with a decently performing listing… Secondly if I were to use sponsored ads on the second product b it will compete with product a. So again, is this going to be problematic? I’m competing against two other competitor products so was hoping to gain more market share but don’t want to do anything unwise, obviously!
What you described above sounds like a very good idea. This is something what I have been successfully doing for years.
Whenever I have a very popular product which I designed and developed, I wish to increase its earning potential by introducing its variations with a slightly different design or properties.
Frequently, buyers who already liked the original product will buy the second version as well or some buyers will purchase a combined order of both versions.
Yes, in this sense, your products will both compete, however most likely, the other version will be featured on the same listing, under related / similar products. This means that regardless, you will be boosting your business.
Fantastic, thanks Kika! (I’ll keep an eye on the extra ad spend of course! 
)
My advice is that you launch 5+ versions of your popular product, to ensure that these listings fully fill all the recommended product spots within each other’s listing.
As otherwise, these spots would be filled with competing products from a different seller.
This includes “Frequently bought together”. For this reason, the listings should be separate and not variations within the same product page.
Thanks very much Kika. For my understanding could you possibly screenshot the area you mean on a listing?
Ah ok that’s what confused me! There’s 7 on my browser. (The number of items shown there is browser/screen width dependant and can show between 5 and 7.) So ideally you’d need 7 products to fill it for all users!
Trust me, as many as you can come up with would be the best scenario. Even if the products vary only in a small detail and if you only have a small inventory of the other versions.
You wouldn’t want to have products from your competitors occupying these spots.
In the past, I used to have Chinese sellers copying all of my private label products and then having their listings featured just under my product.
Now, once I have 50 similar products, it’s just my products everywhere. At the same time, many buyers are purchasing the other ones and making big purchases.
Thanks kika!
So what would be the bext way of applying the same sponsored ad settings I have on my existing product, to a new one? Do I just add my new product’s asin to the sponsored ad?
My recommendation would be that you only sponsor one of the products. The other versions will be featured on the listings next to the sponsored product anyway.
In my experience new products take a long time to show in results though? I was intending on using sponsored ads to improve their rank. Or is there a better (cheaper!) way?
Some of my new products attract dozens of sales on their first day after going live. I think that unless your listing has missing bullet points, description or poor quality non-white background, there’s no reason why you would need advertising from day one.