#526 – Stop Believing Nonsense on Amazon Rufus (Alexa For Shopping)!

Audio version above. Video version below

Has Rufus now called Alexa for Shopping completely changed the way shoppers search on Amazon, or are sellers overreacting to the AI hype? In this episode of the AM/PM Podcast, Bradley Sutton records from the Maldives for part one of his annual Maldives Honeymoon Launch series and breaks down what has changed, what has not changed, and why Amazon sellers should still care deeply about keywords, indexing, and traditional search.

Bradley explains that AI has absolutely changed e-commerce, but not necessarily in the way many people think. Rufus (Quick note: Rufus is now rebranded as Alexa for Shopping) can make the shopping journey easier, especially when customers are looking for solutions rather than a specific product. But when shoppers already know what they want, traditional Amazon search is still one of the fastest paths to purchase. Bradley also explains how optimizing for Amazon search can help sellers optimize for Rufus, using real examples of products missing important keywords and disappearing from both search results and Rufus recommendations.

The episode then shifts into product research strategies sellers can use to find new opportunities in 2026 and beyond. Bradley walks through keyword-based research using title density, search volume, review count, and sales filters, while also comparing those methods against raw AI suggestions that can produce unreliable data. He also explains how sellers can use free Amazon tools, such as Brand Analytics and Opportunity Explorer, to uncover low-conversion keywords, weakly competitive products, and products shoppers are searching for but not finding.

Bradley also shares creative ways to discover product ideas outside of standard research tools, including spotting trends on Etsy and Pinterest, applying saturated products to new niches, taking advantage of quick-moving pop culture trends, finding abandoned “zombie listings,” and using old-school product filters that still work today. The big takeaway: AI matters, Rufus matters, but the fundamentals of Amazon product research and keyword strategy are far from dead. Sellers who combine new AI awareness with proven data-driven research methods can still find serious opportunities before the market gets crowded.

For part two of this Maldives Honeymoon Launch series, head over to the Serious Sellers Podcast and listen to episode 750. Bradley goes deeper into keyword research, launch strategy, and how to get new products ranking on page one within days: https://h10.me/750

In episode 526 of the AM/PM Podcast, Bradley covers:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 00:35 – The Maldives Honeymoon Launch Series
• 02:25 – How AI Has Changed E-Commerce
• 04:54 – Why Sellers Are Overreacting to Rufus/Alexa for Shopping Hype
• 08:58 – Product Discovery vs. Solution Discovery
• 11:26 – Why Keyword Research Still Matters
• 13:53 – Are Prime Members Using Rufus/Alexa for Shopping Instead of Search?
• 16:14 – Amazon Search Query Performance Data
• 18:01 – Product Research Strategies for 2026
• 22:28 – Using Amazon’s Free Product Research Tools
• 24:12 – Creative Ways to Find Product Opportunities
• 27:47 – Finding Zombie Listings and Old-School Opportunities

Transcript

Bradley Sutton: 

The truth about whether Rufus and AI has completely changed Amazon search. Five really cool product research strategies that will help you find your next product. These and more on today’s episode. Hello everybody, and welcome to the AM/PM podcast. My name is Bradley Sutton, and I’ll be your host. And this is the show where we discuss all things Amazon, TikTok shop, and Walmart private label, and how to generate recurring revenue streams 24 hours a day during the AM and the PM, hence the name of the show. Get it? AM/PM podcast. And as a matter of fact, I’m actually recording this episode in the Maldives where I go once a year to record my special Maldives honeymoon episode. And even though I’m taking in the sun as I record this podcast, I’m still making money online. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.  

Bradley Sutton: 

All right guys, I am here in the Maldives and this is a one in a two-part series that I’m doing that I do once a year called the Maldives honeymoon launch. And in it, I talk about keyword research, we talk about how to launch your products and everything in between. Now, here’s the thing. If you guys are watching this here on the AM/PM podcast, which I imagine you are, you need to see the next episode, all right? So that is going to be in the Serious Sellers podcast. I’ll give you more info at the end, but it’s gonna be episode 750 in the Serious Sellers podcast. It’s part two of this. In this episode, we’re gonna be talking about, hey, what has changed and what hasn’t in AI? And we’re gonna be talking about things like, hey, how can you find new products? Can you find new products in this day and age? So a lot of cool stuff we’re gonna be going over today. So let’s go ahead and hop into it.  

Bradley Sutton: 

So first of all, this two-part series is called Maldives honeymoon. Is there a honeymoon? Yes, guys, the honeymoon period is alive and well. Here’s just a couple of things I’m gonna be talking about in the next episode. You guys can see this, those of you watching on YouTube, on how, hey, in just three or four days, I was able to get products live on Amazon and from unranked to the top five, 10 positions in just a few days. So honeymoon is still alive and well. But let’s take a step back and ask ourselves, has Rufus, Cosmo, things like that, completely changed search? Is this like a moot point to even talk about keyword research and trying to get to page one? First of all, let me just get this out of the way. AI has changed Ecom. And for those of you who have seen me talk on this, I’ve been talking about this this year, right? This is like one of my talk tracks this year. I’m going a little bit more in detail. So even if you have seen me talk about this, I have some different angles I wanna talk about. But nobody is dumb enough to say, including myself, oh no, Ecom is still the same. AI has not changed at all. Let me give you guys a personal example.  

Bradley Sutton: 

Quick personal anecdote. I’ve been going the last few months to this beauty clinic in Korea every few months where I get stuff done to my face. Nothing major like Botox or anything like that. But just like, hey, I’m getting up there in years. I wanna make sure I look young. Now, here’s the thing. They have this website. It’s called Muse Clinic. One of the best beauty clinics, in my opinion, in the world. Anyways, I don’t know anything about this stuff. For my entire life, I never did nothing to my face. All right, I barely even washed my face. Okay, I was just like, all right, let me rely on my good Filipino genes to look young, forget it. But now I’m all obsessed with, hey, making sure I still look young. Now, their website has all this stuff that I have never heard about. I don’t know what rejuran means and all these things. And so for my next session, I was like, you know what? I wanna do a deep dive on this website in order to understand what I need, right? So I was like, hey, let me just have ChatGPT read this website and go ahead and let me know what’s going on. Now, fast forward, I actually did end up going, and you can see me here in this picture if you’re watching this on YouTube with me getting about ready for the rejuran, getting my facial. But here’s the thing. When I asked ChatGPT, hey, can you read this website and tell me what you think I need? The answer it gave was, I’m sorry, this website, we can’t really read. It’s made in a format that we can’t even read. Now, here’s the thing, guys. If I was just some customer off the street who loves ChatGPT and I had never been to Muse Clinic before, what’s gonna happen?  

Bradley Sutton: 

Guess what? This Muse Clinic, because they did not adapt their e-com website for AI, they just lost a customer because I can’t even understand these things. Now, me, I had already been going there, so I was just like, all right, let me just do something else. And I just took a screen video and then I uploaded it at the ChatGPT and got what I needed. But you see, this is just one of the many, many ways AI has absolutely changed permanently e-commerce and selling online, even advertising online, right? So again, nobody is going to say that AI has not changed e-commerce. However, on LinkedIn and other places, we have the opposite end of the spectrum. You’ll hear comments like, Amazon SEO is dead. If you don’t optimize for Rufus, you are invisible. Keywords are meaningless. Amazon Rufus users, 60% more likely to buy the recommended product. The list goes on and on maybe of stuff you guys have seen, right? With kind of like clickbaity catchphrases like this. Now, I actually agree with most of the people who say these things. What I differ in is I think people are taking it differently. A lot of them are kind of exaggerating, using hyperbole to kind of like clickbait, which is fine, I do that too on some things. But people are drinking this Kool-Aid thinking that, hey, keywords don’t matter anymore, right? Everything is gonna be AI, everything is Rufus. Rufus has taken over, but is that the case? 

Bradley Sutton: 

Let’s first just take a step back and talk about AI. What is the purpose of AI, all right? How many of you guys own a Tesla? All right, I have a Tesla. Why do I have a Tesla? Not because I love Elon Musk or I’m a fanboy or anything like that. I do it for the autopilot. It’s kind of like AI, right? Now, think about Tesla autopilot. Like, for example, when it backs into a parking space on its own. What is the purpose of this AI? Is it to do something inherently different than a human would do? Is it flying the car into the parking space? Is it making it a boat and floating it into a parking space? No, it’s doing the exact same thing a human is gonna do. It’s like looking around all sides. When you’re a human who’s parking, right? And I know you guys who are in the EU and Asia know how to do backing into parking spaces a lot better than Americans because we never back into spaces. But anyways, you’re looking to your left and your right, you’re looking behind you in your mirrors and stuff, trying to get in, right? Now, that’s just what the AI is doing. It’s not doing something fundamentally different or inherently different. It’s doing the same thing, but in a more efficient way and a faster way. It can look all 360 degrees around it, just like a human would have to do a little bit, you know, it takes a few seconds to do, all right? So that’s the same thing with AI, guys. 

Bradley Sutton: 

AI is designed to make things easier, not to just give you something brand new that a human would never be able to do. You know, whenever you think about stuff that AI does, maybe it helps you do something that you couldn’t do before, but somebody else was doing this work, all right? And when we talk about AI and Amazon, it’s the same thing. Everything that Amazon does is designed to make the customer journey easier. It’s not meant to completely change their behavior, all right? It’s like meant to take things that maybe somebody would do off of Amazon on Amazon. It’s maybe to speed up things, speed up delivery. Everything Amazon does is about the customer. So when you think about it, any AI that Amazon is doing, right, as far as like Search and Rufus and things like that, what is it designed for? It’s designed to make the process easier for the customer, not to fundamentally change the very nature of shopping per se, but it’s how can they find the products easier, all right? So with that in mind, a lot of the stuff that is new, like the things that Rufus does, if you strip it down to its core, what it’s doing is just making it easier of what customers were trying to do in the first place, not fundamentally change stuff. And because of that, a lot of the new stuff is not gonna change what you do. It might change what you have to, you know, the methods of finding things, but it’s not going to change what you as a seller should be doing because at the end of the day, a customer is trying to find something for, that he needs to buy, right?  

Bradley Sutton: 

Now, the method of how you can make sure you’re connecting with that customer might change with inherent things like Rufus. Like for example, before, how would you get in the customer’s mind? You would maybe search for reviews, right? And read reviews and understand what people search for. Now, you grew with Rufus, all right? So again, Rufus is not necessarily changing and making people do something that they wouldn’t normally do, okay? Now, this is where it comes in. To me, there’s like a couple of different ways that people find products. There’s product discovery and solution discovery, all right? Product discovery is like, I already know exactly what I need, or not exactly, but like generally what I need. I have a keyword in mind for it, I enter it in the search bar and I search. Like for example, let’s say I know I need salicylic acid shampoo. Well, if I knew I needed that, I just type it into the search bar. Let me tell you guys, AI is not going to make that any easier. It actually, if you try and do that in AI, it might make it harder, right? What is easier than just typing salicylic acid shampoo in the search results and then just looking at some shopping results? Nothing’s going to be better than that for right now, right? 

Bradley Sutton: 

If I have to have a conversation with AI to ask back and forth about it, it’s already making the shopping experience less efficient, right? But here’s the thing. The other thing is solution discovery. When somebody doesn’t know exactly what they need, like, hey, what am I going to get for a 50th wedding anniversary, all right? You’re not looking for gold and black streamers or something like that, right? You don’t know. Well, so before you might search that thing maybe on Google or on ChatGPT or something. I feel like Amazon is trying to get that solution discovery into Amazon. That’s what Rufus can do that kind of changes the game for buyers. Instead of having to go on ChatGPT, look up videos or something like that, now you can just go into Rufus and ask this question, then find out what you need. Oh, I want black and gold streamer hats. Now you type in the keyword, right? But here’s an example of that. What if I didn’t know I need salicylic acid shampoo? So what I did to ChatGPT was I typed in, hey, I’ve got this dry scallop and I’ve tried this and that. What do I need? And what ChatGPT basically ended up saying is, hey, you need salicylic acid shampoo. If I typed it into Rufus, the same exact thing comes up of, hey, I don’t know what I need. It’s the same answer came up that I need salicylic acid shampoo.  

Bradley Sutton: 

Now, interestingly, if I just go directly to Rufus, skip the search bar and type in best salicylic acid shampoo, the search results are very similar to what you see in page one. Like, you know, the three, there’s only three that come up, but they’re mostly from page one. Like here are those products right here. Those of you watching on YouTube can see that, hey, this T-Sal product and these other products came up, right? So if you type the same keyword in Rufus and the search bar, you know, page one usually has those products. Now, here’s an interesting thing though. We as sellers don’t always know all of the strange ways that somebody might use to find a product, right? In the search bar or in Rufus, doesn’t matter what we’re talking about here. Like, for example, if I were to, you know, put in all of the top salicylic acid shampoos, this T-Sal one and a few of the others that were all on page one, and I used Rebirth to extract the keywords, the main keywords, here are some of the top keywords for this niche. Now, how many of these would you have known about? Like, would you have known scalp cleanser? Maybe. Would you have known dandruff treatment? You know, maybe. But what about scalp detox? I wouldn’t have thought about that, right? I was like, what? That seems like a weird word. So what about these top sellers? Do they all know it? Like Neutrogena, that’s a, you know, these guys have millions of dollars. It’s a, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars company, I would assume, you know, Neutrogena. Interestingly enough, and remember this Neutrogena product does show up when you type in Rufus Best Salicylic Acid Shampoo, and it’s top of the search in Best Salicylic Acid Shampoo. 

Bradley Sutton: 

But did you know that scalp detox and this other word, I don’t know what it means, Feliculite shampoo, these two keywords are not indexed in this T-Sal Neutrogena product. In other words, it is not searchable for these keywords. Not that it doesn’t appear in the search results, it’s just like literally not indexed. All right, using Helium 10 Index Checker. Even this top company doesn’t have all of the keywords. And so they are not searchable for somebody who is gonna type in scalp detox, which is a top keyword for salicylic acid shampoos. They are not gonna show up in the search results. Now, if I type in what is the best salicylic acid shampoo that’s also a Feliculite shampoo, or if I type in, hey, what’s the top Feliculite shampoos? Guess what? Not only does this product not show up in the search results, it does not show up in Rufus. So guys, optimizing for search results is optimizing for Rufus and vice versa, right? You can’t just assume that, hey, I don’t need these keywords in my listing. Rufus is gonna know every single possible keyword that somebody might search for. It might work that some way sometimes. Some keywords where you’re not even indexed for, it might come up in Rufus or in search, right? But you can’t rely on that. Why not do the traditional keyword research we’ve always done to make sure you show up in search results and to make sure you show up in Rufus? Now let’s think, are Prime members really using Rufus in place of search? 

Bradley Sutton: 

One thing I wanted to do as an example of why people are confused about this fact, right? Remember that one quote at the beginning, very reputable report this came from, said Amazon Rufus users were 60% more likely to buy the recommended product. In other words, it’s inferring that, hey, somebody searches on Rufus on something and it recommends this product. Then, hey, they’re 60% more likely to buy it. What did Amazon really say in whatever they were quoting? Here’s the actual quote from Amazon. Hey, 250 million customers have used Rufus, but customers that use Rufus during a shopping journey are 60% more likely to complete a purchase. What could it mean, a shopping journey? How many of you have used Rufus to check the price history of a product? I’ve used Rufus to do that, use it quite often to do that. Guess what, is that a shopping journey? Sure, it’s a shopping journey. How many of you have used Rufus to maybe summarize the reviews? Is that part of the shopping journey? Absolutely, it’s part of the shopping journey. What if you check Rufus for compatibility once you’re on a page? Is that part of the shopping journey? Yes. Do all of these things make it more likely that somebody would purchase? Of course. Do any of these have to do with search or discovering a product? No, not in the slightest, all right? So you see how people can just twist quotes and then if you read it without digging into it, you might be misled about what the actual quote is.  

Bradley Sutton: 

I’ve been doing polls every six months asking people, hey, are you using Rufus for search? Very small number of people are using Rufus for search, very, very small. A lot more people are using it for price history reviews and a big portion, 60, 70% are not using Rufus at all. Now, guys, just because 60 or 70% aren’t using something, that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. I’m never gonna say, I’ve been talking about you need to optimize for Rufus for years, right? Since it came out. But just again, it’s not something that, oh my God, this is taking over search, all right? So keep this in mind, guys. Search is here to stay for now. Things could change, Amazon could launch something different but for now, do not be freaked out that, oh my God, Rufus is completely changing the search journey. Now, here’s the most mic drop moment about this. I can’t drop this mic, it’s a very expensive mic and I’m only holding it right here, it’s gonna break. But if you ever wonder, hey, Bradley, you’re just postulating on this stuff. I’m telling you, Rufus is how people search even though you probably can’t find anybody to actually tell you that, right? Or who actually search on Amazon. You can look at the search query performance data directly from Amazon, not a Helium 10 estimation or anything, the actual number of searches. And here at Helium 10, we have access to all that data from months before Rufus even came into the picture to even recently. And I’m doing this every six months, I’m checking. And you can see the numbers, those of you watching this online and you can see or on YouTube, you can see that, hey, the searches that were happening before Rufus even came to the picture in 2024, it’s about the same number, actually a little bit less. 

Bradley Sutton: 

In other words, search has gone up. So in other words, if 50,000 people were searching for your keywords that lead to your product in 2024, early before Rufus was in the picture, the same amount of people, if not a little bit more, are still searching for it. So this just, I could have just led with this and just stopped without all this other stuff, but to just show you that, hey, people are still using traditional search overwhelmingly to find products. Are people using that to discover solutions? Absolutely not. Nobody ever searched in the search bar, hey, I am going to a 50th wedding anniversary and I need to get an idea. That’s not the way people use search. People would go off of Amazon. Now that kind of stuff, I think people are definitely using Rufus for. So remember, don’t be distracted and sip too much Kool-Aid. I could use some Kool-Aid right now. It’s freaking hot here in the Maldives, but don’t be worrying about this stuff, that search has completely changed because Rufus has not replaced search. Now, before we get into the launch episode, which is the next episode, let’s talk about a few things to help find new products to launch. Can you start a brand from scratch? Can you add brands in 2026? Guys, people are adding products all the time, being successful, big sellers, small sellers. What’s some of the ways? Here’s one thing. I like to search for keywords. This is kind of different than other people, but I like to search for keywords when it comes to products. And so here’s something I enter in Helium 10 is I enter a title density of less than five. That means less than five products on page one have the exact search term in the title, right? To me, that’s an indication of a newer opportunity because you have something that’s saturated like collagen peptides. It’s like the title density is like 40, right? Why? Because 40 out of the 50 listings on page one all have that search term collagen peptides in the title.  

Bradley Sutton: 

Another thing is, hey, I look for search volume over 4,000. This is just a random number I chose. You can choose whatever floats your boat. I also put in black box top 10 products on page one. Five of them at least have less than 150 reviews. And then I also do the top 10 products on page one. Less than five of them are doing $5,000 of sales, meaning to me there’s opportunity. I could go flip that opposite and it would still work pretty good. Now, interestingly enough, a couple of years ago, or about a year and a half or so ago, I actually found this using this exact system, a product that I was like really wanted to launch. It was this something called meat resting blanket. And I’m like, what in the actual heck is a meat resting blanket? Why does meat need to rest? I’m not a barbecuer, so I don’t know, maybe you guys are making fun of me because you think that everybody knows this, but I guess like after you grill meat or barbecue meat or cook it, then you like let it rest in some like insulated bag and it gets flavorful. I don’t know, whatever the heck this is. That’s the beauty about Amazon. You find stuff, you don’t even know what it does, right? And I was like, wow, this is like a killer product. It was doing really well at the time. Now here you can see the BSR chart of when I saw this product. Yeah, it was two years ago in April of 2024, where it was like killing it, crushing it, and then it went out of stock for months, right? But I found it when it was selling in stock because I was using Helium 10.  

Bradley Sutton: 

Now, here you can see the exact Amazon order. I actually ordered this product. You can see right there, April 3rd, 2024, and I was all set to send it to my sourcing agent in China, Apple, and we were gonna be ready to do it, but I got super busy. Now, I wish I did go through with it, but look today at this niche, less than two years later, guys, products on page one doing almost 3 quarters of a million dollars per month from one product that I found using Helium 10, this keyword research tool, or this keyword black box tool, now is this giant niche. Man, you probably wouldn’t even be seeing me doing this episode nine because I would have made a million dollars off of that product. Now, even if I do make a million dollars, you’ll still see me at Helium 10. But anyways, guys, this just shows that, hey, this is a strategy that absolutely works. Now, could I have just done this with AI or ChatGPT or something like that? I just wanted to just do a random thing in ChatGPT that, you know, ChatGPT doesn’t have the Helium 10 data unless you’re using the ChatGPT app for Helium 10 and you connect it to Helium 10, but I was like, hey, find me a product that has this much search volume or the products on page one have less than this number of views, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then what did it give me? It gave me a few keywords here, right? Faucet mat for kitchen sink, sink splash guard, it says it had 6,200 searches, faucet water catcher mat, it says it had 3,300 searches. Where are these numbers are coming from? I have no idea. Sink faucet mat, 2,000, et cetera, et cetera.  

Bradley Sutton: 

Now, here’s the thing. Let’s look at that faucet mat for kitchen sink. Look how many reviews people have. People have thousands of reviews, all right? Is this a good opportunity? No, but you see, ChatGPT can’t get all the review information from Amazon, like Helium 10 or other tools can, all right? So that wouldn’t have been a good one. What about that other one, faucet splash guard, remember, or faucet water catcher mat that said it had 3,000 searches? Number of searches, actually, 30, all right? So again, if you just use raw AI, you can’t just duplicate the kind of things you can do in tools. Obviously, Helium 10 is not the only tool you can do this. I’m sure there’s, you know, you guys might be using something else. That’s gonna be superior to just using raw AI without this data, all right? Now, what if you have no tools? You can’t use ChatGPT, we just said, because it’s not connected to Helium 10 or not connected to Amazon. Guys, use free tools from Amazon. Brand Analytics, Opportunity Explorer, these are free for Amazon sellers, all right? It’s not gonna give you as in-depth. I’ve launched a product based on data from Opportunity Explorer. Once I saw Opportunity Explorer that, hey, the conversion rate for a keyword, coffin bookshelf, was like 0.5%, right? When all the other keywords in my niche were like 2%, 3%, you know, they were triple, quadruple, 400% more than what this one was. And then I looked on Amazon, like, oh, shoot, no wonder why the conversion rate is so low. There are no coffin bookshelves on Amazon, and so people are not purchasing something after searching that keyword. I launched a product, sold hundreds of those units until I just gave up on that product and moved on. It was just a nice experiment. But guys, this is a great way, and it was completely free. I didn’t even need Helium 10 for that one, all right?  

Bradley Sutton: 

Another one, what about going into Brand Analytics? Look for keywords that have a greater than 50% click share, but less than 10% conversion share and more than 1,000 search volume. In other words, if somebody gets 50% of the clicks, three products, what percent of the conversion should it have if all things were equal? Should be 50%, right, greater than 50%. Because if everybody had a similar conversion rate, right? But if I can find something where only, they only have 10% of the conversions, what does that mean? That means the top click products people don’t like, right? And they’re buying something else, that could mean opportunity for you, all right? Here’s an example. There’s some products, here’s some keywords on here, like baby shower decorations, I found masquerade mask for women. All of these things, the top three products have a high click share, but low share of the sales or low share of the conversions. Another thing that we’ve been doing for years, going back to Project X, checking Etsy and Pinterest for trends. You guys remember what we did with a wooden egg tray on Project X six years ago now or seven years ago? We saw on Etsy and Pinterest, everybody had, when you type in egg tray, everybody had these wooden, cool looking ones. But when you looked on the search on Amazon, it was all these plastic ones. And so we had the idea, hey, maybe just people, if they knew that there was a wooden one available, they would buy it, right? And so we were able to go ahead and launch a wooden one. We’ve still been selling it. It’s like one of the top, it’s actually outselling the coffin shelf, even now, six years later. And we found it because we were looking at trends on Etsy and Pinterest.  

Bradley Sutton: 

Another thing you can do, take your competitive product, like something that’s saturated, and apply it to a different niche, all right? That’s kind of what we did with that egg tray. We took a, egg trays were saturated, but we applied it to a different niche and made it wood. So you can do that with like this, with the material, right? Something different material. But you can also do that with other things. Here on the screen, I’ve got this brand called Pup Roar. They’re in the latest season of Outsource to Optimize by Helium 10. And here, Pup Roar, this guy, we had a podcast about him, you know, look him up, Jason Ross. And at first he was making pickleball products, but it was too saturated. But then he was like, you know what? A lot of people have dogs. Pickleball owners have dogs. Maybe they would want their dogs to have a dog toy that looks like a pickleball paddle, right? And so he’s like, he became the first person on Amazon to sell, not pickleball rackets, because that was saturated. He was doing that and he didn’t do well. He was the first person to sell like pickleball racket shaped dog toys. And then he just, you know, went and, you know, went and was like, wait a minute, golf bags are saturated, but nobody’s making a toy or a dog that looks like a golf bag. What about all the golf owners might want that? And he’s just been killing it. He works full time in another job. Only does Amazon by himself in his off time, he’s selling a million dollars a year of these kinds of products where he took something that’s saturated, came in with from a different angle and was able to absolutely kill it.  

Bradley Sutton: 

We did that back in Project X. Coffin shelf, you know, shelves are saturated, but nobody was making coffin shaped ones. Bath mats are saturated, but we saw a trend. And hey, there’s people who like bat shaped things. Let’s make a bat shaped bath mat. Started crushing it. Another product research thing. Take advantage of quick trends. I’m showing something on the screen here that you guys can see. Does anybody know what these are? For those of you just listening to this, I’ve got paper plates that are pink and then another set of paper plates that are like black and green checkered. What do you think of when you think of black and green checkered? All right. This is Demon Slayer. This is like a popular Japanese animation. Anybody who looks at these color scheme, you know exactly what it is just by seeing the colors. And so last year when this movie was about to come out, I’m like, hey, let me take advantage of this quick trend. I don’t have time to get a license, but if I just have something that’s black and green checkered, let me take something that’s saturated and do something that people automatically relate to Demon Slayer. And so I was just crushing it with like these Demon Slayer type fans and straws and paper plates and all this stuff, taking advantage of a trend that is dead or not dead completely, but it’s like nothing compared to what it was. But I had a nice little run where I had zero competition because I was the only one with it. So it’s another great way to find product.  

Bradley Sutton: 

Another thing that’s kind of a unique way to find product is look for zombie listings. Zombie listings are listings that for whatever reason, the brand or the seller has decided to give up on it. All right, so they’re like, hey, we’re not gonna sell this anymore. Maybe they got suspended. Who knows what the reason is, all right? Now, in Helium 10, in this tool Black Box, you type in or you click on find out of stock products and you could enter a date range. Like, hey, show me something that was last active sometime a year ago or more, right? And it had this number of sales for the full year and you can find products that were out of stock, right? This is something I did. We found this product that was crushing it two years ago, a coffin makeup shelf. They were selling thousands of units. For whatever reason, they just disappeared off the face of the earth and the product is dead. You cannot find this product on Amazon now, right? You can see this on the screen that it went out of stock like last year and just never came back, right? It’s currently unavailable. You literally cannot find this on Amazon, like even if you searched because something that has no stock is not gonna show up in the search results. Found it in Helium 10 and what did we do? Like right now, I’m actually doing a launch for a coffin makeup shelf and I use Cerebro, the historical feature in order to get all of its old keywords and using the brand analytics tool. So I knew all of the keywords that drove sales to this product one, two years ago plus and now are trying to like make up and steal their market that they just abandoned on their own, right? So this is another unique way to find product opportunity.  

Bradley Sutton: 

Old school product research still works as well. You know, the traditional one that Helium 10 didn’t create this, you know, like back in the day, other tools that were around before Helium 10 had this where you can enter in different aspects of a product and get results. Like for example, I can enter in product characteristics. Hey, show me something that has greater than $10,000 worth of sales, less than 100 reviews, less than four images, less than two sellers, right? This is a common one that I used to do back in the day. I just did that a couple months ago, came up with this college basketball national tournament dry erase board. Here’s a product so new, it had zero reviews guys. It was doing $10,000 in its first 30 days, less than the first 30 days. I found it in Helium 10. If I had jumped on it, I could have done this, but guys, this product research method still works as well. All right guys, so here we talked about AI, how it has changed e-comm, but not in the way that some people might think. We talked about different ways to find products. So let’s say you do find a product. How do you launch? What’s working for launch nowadays? Is there a such thing as the honeymoon period? How do you find the keywords? Now that we know that keywords and search are still super important, how do you find this? Well, go right now guys, to the Serious Sellers Podcast, right? Episode 750. 

Bradley Sutton: 

So whatever you’re listening to this on, type in Serious Sellers Podcast, go to episode 750, hit the subscribe, make sure to put the notifications on. It should be the latest episode that just came out today. And you’re gonna get part two of this episode where we go how to find the best keywords and then how do you launch. And I’m gonna show you an example of how I got everything to page one within days of my launch. If you’re watching this on YouTube, same thing. Type in Serious Sellers Podcast, episode 750, and we’ll see you there. 

---

Enjoy this episode? Want to be able to ask questions to Leo Sgovio live in a small group with other 7 and 8-figure Amazon sellers?  Join the Helium 10 Elite Mastermind and get quarterly workshops, monthly training, and networking calls with Leo at h10.me/elite

Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our podcast!

💰 Get Helium 10 with a special discount to start or scale your e-commerce business here: https://h10.me/h10
Want to absolutely start crushing it on eCommerce and make more money? Follow these steps for helpful resources to get started:

1. Get the Ultimate Resource Guide from Bradley Sutton, Carrie Miller, and Shivali Patel for tools and services that he uses every day to dominate on Amazon!
2. New to Selling on Amazon? Freedom Ticket offers the best tips, tricks, and strategies for beginners just starting out! Sign up for Freedom Ticket.
3. Trying to Find a New Product? Get the most powerful Amazon product research tool in Black Box, available only at Helium 10! Start researching with Black Box.
4. Want to Verify Your Product Idea? Use Xray in our Chrome extension to check how lucrative your next product idea is with over a dozen metrics of data! Download the Helium 10 Chrome Extension.
5. The Ultimate Software Tool Suite for Amazon Sellers! Get more Helium 10 tools that can help you optimize your listings and increase sales for a low price! Sign up today!
6. Does Amazon Owe YOU Money? Find Out for FREE! If you have been selling for over a year on Amazon, you may be owed money for lost or damaged inventory and not even know it. Get a FREE refund report to see how much you’re owed!
7. Check out our other Amazon FBA podcasts including the Serious Sellers Podcast, as well as our Spanish and German versions!
8. You can also listen to the AM/PM Podcast on YouTube here!

The post #526 – Stop Believing Nonsense on Amazon Rufus (Alexa For Shopping)! appeared first on AM/PM Podcast.

Brazilian wristband business owner

submitted by /u/Particular_Swing8233
[link] [comments]

Brazilian wristband business owner

submitted by /u/Particular_Swing8233
[link] [comments]

Reinstate an account that was left behind for years

submitted by /u/Rebis0601
[link] [comments]

Reinstate an account that was left behind for years

submitted by /u/Rebis0601
[link] [comments]

#525 – Amazon Upgrades Seller Support & Walmart Sales Surge | Weekly Buzz 5/28/26

Audio version above. Video version below

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Manager of Education and Strategy, Carrie Miller. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

Upgrades to Customer Service by Amazon help sellers save time and reduce refunds
https://sell.amazon.com/blog/announcements/upgrades-to-customer-service-by-amazon

New Feature Alert! Helium 10’s new Category Reviews and Returns feature uses Amazon’s official Selling Partner API to display category-level review topics and return reasons, helping sellers understand what customers like and dislike, and why products are being returned. Sellers can use these insights during product research or listing optimization to compare them with top-category products, identify major pain points, and reduce returns before they become a bigger issue.

Scale product discovery with AI-powered Sponsored Brands collections

https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/sponsored-brands-collections/

Walmart online sales in Q1 grow more than 20% for fifth straight quarter
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/walmart-online-sales/

Protect your shipments from U.S. Customs holds with AGL
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHRFpHSEZNMkRHSEFNUEtC

Walmart, Instacart, and others see ecommerce delivery race as a revenue opportunity

https://www.emarketer.com/content/walmart-instacart-stord-ecommerce-delivery-race-revenue-opportunity

Before we wrap up, one last thing for all of you getting ready for Prime Day. We have a Prime Day Prep Checklist that’s packed with ideas, strategies, and action items to help you make this your biggest Prime Day yet.

We’ll drop the link below so you can download it, go through the checklist, and start optimizing while there’s still time. Whether it’s your listings, keywords, promotions, inventory, or advertising strategy, this checklist is designed to help you get prepared and maximize your sales during one of the biggest shopping events of the year.

Get the Prime Day Prep Checklist: https://pages.helium10.com/2026-prime-day-checklist 

That’s all we have for this week’s Weekly Buzz. Thanks so much for watching, and we’ll see you again next week to see what’s buzzin’.

In episode 525 of the AM/PM Podcast and Weekly Buzz, Carrie talks about:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 00:42 – Amazon Upgrades Customer Service
• 02:59 – See Why Customers are Returning Products Before They Hurt Your Business
• 11:24 – New AI-Powered Sponsored Brands Collections
• 13:08 – Walmart Online Sales Continue to Grow
• 15:14 – TikTok Product Finder & Hot Videos Tool
• 18:45 – Protect Shipments from US Customs Holds with AGL
• 21:01 – The Delivery Speed Race is On

Transcript

Carrie Miller:

Amazon upgrades customer service to better support sellers, new AI-powered sponsored brands collections, and Walmart Q1 sales grow more than 20%. This and more on this week’s episode of The Weekly Buzz. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the AM/PM podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Carrie Miller, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has, and we also give you a training tip of the week. So let’s get started and see what’s buzzing.

Carrie Miller:

Okay, let’s go ahead and get into the first article, and that is about Amazon just announced several upgrades to customer service by Amazon, and this could be really important updates for FBM or fulfilled by merchant sellers and seller fulfilled prime sellers. One of the biggest changes is that Amazon says it’s reducing returnless refunds, meaning that customers will no longer automatically get refunds without returning products in many situations. According to Amazon, returnless refunds will now mostly only apply to late deliveries, unsafe returns, or damaged non-returnable items.

Carrie Miller:

And honestly, I think that a lot of sellers are going to be happy to hear this because return abuse has become a real issue on Amazon. In some cases, customers could request refunds and not even have to send the item back, which obviously creates opportunities for abuse. I know, for example, I sell skateboards and we’ve had so many instances where basically we’ve sold like a brand new longboard or something like that and sent it out. And then we get a return that’s a broken old skateboard that is definitely not ours. There’s definitely an issue with abuse like that. Other sellers have also dealt with customers swapping out the products, returning damaged items after clearly using them or trying to keep products while still getting refunded.

Carrie Miller:

And historically, it’s been very difficult for sellers to fight some of these cases. So Amazon is also automating more reimbursements. So if sellers use claims protected shipping through labels like Amazon by shipping or vehicle, Amazon says it will automatically cover certain delivery issue claims. They are also automatically reimbursing goodwill refunds, which could save sellers a ton of time instead of constantly opening cases to recover money. Another major update is that customer service by Amazon is now easier to qualify for. Amazon removed the 95% valid tracking rate requirement and low volume sellers with under 30 orders per quarter can now use the service for free.

Carrie Miller:

Amazon is also adding more AI powered support features, including improved AI generated contact categorization and bringing customer follow ups directly into buyer seller messages. So sellers can manage FBA, FBM and seller fulfilled prime communications all in one place. So overall, I think this looks like Amazon is continuing to push more towards AI driven seller support while also trying to reduce friction for self-fulfilled sellers. And honestly, anything that helps reduce return abuse and make reimbursements easier is probably going to be welcomed by a lot of brands now. OK, next, I’m going to pass it along to Shivali and she is going to share Helium 10’s new feature alert with you.

Shivali Patel:

Up until now, when we’ve talked about doing product research or even optimizing your own listings, we’ve referenced review insights. And it’s been amazing for figuring out what do customers really like or dislike. However, now we’ve got a new feature that isn’t meant to replace review insights, but rather to give you additional context. We’re introducing category reviews as well as returns. Oftentimes when I go to conferences and I speak to you guys, you have asked me, is there a way to see other people’s returns? Well, my friends, now you can figure out why people are returning things as well as what exactly is happening at a more holistic level.

Shivali Patel:

Let’s get into it. Now, the first thing as I pull this up here is going to be this is powered directly by Amazon’s official selling partner API. So anything that you’re seeing is directly from Amazon’s data set. It is trustable and you cannot find this with any other scraping tool that you’re using. And you can’t find this in our previous version either, because that was all at the ASIN level view. If you’re looking for returns data, this is going to be so invaluable for you. If you just take a look at the top header, even on the search term results page, you’re going to see it says category reviews and returns. Now this doesn’t always appear, but it does if the API is connecting the keyword to an actual category, in which case for this whey protein powder, which is a very well-known and wide market, it obviously is. So I can click into analyze reviews right from this page, or I can pull this up when I’m on a product page like Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard, 100% whey protein powder.

Shivali Patel:

I can click the Chrome extension, select category reviews and returns, which will only show up again if the API is connecting that product to a category level view. At the very top, you’re going to have the past six months, which time frame it’s showcasing all the data from. And then right underneath it, you’ve got the top customers like and dislike sorted by the mentioned volume and star rating. As you can see here, we’re seeing two for what customers like and what the two most attributed for what customers dislike is. However, this is not the whole picture again, guys. This is just sorted by what’s being mentioned the most as well as a star rating impact. And then the top product return reason was the overall taste. As we go down into the first tab here that says category reviews, what you’re looking at is up to 10 topic cards per pro and con. Each one has four different aspects to it.

Shivali Patel:

You’re seeing the topic name, you’re seeing the mentioned percentage, the few attributes that fall into this category, for example, for taste overalls, people are saying, hey, there’s clean taste. These are like actual snippets from what folks are using inside of reviews, as well as the trend line over the last 30 days. Okay. Both sides are sorted again by mentioned volume and star rating impact. As you go through, you’re going to notice there is in the top right hand corner, something that says top 25% products in category. This is toggled off by default. You can toggle it on if you just want to see the comparison of what exactly is going on for the category products versus the top 25%. And as you can see, it’s showcasing to you right here for taste overall. This is higher than the top 25% of products, meaning the category products are beating higher than the top 25% of products.

Shivali Patel:

Okay. As we take a look at the dislike section, we’re seeing taste overall is sitting at about 17% of mentions in their reviews, which is lower than the top 25% of products. Still, we’re seeing some subtopics, bad flavor, inconsistent flavor, flavors, very weak. You can actually go in and each of these main topics has these five subtopics, which you can just click the down or up arrow. If I close it out, I can put it away and just continue on with my day or take a look at it, right? Very artificial flavor. I didn’t realize when I ordered this protein powder that it contains a mix of both natural and artificial flavors. And I don’t understand how a company that touts its product as being grass-fed dairy and designed for those who demand maximum quality without soy gluten or artificial sweeteners and free from GMOs, artificial fillers, hormones, antibiotics, and unnecessary additives can then add artificial flavors and call it a clean product. I agree with this person.

Shivali Patel:

I’m pretty heavy into protein powders and this one is one of the ones I will not use because of the sucralose that shows up in it. So it’s interesting that something like this can be marketed as clean and then you’re seeing exactly where people are divvying up. They love it because of the taste or maybe because there’s a really high percentage of protein showing up in the powder, but they’re not liking that the marketing is actually not aligned with what’s in the actual product. And you wouldn’t necessarily know this unless you’re going in and taking a look at your review insights. But that is not even the best part. The best part is you’re seeing these stars showing up next to anything that actually is one of the top return reasons, okay? So the star shows up when you are seeing something that is mentioned a lot in what customers dislike. It’s the topic insight. However, it’s also something that is causing a heavy return.

Shivali Patel:

And this would be naturally very difficult to pinpoint unless you were taking a look at something like this. So if you’re a Helium 10 user and you are on one of our top tier plans, make sure that you go in and you take a look at this because it’s not available anywhere else. It’s not being scraped from Amazon. It’s directly from Amazon. It’s telling you, hey, this is what’s causing returns. So whether you’re doing this in product research phase, you can make sure that you’re actually getting your products inspected for these things. And even designing it to make sure that you are not doing the same mistakes that your competitors might be in your category. And alternatively, maybe you’re taking a look at this later on when you’re trying to optimize your products. You can now go in and get ahead of those returns or those reviews before they actually stack up. What we just took a look at was the topic review insights. Right below that, we’ve got the star rating impact. And this is going to show you which ones are actually leading to a hike in your ratings, as well as what’s leading to a drop.

Shivali Patel:

You can compare this again to the top 25% products in the category. As you hover over it, you’ll be able to see what that layout looks like between the category products as well as the top 25% of products alongside the mentioned percentages and exact reviews. All right, let’s scroll up to the top and go into the second tab, which is return insights. You can select up to four topics right now. So let’s go ahead and select taste overall, flavor, solubility, and maybe nutritional content. And as you can see, check out this. The taste overall has had a drop in mentions, meaning maybe they’ve gone in and tweaked what’s going on with the actual taste, or they have gotten better with their marketing. It’s more aligned, right? You’ve got your nutritional content is kind of up and down. In any case, you can check this out over the last six months, okay? So again, use this data, guys, to go in and make sure you know why you’re getting returns. You are getting ahead of those things, so you’re not getting a bunch of them like your competitors might be or like you’re presently getting right now.

Shivali Patel:

And you can also just take a look and have a better understanding for what’s going on at a category view. This is available so long as the API is pulling the category level insights. This is going to show up directly if the API does pull it when you click that Chrome extension, as well as anytime you are taking a look at the summary up top, the category reviews returns will show up. And you can do this on search term pages as well. It doesn’t have to be just the product pages. With that, back over to you, Carrie.

Carrie Miller:

Thank you so much, Shivali. So let’s go ahead and keep moving forward. Amazon just announced a new AI-powered sponsored brands collections ad format. And this is another example of Amazon pushing deeper into AI-driven advertising automations. So with this new format, advertisers can promote multiple related products inside a single sponsored brands ads. And Amazon’s AI can now automatically decide which products to show shoppers based on things like shopping behavior, search intent, and browsing history. Sellers can still manually choose products if they want more control, but Amazon is clearly encouraging brands to move towards more automation here. So what’s interesting is that this could make cross-selling and catalog discovery much easier for larger brands. So instead of manually building dozens of separate sponsored brands campaigns for different product combinations, Amazon’s AI may dynamically assemble collections for shoppers automatically.

Carrie Miller:

But at the same time, I think this continues a much bigger trend we are seeing across Amazon advertising, where sellers are gradually giving up more creative control in exchange for automation and scale. So according to reports, Amazon is already removing some custom creative elements from these collections style ads and relying more heavily on AI-selected visuals and product groupings. So for some brands, especially those with strong branding and merchandising strategies, that could be a little more concerning because sometimes Amazon’s AI does not necessarily showcase products the way the brand would want them presented. So that said, for sellers with large catalogs, this could potentially improve discoverability and increase average order value if Amazon gets good at surfacing complementary products together. Overall, this looks like Amazon continuing to push towards AI-managed advertising where the platform handles more of the optimization, merchandising, and product selection automatically, while sellers focus more on feeding Amazon strong listings, creative assets, and conversion data.

Carrie Miller:

All right, up next, and this is actually really exciting knowing that I’ve been teaching about Walmart for a few years, and that is that Walmart online sales in Q1 grew more than 20% for the fifth straight quarter. So they really are continuing to accelerate upwards. And according to Digital Commerce 360, and that’s what this article is, Walmart’s e-commerce sales grew 24% in Q4 and officially surpassed $150 billion in online sales for the first time. So what is really interesting is that e-commerce now represents around 23% of Walmart’s total sales and the company says online growth continues to significantly outpace the store growth, which is, I mean, Walmart’s been around for so long, it’s pretty amazing. Walmart is also heavily investing in faster fulfillment, AI shopping tools, and marketplace expansion. The company says 35% of store-fulfilled orders are now being delivered in under three hours, and they’re increasingly using stores almost like mini-fulfillment centers to compete with Amazon’s on speed. But one of the biggest takeaways of e-commerce sellers is that Walmart is no longer just competing on low prices.

Carrie Miller:

They’re building higher margin businesses around advertising memberships, fulfillment services, and AI-powered shopping experiences. In fact, Walmart says customers using its AI shopping assistant, Sparky, it’s kind of like the Rufus on Amazon, Sparky are generating baskets that are about 35% larger than normal shoppers. And honestly, this is a pretty major shift in e-commerce overall. We are watching retailers move away from being simple online stores and towards becoming AI-powered ecosystems where discovery, recommendations, advertising, and fulfillment are all deeply connected. So for marketplace sellers, this probably means a few things. First, Walmart marketplace is continuing to become a much bigger opportunity for brands outside of Amazon. But second, it also means competition is likely going to increase as Walmart gets better at driving traffic, improving fulfillment speeds, and building more sophisticated ad tools. So overall, Walmart looks very focused on becoming a serious long-term e-commerce and advertising competitor to Amazon. And based on the growth numbers we are seeing right now, they are making a lot of progress. All right, so now I’m going to pass it on to Bradley, and he is going to share a Helium 10 strategy with you.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you want to be able to find your first or next product to sell on TikTok shop? Or maybe you’re looking to see what are just the trends? What are hot videos? What kind of videos are really working for your products? Well, this is where the TikTok product finder is going to come in. This is a tool, our newest TikTok tool here at Helium 10. So how I would use this is maybe I don’t have something specific in mind, but I’m like, hey, what are some products that have a price range of between $30 and $80? Maybe in the last 14 days, there have been at least, let’s just say, 400 units sold. And then maybe, hey, new videos, there has been no more than 20 new videos. So there’s a lot of sales, but not many videos. Is there anything that comes up like that? And here, there’s 355 products that come up here.Like, look at this. Here is a storage TV stand. All right. Here are some dark acid wash jeans. Here’s a portable speaker.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. In the last 14 days, 7,000 of these portable speakers have been sold, generating almost a half a million dollars of revenue. Yet there’s only 17 active videos. That’s crazy, right? So that could be like a potential. If I’m like, man, there’s not even that many influencers making content about this product and it’s still doing well. There’s not like zero new influencers here. Here’s a product that has only one new video, this furniture piece here. So there’s all kinds of different filters here that will allow you to kind of like search the product database for top TikTok products and what has a lot of videos. There’s also a tool here called TikTok Hot Videos. I could say, hey, what are people doing in like the Halloween space and which category? Maybe I’m like, are people doing something in the furniture section of Halloween? And I could actually go even a step further and do different categories here in the last seven days. And then now this is going to all right. Here are all the hot videos that are showing up that have the word Halloween somewhere around it and in the furniture category. All right.

Bradley Sutton:

And then so I could start maybe getting some ideas like, look at this. This is called Halloween activities. And I could see, all right, what are some of these videos that are actually generating even sales? Like I could do a search here. I’m like, hey, here’s a video that somebody made that actually generated $583 worth of a GMV for somebody. All right. So the possibilities are endless here, guys, of how you can use this tool. But especially if you are new to TikTok shop and you want to start seeing what is working for videos, what is working for products, there might be a trend that you can find that you can just hop on right away where it might be saturated on Amazon. But on TikTok, it could be an opportunity for you. So make sure to use the only TikTok product finder that is in the Amazon all in one kind of like feature and tool world. We’re the only ones that have something like this. If you have access to Helium 10, you got Platinum Diamond plan, you’re going to have access to this. So make sure to leverage TikTok shop product finder.

Carrie Miller:

All right. So let’s go ahead and get into the next article. And this is about Amazon warning sellers about different customs enforcement. So this is actually an article or kind of a news piece that they put out on Seller Central. And Amazon is actually warning sellers about a new U.S. customs enforcement program called 5H that is leading to more shipments being held or even returned at U.S. ports. And honestly, this is something sellers should probably be paying very close attention to because these holds can become extremely expensive very quickly.  According to Amazon, shipments with documentation issues, undervalued cargo declarations or invalid importer bronze are now facing increased scrutiny from Customs and Border Protection. In some cases, sellers are getting hit with hundreds or even thousands of dollars per day in fees while containers sit at the port. Amazon is basically positioning Amazon Global Logistics or AGL as a solution to help sellers avoid these issues.

Carrie Miller:

They say AGL reviews declarations, invoices and packing lists before shipments even leave the origin country instead of waiting until products arrive at the U.S. port. So that kind of helps to deter any issues that happen at the port. You can solve them while they’re in the origin country. Amazon also says that AGL handles customs documentation, bond processing, declaration filing and customs clearance as part of the shipment process. And honestly, I think this highlights a much bigger trend we’re seeing in e-commerce right now where importing products into the U.S. is becoming increasingly complicated and compliance focused. A lot of sellers historically relied on freight forwarders that may not have caught documentation mistakes early enough, especially when sellers were trying to move inventory quickly or reduce costs by undervaluing shipments. Very bad idea to undervalue your shipments. But now customs enforcement appears to be tightening significantly. Amazon is also encouraging sellers to build inventory buffers through Amazon warehousing and distribution and use faster replenishment options like AGL air freight if inventory becomes delayed.

Carrie Miller:

One thing Amazon does make clear, though, is that even if sellers use AGL, the importer of record is still financially responsible if a shipment gets held. So this is not a guarantee against customs issues, but Amazon is clearly trying to position AGL as a more compliance focused logistics solution during a period of increasing enforcement and supply chain risk. OK, let’s go ahead and get into the next article, and that’s about the e-commerce delivery race. OK, so this delivery race is officially heating up and it’s creating a massive revenue opportunity for companies trying to help retailers compete with Amazon and Walmart. According to eMarketer, companies like Walmart, Instacart, FedEx and logistics startups stored are all aggressively expanding fulfillment and delivery capabilities as brands look for faster and more flexible shipping options. Walmart recently announced new supply chain features designed to speed up inventory movement.

Carrie Miller:

So Instacart launched a new enterprise delivery management software and stored just raised two hundred and fifty million at a three billion valuation to help brands compete with Amazon level fulfillment. And honestly, this is becoming one of the biggest competitive advantages in e-commerce right now. Amazon has completely changed consumer expectations around shipping speed, and Walmart is rapidly catching up by using stores almost like mini fulfillment centers, like I mentioned before, for same day delivery. But what I think is really interesting is that this is no longer just about delivery speed. It’s about customer retention, order of frequency and lifetime value. So retailers are realizing that convenience keeps customers coming back.

Carrie Miller:

And once consumers get used to a fast delivery, it becomes very difficult to go backwards. And at the same time, many brands do not necessarily want to rely entirely on Amazon or Walmart infrastructure because those companies are also their direct competitors. And that is why companies like Stored and STRD and Instacart are trying to position themselves as neutral e-commerce infrastructure partners that can help brands offer fast fulfillment without fully handling without fully handing over customer relationships to major marketplaces. We’re also seeing a much bigger shift happening where fulfillment itself is becoming a major profit center. Walmart’s advertising business is growing rapidly. Instacart’s ad revenue grew 16% year over year, and both companies are increasingly monetizing logistics, delivery, memberships, and retail media together as one ecosystem. So overall, I think this shows that e-commerce is entering a new phase where logistics, advertising, AI, and customer experience are all becoming deeply connected. And for e-commerce brands, the pressure to offer fast fulfillment and better delivery experiences is probably only going to continue increasing from here.

Carrie Miller:

All right. The last thing I want to mention is that we have a Prime Day prep checklist, and this gives you a bunch of ideas and strategies to make this next Prime Day your biggest. So all you have to do is we’re going to put a link below, and you can go ahead and download that Prime Day prep checklist. And it’s going to give you strategies that are going to help you to increase your sales, hopefully, when you are selling this upcoming Prime Day. So if you haven’t checked that out, go ahead and check it out, download it, utilize it. You still have some time before Prime Day, so it’s a great time to start optimizing. So that is all I have today for the Weekly Buzz. We will see you again next week to see what’s buzzing. Bye.

---

Enjoy this episode? Want to be able to ask questions to Leo Sgovio live in a small group with other 7 and 8-figure Amazon sellers?  Join the Helium 10 Elite Mastermind and get quarterly workshops, monthly training, and networking calls with Leo at h10.me/elite

Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our podcast!

💰 Get Helium 10 with a special discount to start or scale your e-commerce business here: https://h10.me/h10
Want to absolutely start crushing it on eCommerce and make more money? Follow these steps for helpful resources to get started:

1. Get the Ultimate Resource Guide from Bradley Sutton, Carrie Miller, and Shivali Patel for tools and services that he uses every day to dominate on Amazon!
2. New to Selling on Amazon? Freedom Ticket offers the best tips, tricks, and strategies for beginners just starting out! Sign up for Freedom Ticket.
3. Trying to Find a New Product? Get the most powerful Amazon product research tool in Black Box, available only at Helium 10! Start researching with Black Box.
4. Want to Verify Your Product Idea? Use Xray in our Chrome extension to check how lucrative your next product idea is with over a dozen metrics of data! Download the Helium 10 Chrome Extension.
5. The Ultimate Software Tool Suite for Amazon Sellers! Get more Helium 10 tools that can help you optimize your listings and increase sales for a low price! Sign up today!
6. Does Amazon Owe YOU Money? Find Out for FREE! If you have been selling for over a year on Amazon, you may be owed money for lost or damaged inventory and not even know it. Get a FREE refund report to see how much you’re owed!
7. Check out our other Amazon FBA podcasts including the Serious Sellers Podcast, as well as our Spanish and German versions!
8. You can also listen to the AM/PM Podcast on YouTube here!

The post #525 – Amazon Upgrades Seller Support & Walmart Sales Surge | Weekly Buzz 5/28/26 appeared first on AM/PM Podcast.

Is seller software necessary?

submitted by /u/barrymccockner_01
[link] [comments]

Is seller software necessary?

submitted by /u/barrymccockner_01
[link] [comments]

Please educate me like I’m 5 years old about selling

submitted by /u/jersey169
[link] [comments]

Please educate me like I’m 5 years old about selling

submitted by /u/jersey169
[link] [comments]