Welcome back friend!
Did you decide anything this year?
Owning a business is really just solving problems all day every day. And we can now point any AI at my Amazon account this week and ask it to find “everything wrong.” (Yep, that’s it).
I tried it. It came back with a list. A category billed at the wrong referral rate. Storage fees growing every month. A subscribe and save discount running well above the number I set two years ago and forgot about. Inventory about to cross an aging cliff.
All real. And I fixed them all quickly!
…And I felt fantastic.
I sat with that feeling for a while, because it was out of proportion to the money. And I think I know what it was.
Every problem on that list had a right answer.
The referral rate is either correct or it isn't. The discount is either 10% or it's 14.4%. There is a true number, I can find it, and when I fix it I am objectively right. That is a very good feeling and it is not a small thing. It is competence.
But there’s also another list: What should I launch next? Should I sell my brand now or later? Is my supplier a risk?
None of those have right answers. They are bets, at best.
I have run this business for over 10 years and I can tell you that of almost all of the days that felt productive, and almost none of them contained a serious decision. You can be excellent at a business for ten years without ever once deciding anything. Nothing stops you. Nothing flags it. The account stays healthy the entire time.
Here is what changed this year, and I don't think we have caught up to it. AI is a right-answer machine. It is astonishing at problems with a true answer sitting somewhere in your data, and it just made that entire category nearly free. Which means the work that you have to do (and only you can do) doesn’t have a right answer.
That should feel like a promotion. Mostly it feels like exposure. (It is much nicer to be right about a referral fee than accountable for a product.)
So a test I have started using: Look at whatever is in front of you and ask whether it has a right answer. If it does, it is a task. Batch it, automate it, or hand it to the machine.
If it doesn't, that is the job. And that is the only part that’s truly yours.
The IVS
Big thanks to Roger Vi for dropping a wild tip this week. Roger is an 8-figure seller and a leader in the Titan Network. Give him a follow! If you want to reach out, here’s his e-mail: [email protected].
Why Vine Reviewers Tank Your Rating: How I Still Launch at 4.8+ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Most sellers hate Vine. The reviewers are tough graders who guard their 5-star ratings, so products that would normally sit at 4.6+ end up at 4.2 or worse. That hole can take hundreds, if not thousands, of purchases to recover from.
I stopped accepting that. My last 8 launches all opened at 4.7 or 4.8 after the Vine units were redeemed, and sellers in the 7-figure group I lead in the Titan Network have used this exact tip with similar results.
The idea: Vine reviewers compare your product with what they thought they were getting. That's all they're measuring. Lower what they expect and you win. Under-promise and over-deliver. Best practice for Vine, and just good life advice :)
Here's how I do it:
1. Upload just ONE bad photo. Plain shot, bad lighting, no editing. Good enough for Amazon to accept and for reviewers to know what the product is. Don't try to sell it to them.
2. Cut the marketing. Title, bullets, and description too. Every claim is something they can hold against you, and a Vine reviewer will check every promise you made. Anything you miss is a reason to leave 1-4 stars instead of 5. Keep it simple and factual.
3. Price it low. The #1 Vine complaint I get is "Good product, but too expensive." Sell 3-5 units at full price first so you don't have buy box problems when you raise it back up.
4. Send EXCELLENT packaging. Put the product in a really nice box that isn't shown in the images. I do this just for the first carton(s) going into FBA, the ones the Vine reviewers will get.
Two exceptions to the one-photo rule: anything people eat or put in or on their body always gets an ingredients photo too (that's safety, not marketing). And if your product already comes in nice packaging, just leave it out of the photo and add the packaging shots back after the Vine window is done.
Why this works
Almost nobody does this, so Vine reviewers aren't onto it. With no box in the images, they're expecting a plain white or brown box, maybe just a plastic bag. That's the bar. When a nice box shows up instead, they stop hunting for ways to critique the product and start talking about the box. You've shifted their attention to something good, so they forget to pick apart your listing and guard their 5-star review.
A final nice touch: an insert card about you, your small business, and your brand story. Put a face on the product. Just remember the goal is still low expectations for the product itself.
Three things to know before you try it
1. Don't use the insert card to send people off Amazon. Amazon polices this, and reviewers may post a photo of the card with their review.
2. Amazon sets your FBA fee from the Vine packaging, even if you switch to a smaller box later, and remeasurements are only every 90 days. Price it out first.
3. Once in a while a reviewer posts a photo of the nice box and a real customer expects the same one. Nobody has ever complained to me about this, but if those photos pile up, add a note to the listing. I wouldn't stress about it.
One last thing
This gets you better Vine reviews. That's all it does. It will not save a bad product. A strong open matters, because a low rating early can hold back the whole launch, but what decides your rating long term is what real customers think after Vine is done. If the product isn't good enough to compete in your category, a perfect run of 5-star Vine reviews won't fix that.
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Amazon News Week 33/52
Amazon now suppresses new listings in regulated categories like toys and supplements immediately unless an approved third party testing lab has already submitted verified results. |
A newly introduced House bill, H.R. 9799, would require Amazon and other large marketplaces to prove wrongdoing before suspending a seller account. |
Amazon now automatically translates text inside product images across 14 stores when it does not match a shopper's language, so check infographics for translation errors. |
Amazon's Seller Assistant tool can now explain the specific reason an offer is losing the Buy Box and suggest a fix instead of only showing a score. |
TikTok Shop now offers its own multi-channel fulfillment service, giving sellers who list on multiple platforms another fulfillment option beyond Amazon MCF. |
Amazon released developer documentation for adding video creative to Sponsored Products ads, opening a new creative option inside a previously image only ad format. |
The Deep Dive (Premium Content)
Amazon Is Already Deciding What Happens To Your Unfulfillable Inventory
What you get this week:
A simple, easy to understand guide on what happens with your unfulfillables (and how much Amazon is actually destroying without your knowledge)
Seven pages, no padding, built to be printed and kept beside your desk.
- The six unfulfillable reasons, and which two Amazon actually pays you for
- Why stranded stock is the opposite problem, and the four fixes that clear it
- Three checks, ten minutes, that tell you what your account is doing right now
- The one report holding your destroyed count, plus the cross-check that separates the units Amazon paid you for from the ones you ate
- The four ways out of the unfulfillable pile, with the real 2026 fee on each (two of them cost exactly the same, which is the part that surprised me)
- The price rules…
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It goes out in the newsletter. Subscribe free, share it with one friend, and every Deep Dive unlocks.
I Don’t Own A Suit Jacket…….and Never Wear Pants
We closed out our final week in Canada in Toronto, at a good friend's wedding.
He asked me to be a groomsman, which was an honor and also a problem. I live in Costa Rica. I don't own a suit jacket. I own two real pairs of pants, and the jeans only come out once in a while in San Jose. So I went shopping. Standing in a fitting room wearing a jacket for the first time in ten years felt genuinely strange. I dress for one season now. Hot and sunny.
But the best part of the week wasn't the wedding.
It was catching up with four different friends I hadn't seen in years. Some of them not in a decade. None of them are Amazon sellers. These are my smart, rich friends, and all we do when we get together is talk business, parenting, trends, and old stories. Some of the most valuable advice I've ever gotten came out of those conversations.
One night with one of my buddies, I just kept buying drinks (since he paid for dinner at his wine club that has a secret door to find it…yeah that’s cool). Suddenly it was 1am and we were both far too old to still be out. And I still had a list of things I hadn't gotten to.
I made a promise before I left, and I hope I keep it, that I'm going to do better at this. Time moves too fast. I honestly don't know how many more chances I get with some of these guys.
So take a minute and think about your own circle. Who actually matters. Make the time, take the trip, put a real date on the calendar.
One of these guys is 78 years old, still running a beer company and still practicing tax law. I truly hope we get together again.
But we're all battling the clock.
Old Stock Sitting in FBA? Get the Removal Order In by the 14th
Amazon charges an extra fee on anything that has been sitting in FBA for more than six months. It looks at your inventory on the 15th of every month and bills you a few days after that.
Submit a removal or disposal order by 11:59 PM Pacific on the 14th and those units do not get charged that month. They do not have to leave first. They almost never do, because removals take about 14 business days to process and another two weeks to ship. Amazon only cares that the order went in before the deadline.
Here is why that one day is worth setting a reminder for. Stock that has been sitting 270 days costs you $1.50 per cubic foot. At 271 days, the exact same stock costs $5.45. Roughly three and a half times more, for one more day on the shelf. Miss the 14th and you eat the whole month before you get another shot.
Better yet: discount it before pulling it
A removal order is money going out. An Outlet deal is money coming in on the same units, and Outlet is built for exactly this stock: an ASIN has to have sat in FBA for at least 90 days before it even qualifies. Amazon shows you a maximum price, you come in at or under it, the deal runs two weeks, and there are no extra fees beyond the fulfillment and referral fees you already pay. How? Inventory > FBA Inventory > filter for “Recommendation for Create outlet deal.”
Even better yet: sell it first
FBA Inventory will tell you which of your ASINs are going to get hit within the next 60 days. That is two months of warning before the fee starts, and closer to six months before the high fees. Stock at month four is still worth discounting, advertising, or bundling. Stock at month nine is worth whatever a liquidator will pay. The cheapest version of this tip is never needing it.
And the 100% best thing you can do? Tell Claude to do it.
The CEO's Email Address Is Just Sitting There
I found something this week that I still can't believe is real. Elliott Advocacy, a consumer nonprofit, keeps a free page at elliott.org/company-contacts with them actual names and email addresses of the executives sitting above every airline, hotel, booking site, car rental counter, cruise line and bank call center. Not a contact form. Not a support alias. Names and inboxes. American Airlines' page ends at CEO Robert Isom, [email protected] (yep, just [email protected]). Expedia's ends at Ariane Gorin. Marriott's ends at Anthony Capuano. Each company is laid out as a ladder: customer service first, then a VP, then the person above them, then the chief executive.
Now… company executives change their email addresses and phone numbers frequently to avoid contact with customers. They move their email to hide from you. So Elliott made a list. How to use it:
Exhaust normal support ONE time first. Then email the lowest executive on the ladder, never the CEO. Short note, dated timeline of what happened, one specific ask. Jump straight to the top and you get punted right back down to the bottom.
Enjoy!
You can buy a PlumeBlanche diamond-encrusted sofa for close to $200,000. It's also possible to hire one person to kill another person for $500. Remember that the next time you hear someone ramble on about how the market decides what things are worth. The market might be rational but the people who comprise it are not.
Ryan Holiday
BEER! Now that I have your attention… you probably would like the Facebook community.
This week in the Facebook group: Susan asks who’s changed their titles
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