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Everybody hates the plastic bag
Everybody hates the plastic bag
In 2017, Denmark's environmental agency asked a team at the Technical University of Denmark which grocery bag is best for the planet. They counted everything: growing the cotton, making the bag, shipping it, throwing it out.
The plain plastic bag, reused once as a bin liner, won. The organic cotton tote has to go shopping 149 times just to match it on carbon. Counting everything they measured, 20,000 times. Once a week, that's 384 years.
The villain was the efficient one. We just never saw the cotton farm.
Which brings us to Amazon… Amazon is our plastic bag.
Holiday fees started October 15, and sellers I know are using them as the reason to finally build their own stores. Get off Amazon. Stop feeding the big guy. DIVERSIFY. My first thought was "maybe it's time to pump our DTC."
So I had AI price it out. A $20 product, holiday rates on both sides, every box to the closest zone USPS has.
Cost to sell one unit:
• 8 oz: Amazon $6.87, your own store $11.41
• 1 lb: Amazon $8.06, your own store $12.09
• 2 lb: Amazon $9.37, your own store $12.47
• 3 lb: Amazon $10.33, your own store $13.12
(Amazon: 15% referral fee plus the FBA fee. Your store: card fees, average pick and pack and USPS Ground Advantage.)
There's no ad spend in there. A customer who finds your store for free still costs you more than one Amazon found for you.
"Fine, I'll ship my store orders out of FBA." Amazon charges $9.54 to ship one 1 lb unit for your store. Sell that same unit on Amazon and the FBA fee is $5.06. Same box, same shelf, almost double the price when the customer is yours (MCF aint nice).
Owning the customer doesn't get you out of it either. Hims & Hers has over 2.5 million subscribers, bringing in about $83 a month each. That's the DTC dream. It still spent 39.2% of its revenue on marketing last year.
And a lot of the people you pay Meta to find go buy it on Amazon anyway. Haus, a company that sells ad testing, looked at hundreds of tests of ads built to drive store sales. Amazon sales went up in 97% of them. In about one in six, Amazon got more of the lift than the store did.
Even Shopify gave up. It used to warn merchants that Amazon's Buy with Prime could break Shopify's terms. In 2023 it put Prime checkout inside Shopify stores. Amazon says stores that add it get 25% more shoppers placing orders. The thing that makes shoppers trust your store is Amazon.
So don't build the store. Not this Q4. Not "as a test." Just don't.
When do you switch? When your store's cost per order, ads included, beats Amazon's, and most of your store orders show up without an ad. The tote does beat the plastic bag eventually. It just takes 20,000 trips.
Hating the big guy feels good. But the big guy often ships it cheaper, faster and better than we can.
Stick with the one that feeds you.
The IVS
Big thanks to SFTB friend Vanessa Hung for graciously sharing a super cool tip this week! Vanessa Hung is the founder and CEO of Online Seller Solutions. Her team works inside Amazon Seller Central to fix the backend problems most sellers dread, like broken catalogs, suppressed listings, compliance blocks and messy variations, and she's known as the Queen of Flat Files. 👑
The Amazon Storefront URL Hack
What if a category word on Amazon led straight to your brand’s store?
Not a search results page where you compete with everyone else, but your own storefront, reached by a clean link like amazon.com/supplements. That is a short URL, and it works differently from the long store link you already have.
The long link is not just an address but a short URL is a keyword you claim, and each one can point to only one store, so whoever claims the word first owns that doorway to the aisle.
It matters because shoppers who visit a store buy more. Amazon’s internal data shows new-to-brand shoppers who visited a store were 62.7% more likely to purchase and spent 72.3% more per order. Store visitors also showed a 53.9% higher purchase frequency, a 52.1% higher add-to-cart rate, and a 71.3% higher average order value.
Getting one takes four steps and no extra tools.
- Make sure your store is live and approved, since short URLs attach to the homepage only.
- Open a support chat from the Amazon Ads console under Help, then Contact us, then Stores.
- Tell them the word you want, along with your store name, your current long store URL, and the short URL you are requesting.
- Then wait 24 to 48 hours, and the short URL will redirect to your full store.
- Once it is live, add ?channel= to the end of the link and give every placement its own tag, such as podcast, insert, or a creator’s name.
Tagged visits show up under “Your tags” in Stores Insights, so you know which podcast, box insert QR code, or creator bio is sending shoppers your way. I break down everything in a short clip from the webinar; you can watch it here.
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Amazon News Week 46/52
Canadian-made products can now carry a 50% extra US tariff or lose it, after the White House changed which goods are covered. |
Q4 inventory from China could be delayed, because a union has approved a strike at the LA/Long Beach ports. |
Sellers who missed the cutoff get a second chance, because Amazon moved the BFCM deal submission deadline to November 13, though inventory cutoffs did not move. |
Launching new products could cost less in FBA fees, since Amazon extended New Selection Program enrollment to March 31. |
Amazon's Q3 shows units up 12% but online-store revenue up only 2%, and slower ad revenue growth of 11%. |
Walmart sellers may gain a channel Amazon sellers lack, as Walmart opens its store to third-party AI shopping agents while Amazon blocks several. |
The Deep Dive (Premium Content)
Your First 30 Days with Claude Code (Updated Nov 2026)
In April we put out a guide to getting started with Claude Code. A lot has changed since then. Amazon now publishes its own way to connect AI tools to your seller account, the AWS account is gone from setup, and Claude Code can run your checks on a schedule.
So we rebuilt it start to finish for someone who has never opened Claude Code…
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So Where’s the Downside?
Michael Keyers
When we moved to Costa Rica nine years ago, Halloween barely existed here. It was a costume day at the kids' school, and that was about it.
That makes sense once you know the background. This is a Catholic country, and plenty of families, especially the older generation, have mixed feelings about a holiday built around demons and ghouls. Costa Rica even has its own answer to it. Since 1996, October 31 has officially been the Día de la Mascarada Tradicional Costarricense, a day for the traditional masquerade: oversized handmade masks of devils, giants and local characters dancing through town behind a cimarrona brass band. This year it has turned into a full weekend. Friday is the school event, followed by trick-or-treating that evening. Saturday there are about eight different events across the communities, from haunted houses to old-school door-to-door trick-or-treating to parties.
The highlight in our house: Jackson's band is playing one of the Halloween events, and he will be performing the Halloween theme on piano while wearing a Michael Myers mask. Nothing says Halloween quite like that piano line coming from behind that mask. Only downfall is Jacksons glasses don’t fit in the mask so the music is all from memory!
The part I like best is who shows up. This is not just an expat thing anymore. Lots of Costa Rican kids are out there in costume with their bags open, right alongside the gringo kids. Probably not with their grandparents' approval. But come on. Put yourself in the shoes of a ten-year-old here. Someone tells you that you get to dress up as anything you want and the neighbours will hand you free candy.
Where exactly is the downside? Happy Halloween!
Got an image that won't go through? Here's 8 places you can try before you ask Seller Support
Most sellers re-upload in the same spot five times and then open a case. A picture can be held up in about ten different places, so try all of them first.
Where you can make the change
- Edit listing, Images tab. The obvious one.
- The Upload Images tool. Name each file by ASIN and slot: B0XXXXXXXX.MAIN.jpg for the main image, then .PT01 to .PT08 for the rest. Zip a batch together.
- Your inventory spreadsheet (flat file). Use the main image and other image URL columns.
- The API, or any listing software that writes through it.
- Every other SKU you have on that ASIN, inactive ones included. Amazon may be showing a SKU you never edited. We had pictures stuck for months because the fix went on an inactive SKU.
- Your other marketplaces: Canada, Mexico, and especially a Europe/UK account. Another region's version of the picture can win. Images stuck since June showed up on Amazon.com within 15 minutes of fixing the EU listing.
- An account with no listing on that ASIN. A picture an account once sent can keep winning after its listing is gone. We gave that account a listing on the ASIN with the right pictures, set up so nothing could be bought from it. The images went live in 3 minutes.
- A slightly different file. Amazon recognizes the same picture even when you resave it. We stretched one 2% and rotated it under a degree, and Amazon took it on the 7th try after refusing 6 others.
One trap: if Amazon refuses a new main image, put the old main back on every SKU right away. We've seen a refused main hide the whole gallery.
Your iPhone Can Translate a Phone Call to Your Factory, Both Ways, While You Talk
People always say the best way to build a good relationship with a supplier is to go there. I'm not disagreeing. But this might save you a flight or two.
Live Translation is built into the iPhone's Phone app, and it translates a normal phone call while it's happening. You speak English, the other person hears you in their language, and their answer comes back to you in English, with a transcript running on your screen.
It works on calls in ten languages: English, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish (Spain), Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean. That covers the call to your factory, the hotel front desk in Tokyo and the pharmacy in Paris.
Download the languages on Wi-Fi before you need them. Then, during a call, tap More, then Live Translation, pick their language and yours, and tap Start Translation. Both of you are told the call is being translated, so the other person isn't caught off guard.
Fair warning: I haven't tried this one yet. But picking up the phone and actually talking to your supplier, each of you in your own language, seems worth a shot.
The catch: it needs an iPhone 15 Pro or any iPhone 16 or newer with Apple Intelligence turned on, it only works on one-on-one calls, and Apple's own page says outputs may vary, so check anything important. Use it to have the conversation, then put the prices, quantities and dates in an email.
If more information was the answer, then we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs.
Derek Sivers
BEER! Now that I have your attention… you probably would like the Facebook community.
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