#511 - Is Amazon Killing Its BEST Seller Perk? Get Ready for FBA Fee Increases! | Weekly Buzz 4/8/26

Did Amazon just make a move that could cost sellers tens of thousands of dollars? There's going to be extra FBA fees starting next week. Amazon and USPS aren't breaking up after all. These stories and more on today's weekly buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the AMM podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host Bradley Sutton 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 Tik Tok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has and we also give a training tip of the week. So, let's get started and see what's buzzing. All right, everybody. First news articles, not really a news article. I don't have a link. And that in itself is kind of interesting. But last week, some emails were being posted around. Actually, it seems like it's the same email of a screenshot that Amazon sent a seller that said, "Hey, in a nutshell, you are not going to be able to continue to use your credit card for your Amazon advertising." WW this like soon as I saw that, I didn't even read the whole thing. I was like, "You've got to be kidding me. It's crazy." Like that's one of the best perks of selling on Amazon is getting those credit card points or getting cash back. Anyways, you know that that screenshot of this supposed email, you know, went on to say, "Hey, you're going to get $2,500 back and stuff like that." Like I was like, "This has got to be like a April a late April Fool's joke, right? Can't be real." But a lot of people were saying it's real. It's posted all over LinkedIn. But I went to all of my accounts and I tried to find this email because it said other people are posting this message that said, "Hey, this is going to be implemented starting April 15th." And even today, April 8th, I don't have any that email in my account. So, I'm like, "What is going on?" Like, how can Amazon make such a drastic move that you're not going to be able to pay credit card for your advertising? Now, remember, this is not like unprecedented. Carrie announced on the Weekly Buzz a few weeks ago that Meta did this, right? So, it would kind of make sense that Amazon might make this move. But the strange thing is this timeline just doesn't make sense. Is it really going to happen 4:15 and we're only one week away and I don't see it in any of my accounts emails, multiple accounts. I opened up seller central cases and yeah, of course, I know that a lot of these reps are not maybe equipped to answer all these questions, but they all said, "No, there hasn't been a policy change or at least not your account. And if you haven't got that email, you're still paying with credit card." So, why is this to me if this happens one of the biggest changes? Well, a lot of us have been using our uh credit cards in order to get airline points and stuff. In 2 weeks, I'm flying to the Maldes. $4,000 business class flight. It's one of the first United new Polaris flights. I'm going to be staying in a $2,000 a night hotel. I'm not paying anything. Why? Cuz Helium 10's paying for it. Nope. It's because I'm using my credit card points that I've been getting for my Hilton American Express. I use my Chase Sapphire Reserve. I've got the Chase or the um City Bank uh Inc. I've got tons of cards that get different kinds of perks and points. Some people just go for the strict three and 4% cash back. So, imagine you're spending $100,000 in Amazon advertising a month. You're getting like three $4,000 cash back at least. We're talking tens of thousands of dollars. you might be out if you were relying on that and Amazon really is going to make you take the payments for advertising out of your dispersements, right? So, let me know guys in the comments below. Did you personally get that message? I want to see how many people got it. I'm like crossing my fingers here. I didn't get that message in any of my accounts. So, I'm like hoping, okay, no news is good news. Hopefully, this is going to keep going. If this happens, guys, this is going to be the worst move for me and all my miles and points and stuff that Amazon has made in a while. Next up, there is no debate about the veracity of if this new charge is coming through. This is 100% confirmed. Uh if you look in your seller central, there's an article that says last week fuel and logistics related search charge FBA, MCF, and BWP in US and Canada. And there's also things that affect uh things in Europe. So what does this mean? As we know, fuel costs are through the roof, right? And so a lot of, you know, carriers are increasing their price and Amazon is one of them. Says here in this article, starting April 17th, a 3% or 3 12% fuel and logistics related search charge will be applied to fulfillment fees across FBA in US and Canada, as well as remote fulfillment from the US into Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Starting May 2nd, this searchcharge will take effect also for BWT, buy with Prime in the US and MCF, multi-channel fulfillment. All right, Amazon is proud that hey, this search charge is less. Now, when you see 3.5%. Does that mean if you have a $100 product, you're having to pay $3.50 more? No, it's 3.5% of your shipping fee so or your FBA, you know, fee, right? So, let's say that was $10. Well, it's now going to be what, 30 cents or or so. One thing I appreciate about this is there's no gaslighting here. Am, you know, whoever wrote this doesn't write Amazon's other articles where they try and gaslight you. Thank you. They're doing you a favor. Amazon isn't being upfront about this. Hats off to Amazon. I appreciate it. They're just like saying how it is. Here's a fee. And uh, you know, this is not to benefit sellers. This is obviously to offset the rising cost. I think, hey guys, we got to give Amazon credit here. is 3.5% is actually not much. I bet you wish your gas prices were uh were only up 3.5%. For most of us, it's a lot more. Now, uh Amazon actually wanted to even get ahead of this and give more information. So, there's some articles that I I can't show here on the screen, but they sent some FAQs that u might help you guys understand this a little bit more and give some information from other marketplaces. Now, first question is how how are you going to be able to know or verify what these fees are? Well, this article says that the search charge is going to appear as a separate line item. All right? So, you're not going to have to like wonder or make calculations. When you look at your reports, you're going to see a separate line item for this search charge. Another question, does this fuel and logistics search charge apply to inventory already in FBA warehouses? The answer is yes. Does it apply to subscribe and save orders? The answer is yes. Does it apply to removal orders or disposal fees? No, does not apply to those things. If I Another question, if I use AWD, is sending to AW from AWD to FBA going to incur this search charge? The answer is no. What about in Europe? All right. Well, actually, starting April 17th, there's going to be a 1.5% fuel and logistics search charge for UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Netherlands, Ireland, and Belgium. And it'll be MC the MCF is actually going on the 2nd and it's going to be across Europe as well. Another FAQ says, "Hey, if the fuel costs keep rising, will you increase the fuel into logistics related search charge again?" Amazon says this search charge will be in place until further notice and we'll reassess as conditions evolve. So, if you guys have any other questions that maybe weren't answered, um, let me know in the comments below. I I can reach out to my uh representatives at at uh Amazon and see if we can get it uh get it confirmed. But pretty straightforward. Amazon went into detail here. 3.5% only in your fulfillment cost and later on it's going to also include MCF and buy with Prime and 1.5% if you're in Europe. Uh I don't have any information as far as like Australia, UAE or other places, but you know, I'm sure there might be something similar over there. So hopefully, you know, this fuel, you know, situation changes, but at least overall it shouldn't be a humongous hit, you know, to pay 10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents more per order. As long as, you know, hopefully you've got some some decent profit margin. If if a 3.5% on your shipping is going to crush your profit, well, you probably have a lot more, you know, pressing issues than just a fuel search charge. All right, next up, let's get into our new feature alert of the week and very happy to show you something new about Blackbox. All right, guys. I've got a pretty cool new feature alert here, and it's in Blackbox. Uh, this feature is available for diamond uh members. Elite members have had it for a while. Now, it's moving down diamond. Maybe one day it'll go down to platinum like things usually do. Now, this is pretty cool. Just so you know, in Helium 10, we are the only tool that has a history of brand analytics top search terms. Like for example, I can enter in an as or group of asens and I could look back, you know, about, you know, 10 20 weeks or so and see all of the keywords that were top three clicked. But then a while back, I had the idea, you know, I was like, you know what, I'm doing research in my coffin shelf niche and I'm just wondering what are the top three clicked products for all those weeks. Until now, there's been no way to look at that. I could look at all of the keywords over a number of weeks, but I couldn't do the opposite where instead of entering an as, I enter a keyword. Guess what, guys? Our team made it happen. Watch this. Let's just go ahead and enter in coffin shelf here. And I'm going to go ahead and hit search. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to see that there's actually three keywords here related to coffin shelf as as a core. Now what I can do is I can go down and expand this coffin shelf and I can see week by week who were the top three clicked like for the for for the last few weeks of this this time period. Like I can see the the number one product Gothic curiosities is consistently the number one clicked product here and my Manny's Mysterious Oddities also consistently the the number two most clicked product week by week. Now this is interesting because I can see some consistency in this niche. Other niches or other keywords, you're going to see different products show up here at different times, right? So this is going to be interesting for me to say, hey, you know what? I want to start targeting all the products that have ever shown up as one of the top three clicked for coffin shelf over the past 10, 15, 20 weeks. Well, what I would do is I can even export this list and then just take those as drop it into a product targeting campaign and advertising just to give it a try and and see, you know, what we can do here. Um maybe I just want to overview of who were the top three click products over time and uh is it my product that's always the first or second? How many weeks did I drop out of the top three click products? So, tons and tons of use cases for this where instantly I can get this history of who were the top three clicked over different time periods. Something else that is new in the tool is if I had entered an as I have a couple buttons here where I where I can say fast drop offs or trending up fast. So, like for example, let me go ahead and choose my coffin shelf as let me put it here. I'd probably, you know, want to put more products here, like more of my products or with my competitors. But now over here, I can see under fast drop offs that, hey, I used to be one of the top three click for coffin gift box, for coffin shelf, for wall, for coffin decor, but I have actually fallen off the list. All right. So, so that's uh something to look at. Maybe I want to know, hey, am I trending up? Am I getting on a top three keywords? Nope, this product isn't. But if you if I had put in a whole bunch of competitors, I can see, hey, where are they coming coming up? Where all of a sudden over the last 90 days, they are starting to show up on as one of the top three click products. So, a lot of new use cases here in Blackbox brand analytics. If you guys don't have access to this tool, might be because you're not in the right plan. Make sure you guys have the diamond plan. Most powerful plan Helium 10 has. you are going to be able to unlock all of these things that your competitors who don't have Helium 10 do not have access to because only in Helium 10 can you leverage this brand analytics data in this way. Well guys, the team has been crushing it lately for Blackbox. Last week, if you know, I uh uh announced a new really super cool tool that I kind of call the zombie hunter. It's not what's the official name, but it allows you to look for products that are out of stock that haven't even been in stock in one or even two years to go ahead and do research on it. No other tool has that. And then this week, uh, a pretty cool new way to look at Amazon brand analytics data. So, make sure you hop into Blackbox and start using, uh, these tools. I believe they're available on the diamond plan. All right, next up, we've got an article here from payments.com and it says, "Amazon reaffirms USPS logistics partnership." If you've been watching the Weekly Buzz over the last, you know, few weeks, we've talked about how stories have come out where where, hey, Amazon might have to kind of like break up with USPS and what would that mean for Amazon sellers, you know, Amazon does not have a way to deliver fast in rural areas, you know, like in the middle of North Dakota or something, you know, so it's usually USPS. So if USPS completely stopped fulfilling Amazon orders, I think we as sellers might have been negatively affected uh because our shipments would, you know, have a little bit more delay. The buy box would show a later shipping date, etc. However, uh per some announcements from Amazon and USPS says here, Amazon on April 6 has reached a new deal with USPS in which the postal agency will continue to make 80% of the package deliveries it currently makes. All right. So, it is it is reducing, right? But at before, Amazon said, "Hey, we're going to cut like 2/3 of everything that we do with the USPS, uh, which was kind of scaring some sellers, including myself." So, for now, uh, looks like we are kind of safe from having to worry about any major changes with shipping times, delivery times, or where our product is available. Right. Next up, let's go to our strategy of the week. And, Shiovali, take it away. Expanding internationally without understanding your keywords is risky. You could be targeting a high search volume of terms that aren't actually even relevant to your product. And worse, you might accidentally include a forbidden or misleading keyword in your listing. When you truly understand what your keywords mean in your native language, you make smarter optimization decisions. You protect your listing health and position your product correctly in that marketplace. That directly impacts your rankings, conversions, and revenue. So let me show you how to solve this right away. Yes, you can run keyword research in Helium 10 like normal. You can use Cerebro, use Magnet. But what happens when all those keywords are in a language that you don't fully understand? Actually, the idea for this feature came from Ru Java. She used to export Cerebra results into Excel or Google Sheets and then use Google Translate to append translated columns. We thought there's got to be an easier way to do this. For example, here we looked up Tupperware looking product on Amazon Espa. We've got 477 keywords. Now, we speak maybe 60 to 70% Spanish if we're taking a look at our team. Mostly Bradley and Carrie cuz that is not me. No bueno. But some of these words we've never heard before. Like fumbra. No idea. Tupper, we assume that's Tupperware. But what about Tupper crystal hermetico? We know crystal. We know Tupperware. But what does hermitico mean? So maybe you don't speak any Spanish at all like myself and you're looking at this thinking, "What is going on?" Now watch this. If you're an English speaker, you can instantly translate everything to English. You can even generate it into a separate column. For example, this keyword right here, hermeticos als native Spanish speakers. If that's incorrect, I'm sorry. Feel free to let me know how to fix that little butcher of mine. That might mean nothing to you, but instantly we see the translation is airtight food containers. And that is exactly what this product is. Fraa crystal. That translates to glass lunchbox. Maybe Spanish speakers in Mexico didn't even know that term. Maybe that's specific to Spain. We don't know. We have tapa microandas crystal glass microwave lid. Instantly, every keyword is translated into the language you understand. And this isn't just in one tool. It exists in Cerebro, in Magnet, in keyword tracker. And as you expand internationally, you need to understand what keywords you're actually targeting. What are the highest search terms? What do they mean in your own language? You could be a Chinese seller expanding into Amazon Germany. Translate German into Chinese instantly and understand the intent before optimizing your listing. International expansion shouldn't mean blind optimization. Use Helium 10's keyword translation feature to make sure you know exactly what you are ranking for and why. >> I hope you guys are selling in multiple marketplaces. And probably if you are, unless you're a, you know, linguist, you probably do not speak fluently all those languages and you can do the keyword research in Helium 10. But hopefully this uh feature helps you guys to understand, you know, some of the nuances of the keywords that are popping off in different marketplaces uh understanding them in your own native language. So, make sure to take advantage of that keyword tracker and Cerebro and more tools to come if you guys like this new feature. This week, guys, uh we are going to be in the Ecom Mastery in Nashville. Carrie, myself, Shiovali, make sure to come out. In a couple of weeks, Shioali and myself will be at the Amazing Days Summit in Sophia, Bulgaria. All right. So, if you guys want to get more information on that, go to h10.me/bulgaria and you can buy tickets directly from there. uh hang out with us in person. If you would like to be interviewed and you'll be in Bulgaria, if you'd like to be interviewed for the podcast or maybe even for a Helium 10 case study, let me know in advance. Reach out to customer service. Tell them, "Hey, you heard that Bradley's looking for people to interview in the Bulgaria conference and I'd love to interview. That would be uh great to have you there." Another thing, uh we have a special uh this month uh only, April until the end of the month for anybody who has never used Helium 10 ads or done a rule automation. people who upgrade to the diamond plan or you already have the diamond plan and you make your first rule in Helium 10 ads, it's going to be 100% covered your entire ad spend for the month of April. You know, the normal cost, I think it's like 2% of your ad spend. So, if you spend $1,000 in Amazon advertising, uh it costs 20 bucks to use Helium 10 ads if you've got the diamond plan, right? Um, obviously if you have like $10,000 to spend, it's a little bit more money than that, but you want to give it a spin. Special deal, you'll see it at the top of your screen and just opt in to the special deal so that you can have your ads completely free of charge this month. If you don't have the diamond plan, you want a crazy deal, go to h10.me/tacos April. Tacos April. And you could see a couple different discounts. We have one for 30% off um every month or you can actually get up to $2,000 off the annual diamond plan and then with either of these you'd be able to take advantage of that free April month of Helium 10 ad. So special deal going on this month. All right guys, not much news today except but the news that came out was pretty impactful with those uh new fees and the potential Amazon taking away the ability with credit card. Let me know what you guys think is going to happen with these things. Are these new fees going to go away soon hopefully? Um, do you think Amazon really is taking away credit card use for Amazon advertising? How is that going to affect you? Let us know in the comments below. Otherwise, we'll see you guys next week to see what's buzzing.