#531 - Amazon REDUCING Fees? | TikTok Shop Expansion in EU | Weekly Buzz 6/18/26

Amazon further reducing fees for some sellers who launch products. Tik Tok shop is going live in four new countries. Walmart has a new program to ship product to Mexico. This 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, guys. Last week we had some doozies of stories. you know, especially we spent about a good 20 minutes talking about the new title changes that has the entire Amazon world uh kind of on edge wondering how that's going to go. So, if you didn't get a chance to watch last week's weekly buzz, just search for AM/PM podcast on whatever you're watching or listening to this on, make sure to check last week's episode, dive into that. And for those who did watch it, I want to know what you think. Like, like what are you guys going to do? I hope you're taking the advice we gave and are not going to change your listings until after Prime Day at the very least. Let us know what uh you guys are thinking, what your plan is for that. You're going to wait for Helium 10's AI tool so you can just bulk do it. Let me know. This week, we don't have any kind of like, you know, hashtag gamechanging news. A lot slower week, but there are some cool things that are going on in the world of e-commerce. So, let's go ahead and hop into it. The first news article is actually a update from Seller Central and it said, "Get increased new selection program benefits starting July 30th." Now, some of you might not even know what is the new selection program. So, before I get into what the news article is, let's just talk a little bit about what this new selection is. All right. Now, it says here, the official description of this program says, uh, by participating in FBA news selection, you can qualify for a rebate on eligible branded and non-branded asens, as well as free monthly storage, free liquidations. Hopefully, you don't have to worry about that. and free return processing for all eligible parent asensants that are new to FBA for a limited time. All right, so you have to enroll in this program. There's no like, you know, risk or anything. So, I highly recommend just going to this page. Click the the link in our description below. Takes you to the news article and then there's a uh there's a link that goes to this help page and then right here you will see this button that says enroll now. Just one click and you should be good to go. Now, if you're a brand new seller, it says you're going to be enrolled in this program automatically if you create your first shipment within 90 days if you're listing your first Bible as this only for brand new sellers. No, it's not. What are some of these uh rebates and kind of like reduction in fees that you get with this program? And this part is not new uh per se. Uh number one, 10% rebate on average for sales of eligible asensants. Next one, reduced vine enrollment fee. All right, you're going to get a 25% off if you are doing three to 10 units per uh the parent asim. Free monthly storage. All right, no monthly storage fees charged for the first 100 units of each new parent item for 120 days. All right, so that's pretty cool. Free monthly storage and free liquidation for non-standard size uh as all right, so it's not just for standard size, but non-standard as well. Uh returns processing fee waiver. All right, up to 20 units. Global enrollment. So let's say you're start uh going and launching products in multiple marketplaces. This covers multiple marketplaces and then limited to new to FBA parent as. So after you enroll the program, it says you can use the fee waiver program benefits for an unlimited unlimited uh number of new to FBA parent asens that you create. Now if you're not a brand new seller, what you need to maintain is a score of 300 uh IPI. That's the inventory performance index. and you have to maintain that eligibility after enrollment and it's updated daily. All right, so if your your your number your IPI score falls below that, you're going to, you know, be kicked out of this program. Now, what are some of the new things that are coming to this program, which is what was announced. Now, it says here effective July 30th, 2026. A lot of things happening that last week of July. That's when your new titles have to go in effect. And a couple days later, you got this new program and and it's going to launch. Like the way this program works, it kind of like launches relaunches every year. And so it says, "Hey, starting that date, your the new benefits for the FBA asens that launch starting July 30th through October 31st." And this is an introductory offer for it. Now, come October 31st, you're going to have to like reup. That's that thing I said where you have to, you know, kind of keep renewing it. Now, new benefits, it says instant fee credits. All right, this is not a rebate. All right, the other ones were rebates. Instant fee credits equivalent to capping referral fees to 10% or your existing rate whichever is lower on your first 100 units and 5% on the next 100 units. All right. So, so now instead of just the first 100 units, it's basically you're getting instant re or instant uh you know discount on your first 200 units that you sell. $50 in coupon variable fees and $75 in Vine enrollment fee credits. All right, this is a huge difference than just, oh, let me get 25% off Vine, you know, there's I think if for to get 10 Vine reviews, it is 75 bucks. So, does that mean it's free for 10 reviews? I think I think that might be what that means. I'm not sure, but but $75 in Vine enroll uh enrollment fee credits and that's usable within the first 60 days. And then, as you know, you know, coupons cost money now. You get $50 off uh that. You know, some of you guys like to use the Maldi's honeymoon launch strategy where you're doing discounts or coupons on launch. And that $50 can come in a little handy. Free storage, free customer returns. Again, not just on the first 100 units anymore. First 200 units for 120 days. And no low inventory fee and uh storage utilization search charge on your first 200 units for 120 days. And you get a 45day so that extension. So that means like what 165 days if you're using that Vine pre-launch service. All right. So if you guys want to get more information on this, you know, make sure to check the link below. But hey, it's it's nice and refreshing. Uh Amazon doesn't just increase fees, sometimes they decrease fees. So if you want to check if you're eligible, make sure to hit that link. Next article, never quoted from this website before, but grandeconsumo.com uh has this article says, "Tik Tok shop launches in four new European markets in June." All right, what are those four? They are Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, and Austria. All right, so let me know in the comments. Are you guys already doing Tik Tok shopping in Europe? You know, UK was the first, you know, even in before US. Where else are you doing a Tik Tok shop in Europe? I believe you got France, uh, Spain, Italy, if I'm not mistaken. But now, four new countries. Are you guys going to be one of the first to get on there? Uh, I highly recommend it. It says here, "Vendors in the new marketplace, uh, were able to start registering from June 1st and preparing for the launch on June 15th, which was just a few a couple days ago. So maybe it's already live. So go out, check your apps, and see if you can see listings already on that in those countries." All right. One of the most uh awaited things at Helium 10 is MCP. MCP for those who don't know it's like hey you want to use claude to to like input you know without having to download data from Helium 10 directly all that amazing data that helium 10 has into claude so that you can ask you know claude questions and to you know give you analysis that might be timeconuming for a human just to do well um it's available now for elite members so carri is going to talk a little bit about it >> today we have some great news and that is that we have our helium 10 mcp now for Those of you who don't know what an MCP is, it's basically a way to connect Helium 10 to Claude. So basically what Claude can do is it can take all the information and data that we have from Helium 10 and you can use it to do really whatever you want. So there's a lot of people who have been basically downloading spreadsheets from Helium 10 and creating their own skills and things like that. But now you don't have to do that because we have an MCP. Now, this MCP is only available for elite members because, as you all know, the elite members get first access to our tools. This is super exciting and elite members are already starting to utilize this. I want to kind of show you maybe some things that you can do with this connector. Okay, so once you have it all connected, here's just a little example of what you can do. I said, "Use Helium 10 MCP to find products under $25 with fewer than 200 reviews and over a,000 monthly sales in the kitchen gadgets category." Okay, so if I'm looking for a product, I can use this our product database in Helium 10 in Claude and it'll give you an overview. So it gave a bunch of different product ideas here and then at the very bottom it gives you kind of an overview of what stands out, what they what Claude, you know, suggests would be good for you. We've got, you know, milk frothers, sink caddies, kitchen tongs, cheese grers. So, those are some, you know, that's an example of that. Um, another thing that a lot of people are doing is they're just they're downloading cerebro spreadsheets and then they're, you know, creating these skills. But now, all you have to do is say, "Hey, this is my as these are my competitor as." And you can do whatever you want. Say, "Hey, why is my competitor beating me on, you know, in sales? What keywords are they dominating that I'm not dominating that I should be dominating?" or you know what are the opportunity keywords where you know all of my competitors are ranking but I'm not ranking. So you can also go in and say hey you know I want to see my profits and losses for a specific a specific product. You can um you know just ask it for an overall view of your profits. You can you know create dashboards within claude. You can ask it about wast wasted ad spend and say hey you know I want to see the keywords based on my search term reports that you know basically I'm getting 20 clicks and no sales. So, so that I'm getting rid of that wasted ad spend. Um, there's a lot of things you can do with this with this connector um and the Helium 10 data. And that's really exciting because a lot of people have been, you know, having to download and do all this manually, but now you can do it directly and you can actually do more because if you have your um your Helium 10 account connected to Amazon, you can pull in that data as well. So, it's a a really really great thing that we have now and you can lit the sky is the limit. You can do so much with it. you can do anything with it really that you want to. So, if you haven't and you're an elite member, go ahead and check out our Helium 10 MCP for everyone else. Um, you'll just have to wait a little bit longer, but it should be um released in the in the coming weeks so that you can check it out as well and start utilizing our Helium 10 MCP. >> Thank you, Carrie, for that. I've been using the MCP for a couple weeks now. Super cool. I I'm doing stuff that I just probably I wish I probably had time to do that would take 15 minutes and now it takes like less than 3 minutes. And so, uh, definitely it's going to be cool. And don't worry, it's going to come to the diamond plan, uh, soon as well, not just elite. Uh, next up, another update from seller central. This one's entitled upload country specific images directly in image manager. So, first of all, why is this even important? You know, if you're selling in Amazon USA, you're selling in Amazon Spain, you're selling in Amazon um, Germany, these three countries, marketplaces, Amazons are in different languages obviously, right? And of course you you know that you know hey your listing gets translated automatically by Amazon or you can like upload your own kind of like you know version of what how you want the listing to show up in a certain language thanks to um you know research in Helium 10 right but your images do not automatically get done and if if you have infographics like you should you probably have words on your uh images right so let's say you first launched a product in you know Germany and you've got deutsch all over your listings well that's not going to play really in Amazon USA or Spain, right? So, what you've had to do in the past is you have to like upload the images first or or you use the edit feature like when you're creating a listing and then go into the image manager and edit it. So, now this update it says here it says you can now do your initial upload for country specific images directly in the image manager. All right. So, this is kind of good because sometimes you guys know how once you upload images, sure, you edit it and theoretically speaking, in an hour your images change, but sometimes it takes like a few days or there's like errors and stuff. And so, that delay might not be great, especially if you're trying to launch in a new marketplace or launch a product. But now, from the first time you upload images or your listing, you can now have these other translated images in the different marketplaces. So, you know, check the link below and you'll see some instructions on how to do that. All right, next up, something about education. You know, a lot of people are like, "Hey, I need to up my advertising game. I don't want to pay $2,000 a month for agencies or or freelancers to do my advertising. How can I take it in uh in house? How can I learn how to do it on my own?" Uh, Shioali has a way you can get some free education on that for some of you. >> Amazon PPC feel overwhelming to you? It's probably one of the things that scares most new to Amazon brands is trying to figure out everything, the ins and outs of Amazon advertising. From learning all the acronyms, a cost, rorowass, tacos, etc. to hey, how do we run advanced sponsored display campaigns? How do we use AMC targeting? Is there a way to dayart and run schedules on our advertising? What should we do for key shopping dates like Prime Day? There's a plethora of questions you might have about advertising, but guess what? Most likely it can be answered with our ads academy. Ads Academy is a complete course with over 25 modules 100% dedicated to Amazon advertising. And it was created by us at Helium 10. We partnered with Destiny Wishon, one of the world's top experts on Amazon advertising. And she goes deep. She shares her screen. She walks you through exactly what you should be doing. We cover topics like learning what your buyers are shopping for, software versus ad console, which one should you use, introduction to bid management, what is negative targeting, launching your first sponsored brands campaign, and the list goes on and on. This is not surface level content. It's structured. It's step-by-step education designed to take you from confused to confident. And here is the best part. Ads Academy is completely free for anyone who has a Helium 10 account, no matter what plan you're on. Even if you're already understanding advertising, this is really powerful. If you hire a new employee and they don't know anything about Amazon ads, put them through Ads Academy. They'll level up their advertising knowledge in a very structured way, instead of learning through expensive mistakes. So, if advertising feels intimidating, don't avoid it, master it, and start with Ads Academy. >> Okay. Thank you very much Shioali for that. You guys remember the NARF program, North American Remote Fulfillment in Amazon. That program was kind of replaced or renamed remote fulfillment. But basically what it meant was let's say you have inventory in Amazon USA. What you could do is open up your listings in Amazon Canada, Amazon Mexico, and then later Amazon Brazil, and then those people who are shopping on those platforms would see your product available, and it would even have the Prime badge, but you wouldn't actually have to have inventory in those uh in those countries. It would just if somebody ordered it from Mexico, it would pick from your, you know, US inventory from one of the warehouses there and send to the customer in Mexico. Well, now uh there's an article here from grocerytradenews.com entitled Walmart opens walmart.com to Mexican customers. And so basically what this says is it says this move allows customers in Mexico to browse and purchase a wider range of items across categories including apparel, homegoods, electronics, and other consumer products that were previously unavailable through Walmart's existing local e-commerce offering. So, you know, there there is a Walmart I don't even know what it is. Walmart.co.mx or something like that. You know, there is a Walmart Mexico, but the only products you would see there are the ones that are shipping from Mexico to Mexico or fulfilled by Walmart in Mexico. But now you they will be able to get uh offerings from walmart.com. So, if you have Walmart or if you have inventory in W uh fulfilled by Walmart, what is that called? WF? Something like that, right? I haven't uh WFN. I don't remember what it's called. But now that inventory is going to be potential to actually export to Mexico. And to kind of like promote this program, it says it's going to offer free shipping on eligible orders of $35 or more for a limited period. Although taxes and duties will still apply. So like I said, this is kind of like making remember the original NARF program at Amazon. I believe it started in Mexico, then went to Canada, then Brazil. So let's see how this works. But this could potentially, you know, give you another reason of why you should be selling on Walmart because now you're going to be, you know, potentially uh available for shopping for millions of customers down south who might never have seen your products otherwise. All right, that's it for the news this week. Just one last note, you know, if you're excited about, you know, getting being one of the first ones to use the Helium 10 MCP, like I said, uh right now it's only for elite members, just like most most stuff that we have at Helium 10 always starts with Elite, then it goes to Diamond, then it goes to platinum, you know, eventually. Um most most of our our our tools do uh go through kind of like that process. But hey, it's going to come to diamond, you know, pretty quickly. All right. So, in the next few weeks or so, you and if you want to be one of the first ones to use it because you know it's going to be a big time savings, now is the time to upgrade to the diamond plan. So, guys, just go into your account uh at Helium 10 or if you're not a Helium 10 member, use this special code SSP20, SP20. It'll save you uh 20% off for 6 months. All right, 20% off for 6 months. Or if you've never used the coupon before and you you're like a Helium 10 for lifer, right? Um, make sure to use the code SSP 10. You only get 10% off, but it is ongoing. It doesn't shut off after 6 months. All right? So, that will be a 10% off for life uh coupon there. So, SSP 10 or SSP 20, get on that diamond plan so you can be one of the first ones to use the brand new Helium 10 MCP. All right, guys. Uh, I'll be out of town for the next uh week or so or a couple weeks. So Carrie will step in next week uh and the week after and she'll be sure to let you guys know what's buzzing.