Amazon News: AI Hijacks, Bot Wars & TikTok’s Takeover

Amazon News: AI Hijacks, Bot Wars & TikTok’s Takeover Unknown Speaker: Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Seller School podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle, and anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Speaker 2: What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the first episode in 2026 for Amazon Seller News Live. We got Leslie joining us, Danan and Robyn. So appreciate y'all joining me in the new year here. Before we went live, we were all talking about, I think all of us except for Leslie were sick for Christmas and the new year. I've been sick for like two months, but it seems to be going around with the flu and colds and stuff like that. But we're here today to talk about some Amazon news for this new year and get everybody's thoughts about their projections and such for 2026, how they see things going. We've got some interesting news. Amazon's kind of in some hot water with a lot of sellers that do not sell their products on Amazon, which is interesting. TikTok Shop potentially breakout year for them. Chinese sellers pretty upset. And then if we get to it, we're gonna be talking about some Vine strategies, some variation changes and things like that as well. So for everybody out there that is watching, if you've got any questions or comments related to the news or Amazon in general, throw them in the comments. We always love bringing them in the show. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into this first article here. So Amazon's Buy For Me AI sparks backlash as small businesses say listings are being hijacked. Amazon's Buy For Me agentic AI feature is under fire after small businesses reported their websites were scraped without consent, leading to AI generated product images, incorrect listings, and orders for items they no longer sell. Merchants like Bobo Design Studio Today, we're gonna talk about how Amazon sellers say they were unknowingly opted in, struggled to opt out, and are now dealing with customer complaints, mismatched product data, and fulfillment issues. For Amazon sellers, this controversy highlights the growing tension between AI-driven discovery tools and marketplace trust, especially as Amazon tightens control on third-party shopping agents while simultaneously So this has been around for a little bit, as Danan mentioned, before we jumped on the live. But the outrage has really kind of taken off in this last week as people have realized that Amazon is scraping off Amazon sites to pull their products into Amazon. And in other news, as we've already talked about in the past, Amazon is also blocking AI bots from doing the same to them and scraping Amazon site to get data for their platform. Really looking forward to your guys' opinions on that. Danan, you look like you're ready to jump in. Speaker 3: This is just a do as I say, not as I do situation, right? Speaker 2: For sure. Speaker 3: Like we're going to scrape everything. Amazon is a data company, right? At this point, they require all of our data. They know everything about us. They track what we do so that they can make intelligent recommendations on making more money. We pay for Prime. Then we watch Prime Video and we get commercials, right? So, you know, it doesn't surprise me that they're doing this. They've probably been doing it. I mean, look, they've been doing this for years already looking for the products that you are selling on Amazon to be able to give you like a soft soft suspension on buy box and stuff like that because You, your price is higher than some other website. And I've spoken to people where, and I've got clients where, you know, we don't even sell this product on eBay. Somebody bought it and put it up for, you know, however much less. And so we're selling it for way more and we got in trouble for it. And we're like, Hey, this is an unauthorized seller. And typically Amazon's response is no response at all. You know. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you know, it's interesting that you mention about Amazon suppressing the buy box because that's actually it's not one of the stories that I had queued up to talk about. But this was in the newsletter. That Brandon Fishman over on LinkedIn posted about apparently Poppy is selling their product way cheaper on Target than on Amazon and Amazon is not suppressing their buy box while they are suppressing other brands. So Amazon kind of Playing favorites there or not evenly enforcing the rules one way or another? Speaker 3: Unfortunately, that's nothing new. I mean, look, I don't agree with Amazon saying you cannot sell at other prices in other places. If I sell this product on Poppy on my website, let's say I'm the brand owner. I can afford to sell it for 10% less and make 5% more, or likely even more than that, depending on my fulfillment situation. And I'd make more money selling it for less than I do on Amazon. And then Amazon comes in and goes, yeah, you can't do that. You can't make your own decisions like that. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it's always been a problem. But it seems to be getting either more and more widespread or people are just noticing it more and reporting on it more. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: So going back to the, the original story though, I have real questions about what Amazon's intention actually was here. If they, if this is not what the intention was for these dead products to suddenly show up. Um, and because you know, folks who, who've known the Amazon ecosystem for a long time, you all know that, They develop really fast. They try and operate like a small entrepreneurial business would, even though they are enormous. And so they will launch stuff pretty much on the fly. And we've all seen it as sellers where they launch some feature and then they have to backpedal or they have to fix it or they have to turn it off and turn it back on after they fix it. And so I really wonder what they really meant the buy for me to Do and if someone didn't put a limitation on it that they should have, especially since, as Danan mentioned so astutely, this idea of them scraping like every platform known to God. Uh, where your product might sell. So they already set up their data so that they're scraping absolutely everywhere to see if you're selling anywhere cheaper. So it's like they used that same data model for this when maybe that wasn't what was intended or they didn't think it through. And you know, maybe this is something they're going to, they're going to fix and, and narrow because that's kind of what they do. They just like, let's launch the thing and then they go fix it. Speaker 4: Part of the reason brand registry exists is because Amazon did similar things that caused problems for brands. Somebody on the outside, not familiar with the ecospace, might say, why do brands care? They're getting more sales. The sales go to them. What difference does it make? You know, my daughter is very anti-AI and she's in a very like tight artist community. No, like that means there's only she's 37. She's 15. But you know, she's, you know, in the artist community. Using AI is a really negative thing. If you're selling a product, the constituency of your product is somebody that's actively boycotting Amazon or they're trying to avoid certain things, that it could actually tarnish their brand by being on Amazon because most people don't understand. They'll think that the brand put it on there. And then the same reasons why we have locked listings with brand registry. What if that AI gets it wrong? We had a client that used AI to write, before they came to us, this was us fixing it. They had a bunch of animal cages and they had AI write the title, bullets and descriptions, but it was just basing it off keyword research and not actual truth. And so it was saying that certain cages were good for animals that they weren't and so animals were getting out, animals were dying. So that's a really negative thing. So there's a lot of things in not giving those brands control that can be an issue and could potentially be the basis for a lawsuit if a brand feels like it was significantly tarnished. But it's also just not a great way to build up goodwill when Amazon is already doing a lot of things to erode the goodwill that they've built with brands over the years. Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm looking at the the official Shop Other Stores Directly page. And here's some interesting things about in the FAQ. Do you share any personal data about me with merchant websites? No. Okay, good. So now this merchant doesn't get your information. Can I apply, let's see, how do I communicate with the merchant about my order? Amazon provides a secure unique email address in each order, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Basically what this says to me is you can now buy anywhere on the internet and all of these other accounts that are not selling on Amazon, Don't get your data. One of the most valuable things that any brand can do to build a community is to acquire the identities of the people that are their customers so that they can survey them, announce new launches and stuff like that. And this to me, this is like the Amazon is trying to be the one stop shop on all e-com purchases of the Internet and nobody else gets the data but Amazon. Speaker 2: Yeah, correct. And I watched this video, and I don't know if I can play it here without the audio. Um, no, but, uh, so what this lady says is basically that, uh, number one, they're scraping products that don't exist on their website anymore and selling them. Um, and when they, when the order comes in, it's usually always like one off sales with, um, you know, just a random email address at amazon.com. And so they're losing the ability, like you said, to get the information for the customer, but they're also losing the upsell abilities that they get on their website. Because she mentioned that almost never do people only buy one thing on their website. And so when an order comes through for a single unit, she always double checks the order to see if it's like a fraudulent purchase. You know, someone trying to test a stolen credit card to see if it'll work and things like that. But with this Amazon Buy For Me, she's seeing more and more of those just one-off single purchases that she doesn't really see. Speaker 3: Yeah i tried to look deep into the amazon buy for me and i couldn't find a whole lot of data on how does one get enrolled into it what are the qualifications how. Like is what i don't understand is because the this. Company doesn't get the client's information. How is that order going through? Are they going through as like first name Amazon, last name Amazon, address some fulfillment redirection center? I don't understand that part. I wasn't able to get information on that. Speaker 2: Well, they must be getting their address, their name and address, I would imagine, but not the phone number, not the email. Two of the probably more important things in this day and age. Speaker 3: That would make sense actually. So Amazon would just use their standard alphanumeric 32 character whatever at amazon.com, just like we've always seen. Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah, the same kind of email that we see when we get orders for FBM orders and things like that. Yeah. It's Yeah, it's I definitely get the frustration for for brands that have intentionally stayed off of Amazon. Because they don't want their brand maybe represented in the way that Amazon wants it represented. And plus, they get a lot larger order value when people are shopping on their website. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: So You know, at the same time, maybe you're doing sales. Speaker 4: They want to control the customer experience because it's something that's really important to them. And Amazon is taking that ability to control that customer experience away. Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's the big thing here, I think, is the ability to opt in. You know, I believe there's lawsuits out there already about AI models being trained on data that, you know, they weren't given permission to access. And so if Amazon is scraping Shopify sites and other sites, and just selling their products on their own website without their permission, that could be a big problem for them, especially when they're blocking others from doing it to them. Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing that bothers me the most is like, you know, you want to be a public marketplace for everyone. I will I will say there are definitely scrapers out there that use scraping for nefarious purposes. But the vast majority of the companies that Solutions, softwares, myself, you know, scraping is a part of it because Amazon doesn't provide you the data that should be very, very easily accessible. Like, for instance, in my case, reviews. They only give you the last 100 reviews, or if you're brand registered, the last three months. Well, I've got a 15-year-old product on Amazon. How am I supposed to be able to strategically look at my reviews and see, am I improving or declining? Granted, you are able within three months, I'd say, As long as you're constantly doing it, you're able to find out if you have a feature request or an issue. But by and large, your entire listing lives or dies based on your rating, and they only give you a snapshot of that. And in my opinion, that should be like Punch them in the face right in the nose illegal. Um, because that's how you operate your business successfully or unsuccessfully is by those reviews. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And if I can go back to something Robyn just said that I think was so insightful, um, she was talking about these brands wanting to control the buyer experience. All of y'all can relate to this. At this point, I'm a boutique agency. I'm an agency of one plus an admin. What I sell everyone is, it's just me. You're going to hear from me. I'm doing all the work. There's not random people on your case. It's all about the delivery experience and the buyer experience. Yesterday I had the worst buyer experience I've ever had on Amazon, ever. It was so terrible and frustrating and wasted so much of my time and made me super angry. So imagine you're more of a boutique Shopify store. You're trying to give that boutique feeling. You're an artist like Robyn had mentioned, or you have handmade items or whatever it is. And so you're trying to create this wonderful experience and that you have what I have with Amazon yesterday. And then me as the buyer, I'm going to attribute that to you wrongly. So that's, that's super upsetting. Like this should be opt in. It shouldn't be, I've got to opt out. It should be, I've got to opt in if you're going to be taking over buyer experience for my brand. And make people hate me because I've got this terrible and the buyer experience that I had, it was because of a technical error on Amazon's side that by the way, the agent knew was an error and hasn't been fixed. So, you know, that tells you something right there that I would be angry like these people are too, if I were in there. In their shoes and suddenly there were random people selling my services to random people and I couldn't fulfill it the right way. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 4: And also what happens when somebody's been using buy with Amazon and that brand says, okay, I can't handle this. We're just going to go on Amazon ourselves. So at least we can control the narrative. And then how, how is the communication going to be to stop that? So, and then is that going to impact that? I mean, Sometimes I just feel like Amazon doesn't think things all the way through because they're a big deal to us, but it's rounding errors to them. So I feel like this is I'm anticipating issues where like, oh, well, since that was done with Buy With Prime, now we can't use that UPC because blah, blah, blah. It's in the system, funky. Or what happens if they use Buy With Prime and that toy was, and they sell it under a category or with words that would have triggered like a compliance issue and that gets missed? Where is that liability? Because the brand didn't create the listing. I don't know. I just- All respect to the amazing engineers that put it together. I'm sure it's a technical feat. No shade there. I don't know if this is thought out from the brand and a PR relations perspective. Speaker 3: If you think about it on a timeline, this is the next iteration after Buy with Prime. Remember when Buy With Prime came out, everyone was like, forget that. But then it actually became a useful tool that a lot of brands use. And I'm sure this wasn't intentional. But those, oh, great balloons. Those that were using the Buy With Prime, I've had reports from several different brands using Buy With Prime. They saw like a 5% increase in organic sales. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: A coincident with implementing Buy With Prime. So, you know, 5 to 10%. You know. Speaker 2: This Amazon is, but that was their choice. They chose to opt into that. Speaker 3: That's absolutely, absolutely. Yes. And this is just the next iteration. Like, well, how do we get the people that didn't? I know. Why don't we just be the buyer? You know, at the end of the day, Amazon is trying to take over the world. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you guys touched on it already, but I think the biggest problem here is just the ruining the customer experience that these brands have built out because, you know, if let's say I get the product and it was damaged in shipping or something happened to it, and now I got to return it, Am I contacting Amazon? Am I contacting the brand? If I contact Amazon, how's that workflow gonna look like with Amazon as the intermediary? Speaker 3: We're not responsible for their fulfillment. And so you contact the brand, we're like, we don't know who you are. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, they'll have some idea of your order number, but let's say I buy from, what was the company called? Pop, no. Poppies. Poppies was the soda. Whatever this brand is, Bobo Designs. So let's say I buy this sticker through Amazon and they send me the wrong one or it gets damaged in the mail, torn or something. And I call Bobo Designs and they're like, well, what's your phone number? Here's my phone number. Oh, we don't have that. What's your order number? There's my order number that Amazon gave me. Oh, that's not in our system. Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't have a seller central account. Speaker 2: Yeah. And so you're hurting, definitely hurting the customer experience for that brand. And like you said, Leslie, The customer is going to blame it on the brand over Amazon. And even if they do blame Amazon, it's not going to hurt Amazon nearly as much as the brand potentially. Hey, Amazon sellers. Tired of losing money on storage and shipping fees? Well, Amazon Storage Pros is here to take the headache out of logistics. We manage everything from inventory and creating efficient shipping plans to working with 3PLs and Amazon's AWD so that you can focus on growing your business. Start with a free storage cost audit and discover exactly where you're overspending and how to fix it. Don't let logistics eat into your profits. Visit AmazonStoragePros.com. That's AmazonStoragePros.com to get your free storage cost audit and start saving today. And now back to the show. So it's a plus the moral dilemma, right of stealing people's listings and then blocking others from stealing yours. So it's, it's going to be interesting to see. I mean, definitely AI shopping and stuff is is in the future, and we're in the infancy stages of it. But yeah, this definitely feels like something that Amazon just kind of threw up and said, let's see what happens here. And we'll iterate as we go along. Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, they launched this in April of last year. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: So it's still I mean, according to the logos, it's still in beta. And, you know, one thing to say for Amazon, that's a positive, is that they do do a lot of testing. They're never stagnant in what they're doing. In our experience as sellers, that has very often led to disastrous results for us. Like Leslie, I know you know this one, but Robyn and Todd, I don't know if we talked about it, but Amazon tested for a little while completely eliminating the star system. Of showing the five stars and they showed a single star with a little teeny tiny Chevron arrow pointing down. You had to roll your mouse over. I don't remember if you had to click it or just roll over it, but you had to roll your mouse over it to expand out what the actual rating was. And the buyers went one star. I'm not buying this product. And it actually ruined some brands until they rolled that back. I mean, whose brilliant idea was that? Hey, why don't we just display a single star on everybody's products? That'll, that, you know, that's a great idea. Unknown Speaker: So, you know, go wrong. Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. You know, like, by all means, Amazon, keep testing. But sometimes you come up with some pretty terrible ideas to test and it never should have made it out of the idea stage. And somebody should have been like, No, no, don't do that, you know? Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, another story that's in the newsletter that you made me think of is that apparently for about two months, Amazon was hiding certain ASINs from certain geographical locations around the United States. So like, if you went and looked for your product in New York City, it might not show up. But if you were in Chicago, it would show up. And apparently Amazon said they fixed the issue when the ASINs that were affected were removed from an experimental program. Speaker 3: No, they've been doing that for ages. If they can't do a prime delivery, if you're searching as a prime member, They'll either, well, if there's no inventory in the area and it's not gonna get there in two to three days, they just won't show it. That's something that we saw managed by stats for years. Speaker 2: This was even if there was inventory, like your product just wouldn't show up in the search results in that area. And apparently it was an experimental program that they had to remove the ASINs from and then the glitch was fixed. Speaker 3: That's, yes, I don't know. Speaker 2: Amazon is always testing. Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1: Always testing with other people's livelihoods and businesses. Speaker 3: Well said, Leslie. You're 100% right. Like, hey, let's see if this screws people or helps them. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 3: Absolutely. Speaker 2: All right, let's go ahead and jump on to the next article here. So TikTok Shop surges to nearly 20% of all social commerce in 2025. The social commerce there is the keyword, not all commerce, but social commerce. So TikTok Shop has rapidly become a dominant force in social commerce, reaching 18.2% market share in 2025 and projected to hit 24.1% by 2027. Driven by explosive sale growth and its ability to merge entertainment with instant purchasing, sales on TikTok Shop dropped or jumped 407% in 2024, and another 108% in 2025, positioning the platform as a massive discovery engine, especially for Gen Z and millennials. For Amazon sellers, this signals a major shift in where product discovery and impulse buying happen with TikTok shop increasingly capturing attention before shoppers ever reach Amazon. As social commerce grows past 100 billion, By 2026, sellers who diversify in a TikTok shop, particularly with low price trend driven products amplified by creators, stand to gain significant incremental revenue. So with all that said, I'm curious of your guys's forecasts for TikTok shop this year, especially with TikTok most likely getting US ownership this year, so it's going to be, you know, safer. We're here with Robyn Johnson. Robyn, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. It's great to have you on the show. It's great to have you on the show. It's great to have you on the show. It's great to have you on the show. It's great to have you on the show. It's great to have you on the show. It's great to have you on the show. It's great to have you on the show. It's great to have you on the show. Speaker 4: I think it could go any way, right? Like in whatever way people are going to go, there's going to be half the people be like, I told you. I think that I can just tell you my concern. So I've been working with kids in the Cheney Phoenix Children's Hospital. The thing that concerns me about TikTok is this lack of safety standards. And I think it only takes a couple of kids dying for people to get discolored on a marketplace. And that's me being a worrywart. And I just want to acknowledge that I am a worrywart. And these are the weird things for me to worry about. Speaker 3: But I worry about, you know, somebody needs to do it, though. So I actually respect that you're a worrywart. Because if people didn't worry, there'd be a shh. A lot more issues. Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, and I don't think moms know that they're buying on TikTok Shop versus Amazon might be somebody who took their thing off Amazon because they didn't want to bother with the safety testing, which is we've had people that we've let go as clients that you know, we like this is a product and like, oh, no, let's just sell it as an adult product. I'm like, well, It's a science kit. So no, you know, like that's, you know, where, you know, so there's that concern. And then there's, you know, all the concerns that kind of radiate around those same spaces without lack of regulation. But all the people who loved Amazon Wild Wild West, Amazon is not Wild Wild West anymore. We are like, You know, boring, suburbia, like in the trenches, corporate now, right? So if you came for Wild Wild West, then TikTok is probably the better thing. Now, just like the original Wild Wild West, there's a lot of danger, you know. There's a lot of things we don't know about how things will go, how customers, and you know, it's not an owned platform. So, you know, if I'm talking with a brand and they're doing great on TikTok Shop, we also wanna look at how can we, and this is true even if they're doing well on Amazon, how can we get them some more of their own traffic so that they can own their customer base if that platform was to disappear, was to change, was to, Right now things are pretty much being subsidized. What happens when that ends? Because it will end. I think that there's still a lot of opportunity on TikTok shops. I'm praying that people are doing the right things and taking care of their customers. The other thing that I'm concerned about is as it becomes a wild, wild west, we might see some of the same things. I know a lot of friends that will not buy from Facebook ads because they've been burned so many times on bad products. And so, you know, now that more people are buying on TikTok, it could be that people get burned more often because we've get, you know, maybe like the people who are always looking for the gold rush sometimes cut quarters, not always, but sometimes, right? And so, you know, if that changes the experience that people have down that platform, that could also impact the effectiveness of that platform. So all that being said, TikTok could be where the next 7 million millionaires are happening. You know, right now we're in a weird time with kind of a K economy growth. And so, you know, there's a lot of different ways that things are going to play out. There's a lot of uncertainty about a lot of industries in kind of the world in general. So I wish I had more predictions this year. I'm mostly just like, ah. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 3: And that's your official statement. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think, you know, I was just looking up the stats here and I'll throw them on the screen because this is an important thing. Welcome to Know. So this is the US 2025 ranking for e-commerce share, not social commerce share. So Amazon's around 37%. Walmart's coming in second at 6.4%. TikTok is way down in the low single digit in terms of actual commerce. So below like Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot. So volume of sales in total is going to be extremely low. Speaker 3: With that said, though, I have heard from nearly everyone doing TikTok that there is a attributable halo effect to Amazon sales. Speaker 2: That's what I was going to say. Yes. The benefit of TikTok is the same benefit like with Instagram, because maybe they don't buy on TikTok shop. But maybe they go over to Amazon, Walmart, Target, Home Depot or wherever and find your product there and buy it. So yeah, that halo effect is much harder to kind of track as to where that's coming from. So that's the big benefit of TikTok, I think. Especially if you can get your product to go viral. Speaker 1: Right, because like what Robyn was saying about Facebook, you know, if you see a product on Facebook or on TikTok shops, a lot of times people will go and search it on Amazon to figure out if it's a legit product. Like they feel more comfortable there. They're looking at the ratings and reviews there. And they also feel comfortable that if they buy it on Amazon and it's not what was promised, that they can actually get it returned easily and get their money back. And you may not feel that way about TikTok or an Instagram purchase or something through Facebook, right? That's because it's not the same experience and there's no accountability. But I'm not at all surprised by the tremendous amount of growth because so many people who work at TikTok, especially higher level people in the U.S. infrastructure at TikTok are ex-Amazon, a huge portion. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a majority. It is the same thing at Walmart in their e-commerce. They all came from the Amazon. So there's been some Amazonization of the TikTok purchasing experience, just like the fulfillment side of it. You know, when you add fulfillment options, it's going to make it easier for sellers. It's going to make it better for buyers. And so then, yeah, of course, the amount is going to surge. But, you know, I have I wonder, I don't understand how weird my family is or isn't on some things. And one of them is I have two boys. They're adults now. They're 18 and 23, but still young. They wouldn't touch TikTok with a 10 foot pole. None of their friends are on it at all. It's interesting to me. So I'm not surprised by the growth because actually I know a lot of people my age and I'm an old lady. And these are my old lady friends and they're scrolling on TikTok half the day and buying stuff. Speaker 3: Really? Speaker 1: So it's fascinating to me to figure out like who's actually making these purchases, what their demographics are. I don't know. Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder. I've never seen any census on that, but you can be sure that TikTok has that information. I've heard that supplements sell extremely well. Now, I've not tried it. I've talked to a couple of agencies about maybe selling our supplements on TikTok, but I have heard from TikTok and from Xin that supplements sell very well there. Speaker 1: I know sellers who sell on TikTok and do better there than they ever thought they would. Speaker 3: Really? See, you just corroborated the, the whatever. I can't think. Speaker 1: And like Robyn mentioned, some of their products they sell on TikTok, they can't sell on Amazon. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: And they make all kinds of claims that they can't make on Amazon or any other large platform or in any retail store. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the my, my wife's mother. Actually, I see her watching this lady live stream. Clothing, basically. She tries on this different clothing and people can buy the clothing right through her on Instagram and everything. And she's received packages from the lady and everything. So I know at least she's doing it. My wife has done it a little bit as well. So it's definitely a thing. Gary Vaynerchuk, if you guys are familiar with him, that's one of his big predictions for this year and the coming years that social commerce is going to become kind of a leading driver of sales for products and such online. A lot more than any kind of affiliate to blogs and things like that. I pulled up these stats here. So TikTok Shop is at around 20% for social commerce. Facebook and Instagram combined have about 60 to 65%. Speaker 3: I wonder if they include Marketplace with that though. Speaker 2: Facebook marketplace? Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: That's a good question. Not sure. Speaker 3: Because an extraordinary amount of sales happens through that. Speaker 2: Is Facebook marketplace included in that percentage? Let's see what perplexity has to say on that. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: So it does include Facebook Marketplace. Speaker 3: Yep. Unknown Speaker: Ask it. Speaker 3: Ask it if it didn't include it, what it would be. Unknown Speaker: People sell cars. Speaker 1: I mean, they sell big color items through Facebook Marketplace. Speaker 3: I just saw a $350,000 boat on there. I didn't buy it for the record. Speaker 2: I thought you said you sold it. Speaker 3: No, I would have loved to have sold. I wouldn't have liked to have purchased the boat in the first place, but I would have loved to have sold a $350,000 boat. Speaker 2: Yeah. Alright, so meta does not break it out between the platforms. Surprise, surprise. Speaker 3: Hell of a claim they can make. Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. So yeah, I mean, my prediction is that TikTok Shop is going to continue to grow and Chip away at Facebook and Instagram. I'm going to lean towards probably more Instagram is where the social commerce is happening than any place, especially if you take out Facebook marketplace. So I definitely think TikTok is going to keep stealing that share because it's capturing the younger people where Facebook has the older people and Instagram kind of has the millennial generation in there a lot. So they're going to keep stealing that share. I don't think their total commerce is going to increase that much. They're not going to be stealing You know, 5-10% of the market share from Amazon or anything anytime soon. But that halo effect is going to keep growing more and more. So I think it's a platform that if you're building a brand you need to be on and you should probably put your products on there, fulfill them through Amazon and be working on influencers and things like that through TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube Shorts and all those different platforms. So that's my prediction for 2026. We'll see one year from now how that turns out. Any other last comments on that? Otherwise, we'll move on to our next story here. All right. Chinese online retailers warn new tax rules could be devastating. China's new data-driven tax regime is forcing platforms like Amazon, Shein, and Alibaba to report merchant profits, driving a 12.7% surge in e-commerce tax revenue. But also creating major strain for cross-border sellers operating on thin margins. Many Chinese exporters say the new 13% VAT for businesses over 5 million yuan in sales wipes out profitability with Amazon sellers reporting average margins of only 8 to 20%. For Amazon sellers in the U.S., this matters because higher taxes on Chinese competitors could shift pricing dynamics, reduce ultra cheap competition on certain categories, and potentially change sourcing behavior globally. At the same time, rising return rates expected to hit 849 billion in the U.S. by 2025 add pressure on retailers everywhere to manage costs and protect margins. So curious on your guys' thoughts on this in terms of Chinese sellers in the US marketplace. Speaker 3: I've got actually a very recent example of how this may be, I think it'll be beneficial. So first of all, I don't mind buying quality products for less money, but I do mind if it is Undermining a marketplace by using. Arguably legal loopholes, it's technically legal, but so I've got I think you you three know I'm in the off road space fairly heavily and. There is a tent manufacturer, all the tents, like you know how it is in China. There's usually districts that they all manufacture these things, right? There's three or four or five different manufacturers that manufacture these things and they all share parts and stuff like that. Well, the tents that are, I'm talking about big rooftop tents, you know, two, $3,000 tents. They're manufactured, I think there's three or four different factories that do it. And recently one came out that is like half the price of everybody else. And my buddy who owns an Overland shop, he actually builds, he's building my truck actually next month, beginning of the month, super excited. Totally separate subject, but he's like, dude, I don't know how these guys can possibly do this. Like my margin is I couldn't possibly even sell it for that. And I look it up. I'm like, well, that's. This company is out of Shenzhen there. They are directly fulfilling this stuff. And so he's wondering how they can do a twelve, an eight hundred to twelve hundred dollar tent. And that right there is exactly what is happening is they they come into the market bypassing all the taxes and stuff like that. Right. And whatever fees that need to be happened that we all have to pay. And and then they undercut a market and but they also have no on the legal side of things, they can just be like, yeah, we're not an American corporation. You can't sue us for anything. You know, this thing broke and it stabbed me through my forearm. Oh, well, sorry about that. If they reply to you, you know, so I'm for this. If I would ask for anything, it would be an equal playing field when it comes to having to pay fees, taxes, et cetera, because then it's actually fair. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And so to go along with this and in other news that I've seen, Is that right now the CCP, the Chinese government is struggling for money, for income that's coming in because of, you know, the tariff wars and people shifting to have things made in other countries and such like that. And so that is one of the main reasons that they're implementing these high taxes on Amazon sellers, where in the past, You know, they were happy to let these companies just run wild and pull all that money back to China. But now the CCP wants its cut because its pockets are getting a little A little sparse in terms of tax revenue and income from other places. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: Well, and can I pull out the world's smallest violin for our little friend here saying this is devastating because they still have so many advantages, even with this tax in place, because like everyone here, you know, we're very familiar with paying a lot in taxes, but also we can't get away with stuff like Say we decide we're going to sell a product that is illegal and we don't follow the regulations for this product that all the American sellers have to. And so then Amazon never bothers to enforce on the listing. I'm thinking of like the low flow shower head thing, right? You can buy all these Chinese shower heads that are not low flow. That violate EPA rules, California rules, all these other rules. Amazon won't kick them down. And then if they did, if they were to, then that, that seller just creates a new storefront and puts them up on that. Speaker 3: Most likely they've already got one. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Oh, they might have, Oh gosh, I've already done the thing where I find all five stores that are selling the same product and show that to Amazon for my client, all the things. So they already have the advantage that, they aren't having to follow the rules. A lot of them, they have people working under terrible working conditions, things that we don't do here. Or if we do, we can be arrested for it. You can go on and on about About advantages, and I say that with scare quotes because, golly, I wouldn't want the advantage of paying slave labor type wages or using materials that are harmful to people. Robyn brought up earlier the frightening thing about some of these products on TikTok, that God knows what is in them. That there's no testing. You can't get away with that as a U.S. company. But as Danan said, if you're a Chinese company and you hurt someone with a product because it's jewelry full of lead, which, by the way, you can find all over Amazon, Chinese jewelry full of lead. You know, if you sell that, they just kind of disappear and come back and sell it under another storefront. So, yeah, you know, I'm so sad for his devastating experience he's having. But I'm like Danan, I love the idea of a level playing field. The idea of free marketplaces and capitalism isn't you do whatever the heck you want. The idea is that there's a level playing field. Obviously, we never achieve that nirvana and perfection of the perfect level playing field. But golly, this seems to make it tip just a little bit less for US sellers and European sellers as well. Speaker 3: Next up, I'd like to see less favoritism between the Chinese sellers. Do you remember our early, let's see when, what was it called? Amazon Trash or Amazon Dumpster. What was the one? Unknown Speaker: The haul haul. Speaker 3: Yeah. The Amazon haul. The amount of items in like glaring violation of terms of service and stuff like that was astounding. And none of those companies were well, I can't say none. Almost none of those companies were American companies selling these products, you know. Speaker 1: And that was an invitation only. They were invited. They were Chinese sellers invited by Amazon to come in and sell these things. Speaker 3: It was some number of thousands. I think maybe in the tens of thousands that were invited to that, something like that. I'm not sure. It was a lot though. And we went on a rant on this live stream for weeks about us. I even reported a couple of things to see the Apple logo one. I reported that one that we were talking about. Nothing ever happened with that. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they probably don't even take the time to look at it. For me, the liability is the biggest problem with overseas sellers, but Chinese sellers in particular, because that's one of the big things that holds a free market accountable, is the ability for consumers and or government or both Suing a company if their product causes harm and that company either being forced out of business or to pay out millions of dollars in claims and things like that. That's one of the mechanisms that a free market uses to keep people honest. And when you remove that, like with Chinese sellers, if they sell your product, and it's defective, and it harms people, and so Amazon pulls it down, next week, it's just going to show up under a different name under a different seller. And, you know, maybe with a few tweaks or something like that, then no one In China we'll ever be held accountable except for maybe Amazon holds a few thousand dollars or something in their account that they don't get. But that's completely different where if I sell you a product and it shorts out the electricity in the wall and burns down your house, I'm probably going to be out of business real quick or at least my insurance company is going to be paying out to buy you a new house and potentially a lot more depending on what happened. Speaker 3: Exactly, yeah. Speaker 2: So yeah, it's definitely no shedding no tears for the Chinese sellers and leveling the platform. With for the consumer, you may see some slight in price increases from this for sure. But in the long run, I think it will be a benefit for for everybody on the Amazon platform and wherever people are selling to kind of reign this stuff in a little bit. Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. Speaker 1: I just have to give Danan a vote for Amazon Dumpster or Amazon Trash being the line of the day. You get a big vote right here. Speaker 3: I genuinely thought that's what they were called. Speaker 2: Pretty much accurate for sure. All right, we just got a few minutes and then we're going to jump off. So just real quick, I wanted to get your guys' thoughts on the Vine program. So I'm curious if you guys use Vine or recommend people use Vine. And what this guy says here is that he suggests that before you do the Vine program, Put in discount pricing on your product so that people don't say, oh yeah, it's a really nice product, but it's not a great value for the money or something like that. So it could potentially help you get higher reviews through the Vine program by instituting a sales price before you do the program. Speaker 4: I think that his theory is good in certain situations. I think in certain situations it's not the best strategy. So if I lived in a vacuum, yeah, this would be great. It depends on the size of the brand, how much brand affinity they have. Especially with the new variations policy that just rolled out, if somebody wants to launch quickly and they want to push hard on that quickly, doing this is going to impact their reference price. They might not want to give that reference price, to have that multi-month of not being able to sell it at the price that you want. So I think that, you know, if you're a brand new private label brand, you know it's going to be a client because you're having to build everything from scratch. I think this is a good thing. One thing, especially now that you can do Vine before launch, but one thing that we do tell brands is you want to make sure that you are positive that people are going to love your product before we do Vine. Sometimes if a brand is not positive, we will say, let's wait till you get your first five reviews. But it's a cost-benefit analysis of how quickly do we need to turn things around? How much window do we have? Is this the only product? Is there a brand affinity? Do they already have consumer trust? So I think this is a strategy, but I don't necessarily say that any other strategy would be wrong. I think that there's a lot of considerations that you want to look at your process holistically, but this could be a situation for some sellers, especially private label sellers, that is a good one. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Any thoughts, Leslie? Speaker 1: Yeah. So actually I know Jaime. He's a, he's a nice guy. So the A lot of people that I know out in Amazon Wild, they launch all their products like this anyway. They start at a lower price than they intend to ultimately sell the product and then they have But like Robyn said, they have to accept that the reference price that they have to nudge it up over time and they have to accept that this is an investment. So let's say you want your price to be $25. And so you're going to start at $19.95 and you have to accept that you're raising the price very gradually over time. You know, 50 cents at a pop, a dollar at a pop and leaving it there and then doing it again. Now, you know, I've known people that use this to try and build a subscribe and save. Which is an interesting strategy. And, you know, sometimes people get mad when they figure out eventually that the subscriber price is much higher than when they originally subscribed. However, on top of this, they give like a massive coupon for the first Purchase. So you start out at a lower price, you give this huge coupon, you're pushing for the subscribe and save, and then you gradually nudge the price over time. That's I know a lot of sellers who already kind of do it this way. And I get what they're saying, because I think a lot of people at Vine could very well have that mindset that they're the guardians of the Amazon galaxy. They are providing these reviews and that they are here to protect and serve the rest of us. Like, are these good products or not? I can see them saying, you know what, I like those headphones, but wow, they're not $40 headphones. I can totally see that. So I get where he's coming from on this. I don't know if it's better or worse on the buying pricing, but it might be worth trying. Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've got a little aside on this. So I agree with everything you guys said and you know, it all depends. This is a good strategy, but it depends on what your goals are. But the other day I did a review on Amazon and it said, hey, you're invited to the Vine program. I'm like, okay, cool. Now I get to see what the other side looks like. So I accepted and got in the program. And I'm looking at it right now and there are literally over 8,000, maybe 9,000 different products available on here. Almost all of them are like replacement parts of some type. So I'm like, and there's no like easy way to try to sort through them or search to find something that you're actually interested in. Except for it does have a recommended for you section, which does have a few nice things on there. But it seems like there's a lot of just replacement parts and random things that people are throwing into the buying program. The actual good products are kind of few and far between and get snatched up really quickly. Speaker 3: Hey, Todd, I saw once the contract for a Vine reviewer, and I'd love to see it again, because as I recall, the last time I looked at it, the contract said it basically said they're contractually obligated to give diversity of reviews. So irrespective of their opinion, they have to give diverse reviews. They can't just lean towards positive or negative. Speaker 2: So yeah, it didn't I don't think it really said that I was reading through it. And it said that, you know, you want to give truthful reviews. And if you look at the review box now on Amazon, it has like points that it wants you to touch on for your review to make it a good review. And so the Vine reviewers are supposed to leave good reviews. So they want to touch on all those things. And one of the points is, is it a good value for the money? Which is what Jaime is touching on here for sure. So you don't have to leave a diversity of reviews, but I think if you're always just hitting five stars and then copying and pasting the same thing in there, they're going to remove you from the program more likely. So yeah, it's a it's an interesting program for getting reviews. The debate is kind of out as to whether you need to use it or not, or if you can just start with no reviews and kind of organically get them. Speaker 3: I've heard such conflicting information on that. Like, I've never used the vine program to do a launch. I've also never used PPC to do a launch. But I believe that these are all factors to a greater A greater velocity launch. So. But of course, I also haven't launched a brand new product that doesn't already have brand search for in over a decade. So I can't really speak to it in today's terms, but you can technically do it. Like you could do a launch without fine, without PPC, and then just do a whole bunch of outside advertising to it. You know, there's lots of different strategies, lots you could do. I mean, those who are savvy with PPC know that Amazon is actually arbitraging Google PPC. So, um, you know, you could just bypass that and run it through and get that, uh, that 10% referral fee, you know, that 10% referral, uh, bonus, um, credit. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 3: Anyhow, there's, I mean, there's ways that you can launch a product. Speaker 2: All right. Well, we're over the top of the hour, so I will let you guys all get back to your day here. I appreciate everybody out there watching. Until next Thursday, we will see you all later and have an awesome one. Speaker 3: Bye, everyone. See you next week. Speaker 4: Bye. Speaker 2: Later. Unknown Speaker: This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow Amazon seller. And always remember, success is yours if you take it. Speaker 2: Hey, if you made it this far in the show, I really hope you enjoyed it and I'd like to ask you a favor. Could you head on over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a review? It would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to grow the show and offer more episodes for you. Thank you. God bless and have an awesome day.