Amazon News: AI Lawsuits, China Data Rules & Doorstep Returns

Amazon News: AI Lawsuits, China Data Rules & Doorstep Returns Unknown Speaker: Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Sellers 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: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Amazon Seller News Live. Another week has gone by. We got Robin Johnson from Marketplace Blueprint, and of course, Leslie Hensel with us today. Appreciate you both joining me. Speaker 3: Hello, hello. My pleasure. Speaker 2: Yeah. I hope your guys' days are going pretty good so far. Starting a little early today on Thursday instead of Friday, so mixing it up a little bit. Unknown Speaker: It's that's a good thing. Speaker 1: We're coming into the holidays where a lot of people try to disappear on Fridays. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we were having trouble with scheduling and then Thursday, I think it'll be a little bit better for for people coming live to the episode as well. So. Fridays, you never know people take off on Fridays, early vacations, all that good stuff. Thursday is a little bit better. But we've got some good news, I think, today. We've got some Amazon versus Perplexity. China is cracking down on their sellers to make sure they're getting their money from them. Amazon, the price of Amazon software is probably gonna be going up. They're gonna be charging for some API usage. And then also some interesting USPS doorstep return pickups. So could our costs for returns be going up? All of that we're going to be diving into today. But let's go ahead and dive into this first one here, which we've been talking about a lot lately with AI and everything from Amazon. And it looks like I forgot to share my screen. So we've just got a blank screen at the moment. Let's see if we can get that up. There we go. So Amazon is suing Perplexity as the AI browser wars escalate. So Amazon has filed a lawsuit against AI startup Perplexity accusing its Comet browser of illegally accessing customer accounts and making purchases on Amazon without permission. The company claims Perplexity's agentic shopping tool violates its terms of service and undermines the shopping experience by bypassing Amazon's site and ads. Perplexity fired back calling Amazon's actions anti-competitive and insists it's AI enhances convenience, not harm. For Amazon sellers, this battle underscores how AI driven agentic browsers could disrupt how customers shop, compare and complete purchases, posing both risks and new opportunities for visibility and sales channels. So as soon as I seen this one, I knew we had to talk about it because the last couple episodes we were talking about Walmart allowing shopping through ChatGPT. ChatGPT released its browsers. We also talked about Perplexity's browser and how some think Perplexity's browser is much better than ChatGPT's. But this is just rather interesting because Amazon's been blocking all of the AI from directly accessing its site. So with the browser, it's kind of a way that they've been getting around that blockade and now Amazon doesn't like that too much. So what are your guys' thoughts? Let's jump over to you, Leslie, and then we'll come to you, Robyn. Speaker 1: Okay, so first, if Rufus is so amazing, Then why would they care? Like, Rufus is not amazing. Rufus is behind. Rufus is not as open, shall we say, in the language models that they've used to develop Rufus compared to, you know, how perplexity and ChatGPT and these others have developed their AI. So Rufus is not amazing. And I think people I know people are using Rufus. I think the numbers are a lot lower than what Amazon is telling us, though, because like almost everyone I talk to is like, no, I'm still using, you know, natural language search in the search bar. I'm still typing in what I want. I'm not using Rufus. Whatever, man. So I think internally at Amazon, this is a little bit of showing their behinds because there are people in Amazon who are like, if everyone would just use Rufus, it would be great. Unknown Speaker: And we would capture even more market share and people would be even more attached to us. It would be amazing. Speaker 1: We can't let this happen. And that's just not that's just not reality. But I'm really fascinated By what area of law this is going to fall under? Because y'all, this is like making new law. And so I was talking to a friend about this yesterday and she said, this is probably going to end up falling under some kind of weird IP, intellectual property law. But to say you can't, they're essentially saying like you can't scrape. And how many tools already scraped? Speaker 2: Not even that, really. It's a browser, right? So you're going to Amazon with the browser and then I, as Amazon's customer, am allowing Perplexity to access my data that I've entered into Amazon. So that's kind of a weird area because it's like I'm giving authorization for everything that's happening. And Amazon is saying that I don't have authorization to give authorization to my own data, I guess, is what they're claiming. Speaker 1: Exactly. And part of the part of the problem with intellectual property law and anyone who sells on Amazon already knows this problem. If you don't defend something, You lose the right to defend it, right? And Robyn correctly just said, you're not supposed to scrape data from Amazon. But show me who they've gone after for scraping data. Show me the lawsuits. That's the problem. They've never done it. And now they feel like someone is on their little doggy's territory. Speaker 3: There has been some case law against scraping. It's a developing area, but there is some case law on it. I don't think anybody thinks Rufus is really amazing after two beers. I mean, maybe the people working on it and every mother loves their child and I can totally appreciate that. But for me, I think that Amazon's concern might be more of a security and a manipulation issue. Personally, knowing what I do about AI, I think it's a little crazy that people have full access to email and bank accounts and money things because it would be so easy for somebody to come in and manipulate. There's not the same security. There's things like PCI compliance. They could open them up to a lot of potential issues. And then as somebody that works directly with brands, especially when we pair these looser return policies, if you were saying, well, we're just going to let Perplexity order a bunch of stuff and return it, that's going to change the user interface. It's going to change the way that they are able to do personalization. And it can open up things where people could do malicious things, especially as people create agents and have other people use it. And then it also becomes like, you know, with You know, a lot of sites, they say, you know, you need to have your own unique login. You know, you're not supposed to share logins. And you're basically sharing a login. And so it's kind of creating the security gap. And then, you know, with brands, I also worry about potential liability issues. If they say, I need a toy that's great for my, let's say, 18 month old, and it buys something that has a choking hazard. Well, now who's liable? Is that Perplexity or is that Amazon? And so could that brand end up with a lawsuit against them for a death of a child because, you know, they worked, you know, AI told them it was safe. Now, I'm sure it has to be on the box. And so I don't think that that lawsuit would go anywhere, but it's a potential thing that, you know, I, you know, even when they first announced, Amazon announced they were going to have AI change the titles. Everybody was like, we didn't ask for this because we can see ways where that's not going to, you know, titles are phrased. You know, somebody works with very large companies. A lot of thought goes into sometimes Sometimes it's not, but sometimes there's a lot of thought in how do we present this information? One of our brands is a cable wire, like a steel cable wire. One of the things that when they brought us on and they wanted to make sure is that we did not use any imagery from zip lines because while it can be used from that, it's not rated for that. I worry about potential alternate uses that might not be safe, that could cause harm to the consumer. And then of course there's Amazon Business Interests. There's the advertising and from a brand that also impacts the way that we need to optimize. As somebody who speaks at a lot of things like PubCon and SMX, there's a lot of work going into with Black Hat SEO right now trying to figure out how to manipulate these things. Right now, they're having some good success. I would be concerned about ending up with the review manipulation. And, you know, brushing issues at a whole new level and with a whole lot of waste in, you know, impact to the environment with things being shipped across the country. I know I'm always the AI party pooper, but yeah. Speaker 1: Hey, I'm with you, Robyn. I'm on the AI thing. I think it's crazy to say, hey, go through all my email. I just I don't understand this. It makes me crazy. I think where I get annoyed with Amazon is their AI is OK and everything else is wrong. Them changing your titles with AI, which I love that you brought that up. Then doing that is okay, but they do nothing to enforce against black hats who use vendor accounts who go in and change people's titles. You know, everything is for Amazon's good and benefit and all the rest of us can just go jump, right? So to me, this is just so on brand for them that it's all for them. And if they just call it security, then they can do whatever they want. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It's always for the good of the people. Every bad thing in history has always been for the good of people. Speaker 1: It's very animal farm. Amazon is animal farm. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. You make really good points for sure, Robyn, and all that is definitely true. I think You know, Amazon pushing back against this is kind of just a sign of them being the big boy on the block and trying to, you know, muscle others out of their turf kind of thing, which I don't I think typically ends well for the big guy on the block. And if you look through history, a lot of times that's kind of a sign of moving into the past and a new company or someone taking over in the future if we look at the history of tech. And my problem with this is that if it's not perplexity, And if they don't protect it, then it's gonna be some other browser, a Chinese-based AI browser or something that's not gonna care about US laws. Speaker 3: Well, I think that's a bigger reason why they need to fight perplexity. Because if they let perplexity do it, then now there's no reason for them to, it would be anti-competitive for them to, so if they don't, kind of like Leslie said, if they don't protect it at this level with something that is known, Let's say TikTok decides to run an AI or there were security issues there. What if there's something that could cause a bigger security issue for them? If they allow perplexity to do it unchallenged, then it could open up more doors. Speaker 2: I guess what I'm saying is that it's going to happen one way or another. It's either going to be above board or it's going to be below board. You're not going to stop it. People are going to want this ease of use with AI and everything. They might stop perplexity, but that's not going to stop DeepSeek from doing it because DeepSeek isn't going to care about US laws or following Amazon's rules. They're just going to do it. Because they can and they're going to figure out a way to do it. So to me, the better way would be to figure out how to work with perplexity and do this in the most secure fashion. Because that way you can work out the laws and you can work out the security and everything like that with a reputable company rather than, you know, having to battle this forever with black hat AI companies that are going to do it anyways. You know what I'm saying? And the reason I say that is because there's another actual headline here, which I'll bring up. And this is just another headline at the same time as this other article. So Amazon CEO expects to find ways to partner with third party AI shopping agents in the future. Um, so you kind of got dueling headlines, right? They're suing perplexity on one hand and then saying, Oh, we're going to work with you on the other hand. Um, so you know, they'll have to find the balance. Uh, you know, maybe the lawsuit is just something they have to do. Like you said, to protect their intellectual property rights and they'll eventually find a way to work with them. Um, but it's hard to say which way it'll go. Amazon isn't always the, Most seller-friendly, as we all know. They kind of like to focus inward on themselves for whatever's best for their company. So we'll see. I don't know. Do you guys have a thought on which way it'll go in the future? Speaker 3: I think it also could be that, first of all, the way Amazon operates, it could be both. It could be the legal doesn't want AI agents, but the CEO asked in an interview casually, hadn't been briefed on that, said yes. So it could be and or, right? The other thing is it could be that they are okay with ultimately having AI agents, but they want to make sure that the proper safety things are in there and they want to make sure that they're not going to cause Any negative customer experience or liability or even impact, the returns are not great for them either. I think that all of those things, it might be that they need a little bit more time to work out the details, but it also could be that one half the company thinks that this is a great idea. I know there's a lot of differing opinions on how much we should give access to agents. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Did y'all see the delicious tidbit out there? This is one of those things that probably only the inside baseball people like us would laugh and laugh at, but where one of the major investors in perplexity is Jeff Bezos. Yes, it made me laugh. I thought it was really funny. I know that it's like apropos of nothing. They still have to do what they have to do. He's not even really inside the company. He's just a big shareholder, all those things. So it doesn't really mean anything that doesn't make it not amusing. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Bezos is suing himself in a roundabout way. Yeah. That's interesting. It's a, Yeah, we're so early in all of this. I always compare it to like 1995 internet e-commerce days, you know, the AI. So all this will eventually be worked out. I just hope that, you know, the government stays out of it as much as possible and lets the tech companies kind of figure this out because that usually ends up the best versus The government saying, oh, this is the best. And then, you know, in five years, that technology that they say is the best no longer even matters anymore. But yet we're stuck using it because of antiquated laws or something like that. And this space is going to move so fast that things are going to be completely different two years from now than what they are now. So we'll have to wait and see. All right. Let's go ahead and jump on to the next article here. And Leslie, we lost your video. Hopefully that wasn't intentional. Speaker 1: I'll try and figure that out. Sorry. Speaker 2: All right. No problem. We can still hear you. So that's good. All right, next article here, Amazon to Report China-Based Sellers Data to Tax Bureau. Amazon will begin reporting detailed financial and identity data for all China-based sellers, including revenue, transaction, and fees to China's tax authorities, starting with Q3 2025 filings due October 31st. The move follows new regulations requiring both domestic and international e-commerce platforms to share tax-related information about Chinese sellers. The reporting applies even to Chinese sellers who only operate on non-China Amazon marketplaces like the US or UK for global Amazon sellers. This highlights tightening cross-border tax compliance rules and signals that governments are increasing data sharing to track And I'm here to talk about international e-commerce revenue. So I thought this was quite interesting. I'm curious what your thoughts are first though, Robyn. Speaker 3: I think anytime where we're doing, where we're trying to hold Chinese sellers accountable, that's great. There is a lot of corruption that happens in Chinese politics. So how much this will impact things is hard to say. I don't know enough about their tax system to know. I think that it's interesting but I don't know. I think the bigger thing that Amazon could do is if there was some way to try to make it so they're not able to kind of do some of the things they're able to do is skirt around some of the tariffs by dissolving and things like that. I think that would play a bigger role but I appreciate it for effort. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the timing is interesting. It kind of makes me wonder, you know, if I'm not Amazon, but if the tariffs are harming China enough that they're seeing their government revenues drop. So they're like, we need to find new areas to get tax dollars to fill back the coffers back up, if that's a part of it or if it's just kind of a coincidence in that. Speaker 1: That's a really good thought, Todd. Very astute thinking there. Also, the thing about this that to me just screams window dressing is that this is when you think, you know, I've been around all of this too long and so I'm suspicious of everything, is that, you know, every company in China is partly owned by the Chinese government. So they're just getting more money out of one bucket and putting it in another bucket. So how much is this really the Chinese government saying, oh, golly, y'all have been not paying taxes. We're going to get that money from you because we need it. And how much of it is we're going to look like we're leveling the playing field more so that we won't You know, we can try and make these tariffs go away and make the Americans think that we're all on the same level playing field, which obviously we aren't, partly because every company in China is partly owned by the Chinese government and they get, you know, startup money and they get all kinds of help and, you know, things that we don't have here because my business It doesn't have a U.S. investment arm in it. So, you know, I hate to be like a Debbie Downer on everything relating to China, but we haven't had anything really, you know, that's like fairness between Amazon sellers in the U.S. and those in China ever. So it's hard to look at this and get too excited. Speaker 2: Yeah, what I would like to see over this to level the playing field, as you say, is we have this sales data for the Chinese sellers. And we also know what the typical profit is for companies that are selling on Amazon. So we could, the government could potentially use that data to say, Hey, you sold this much, a million dollars on Amazon, but you only paid a thousand dollars in tariffs. Yeah. Something isn't, Adding up here, and they could use that data to potentially prevent people skirting around, you know, paying the tariffs or paying proper income taxes and such in the US. And that could help level the playing field a little bit. Now, in a perfect world, they would just decrease our taxes here in the United States to match whatever the Chinese companies are selling, but I highly doubt that will ever happen. Things tend to just go up instead of down. But that would be kind of a cool idea that the government could potentially use that data for. 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. Speaker 1: You and your crazy ideas about actually getting our taxes lowered, Todd. Yeah. Talk about like a utopia that I want to live in right there. Yeah. But yeah, if the information were actually used to create fairness, that would be super cool. I mean, how amazing would that be? It's interesting you mentioned earlier, too, about governments like sharing information cross-border and companies sharing information cross-border with governments. There's good in that. There's also a little bit of scary in that. So there's a lot to think about with all of this. Again, I don't want to sound like the crazy conspiracy woman who lives in the attic or something, but look at a lot of the speech things going on in the EU. And the UK and Australia, where they're expecting platforms to enforce laws and rules that that we would not do here. But it's putting businesses at risk of not being able to operate internationally. So, you know, I've always got a little bit of the skeptic in me on all these things. Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed. Same. Robyn, were you going to say something? Speaker 3: No, I mean, yeah, I kind of, I feel like this is kind of a half, I don't know that this is going to be a earth shattering thing. So yeah, I just kind of, kind of meh about it. Speaker 2: Yeah, you're probably right. It probably won't have a lot of effect. I'm curious, Robyn, you work with a lot of different sellers. Are you continuing to see price increases in general or is that kind of flattened out? Speaker 3: Are they increasing the prices to consumers? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: It depends on the brand and it depends on how much margin they had and how much they were able to buy during that window when the tariffs were down and what a cash position they are in. There are some that have had to move their pricing up. There are some that are looking at reassessing what products And so there's some products they're gonna discontinue just because they have to conserve cash. And then there's some that aren't making it all together. There are a couple of brands that we had that were younger brands that were already, they had, by the time they came to us, they were already in a tough cash position. And the tariffs have impacted that significantly. But I definitely see prices going, I think the bigger thing is that they're not necessarily increasing a lot of retail prices right now because we want that reference price for the sales. What I am seeing is fewer discounts. Brands in the past that had been very much like, we need to be on every tentpole event are kind of like, well, I don't know what we're going to be able to do this year. So I think it's more that this part of the year that I'm seeing less discounting and more focus on profitability. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree with that with the with the brands that I buy from the suppliers. Just recently I've seen some more increases, like one of the products that we sell a lot of literally went up 100% our cost to buy it. That won't equate to 100% increase in the price on Amazon, but our cost went up 100% and then several other products went up 25 to 50% our cost. So I'm definitely still seeing increases across the board in a lot of the companies that I send orders over to. They'll be like, oh, sorry, the prices on these went up to whatever. The 100% one surprised me. I'm like, wow, it basically went from $2.50 to $5 a unit. I'm like, okay, that's a big increase. Speaker 3: I don't see prices going down anytime soon. I definitely see prices continuing to rise unless something was to change in the landscape. But when we combine that with jobs, ADP posted that job postings are down. We have a lot of people that are furloughed. We have a lot of people that have been terminated. So I think that we could be heading into some shake your time. So as you're looking at your product selection, think about if things were to be more of a recession. This is something we talk about with our clients. If you're looking at two product extensions, look at which one is going to be more resilient in the case of an economic downturn. If you're gonna look at having like a high-end knockoff, which is still a want, but doesn't provide you the prestige of that luxury brand, that's gonna get hit more than something that's more of a staple, more utilitarian, something that provides a good ROI, or something that provides like an emotional, or kind of like a dopamine, oxytocin surge for people. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree. To me, the economy definitely seems to be balancing on an edge right now and it could go either way depending on how things work out in the future. To be fair, you know, our last real downturn was 2008, which is 17 years ago. Normally, these are like five to seven year cycles that we see. Before that, so we've been, we've had a long run. So if it does continue, you know, that's quite impressive. If it does go down, you know, it's kind of a natural thing that happens. Well, I shouldn't say natural. It's, it's highly affected by government policy and regulations and stuff like that. So we kind of do it to ourself, I think. But historically, every five to seven years, there's been a downturn. We're on a super long run so a downturn wouldn't be all that unexpected. Speaker 3: It's not a ton of consolation for somebody though who just invested in business. I think the other thing is if you find that if you are getting down on yourself because things have not gone how you wanted this year, just provide yourself some grace. There were a lot of variables that people didn't anticipate. Make sure you've got really great advisors, people who are keeping their pulse on the economy that are willing to think through with you on the strategies for how you can best insulate. Like you said, things could go several different ways. I like to plan for the worst and hope and aspire to the best, right? So making sure that you always have your four walls covered, making sure that you're really thinking about those big swings and what happens if you miss that swing. You know, we are coming off a gold rush in Amazon. We're now Amazon is really more kind of that traditional marketing place to sell and some of the more traditional kind of like commerce rules and economics are starting to play a bigger role. You might not see the same growth that somebody that posts before that they had five years ago because we're kind of hitting the end of the gold rush and the industry is maturing which is a good thing. It just means a different skill set needs to be brought to keep businesses successful. Speaker 1: And Robyn gave some really great advice earlier talking about product set and looking at things that are necessities, looking at things that people will always buy. There are things people will always buy unless they are destitute in industry, right? They need food. Women are going to buy like basic makeup, basic hair products. They're not going to buy the $250 curling iron when things are uncertain. So looking at product set and, Also falling on things that are inexpensive luxuries. So Robyn had mentioned like the knockoffs, but like, you know, a nice lotion that is $12 instead of the $40 lotion. You know, we've seen this before. We saw this at the beginning of COVID. Y'all might remember sellers who were selling a lot of necessities did really well at the beginning of COVID where anything that was considered like an optional product wasn't selling at all. It was not moving at all. And then, you know, beyond that, part of the shakeup right now is around AI and efficiencies. And there's a lot of questions about how much of this is real and how much is not. Like Amazon did this huge layoff, right? Massive layoff. And they want you to believe that it was largely because of AI. I don't think I believe that. I'm not saying that AI didn't have some portion of that, but I think they had overhired middle managers many times over, over the years, and they decided to shed some of that and try and get flatter because they realized they were carrying a whole lot of overhead that perhaps they could do without. I don't know that I agree with them that they should do without those people because I think there's definitely areas that they are understaffed and as people who work on the other side of the Amazon wall, we can see what those areas are. But, you know, they would have you believe that's all AI. There are other companies doing large layoffs and they want you to believe it's because of AI. So then, you know, as a seller or as someone who's in e-commerce, Then think about, OK, well, then what do I need to do to be more efficient? How can I magically, like Amazon, suddenly not need all these people again? How real is that? But how can I be more efficient? How can I operate more cheaply? How can I prepare for an economy that's a little more challenging? And then the same thing that I've preached for all of the 15 years I've been an Amazon seller, diversification is everything. If Amazon is going to decide to pull back On being the everything store, if they no longer care about being the everything store, if they are going to focus more on brands and it's going to shut down opportunities for sellers in other ways, then where else do you need to be selling? Can you be selling on Shopify? Can you be selling on Walmart? Should you be on Etsy? People laugh at eBay. I actually move a lot of product on eBay. A lot of small sellers do and actually some big brands do. Go check out New Balance on eBay. They move a lot of shoes there. Speaker 2: So, you know, there's, I'm not saying it's so fun to sell on too. Speaker 1: And I'm not saying you're going to make a million dollars there, but you know, if things slow down overall and you see your sales dropping on some other platform, if you're Amazon only, then my goodness, get yourself over to these other platforms, do some testing and see if you can marginally increase that revenue on those platforms to get you back where you were. Be where the consumers go and in tough times, consumers freaking go to eBay and they go to Walmart and they go to other discounted places. Speaker 3: And just make sure you're not looking at revenue. You're looking at profit. So you need to make sure that, you know, sometimes people will go to a different platform. They're not accounting for higher costs or lower selling average price, ever selling prices. So make sure you're considering that. And then the biggest thing is if you're looking at how do I get through this piece before looking at taking a loan, make sure that you really identified any holes in your business. Because, you know, if things go under, a lot of times people are taking loans that are personally guaranteed, which means, you know, a bigger impact. You're not just going to be able to walk away from it. And so just, you know, be really cognizant of how you're spending every money. Look at your subscriptions, cut what you don't need. It's always better to lower expenses than to try to just outgrow revenue. We want to try to grow revenue but we want to do it profitably. Sometimes if you're trying to make ends meet quickly, cutting expenses in ways that are not going to cut off your sales are going to be a faster way to right the ship. While I'm trying to grow sales because oftentimes in order to grow, we need more capital. You're already in the hole and then you're betting the farm on you being able to dig yourself out. But with the ground moving underneath us, even if you have that history of being able to do that in the past, It might be that we try to be a little bit more cautious in what we're kind of trying to identify where things are going in the next couple months. And we'll have a better clarity, I think, after Q4. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah, I would echo that, Robyn. It can make for sleepless nights if you're trying to dig your way out of a hole by growing revenue only. It's a good thing to grow revenue, but the profit has to follow it up as well. Definitely have to know your numbers, have a good bookkeeper that's giving you your profit and loss and balance statement every day or every month. And, you know, tracking those numbers. Speaker 3: That's why I like working with Sydney Thomason, you know, at Bookskeep, because she is so, her team and your profit team that she has there is really great at working. We have a couple of joint clients really looking at kind of the whole picture and identifying what's the best path to profitability and giving them kind of that objective third-party look into their business. So, I mean, find somebody like that, that you know that you can trust. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, super important. I was just pulling up my scorecard here. We track the total revenue, ROI, and gross profit, of course. Those are the E of the Z ones, or margin instead of ROI. But then I also track, where are those other metrics here? Shoot, I'm not seeing them now. Oh, current ratio is one, which is your current assets divided by your current liabilities. So ideally, you want that like at least two to one, so your assets are double whatever your debt is. Basically, that's kind of the lowest you want to go. So that's one thing that I track to make sure we're not taking out too much debt. Inventory turnover ratios as well, how fast you're selling through. Don't worry because that tells you if you're gonna be able to outrun your debt payments basically, right? Digging your way out of your hole as we mentioned. So those are some of the big ones that I like to track to make sure, you know, you're not getting into that hole in the first place and that you're also staying, you know, ahead of your payments essentially with your turning your inventory faster. Speaker 3: I think one of the most important tools that sellers can be looking at is a simple Excel sheet, a 13-week rolling cash flow, and you basically look at all of your expenses at a weekly basis because Amazon sellers, we're like Scrooge McDuck rich, and then we're like, I'll gladly pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today. We kind of go back and forth. In addition to reading Profit First, and Cindy has Profit First e-commerce, but in addition to that, having a 13-week rolling cash flow where you look at your expenses at a weekly basis. This is really, really important as you go into buying your inventory because sometimes moving the date of when you purchase your inventory by three days will be the difference between you having enough money to make it through and not. It allows you to see with enough window when you're going to go into the red so you have time to make thoughtful decisions. Thoughtful decisions on how you're going to get through that versus a reaction where you can dig yourself into a bigger hole. So if anybody needs access, I have a very basic one that I'm happy to share. That 13-week rolling cash flow, I've seen it save so many businesses. And, you know, even if it can make a huge difference. It is a pain in the butt. It is tedious. You will want to split your throat, especially if you have ADHD doing it, but it will save you so many times. Speaker 2: All right. Yeah, if you have a link to that, I can put it in the show notes if you want. Speaker 3: Yeah, let me dig up my thing and I can send it over to you. Remind me if I forget. Speaker 1: Todd, can I just be the most boring person in the world for two seconds here? Speaker 2: Go for it. Speaker 1: This is something that no business owner ever wants to hear, but most of us, we can handle stress at work or stress at home, but stress at both is awful. You can do financial problems at work or financial problems at home, but doing them both will Give you an ulcer. I think most people operate that way that you can do one or the other, but both has you fit for the loony bin. And so, you know, I'm not a fan of debt for a whole lot of reasons, but, you know, debt. There are so many people who they want to leverage all the things and they believe that if they use the debt that they'll always be able to outgrow, like Robyn said, they're always going to be able to outgrow the expenses if they use a whole lot of debt. If you want to use debt, awesome, but just be real careful about being highly leveraged in your business and at home. Doing both is so stressful. People who have regular office jobs and work for other people, they don't even have this thought process. They have debt at home. They have debt in their house and their cars and maybe some credit cards. And some student loans and that's all very normal in our society. But if you're an entrepreneur and you've gone all in on this Amazon thing or on e-commerce and you're also taking the debt on the business and then you have the American normal debt at home. It's just a recipe for scary and hard. So just put a lot of thought, y'all, into that debt, especially when, and the only reason I bring it up is because here's three people who are not in their 20s, who are a little older than that, and we've seen We've seen cycles in business. We've seen people go out of business. We've seen the stress and the pain that it causes. So just give it a lot of thought as we go into this uncertainty of how much stress you can take over debt and where you want that to be. Speaker 3: I had a conversation with somebody that went home and he's like, you know, everybody says go big and go home, but nobody tells you how hard it's going to be if you have to go home. Yeah. You know, so I know that's kind of a bummer, but there's still, and there's so many ways to make money right now and there's still a lot of opportunity. There's still a lot of things that are going right. So, you know, just make sure that you're watching those four walls. You're watching your cashflow. I think that's the biggest thing. Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. All right. Robyn, I know you have to jump off, so I appreciate you coming on the show. We'll see you next time. Speaker 3: Thanks. Speaker 1: It's great seeing you, Robyn. Speaker 2: And Leslie and I, let's go ahead and jump on to the next story here. So Amazon announces new SP API fee structure for third-party developers. Starting January 31st, 2026, Amazon will introduce a $1,400 annual subscription fee for third-party developers using the Seller Partner API, along with tiered monthly usage fees beginning April 30th, 2026. The new model includes a free basic tier allowing up to 2.5 million get calls per month while higher tiers ProPlus and Enterprise support I'm here to talk about larger scale operations with added support and account management options. For Amazon sellers, these changes primarily affect third-party tools and software providers that connect to Seller Central. Developers may pass some of these new costs along to users, meaning sellers could see higher fees for analytics, automation, and listing management tools starting in 2026, I definitely would expect most likely these fees are going to get passed along to the people using the software. So if you use Helium 10, Jungle Scout, Smart Scout, all these companies are going to start getting this fee here this next year. So most likely you're going to see at least incremental increases in the cost of their services. Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of software out there that has free versions. I'm wondering if those free versions are going to go away or become, you know, just they could become very inexpensive. They could do a five bucks a month kind of service, but I can't see them doing it for free. What I'm really interested to see, and y'all, I did not realize this until I was working with a particular client once with an issue. Uh, they were using a repricer and it was a repricer that was specifically for books and books are cutthroat on repricing on used books. Um, they were literally calling data every, I think it was 20 seconds. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Um, so insane amounts of calls. And so part of me is like, come on, Amazon, you actually make so much money because of the people that are calling data. So who calls data? Well, I'll tell you who does is the ads people, all the PPC firms. They use a lot of data calls. They also enable Amazon to make so much money off of ads, so much money. And now they're going to penalize those firms and take that. But they're making everyone who's like That repricer for books that was like an in-house software written by a really big bookseller. Folks like that are going to have to really think about how often they are calling data because You can add up to being, you know, so this chart you're showing, it has basic, which doesn't have a monthly fee, has included 2.5 million per month. And then if you go over that, you're going to pay 40 cents per thousand. That's the basic tier. So you're like, oh, 2.5 million. That's a ton. Not if you're calling an entire catalog every 25 seconds. It's not a lot. So are some of these softwares going to go and rewrite their software? I would if I were calling that often because you cannot really argue why on earth. The programmer just did it that way because he could, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're going to see some free software disappear. Because it's just going to be too expensive. And they're definitely going to have to rewrite their softwares to be more efficient. So in that way, this is a good thing. It'll force developers to be more efficient with their code and with pulling data, which theoretically could speed up programs as well if they optimize them better. But The bad part, like I said, the free software may go away or have a small fee of some kind and you're most likely going to see some kind of increase in various softwares. One that comes to mind is RevSeller. RevSeller is only $100 a year and it gives you some really good data. You can pull a ton of data using its software. I can't imagine they're going to be able to give that away for $100 a year any longer with this new fee that's coming in, especially the data pulls that you're able to do with it, which are pretty It's extensive. It pulls a lot of data for whatever you need for free, basically just a part of the $100 a year fee. Speaker 1: Right. And then, okay, people are already starting to get used to the metered way that some AI software is set up. So for example, I use a software to help me create photos for some listings. And it has, I'm on a really basic plan and it has a lot of AI generated background stuff included. But then when you go over your weekly or your monthly, then it's metered, right? And you're paying, I don't remember what it is. Let's mix up and up 10 cents a photo or whatever it is to generate these photos. And a lot of sellers are already kind of getting used to that. They're using these metered services. It's essentially metered because it's on how many items you actually use. But if you think about it, AI software is really the first time most of us have ever been exposed to any software that was on usage. Unless you go all the way back to like dial-up internet service a long time ago, nothing is based on usage. And it really makes me wonder if ultimately, because we all know that prices at Amazon only go up. This is their starting point. This is never going to go down. It's just going to go up. So will some of the service or software providers who the data calls are all being done not automatically by them because they're managing your account for you so they can control that, but the data calls are all being done by the end user. Are they going to have to either jack up the price on everyone, which is sad because I would be a small user and then there's other power users and I'm getting hurt more than them, right? I'm like paying for their lunch. Or are they going to have to go to some AI meter mode where you're paying by usage? It's really interesting to see this Like shift toward metered software. And I just wonder if this could be like metered software, metered service. It's probably. It's like, Todd, you remember when you used to like pay per minute on phone calls? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: And the uncertainty of that. And I guess, I don't know, it's fascinating. And as we have energy constraints for data centers and energy constraints because of AI and having to build out data centers and tools, Why wouldn't things go to metered use? But it's just kind of mind-bending because we used to be there and now we're not there at all and now we're going back. Speaker 2: Yeah. It makes me think of my grandmother because, you know, old school phones, right? You used to pay for long distance, anywhere out of your local area code, you'd pay by the minute. And I think it might have been last year or the year before I was talking to my mom and My grandma would call or you'd call her and she'd always make the call like really quick. You'd talk for a little while and then she'd be like, oh, okay, okay, gotta go, have a good one. And then one time my mom asked her like, why do you gotta go so fast all the time? Why don't we talk longer? She's like, oh, I don't wanna rack up your long distance phone bills when you're calling me. We're like, grandma, that doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't matter how long we talk. Speaker 1: That's awesome. Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, she's, she's like nine, I think 93 now. It's like, wow. So, you know, even though we tell her that she probably won't remember it in a couple months or whatever. So she'll get off, try to get off the phone call right away. We'll have to remind her. But yeah, it's just, you know, that's the way the world used to be. A lot of things used to be metered and maybe we'll go, we'll go back to that. You'll have, The RevSeller that I was talking about, it'll give you 500 pulls included in the $100 a year or something like that and anything over, you got to pay 10 bucks extra for every 500 or whatever the case may be. Speaker 1: Well, and if they have to go to that model and if other software has to do that, they have already been helped by people like me who already understand, oh, I'm paying per image. Whereas in the past, I never would have even had that thought process. I would just say, oh, I pay monthly for this software, not I'm paying per image. So at least that's baked in. But wow, something else that we would all have to monitor our people. Right? Monitor your people and see how much data they're pulling that you don't need or whatever the case may be. I'll be fascinated to see the pushback on this and if it hurts some of these agencies. I think you'd have to be a pretty big agency to be in that $10,000 monthly fee, but I could be wrong. Speaker 2: Yeah, probably 250 million. It depends, you know, how they're counting the get calls, I guess. I think I'm not super familiar with it. I've done a little bit of programming with the API, but I think there is like a limit to the amount of records you get back with each call. So how the API works is you make a call to Amazon, right? And you say, give me this information. And I think they send back something like, I have about 100 or 500 records at a time. So if you've got 10,000 products in your catalog, you might have to make 10 calls or 20 calls to be able to get all of the records in your catalog. So it kind of depends on how that's working. The put calls, which is putting products or information into Amazon, I believe, Yeah, so they're not charging for you to put Amazon data in, only to pull data out. So it all depends on how the application is set up and how many calls you're having to make and how big your customers are that you're dealing with and stuff like that. So, you know, it may be a cost that a lot of these companies just eat. For their smaller customers and maybe increase for their bigger customers, but we'll have to see. It definitely could hurt the free software options that are out there though. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And the really small agencies because the, what is 1400 bucks a year? That's not terrible, but if you're really small, I mean, there are really small guys who do this work and they are using the API and they're, you know, solopreneur. That's an ouchie, but I guess it's just cost of doing business. Speaker 2: Yep, absolutely. All right, let's jump on to this last one here. We've only got a few minutes, but just so people can see it here. Amazon Doorstep Returns launch as sellers battle rising costs. Amazon has launched Doorstep Returns, allowing customers to schedule USPS pickups directly from their homes, further cementing convenience as the new e-commerce standard. While the move enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty, it also increases pressure on third-party sellers already facing record high return costs, averaging 30% of an item's value. Return abuse, including fraudulent and wardrobing behavior, continues to erode profits and trust while Amazon's returnless refund and extended holiday returns Well, this here says through January 15th, but I think they made it January 31st this year, if I'm not wrong there. They constrain seller cash flow even further. For Amazon sellers, mastering return rate management using in-package support inserts and strengthening post-purchase communication are now essential to surviving an increasingly convenience-driven but costly marketplace. I definitely agree with the increasing costs and the battle with returns that you really got to stay on top of nowadays because that is just skyrocketing in importance. Speaker 1: I've got a question on this, Todd. Is the buyer going to pay a fee to have UPS pick this up? Speaker 2: That's a good question. Let me scroll through here. I did not see anything about a fee. Speaker 1: So it's postal service they're picking up. The reason I ask, It's because, you know, for a while Amazon was like, hey, no fee for returning anything. Right. And then it became there's no fee if you return it. It depends on where you live. Like if there's a Staples, you can return it there for free. And if it's a Kohl's, you can return it there for free. But if it's you want to return to a UPS location, it has to be the only one within a certain number of miles or you pay a dollar, you pay a dollar to return an item to the UPS. And then that like changed. And some places you still didn't have to pay the dollar, but some places you do have to pay the dollar. I don't know. I don't get it. I can't figure out what they want from us. Oh, free pickup. Speaker 2: Free pickup. The customer just has to provide their own box and shipping label though. Speaker 1: They'll email you a return label or it'll show up in your account when you do the return, right? You just have to print it off and stick it on the package. Speaker 2: Print it off yourself and have your own box for the pickups. I'm assuming the shipping label will still be free. Like most returns, I can't imagine they would make you start paying that. But they already have the UPS pickups. The UPS pickups used to be free, but now a lot of times they'll charge you like $6.99 or something like that. It'll still be one of the options, but they'll charge you. So I imagine this will just start showing up as another one of the options. Sometimes free, sometimes not free, depending on the reason for your return, which is why everybody lies about why they're returning their products. They always say it was damaged or something so that they can get the free return label and free pickup kind of things. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And golly, so this is so dependent on where people live too, because porch piracy is so different in different places. You know, there are neighborhoods where you could leave stuff on the, on the porch and nothing would ever, ever happen. And then there are places where yikes, and then there's, you know, nice neighborhoods where it just happens randomly. This is a whole new avenue for buyers to claim that they put it on the porch and it disappeared. You can say, well, it wasn't scanned until the cows come home, but they'll still say, well, I put it out there with the label on. It's just one more way for people to lie and keep the item, sadly. I hate even saying that, but it's true. Speaker 2: Yeah. That's one thing Amazon really needs to crack down on and I know they've done a little bit of it for like super horrible offenders of this. They've canceled their Prime subscriptions and stuff and discontinued allowing them to buy on Amazon, but I think it's pretty rare. That Amazon actually cracks down on people and that's something they need to do a lot more of because overall those kind of people are just harming the sellers on Amazon and Amazon themselves in the long run. Removing those kind of people from the service would be a benefit to planet Earth, really. Speaker 1: Agreed. And sadly, there's no way for a merchant fulfilled seller to block a repeat buyer that they have issues with. That is something you can do over on eBay. You can block someone who repeatedly steals product from you in various ways. And that doesn't, there's no way for a seller to do that on I'm the great Amazon. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely a problem. Free returns and everything have always caused kind of headaches for sellers and stuff. But at this point, it's just ingrained in people's heads that they should get free shipping and free returns, you know, air quotes free, because of course, we all know that that's added into the cost. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: Just like taxes, right, are added into the cost of Today we're going to be talking about how to sell products, which for some reason a lot of people think that doesn't happen as well. So I don't think those days are going to be going away. It's just a part of doing business in e-commerce and something that you have to add in to the cost of your products when you're setting the price that you're selling it for on Amazon. Oh yeah. Yep. I have that. You know, I, we have these like skeleton hoodies that we, we sold for a while, which we're, we're discontinuing, you know, but all the time I would see people, they would buy a large and an extra large. It's like, okay, so there's going to be a return. Of course, they're going to see which one fits and then return the other one. So those kinds of things are definitely very annoying in those spaces. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And very, very expensive. And sadly, you know, it's just like you said, it's become part of the online sales culture where I think people don't even understand the negatives attached to it. There are a lot of good people out there who, if they understood the negative costs attached to it, might not do it. But it's almost encouraged by the structure set up by the platforms, right? So they would rather get the sale and have a return and have you be the happy return customer who's on prime and all the things. So, you know, people don't think anything about it anymore. Speaker 2: For the most part, surprisingly, I have had a call or two for someone who got one of our products and they called me and let me know that, you know, I got this and the box, I just wanted to let you know that the box was torn open and there was a couple of the Um, it was a candy thing and a couple of the candies were missing and I'm like, Oh, I'm so sorry about that. Let me just go into Amazon and ask for a return. We'll get you a new one. No problem. And they're like, Oh no, that's okay. I don't want to make you have to pay for me to return it and everything. I just wanted to let you guys know that it happened. I'm like, wow, that's so rare these days. Looking out for, you know, the seller. It was very refreshing, but you don't get much of that. Speaker 1: No, but wow, what a positive note to end on, Todd. That's great. Speaker 2: I insist that you do the return because this is a valid reason that you should get the return, but it was just nice to hear that kind of thing. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Speaker 2: All right. Well, we'll go ahead and wrap it up there. Leslie, always great to have you on the show. Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much. This has been fun as always. Speaker 2: Absolutely. And everybody out there watching, I appreciate you as well. Every Thursday, 12 o'clock now, we're going to be doing this. Of course, we'll take off for Thanksgiving, but until then, we'll see you next Thursday. Have an awesome weekend. 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.