Weekly Buzz 10/2/25: Chat GPT Taking Over E-Commerce? | New Amazon Advertising Tax

Weekly Buzz 10/2/25: Chat GPT Taking Over E-Commerce? | New Amazon Advertising Tax Speaker 1: Has ChatGPT changed e-commerce forever with this new move? There might be new taxes for some of you on your Amazon advertising. A new Project X. These stories and more on today's Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz. We give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, TikTok shop, and e-commerce world. We give you a strategy of the week, and we let you know what new features that Helium 10 has that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. The thing that's been buzzing this whole week, unless you guys don't go on LinkedIn or don't check the news or don't check people's social media feeds, is the whole e-commerce is in an uproar about this move that ChatGPT made. The actual article I'm going to bring this from is from Fortune.com and it's entitled, Open AI Rolls Out Instant Purchases Directly from ChatGPT in a Radical Shift to E-commerce in a Direct Challenge to Goal. Now this is interesting because this to me kind of like exaggerates it like I think I feel like other people are doing plus it actually level sets. Now here's the thing. I see all over LinkedIn and other places people saying this is like the biggest move ever and huge change, game changing. Let me just come out and say something controversial. I don't think this is a big difference for most of you. Now, let me take a step back. I don't think that it's a big difference in the aspect of I don't think Amazon sellers are all of a sudden going to see some rapid decline. In your sales because of this move and that's what I mean. First of all, obviously not right now. Right now it's only for Etsy and soon to be Shopify. Basically what this is according to this article just in case you haven't heard about this is it says open AI will allow users in the US to make purchases directly through ChatGPT using a new instant checkout feature powered by a payment protocol for AI co-developed with Stripe. And basically in the beginning it's only for Etsy and soon to be Shopify. So the very first thing even now obviously you're not going to see like some rapid decline in your sales. Somebody is searching for a water bottle. They're not going to search in ChatGPT so they can buy a water bottle on Etsy. There's no water bottles on Etsy. At least there's not supposed to be. But even when Shopify rolls out, I don't think this is going to affect too much. Now again, some people might think that's controversial, but I'm just telling you how it is. How many of you guys purchase majority of your stuff off of Amazon? Probably not many. For me, I purchase at least 50 different orders compared to one that I might use Google or something for. I'll give you an example. I mean, I literally have ordered 40 things in the last month and just yesterday, for the first time, I started looking on Google and actually ChatGPT looking for a new Barong Tagalog shirt. That's those Filipino shirts you guys see me wear when I go on stage. It's been a while since I had some and I know that's not on Amazon. That's something that's kind of like a handcrafted thing. So I was like, hey, let me see what's going on Etsy for this. Let me see if there's any companies. I was looking at this one Filipino company called Kultura that carries some brands and I was looking off of Amazon for it. That's the exception, not the rule. The majority of my purchases, as the majority of American purchases from e-commerce who are prime members, they are going to stick to prime because they can get the same day shipping, two-hour shipping, maybe next day shipping, etc. Who does this move affect? Right now, it's not affecting too much. It's affecting people who might have been shopping just for Etsy or people who don't have prime, or it's the people who usually buy stuff online. I barely look for stuff on Google just because why would I? Amazon is absolutely a better place and more trustworthy. Who knows what the heck is these random websites, right? So I don't think this is going to be a big shift. Now that being said, guys, ChatGPT, AI search for e-commerce, this is important. It was important before this move. Did you guys see our podcast last week? What was it? I worked hard before I even knew about this ChatGPT OpenAI thing to bring Joe, one of the premier leaders in the e-commerce world, about optimizing your products for search on ChatGPT and discovery. This is before I even knew that this thing was coming, so obviously I'm not saying that, nobody's ever going to search on ChatGPT, but my point is, guys, don't drink the Kool-Aid that this is some game-changing thing that has changed, that's going to crush your Amazon sales if you don't immediately take action. You should have taken action even before this move. Otherwise, why would I have had that webinar? I want you guys to balance though what this means. It's going to be very little change for now. It might change those of you who are doing had main products and now all of a sudden it's going to be easier to buy on Etsy. Who knows? Maybe for you, it might change. But that being said, it doesn't matter. Even if it's only a 2% difference for right now, guess what guys? You still should be optimizing for how your products show up on open eye. You should be preparing for what's next. We've talked about for years, you probably should be running Google Ads. This article mentioned how what is really going to change is like those who are doing Google advertising. Those who are optimizing for Google search to find their off Amazon products, that's probably going to change the way your Google ads are performing because I think more and more people are going to be doing their discovery and their research in ChatGPT. This is interesting. Now, this is something that Amazon sellers are going to have to pay even more attention to. There's going to be like a fee. I think it's at something like 2% or something like that, where you can opt in if you've got a website. If you don't have a website yet, guys, you should have had a website years ago. It's not just because of this, but this just makes it maybe a little bit more urgent. But again, this is interesting. Check out the article in the comments below, and there's a lot of articles and commentary on this. I do think it's important but please do not panic and think your Amazon sales are going to plunge 50% because ChatGPT allows you to buy a coffin shelf on Etsy now. I think it's important, something we have to watch out for, but take it kind of like in stride with the importance that you have. Now, the next article is another one of those things that you could potentially panic about, but I think it's important that we know what's possible. There was an email about this two weeks ago from Amazon and then GeekWire actually had another article about this just yesterday. It said, sweeping new sales tax law on digital ads in Washington takes effect amid compliance confusion. This is a law that just came into act this month in October and it's very interesting because it says This is by the way called Senate Bill 5814 but basically it says it reclassifies several activities as retail sales. It says sellers must now charge sales tax on advertising services. There's a whole bunch of other things too like IT services I don't think applies to Amazon sellers so I'm not going to talk about that but this is very interesting and there's a lot of confusion. I see a lot of speculation. Hey, does this mean that if I have an Amazon agency and I have a customer who lives in Washington, I have to pay tax on the advertising I'm doing for them or are they paying tax? Some Amazon sellers are like, wait, do I pay tax to Amazon? Is Amazon collecting it for me? What's going on? This article GeekWire tried to reach out to Amazon. They didn't get a reply yet, but maybe you guys, some of you might have gotten this email from Amazon and it says, this notification only applies to those customers with a Washington US based business address. And it talks about this Washington state law specifically includes online advertising services such as taxable retail sales and encompasses all aspects of online Advertising, it says, as a result of this Washington state law, a number of your Amazon ads purchases will be subject to Washington state sales tax beginning October 1st, 2025, including all sponsor display. And sponsored ad products. So this is again something that I don't think we should completely panic over right now. But there's two things. If your business is in Washington, something's coming to you for your advertising. All right. But this could be big. I mean, imagine if you're spending, you know, $10,000 a month on advertising and there's like this, I don't know, let's just call it a 2% tax. I have no idea what I'm also the co-founder and co-producer of Serious Sellers Podcast. This is not a precursor and a whole bunch of other states are going to start charging tax on your Amazon advertising, but it's something to be on the lookout for and it's something you guys who have a Washington-based business address definitely need to be looking at what's going on and are you getting charged by Amazon? Are you liable for more taxes to pay separately? Make sure to talk to your CPA, but it sounds like there's a confusion on this. Alright, next up is our Helium 10 New Feature Alert and this is pretty cool. This is probably the most significant update to our TikTok Influencer Finder. So before our TikTok Influencer Finder, it just allows you to enter in like a word or something and then it basically looks at the usernames of TikTok creators or maybe it looks at their profile picture, right? Which still or their profile for their TikTok account, which is still pretty good. I could search gothic or goth and then basically anybody who has goth in their name or profile picture would come up. But if I entered something like coffin shelf, almost nobody would come up. There would be almost no influencers. Why? Because people don't really use the word coffin shelf in their profile. Or as part of their handle or their username on TikTok. But now the team has optimized our algorithm, even using AI, to now search multiple sources for keywords. It's going to look at hashtags of videos that they have put out. It's going to look at the products that creators have promoted. So now take a look at what you see here in our TikTok Influencer Finder. Before when I entered Coffin Shelf, I would have like maybe five or six people come up. But now I entered Coffin Shelf here into the Influencer Finder and it found over 1,000 influencers. Look at the very first one. This person never would have come up under if you're just searching this in TikTok or if you're using the old Helium 10 Influencer Finder. But if I click on their listing or their profile and go to this lady Bdub11's channel here, look at their profile. It says, Makeup Spooks, Honest Reviews, and Cats. Nothing about a coffin shelf but Instantly, the fact that she has spooks in her profile and just looking at her dark makeup, I'm like, man, this might be a good influencer. And I'm looking at the kind of stuff that she's made videos for and very spooky stuff here. You know, this looks pretty good. And now I'm scrolling down here. Take a look here. She has a coffin letter board right there. Helium 10 has a coffin letter board and as I scroll down here, take a look at what we see here guys. What do we see here? We see a video she made for another coffin shelf and this is kind of crazy. Like AI is pretty powerful. I don't even see like A hashtag here of Coffin Shelf, or actually there is a hashtag. She did put hashtag Coffin Shelf somewhere here, but that is how advanced now the Helium 10 TikTok Influencer Finder is. It's using AI to look at hashtags and the images and videos that people are doing to bring you relevant creators for some of your products. So if you have not used the TikTok Influencer Finder in Helium 10, you need the Diamond account to do that for now. Start looking for those influencers, just looking to reach out. But don't forget, we also have the influencer messenger there too. So once you find like, I'm going to go ahead and offer this Bdubs11 gothic lady here, I'm going to offer her one of our coffin shelves. Say, hey, I see you've made a video for a coffin shelf. Would you like to make a video of ours? I'll send you one. All right, 15% commission. You can do all that through Helium 10. So guys, make sure to use the new and improved Helium 10 TikTok Influencer Finder. We've got an article from Bloomberg and it's entitled Mercado Libre Sinks as Rival Amazon Boosts Presence in Brazil. This is interesting. Historically in Latin America, MercadoLibre has been king, like Mexico, Brazil, etc. That's the big marketplace. Amazon is a little bit behind. So as you can see here, it says, shares of MercadoLibre recorded their worst session since November on concern that Amazon's latest move in Brazil will ramp up competition in the e-commerce segment. The stock ended 7% down and it followed another 7% decline in the prior session. Now, some pointed as a reason for this, it says, by an announcement by Amazon Brazil where Amazon is waiving all FBA logistics fees, inbound, storage, last mile for every seller and take rates on FBA orders for newly onboarded merchants, effectively making its marketplace free Through the peak holiday season. Oh my goodness gracious. How wouldn't we all like Amazon USA to make a move like that like guys? You know you're all your all your fees inbound storage. It's on us. You know. But it looks like Amazon is trying to make big moves in Brazil. So don't forget guys, Helium 10, Blackbox, Cerebro, Chrome Extension, Profits, most all of our tools work for Amazon Brazil. If you guys are located in Brazil and want to start doing start FBA there, now is the time. It's literally free almost. For those who don't want to do FBA inbound or at least you know store products down in Amazon Brazil, don't forget it's free to at least turn, I'm free not You don't get the free FBA charges and stuff, but it's free to turn on your remote fulfillment. So you can fulfill Amazon Brazil orders using your Amazon USA FBA inventory through remote fulfillment. Just turn it on, do some keyword research and some product research and Helium 10 for Amazon Brazil. But sounds like regardless if you're in Brazil or out of Brazil, now is a time to get started in this emerging marketplace. Next up, it's time for our strategy of the week and Shivali has a hack here on how whenever you are looking on any search result page, you can see based on what Amazon says who were the top three click products for that week. Shivali, take it away. Speaker 2: Sometimes, you don't want to do a full deep dive into search query performance or brand analytics in Amazon or Helium 10. Maybe you're just browsing on Amazon, whether that be as a buyer or a seller looking for inspo. Did you know that if your account is connected to Helium 10 and you've got brand registry, no matter what level plan you have, you can see in the search results which the three products were that were most clicked and what percentage of sales that they got without clicking anything at all. Watch this. I searched for wooden egg holder. Now look, first of all, I don't know why underwear ads are showing up on this page, but anyway, you'll see the Helium 10 widget showing me which were the top three most clicked last week. There's a little blue bar that says ADA most clicked. For example, this competitor egg holder was number one with 20.83% of all sales from that keyword last week. Another listing was the third most clicked, but it had 0% conversions. Do I really need to worry about that competitor? No. And I'm just getting these insights without clicking anything. This is Helium 10 showing me data in the search results. Now, check this out. The second bestseller last week, that was us, our egg tray. We had the second most clicks and 8.33% of the sales, even though the listing was really far down on that page. What does this tell me? If we were to increase our bid and move up in rank, we can grab even more clicks and sales. And I learned all of that simply by searching a keyword and hovering over the blue bar. This is a sponsored ad. So what am I going to do with this information? Well, I just saw without even clicking Anything at all, that one of my products was one of the top three clicked and had nearly 10% of the purchases. Not quite 10, but almost 10, even though my listing was halfway down the page. So what would you do if this were you, your products? For me, I'm going to increase my bid so I can move higher up in the results. And if I get to the top of the page, I could capture even more clicks and a bigger share of the sales. The best part is I learned all of that just by searching on Amazon, hovering over the blue bar that shows me straight from Amazon Brand Analytics which products were the most clicked. You will not see this in any other tool, but with Helium 10's Chrome extension installed, you can take advantage of this feature right inside of the search results. Speaker 1: Alright, thank you very much, Shivali. Last article of the day is from Amazon itself and it's entitled, Amazon Unveils the Next Generation of AI-Powered Echo Devices. Purpose built for Alexa Plus. So you might think, what does this have to do with Amazon sellers? But we've always talked about Alexa for years now. There's always been talk about, hey, Alexa is going to be changed and more people are going to be buying on Alexa. And we haven't really seen it yet. But I think with this Alexa Plus, this is actually We're going to start seeing increases in Alexa purchases because it's like a gen AI experience where it's going to be much easier to shop. Traditionally, it's been really clunky to shop on Alexa on Amazon. But for those who have used Alexa Plus, it's been in beta for a while now. For a lot of users, it says actually millions of people are in that beta. But the fact that now Amazon is building Alexa Plus into all its new devices that they just announced, this is a sign that I think it's going to come across to everybody and then we're really going to be able to hopefully see what changes there are and how we should start optimizing our listings for Alexa Plus. Another thing we're going to have to worry about as sellers is about optimizing. Do I think this is going to double your sales or increase your sales 50%? I doubt it's going to increase your sales even 2 or 3%, but guess what guys? Anything that increases our sales 2 or 3%, you still should do it. Just like I was talking about the ChatGPT, I might not think it's a hashtag game changing thing, but if it's going to increase your sales 1, 2%, you should do it. You do 10 different things that increase your sales 2% each, it adds up guys. So start thinking about what your strategy might be once Alexa Plus rolls out to everybody. One more thing, how many of you old timers out there remember Project X? That was a case study we did years ago where Howie found the coffin shelf and oh my goodness, look at this video of me. Way back when I was about 40 pounds less than what I am now, but Project X is one of the most popular series that we ever had where we brought some products from zero to hero and we showed you every step of the way how to do it. I've always been wanting to do a Project X Season 2. Now, we are not going to do Project X Season 2. However, we are going to be doing something brand new called Scale Stories. We really went to the next level for this and it's going to be coming out launching next week. How do we go all I mean we had a film crew that. It's a film crew that even works on Mr. Beast videos. We did not spare any expenses on this. Instead of me finding products for myself, we had different contestants come on that are at different stages in their Amazon or TikTok shop journey. So what I want you guys to do is go now into YouTube if you have not yet done this. Make sure to search for Helium 10. Just go to YouTube, search Helium 10, and then make sure you have the subscribe button on. All right? So make sure you have the subscribe button on and then turn on the notifications, the bell feature. It says all. All right? So go to Helium 10. Make sure you're subscribed. If not subscribed, and then turn on the bell notifications because we are going to have our world premiere of scale stories by Helium 10, which is like Project X Season 2 on steroids. The world premiere is going to be in a few days and there's going to be a big watch party. I think it's going to be on the 7th and I want everybody to watch with us live and comment and everything, but you need to get notified. So go to Helium 10. Make sure to register or subscribe to our channel and look out for one of the coolest case studies that you'll ever see in the Amazon world. Alright guys, that's it for the news this week. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Don't forget to tune in next week to see what's buzzing.