Just received an email last week from Amazon Shipping (AMZ's point to point parcel service). Amazon shipping has been very competitive with our Fedex rates. For items unsuitable to FBA, we use Amazon shipping to move merchant fulfilled orders to Amazon orders, and non-amazon marketplaces.

Our monthly spend (post discount) is approximately $40,000 for Amazon shipping, soon to be zero'd out. Due to, them completely and utterly killing off the competitiveness.

Original Negotiated rate with Amazon is pretty good compared to our Fedex rates (I get 70% ground discount, 50-75% delivery area surcharge, 75% discount on residential).

This new rate... seems to be a standardized "take-it-or-leave-it price chart with an effective date of 7/26/2026.

Based on my current vs new rate:

Packages under 15 lbs: 43% increase

Packages 15-30 lbs: 78% increase

Packages 30-45 lbs: 88% increase

DIM divisor cut from 194 to 166.

Since my system performs live rate shopping between carriers, I am forecasting a drop of more than 90% in parcel volume, looks like volume will shift over to Fedex, USPS and other regional carriers.

Amazon shipping already heavily cherry picks packages (mostly large metropolitan areas) so their overhead is inherently much cheaper than legacy carriers, but this seems like another case of internal analysts being disconnected with reality. so we'll see how this plays out.

Original Email:

Dear Amazon Shipping Customer,

We are reaching out regarding two important updates to your Amazon Shipping account.

Pricing Adjustment

As part of our ongoing commitment to maintaining high service standards, we regularly review our operations to ensure we continue to deliver reliable and efficient shipping solutions for your business. Following this review, we would like to inform you of an upcoming adjustment to your Amazon Shipping rates, effective July 26, 2026.

These adjustments support our continued investment in service quality, technology, and operational capabilities, helping us consistently meet the evolving demands of the shipping industry.

Your new rates will be available on the Shipping Rates page in Shipper Central on July 26, 2026, or you can preview them now by clicking on the button below.

Preview rates

Earned Discount Updates

Along with this rate structure change, your Earned Discount table will also be updated with improved tracking features. The discount adjusts based on how much you ship - the more you ship, the more you can save.

Earned Discount rewards consistent shipping activity with Amazon Shipping, calculated weekly based on your trailing 52-week annual gross shipping spend and automatically applied to your base rates at label purchase.

What’s new?

You will now have enhanced visibility into your discount directly from your account. You can track:

Current Earned Discount percentage tier

Progress towards the next percentage tier

Weekly Earned Discount history

What does this mean for you?

Starting July 26, 2026, your rate structure and Earned Discount terms will be updated. When these rates go live, you will be able to download your updated rate card and track your Earned Discount tier by logging into Shipper Central and navigating to the Shipping rates page.

With this update, we are giving you a new 2-week ramp period to reach the revised committed spend before your next Earned Discount tier calculation. Your next discount tier calculation will occur on August 23, 2026*.

*The Earned Discount tier applied to the shipping rates tab of the attached file is reflective of your current ADV. Your next tier calculation will occur on August 23, 2026 based on actual shipments between August 9, 2026 and August 22, 2026.

Thank you for shipping with us. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us via “Contact Us" in Shipper Central. Our team is available to help if you need assistance.

I don’t understand why so many people prefer to work alone and build a business entirely by themselves. I know that partnerships can be difficult because of differences in goals, trust, or communication.
But when you compare long-term results, a strong team often achieves much more than one person alone. Different skills, shared responsibilities, and faster problem-solving can accelerate growth in ways that are hard to match as a solo entrepreneur.
Of course, the wrong partner can slow everything down. But with the right people, collaboration can create opportunities that would be difficult to achieve alone.
What do you think? Is working alone better, or is building a team the smarter path?

Hi guys i've been looking to try to sell on amazon and i wanted to see if you guys can send me a video link or post link to read or watch to get information about this process. I was also wondering from people with experience is it better to send product to amazon warhouse or to do it yourself and ship out product? let me know about the pros and cons thank you

Help with FBA

I’d like to start selling via Amazon FBA. I have some previous experience in e-commerce. In your opinion, which is the best country to start with for FBA? Apart from Australia and Canada, what else would you recommend? Please share any YouTube videos and other resources I could use.

I have been doing research on here, Facebook and upwork and there’s a lot of people saying they have great teams and can make x amount of dollars for me and we work on a split. I don’t know who to choose and who to trust. If you have any recommendations of a solid team I can trust let me know or how I should vet a team.

Many sellers do and get to the half-cooked conclusions. The product which can perform well gets a bad performer badge. Sometimes everything is right and the only thing missing is the enough time for the decisions to mature.

For example changing the bids four times in twenty four hours or closing the campaign which you started three days ago or changing the title weekly.

Any new introduction to the market takes its due time to cause any noticeable and ultimately profitable effect. Be patient and sturdy with your Amazon strategy and try not to obsess over every metric every hour.

Believe me its good for your health and the health of your product too 😊

I’m guessing many of you know this already, but I’ve been stunned by how many people don’t know about Amazon’s “off-Amazon” placements in Sponsored Product Ads.

They snuck this in a while - you can find it by:
1 - go to Amazon Campaign Center
2 - click on a Campaign
3 - go to Campaign Settings
4 - scroll way to the bottom, under the typical placement multipliers (Top of Search, Rest of Search, Product Page), and you’ll see it.

Looks like this:

If you run a Sponsored Products “Placement” report, you’ll likely find that this specific placement is 100% garbage. It’s one of the first places I look to find wasted ad-spend when auditing accounts. I’ve yet to see this placement perform below 70% ACOS.

What sucks is that Amazon opted everyone into this placement.
They didn’t tell us.
They didn’t notify us.
They didn’t ask.
They just did it.
Amazon, doing Amazon 

Up until a few weeks ago, the only way you could stop the bleeding was to manually open EVERY SINGLE CAMPAIGN, go to settings, and click on the “limit off-Amazon” option.

Recently, they’ve added this option in their bulk operations file.
So, you can now go to Bulk Operations, export ALL of your campaigns, and paste in the option to limit this ad-spend, re-upload, and you’re all set.

I published a video on my channel yesterday that walks through the issue and how to fix it manually (via the settings) or via the Bulk Operations flat file, which is much better if you're comfortable with Excel.

II’m curious, have any of you run Placement Reports lately and figured out what your off-Amazon ACOS is?

I’m trying to understand how a product’s cost builds up through each stage of the Amazon FBA process.

The infographic shows one simplified example

Product cost: $4.00
Landed cost at Amazon: $8.10
Total cost after Amazon fees and PPC: $16.30
Selling price: $19.99
Estimated profit: $3.69

Obviously, the actual numbers depend on the product’s size, weight, sourcing country, order volume, tariffs and advertising costs.

For sellers with real experience:
What does your cost buildup look like?
Which stage adds the most unexpected cost?
What expenses do new sellers commonly forget?
At what stage do you usually discover that a product is no longer profitable?

Can anyone recommend a reputable prep centre in Europe? My company is based in UK and so far we have been working with WePrep, which are fairly decent. But they are only present in UK.

Our main distributors are in mainland Europe, and we are working to get EPR, VAT etc. for major EU markets, Pan-EU expansion etc., it just makes sence to work with EU-based prep centre.

What is a must for us is that company is Amazon SPN-listed/vetted and they can speak English for ad-hoc issues discussions over the phone. And of course not operating our of spare room or garage

Doesn't have to be rock-bottom per-unit pricing, we understand that good quality service comes at a premium.

I have sent a small batch of like 90 units, and just cant wait for it to reach the warehouse. Suppose to be there tomorrow.

Curious where the room is landing. Poll for wholesale specifically (private label different margins), ideally Amazon UK — non-UK welcome too.

I've been tracking mine per SKU across COGS, prep, inbound, monthly storage (incl. Q4), aged-surcharge, returns, and PPC. Most of my catalogue sits 8–16% net once I actually do the maths. A few "heroes" sit 20%+, a few "villains" sit negative once returns + aged stock land on them.

Drop your numbers if you've got them — even rough bands. Especially interested in:

• Typical range across your catalogue
• Whether you rule SKUs in/out on net margin or on gut
• Per-SKU tracking or portfolio-level only

What do people specifiacally aim for?

5 months in. Countless tests run.

And some days I still stare at zero sales wondering what I’m missing.

I sell pet leashes on Amazon Canada. On paper it makes sense. The reviews I have are 5 stars. The product works. People who buy it love it.

But converting cold buyers is a different story.
I’ve tested prices. I’ve tested keywords. I’ve rebuilt my ad campaigns from scratch three times. I’ve changed my photos twice. I’ve studied competitor listings, pulled brand analytics reports, tracked cart abandonment rates, calculated ACoS and ROAS and breakeven thresholds.

Some weeks it clicks. Two consecutive profitable weeks last month felt like a real breakthrough. Then a slow stretch hits and you question everything again.

4 reviews. 91% cart abandonment rate (average 45 people abandon) A category where the top sellers have hundreds of reviews and have been at it for years.

To anyone who’s been through this on Amazon — especially in Canada where the market is smaller and the competition still comes from the same global sellers — I’d love to hear your experience.

What moved the needle for you when you were stuck in the early stages?

Any advice from sellers who’ve been here is genuinely appreciated. 🙏

Hi,
I’m getting a cheaper option for importing 500 units from China if I use AGL + AWD. These 500 units consist of two SKU variants (250 units of each).

Is using AWD a good idea with Q4 coming up?

Is my shipment too small for AWD?

Vocês que começaram a importar produtos. Vocês acham uma boa comprar cursos que falam sobre isso? E quais cursos me indicam?

Gostaria de saber a opinião de pessoas mais experientes em vender na Amazon. Para você, quais são os sinais que um produto costuma dar para desistirmos dele? Sinais que mostram que ele não será mais vantajoso e que poderá nos dar prejuízo e não lucro.

Hello everyone,

I'm having a big problem accessing my seller account. Whenever I try to log in, I'm asked to enter a verification code sent via SMS to my old phone number, which I no longer have access to.

I've also tried resetting my password and using the two-factor authentication recovery process, but every option still requires a code sent to my old phone number.

I contacted customer support by email, but they just told me to disable two-factor authentication. The problem is that I can't do that because I can't log in to my account in the first place.

Has anyone experienced this issue before or knows how to recover the account? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Did a focused 3pl logistics Secaucus search because we needed northeast US coverage and the Secaucus/Wallington corridor in northern New Jersey kept showing up as the right cluster for that geography. Posting what I found in case anyone else is running the same evaluation.

Quick context on why Secaucus specifically. The area sits about 10 miles from Manhattan, has strong carrier hub density for UPS, FedEx, and USPS, and ground transit times to NY, NJ, CT, MA, and PA customers run one to two business days without paying for expedited service. The port of NY/NJ is right there too, which makes the area relevant for brands importing through the east coast rather than the west.

ShipBob has NJ presence with a similar feature set on paper and broader US location count. The 3PL logistics Secaucus piece for them runs through a mix of structures depending on the specific facility, so the ownership question is worth pressing on during sales calls before signing.

ShipMonk has east coast presence and is particularly strong for subscription and crowdfunding fulfillment with built in kitting workflows. Published pricing makes comparison easier than some of the quote based options in this space.

Red Stag Fulfillment shows up in the conversation if your SKUs are heavy or fragile. They specialize in items where standard parcel handling causes damage rates that the standard providers can't accept. Not a fit for typical DTC parcel but worth knowing about for the right product profile.

Shiphype is the 3PL we went with for the Wallington area. They are operating a company owned warehouse in Wallington that handles DTC fulfillment for the northeast US corridor, and the integration with ShipHero as the WMS was already solid out of the gate which mattered for us coming off a manual handoff setup.

The patterns that showed up across the evaluation. Secaucus location alone doesn't differentiate because most northern NJ 3PLs hit similar zone rates to northeast customers. The differences live in WMS quality, integration reliability, account management structure, and whether the facility is company owned or partner operated. Filter on those before getting into per order pricing because the headline rate is similar across the serious providers.

Hi everyone,
Its Eren B.

Over the past several months we’ve been building an educational Amazon FBA simulator and we’re planning to launch it on Kickstarter soon.

The idea is simple: instead of risking real money while learning Amazon Wholesale/FBA, users can practice in a realistic environment.

Current features include:

Importing wholesale price lists
Live Amazon marketplace data
Virtual inventory purchases
Simulated FBA workflow
Profit/loss tracking
Buy Box changes
Price fluctuations
Storage fees and other Amazon costs
Performance reports based on real marketplace conditions

Our goal isn’t to replace Seller Central it’s to give new and experienced sellers a safe environment to test sourcing decisions before investing real money.

Before we launch, we’d genuinely love some feedback from the community.

Would you actually use something like this?

What’s missing?

What would make it realistic enough to be worth paying for?

If you were learning Amazon today, would this have saved you money?

We’re still polishing the product, so honest feedback is exactly what we’re looking for.
Thanks!

anyone have results on ads acos/tacos roas vs running promos? have you been able to beat your advertising cost of sales running any separate promos?

With Shop Direct now using real-time product feeds, Amazon sellers aren't just up against one another anymore. They're now competing with retailers from across the whole internet, all in the same search results. 

Amazon has made it easier for outside merchants to join its Shop Direct program and show up in Amazon search results. Now, external retailers can sync their product catalogs, prices, and inventory in real time, so their listings appear right next to those from Amazon sellers when customers search. 

Shop Direct now includes more than 100 million products from more than 400,000 merchants. Some of these items can be bought using Amazon's "Buy for Me" feature, where Amazon's AI completes the purchase using saved payment and shipping details. Customers can also pick "Shop Direct" to go straight to the merchant's website and finish the purchase there. 

I've spent years helping brands get noticed on Amazon. Now, the boundaries of Amazon are opening up, but most sellers haven't updated their strategies to keep up with these changes. 

Marketplace isolation is no longer a strategy 

Many sellers still think their main competition is just the other few listings on the same search page. That's not true anymore. Amazon now shows prices and products from retailers that were never part of its marketplace, and these listings appear right alongside the usual search results. 

This shift has been happening for some time. Shop Direct started to help customers find products Amazon didn't sell, and the new feed integration makes it much easier for merchants to join in without special setups. In practice, this means brands now face a much bigger and less predictable group of competitors. 

Even if a brand does well against other Amazon sellers, it can still lose out to an outside retailer with better prices or more detailed listings. Before, shoppers had to click to compare. Now, everything shows up instantly on the same screen. This changes what it takes to win in search results, so brands need to compare themselves to more than just other Amazon sellers. 

The new pressure points and how to handle them 

Three areas need fresh attention as Shop Direct scales: 

Brands should update their prices in real time, not just occasionally. With AI-powered search showing options from outside the marketplace, outdated prices or inconsistent deals are easier for both customers and Amazon to notice and skip. Brands should check competitors’ prices daily and be ready to adjust quickly without losing profit. The goal isn’t always to have the lowest price; it’s to make sure your price fits your real position when shoppers see it. 

Product data needs to work for both machines and people. Titles, attributes, images, and specifications all feed the AI systems behind Amazon search and Alexa for Shopping, which replaced Rufus, Amazon’s shopping assistant. Many feed-based competitors are syncing rich, real-time catalog data, raising the bar for competitive listings. My advice: Audit your catalog data as carefully as you would audit a website for technical SEO. Incomplete attributes, short descriptions, or inconsistent specs are now a visibility problem, not just a content issue. 

Differentiation needs to be part of the listing itself, not just assumed. A brand’s positioning, reviews, and content used to be compared to a familiar group of Amazon competitors. Now, that same content is judged against the entire retail web. This means your brand story, A+ Content, and strong reviews matter even more to help your listing stand out from similar external options. If your listing relies on shoppers already knowing why your brand is trustworthy, that no longer works. The difference must be clear on the page. 

The fundamentals haven’t changed. Ranking, conversion, and margin protection are still the main goals. What’s different now is the size of the competition and how quickly shoppers make decisions. 

What this means for brands now 

The growth of Shop Direct aligns with Amazon’s broader shift toward AI discovery, including tools like Alexa and Help Me Decide that are designed to help customers move from searching to buying more quickly. As these systems get better and better, the products that show up first will be the ones with the cleanest, most complete data, no matter where they’re sold. 

Brands that treat this as an opportunity to improve rather than a threat will be the most successful. So invest in pricing tools, keep your catalog data strong, and build a content strategy that helps you stand out without depending on a closed marketplace. 

Amazon marketing used to have its own world and its own rules. Now, Shop Direct’s growth shows those rules are shaped by the wider retail internet. Brands that adapt quickly will benefit most from the extra exposure, while others risk falling behind. 

Has anyone ever dealt with this? I can't find any information on it.
I sell shirts on amazon through printify and my account was suspended

My brand is very small compared to most of the listings on EF and they charge a $10K commission for all listings below $70K.

Are there any other good alternatives with serious buyers? I have heard mixed reviews on Flippa. I have also heard that there are some quality FB groups but not sure where to start.

Some info on my brand: 7 year old Jewelry Brand with 8 listings and an average of 4.6 star reviews. Top listing has 170+ reviews. $1300/mo profit.

I'm about to put €8K of my savings into a niche where the single biggest product complaint has gone unfixed for nine years. Roast my numbers.

The niche (AMZ France, data pulled last week)

• 36 active brands, 64 listings, ~11,600 units/month, ~€274K/month
• Leader holds 39% of units. Nine years of activity, 14k reviews, priced at the top
• Median review count in the top 10 is 322 and half of those listings launched in the last 2 years
• Searches up 30% year over year but sales are flat across the year, only searches spike during summer
• Non electronic, no consumables, no repeat purchase.

The opening

Sizing and fit drives 56% of all category returns, rising from 54.6% to 61.2% in six months. The market leaders have not fixed this. It barely dents their star ratings, because people return the product instead of leaving 1 star.

My product would fix exactly that, and I would price 20% above category average.

Unit economics (per unit, ex VAT revenue €23.42)

• Landed cost estimate : €4.70
• Marketplace commission : €4.22
• Fulfilment + storage : €3.46
• Returns + refunds : €2.58
• Ads at steady state : €3.04
• Net margin: €5.44, or 23%

Breakeven is 51 units/month. 19 of 36 brands clear that.

What worries me

1. Nobody sells where I want to sell. 40% of units and 54% of revenue happen above €25, but 96% of that belongs to the incumbent. Zero brands younger than 40 months have any meaningful volume in my exact price band. Measured price elasticity is -1.45 to -1.98.
2. My landed cost is a guess. No quote yet. €1 of error moves 18% of my net margin.
3. The ceiling is low. Becoming the #4 player (took them 37 months) pays about €5.9K/month. Becoming the outright leader pays about €24K/month. That's the best case, ever.
4. Maybe the gap isn't a gap. Dozens of sellers have iterated here for a decade and all drifted to the easier sub-segment. I've proven the problem exists. I have not proven a sellable solution does.

Constraints: €8K, 500 unit MOQ, 13 week lead time, and I have 2 to 3 months full time before I go back to a salaried job.

Green flag or red flag?