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Sellers Summit 2024 was our best year yet, and this Sellers Summit 2024 recap pulls the single most useful tip out of every speaker’s session so you can apply the strategies without waiting for the recordings. My co-host and Sellers Summit co-founder Toni Herrbach and I sat down right after the event to walk through every talk we saw, from Mina Elias on Amazon PPC to Tiffany Ivanovsky on TikTok Shop to Spencer Haws on publishing 987 blog posts in a year.
Sellers Summit is the ecommerce conference Toni and I have run together for 8 years. This year we sold out with 50% first-time attendees, added a photographer, moved the closing party back to the hotel rooftop, and every one of the 15+ sessions was a hit. Below is the takeaway from each talk, organized so you can jump to the tactic you need.
This is a working recap of every Sellers Summit 2024 session, the one tactic we’d steal from each speaker, and how to apply it to your own store.
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Table of Contents
Key takeaways
- The biggest theme of Sellers Summit 2024 was content and brand-building, driven by Amazon fees rising and margins shrinking.
- Toni’s email marketing session pushed flows first, then segmentation, personalization, and product education instead of pure promo blasts.
- Tiffany Ivanovsky’s TikTok Shop store was on pace to hit $1 million in the month of May 2024 selling primarily denim.
- Spencer Haws published 987 blog posts in one year and walked through the exact hiring and QA process he used.
- Trivium (Mina Elias’ agency) ran free pre-summit Amazon audits and printed the results as bound booklets, generating standing-room-only booth traffic.
- Kristin Levine’s DIY PR session was standing-room-only, and Elaine from Quiet Light warned attendees they need 2-3 years of clean books before an exit.
What made Sellers Summit 2024 different from prior years
Sellers Summit 2024 stood out because for the first time every single talk landed, the criteria for speakers is dialed in after 8 years, and 50% of the 200+ attendees were first-timers who still felt welcomed by the community. Toni and I both felt this was the strongest speaker lineup we have ever put on.
Two operational changes moved the needle. We hired a professional photographer (Francesca) who captured every session and every attendee, and we brought the closing party back to the rooftop of the host hotel for the first time since 2019. Attendees told us the closing venue alone made the week.
The feedback we kept hearing from repeat conference-goers was that Sellers Summit is one of the only ecommerce events where sponsors, speakers, and attendees genuinely mingle instead of splitting off at 5pm. Several attendees told us they go to 10 to 20 events a year, and the openness at this one is unusual.
Toni Herrbach on email marketing flows and segmentation
Toni’s session made the case that ecommerce email marketing lives or dies on flows, and the entire Klaviyo team sat in the front row while she said it. Set the flows up once, monitor them, and they run in the background, delivering better return per hour than any broadcast.
After flows, she covered three practical layers: segmentation (send the right email to the right person, not blast-to-all), personalization (use the customer data Klaviyo already has), and product education (most brands do a terrible job explaining why their product is better made, US-manufactured, patented, or built to last). Product-education emails let you send to your list without another sale banner.
On segmentation, most of the extra work happens inside the flow, not in writing 4x more broadcasts. Buyers of Product X automatically drop into Email A; non-buyers get Email B, using Klaviyo’s dynamic tags. You write the branches once and they run forever.
Mina Elias on Amazon PPC and the pre-summit audit trick
Mina’s Trivium session on the three pillars of Amazon success was our favorite Amazon talk this year, and it stood out because it was actionable instead of spreadsheet-heavy like last year’s. Attendees left with a specific plan for improving their PPC and rankings.
The genius play from Trivium was outside the session. Before the event, they audited attendee brands from the app, printed the audits as bound booklets, and spread them across their sponsor table so people would walk by and spot their own brand name. Then a Trivium team member walked each attendee through the findings live.
That single tactic drove more booth traffic than any giveaway in the room. Other sponsors were visibly taking notes. If you sponsor an ecommerce event next year, pre-audit the attendee list.
Kristin Levine on DIY PR for ecommerce brands
Kristin Levine’s DIY PR playbook was standing-room-only, which was the first PR session we have ever put on at Sellers Summit and clearly overdue. Kristin has been in PR for 25 to 30 years, and her session gave attendees a repeatable pitch process instead of a “hire an agency” answer.
The demand for this session confirmed something we have seen for years: PR pays. Our own store landed a Today Show segment that generated 7x normal daily orders in the first 12 seconds after the segment aired, and features in national magazines have become permanent social proof on our website.
If you sell physical products and have never pitched a journalist, this is the topic we would prioritize next.
Elaine from Quiet Light on selling your ecommerce business
Elaine’s Quiet Light session on getting top dollar for your business in 2 to 3 years drove home that most sellers start the sale process at least a year behind where they need to be. The bookkeeping, the return accounting, the SKU-level margin data, none of it is where a buyer will need it on the day you decide to list.
Mike Jackness gave a similar talk after selling Colorit years ago, and the specific gotcha he flagged was return accounting: how many returns you had, what the reason codes were, and how they hit margin. Buyers will diligence that line. Most sellers cannot answer it.
Even if you are 3 to 4 years from an exit, this session teaches you how to get your books in order now so you do not delay the sale by another year when the time comes.
Chris Schaffer on how big brands use organic content
Chris Schaffer’s talk broke down exactly how big brands use organic content to build a moat, and it is the session where the room takes the most notes every single year. Chris has done nearly every discipline in ecommerce and content over his career, so his frameworks come from actual execution, not theory.
He gave attendees a practical playbook they could take home and start using the next day. If you want a repeatable organic-content engine that does not depend on Google ads, this is the talk to watch on the recording.
Angela on growing an ecommerce business with organic Instagram
Angela ran a seven-figure ecommerce business on almost pure organic Instagram, and her Sellers Summit talk laid out exactly how she does it. She hardly spends anything on paid ads, which for most brands is the reverse of the current playbook.
The room loved her. She had the stage presence and the specifics, and she retired her husband off the business. Attendees walked out with a concrete organic Instagram playbook, not a “post consistently” platitude.
Brett Curry on Google performance max and paid ads that work
Brett Curry’s paid ads talk was refreshing because he showed which ads are working right now and which are not, using real client examples. One client sells vivid hair colors (orange, purple, pink), and Brett showed the exact video creatives that were converting, then broke down every element frame by frame.
Brett is honest about the state of paid ads and never sugarcoats what has stopped working. Even attendees who plan to outsource ads walked out understanding what to demand from an agency. Google is fighting for its life right now, and Brett laid out how to still win inside it.
Annette on Profit First for ecommerce sellers
Annette’s “You Made a Product, Now Make a Profit” session applied Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First method to ecommerce, and attendees literally hugged her after the session. She is a certified Profit First consultant, and the method guarantees you actually pay yourself instead of reinvesting every dollar back into inventory.
The number of ecommerce sellers we meet who never pay themselves is shocking. Profit First is the fix. If you are running a store where every dollar of margin gets sucked back into stock or ads, this session (or Mike’s book) will change how you allocate cash.
Ritu on using AI to automate small business tasks
Ritu’s AI session was the most immediately actionable talk of Sellers Summit 2024. She works with Bernie (an electronics seller and longtime friend of the podcast) and shared the exact ChatGPT-driven micro-automations she uses to shave hours out of the week.
One example: ask ChatGPT to write a Google Apps Script you can paste into Gmail that pulls every email of a specific type into one view. No more scrolling for that one message from three weeks ago. Small tips like this compound.
Attendees came out of this session calling it a game-changer for their business. If you are still doing manual Gmail searches, Gmail exports, or line-by-line data cleaning, you are the target audience.
Bernie on competing with Chinese sellers when you share their factories
Bernie’s talk on how to fight back against Chinese sellers who source from the same factories was tactical and battle-tested. Electronics is one of the most competitive categories on Amazon, and Bernie has survived by out-branding and out-quality-controlling the copycats.
The best moment of his session was accidental. Mid-talk, the AV-provided cable to his laptop failed, and he pulled his own branded cable out of his bag and swapped it in.
The Chinese cable had failed live on stage; his branded one worked. You cannot script a better commercial than that.
Spencer Haws on publishing 987 blog posts in a year
Spencer Haws walked through the exact SOP he used to publish 987 blog posts in one year, including hiring writers, training them, and QA-ing for AI-generated content. He showed screenshots of the traffic and ad revenue that resulted, so nothing was hypothetical.
His hiring and QA process is the reusable asset from the session. Attendees left with a step-by-step content SOP they could apply to blog posts, YouTube scripts, short-form video, or Amazon influencer videos. Spencer uses the same process for every content medium.
If you have been holding off scaling content because “you can’t write it all yourself,” Spencer’s talk is the counterexample.
Tiffany Ivanovsky on TikTok Shop and pacing to $1M in a month
Tiffany Ivanovsky’s TikTok Shop store sells apparel (primarily denim) and was on pace to do $1 million in TikTok Shop sales in the month of May 2024 alone, excluding Shopify, retail, and live selling. Her session was standing-room-only despite pre-event skepticism that TikTok Shop was fading.
Her strategy hinges on affiliates and short-form video volume. She brought her team, and each team member ran roundtables on their specialty: one on affiliates, one on ads. Attendees could go deep with whichever discipline they cared about.
She shared her monthly revenue by month, including down months (out of inventory, banned for a comment), and showed videos that worked next to videos that flopped. Deep inventory is non-negotiable on TikTok Shop, because one viral video empties your warehouse in hours.
Eugenia Chen on organic TikTok and hitting millions of followers
Eugenia Chen (roughly 6 million TikTok followers) covered the organic TikTok principles that let a brand grow without paid ads, and her session paired perfectly with Tiffany’s. She is a mathematician by background and reduced TikTok success to a repeatable formula.
Watch Eugenia’s session first to learn the platform principles, then watch Tiffany’s to apply them to a TikTok Shop store. Bonus: Eugenia brought her dog Huxley, who co-presented for the first few minutes.
Jake Thomas on YouTube titles and thumbnail hacks
Jake Thomas’ YouTube titles and thumbnail session gave attendees a repeatable framework for writing hooks that get the click. He showed titles that worked next to titles that flopped and broke down why, guessing when the cause was ambiguous. Titles and thumbnails are roughly 85% of YouTube growth.
Jake’s newsletter is one of the few I read weekly. If you make YouTube videos and are frustrated with view counts, the tunnel of title + thumbnail is where your gains are hiding. Once I started applying his approach to my own channel, growth followed.
Andrea on how to run a million-dollar product launch
Andrea’s million-dollar launch session made the point that a million-dollar launch is not built on launch day. It is built in the 9 months of prep before it, and she walked through every tool, milestone, and asset her team lines up.
The takeaway is timeline, not tactics. If you want a big launch, count backward from launch day and start building the runway now, not the week before.
Brandon Young on Amazon product research using AI
Brandon Young’s Amazon session showed how he uses AI to generate and test product images, keywords, and listing angles. His wife is reportedly an 8-figure Amazon seller, so his tools (Data Dive and others) are built on actual seller data instead of hypotheticals.
What sets Brandon apart is he makes everything feel doable. Nothing in his session lands as “great for you, impossible for me.” If you sell on Amazon and want to steal his workflow for testing images at scale, watch the recording.
Toni on Facebook ads (a talk she rewrote the night before)
Toni gave the closing talk on Facebook ads, and rewrote the whole thing the night before because one of her mastermind members had a product that was perfect for Facebook ads but had never tried the channel. She built the new deck around that member’s product and even created sample ad creatives during the rewrite.
Attendees noticed the effort and told her so afterwards. The bigger point: if you are running a mastermind or a course, the best content is often the specific case study a member hands you.
Sponsors that made Sellers Summit 2024 great
The sponsors who show up prepared and ready to work with attendees are the ones who close business at the event. Klaviyo fed everyone tacos with a mariachi band on Wednesday night.
Steve Weigler gave 30-minute legal sessions all week. Liz from Fluencer Fruit filmed 32 UGC product videos on-site. Carbon6 hosted registration with cookies and a raffle.
Highbeam pitched 4.5% checking accounts for ecommerce sellers, which is worth moving your working capital over for. Channelable, Helium 10, Jungle Scout, Pam from RPC, Katita, and LinkWerks all ran booths where sellers actually sat down with a laptop and got help. That is the model.
The Katita Amazon trivia stat that shocked the room
Katita runs an Amazon-facts trivia contest every year, and one stat drew the biggest gasp of 2024: reportedly around 30% of Amazon sellers claim to source from the US or “Made in USA.” Most of the room guessed 2 to 5%. That single stat says a lot about how buyers are marketing on Amazon right now.
How to watch the Sellers Summit 2024 recordings
All Sellers Summit 2024 session recordings will be available a few weeks after the event at SellersSummit.com. If you missed the live event and want to catch the specific sessions covered above, that is where they live. Tickets for Sellers Summit 2025 will be announced once the venue and date are confirmed.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Sellers Summit?
Sellers Summit is an ecommerce conference co-founded by Steve Chou (My Wife Quit Her Job) and Toni Herrbach, running annually since 2016. It focuses on actionable ecommerce strategy across Amazon, DTC, content, and paid ads, and caps attendance to keep the community close.
How many people attend Sellers Summit?
Sellers Summit is intentionally kept small, with roughly 200 attendees and a 50/50 mix of returning and first-time attendees in 2024. The size is the point: sponsors, speakers, and attendees actually mingle instead of splitting off after sessions.
Who were the Sellers Summit 2024 speakers?
The Sellers Summit 2024 lineup included Toni Herrbach on email and Facebook ads, Mina Elias on Amazon PPC, Kristin Levine on PR, Elaine from Quiet Light on exits, Chris Schaffer on organic content, Angela on organic Instagram, Brett Curry on Google Performance Max, Annette on Profit First, Ritu on AI automation, Bernie on competing with Chinese sellers, Spencer Haws on scaled content, Tiffany Ivanovsky on TikTok Shop, Eugenia Chen on organic TikTok, Jake Thomas on YouTube titles, Andrea on product launches, and Brandon Young on Amazon research.
What was the biggest theme at Sellers Summit 2024?
The biggest theme was content and brand-building. Roughly half the sessions focused on organic content across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and blogs, driven by Amazon fees rising and margins shrinking. Sellers can no longer rely on Amazon to build their brand for them.
How is TikTok Shop performing for apparel sellers?
Tiffany Ivanovsky’s Sellers Summit 2024 session showed her TikTok Shop denim brand on pace to do $1 million in TikTok Shop sales in the month of May 2024. That figure excludes her Shopify, retail, and live-selling revenue, so it is a floor, not a ceiling.
When will Sellers Summit 2025 tickets go on sale?
Sellers Summit 2025 tickets have not been announced. They will go on sale once the venue and date are confirmed, and the podcast will announce the on-sale date.
Where can I watch the Sellers Summit 2024 recordings?
Sellers Summit 2024 session recordings will be available at SellersSummit.com a few weeks after the event. Attendees receive access as part of the ticket.
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