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Every big tech platform that ecommerce sellers depend on eventually gets worse for the people who built it. Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, and Shopify all follow the same three-stage playbook: attract users with a great free service, lock them in, then squeeze both sides for every dollar of profit they can extract. In this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, I explain why this pattern is so predictable and what you have to do to stop it from killing your business.

I have been selling on Amazon for over a decade, and I have personally watched the FBA program go from a no-brainer to a fee-riddled trap. The same thing happened to Facebook pages, then Facebook groups, then Facebook Messenger marketing. Each time I built on rented land, the landlord raised the rent or bulldozed the building.

Below I break down the exact stages every platform moves through, the specific 2024 Amazon fees that pushed sellers over the edge, and the “owned marketing” strategy I now use to keep my businesses insulated from the next platform meltdown.

Key takeaways

• Every big tech platform follows a three-stage pattern: win users, lock them in, then squeeze profit until quality collapses.
• Amazon FBA fees now regularly consume 45 to 60 percent of revenue between the 15 percent referral fee, 10 to 15 percent FBA fee, and 20 to 30 percent for ads.
• Amazon’s Q4 2023 third-party seller revenue hit 43.4 billion dollars, up 20 percent year over year, while retail revenue rose only 9 percent. Most of the growth came from squeezing sellers, not selling more products.
• Facebook has burned sellers three times: pages, groups, and Messenger all lost reach the moment they became valuable.
• The defense is owned marketing: email, SMS, and your own website. You control the customer list, so no platform can turn off the tap.
• Ride new waves early (TikTok Shop, TikTok organic) and expect them to enshittify on schedule too.

What is the enshittification of big tech platforms?

Enshittification is the predictable decay of a two-sided platform as it matures, moving from great for users, to great for business customers, to great only for shareholders. Cory Doctorow coined the term in 2022 to describe how Amazon, Facebook, Google, and TikTok all rot in the same way. The technical version is simple: platforms subsidize one side of the marketplace to grow, then squeeze both sides once they are locked in.

For ecommerce sellers, the pattern always plays out in three stages. First, the platform is generous with reach, low fees, and great support.

Then, once buyers and sellers cannot leave, the platform slowly turns every free feature into a paid one. Finally, the platform maximizes short-term profit until quality collapses and the whole thing stops working.

The three stages of platform enshittification

Every major ecommerce platform I have used moves through the same three stages, in the same order, on roughly the same timeline. Understanding the stages is what lets you predict where a platform is right now and how much runway you have left.

Stage 1: The platform bends over backwards for users

New platforms have no leverage, so they compete on service quality. Amazon FBA in 2010 charged tiny fees, accepted any quantity of inventory with no penalties, and threw in free Prime shipping for your customers.

Amazon warehouses had space, and Amazon actively begged sellers to try the program. It was a private ATM machine for anyone willing to import from Alibaba.

Facebook pages worked the same way. Post something in 2010 and 100 percent of your fans saw it. Building a fan page was the highest-ROI marketing activity on the internet for about three years.

Stage 2: The platform locks in both sides of the marketplace

Once buyers cannot easily leave (huge selection, low prices, generous returns) and sellers cannot leave (that is where the customers are), the platform quietly starts changing the rules. Amazon hit this stage around 2016 when they launched the Dragon Boat program and started aggressively recruiting Chinese sellers directly into US fulfillment centers.

Within three years, Chinese sellers flooded Amazon with dirt-cheap products, blatantly copied US sellers’ listings, gamed reviews, and manipulated rankings with impunity. Amazon did essentially nothing for years because from Amazon’s point of view, one seller being replaced by another is a wash. Amazon takes its cut either way.

Stage 3: The platform maximizes profit and quality collapses

Once a platform is public, the founder rarely controls the roadmap anymore. Shareholders want quarterly earnings growth, and the fastest way to hit those numbers is to raise fees on the side of the marketplace that cannot leave. That is when the fee squeeze accelerates and the service quality drops.

Amazon is deep into this stage now. Ads eat the first two pages of most search results, FBA fees keep climbing, and Prime deliveries regularly miss the promised window. The platform still makes money, but the ecosystem is being drained.

How Amazon FBA fees add up to 45 to 60 percent of revenue in 2024

Amazon FBA fees now consume roughly 45 to 60 percent of a seller’s revenue once you add up the referral fee, fulfillment fee, ad spend, and the newer surcharges. Here is the current stack most sellers are dealing with.

The inbound placement fee is new for 2024. Amazon now charges 21 cents to 6 dollars per unit just to accept standard and bulky products into the warehouse, which is supposed to reflect the cost of distributing your inventory across their network.

The low-inventory surcharge is the fee that made sellers furious. If you typically sell 1,000 units per month and your stock at Amazon drops to 500 units, Amazon charges you a per-unit fee on the missing 500. You get penalized for holding too much inventory (long-term storage fees) and now you also get penalized for holding too little.

Why Amazon buyers are getting worse products and slower shipping

Amazon’s buyer experience has also decayed measurably in the last few years. This past Christmas, I received fewer than 25 percent of my Prime orders inside the promised delivery window. Prime now costs 139 dollars a year, up from 79 dollars a decade ago.

Amazon also quietly changed some default behaviors that cost you shipping speed. Many product pages now default to a slower delivery option, and some items have minimum-order requirements to unlock free Prime delivery even if you are a paid Prime member. I have accidentally chosen slower shipping this way multiple times.

Product quality has slid too. Roughly 50 percent of top sellers on Amazon are now based in China, and a chunk of them violate trademark and copyright law with no meaningful consequence. One popular repair YouTuber recently tested several sets of 5-amp fuses bought on Amazon and found that none of them actually blew at 5 amps.

How Amazon’s own numbers prove sellers are subsidizing the growth

The clearest evidence that Amazon is in the squeeze stage comes from its own 2023 Q4 earnings. Third-party seller services revenue reached 43.4 billion dollars in the quarter, up 20 percent year over year. Amazon’s online store revenue was only up 9 percent over the same period.

Third-party sellers are growing revenue for Amazon at more than twice the rate of Amazon’s own retail sales. That gap is not because sellers are magically selling more units. It is because Amazon keeps taking a bigger cut of each transaction.

Customer service for sellers has moved in the opposite direction. Ten years ago you could get a real human on the phone at Seller Central. Today the responses are canned templates, and it can take weeks to resolve a suspended listing or an unfair review.

Facebook’s three-strike record: pages, groups, and Messenger

Facebook has run the enshittification playbook on ecommerce sellers three separate times, on three separate features. Each time the pattern was identical: build free reach, get sellers to invest years of effort, then throttle reach and demand payment for what used to be free.

Round one was Facebook pages. I built a large fan page when pages were driving huge referral traffic. Facebook then throttled organic page reach to a few percent of followers and forced page owners to pay to boost posts.

Round two was Facebook groups. Groups filled the void when pages died, and I built a private group of 20,000 users. Facebook then throttled group reach to make room for more ad inventory in the feed.

Round three was Facebook Messenger marketing. Free direct messages to opted-in subscribers were an incredible marketing channel, so I built a large Messenger list. Facebook then shut off the free messaging and started charging per message.

Which platforms are in which stage right now (2024)

Below is my read on where the main ecommerce platforms sit on the enshittification curve as of 2024. Wave riders should look at where a platform is on this list and plan accordingly.

How to protect your ecommerce business from the next platform meltdown

You protect your business from platform enshittification by building on assets you control, and by treating every third-party platform as a distribution channel you will eventually have to replace. That combination is what I call owned marketing, and it is the single biggest strategic shift I have made in the last decade.

Owned marketing is any channel where you personally control the customer list and the delivery mechanism. Email is the clearest example. Once you have a customer’s email address, you can email them as much as you want, and no platform can shut off the connection.

The owned marketing stack that actually survives

Owned marketing assets should be the foundation, and platforms should be the funnel that fills them. My current stack looks like this.

• Your own website (Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce). You own the customer relationship, product data, and checkout flow.
• Email list. Highest-ROI channel, no platform sits between you and the send.
• SMS list. 95 percent-plus open rates, direct to the customer’s phone.
• A blog or content library you host. Feeds SEO and AI search citations independently of any social platform.
• A podcast or YouTube channel. Rented land, but the content library is portable across platforms.

Every platform channel (Amazon, TikTok, Meta ads, Google ads) should exist to funnel customers into one of the owned assets above. If a channel disappears tomorrow, the business survives because the customer list survives.

Ride new waves early, then get off before the crash

Owned marketing is defense. Riding new waves is offense. The best time to be on a platform is stage 1, when the platform is subsidizing your growth because it needs sellers to attract buyers.

TikTok Shop and TikTok organic are in that window right now. Fees are low, discovery is subsidized, and creators still get real free reach. That will not last, so you should be there today, capturing customers into your email and SMS lists while the platform is still generous.

The rule is simple: expect every platform to go to crap eventually, and it will keep you honest about diversifying before the squeeze starts.

Frequently asked questions

What is enshittification?

Enshittification is the predictable decline of a two-sided platform as it moves from serving users, to serving business customers, to serving only shareholders. The term was coined by writer Cory Doctorow in 2022 to describe how Amazon, Facebook, Google, and TikTok all decay in the same way once they lock in both sides of their marketplace.

How much does it cost to sell on Amazon FBA in 2024?

Total Amazon FBA costs typically consume 45 to 60 percent of a seller’s revenue. The stack includes a 15 percent referral fee, a 10 to 15 percent FBA fulfillment fee, 20 to 30 percent for advertising, plus newer surcharges like the inbound placement fee (21 cents to 6 dollars per unit) and the low-inventory surcharge.

What is the Amazon low-inventory surcharge?

The Amazon low-inventory surcharge is a per-unit fee Amazon charges when you carry less inventory in FBA than your recent sales velocity suggests you should. If you typically sell 1,000 units per month and your stock drops to 500, Amazon charges a fee on the 500-unit shortfall, on top of the standard FBA fees.

Is Amazon FBA still worth it?

Amazon FBA is still worth it for many sellers, but the margin is much thinner than it was five years ago, and it is no longer safe to rely on it as your only channel. Most successful Amazon sellers today treat FBA as one channel of several, use it to fund and grow an owned direct-to-consumer store, and capture email and SMS lists at every opportunity.

What is owned marketing and why does it matter?

Owned marketing is any marketing channel or asset that you personally control, with no third-party platform in between you and the customer. Email lists, SMS lists, and your own website are the core examples. It matters because owned channels survive platform algorithm changes, fee hikes, and account bans, which are the failure modes that kill platform-dependent businesses.

Which ecommerce platforms are safest to build on right now?

The safest ecommerce foundation is your own store (Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce) plus an email list, because you control the customer relationship end to end. Among third-party platforms, TikTok Shop and TikTok organic are currently in the subsidized early stage, which makes them the best places to acquire new customers cheaply before fees rise.

How do I know when a platform is about to enshittify?

The clearest warning signs are rising fees on sellers, more of the SERP or feed being replaced by ads, worse customer support, and heavy recruitment of low-cost sellers who race to the bottom on price. When those signals stack up together and the platform is publicly traded and past the founder-led era, the squeeze is already in motion.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 13:13 — 15.4MB)

Amazon just launched a new low-cost online store that ships unbranded goods directly from Chinese factories to US shoppers in 9 to 11 days, in a direct assault on Temu and Shein. For third-party Amazon FBA sellers, this is the worst piece of Amazon news in a decade. Chinese factories selling on the new store skip US import duties (thanks to the 800-dollar de minimis rule), skip the middleman, and undercut FBA prices by 5x to 40x on identical products.

In this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, I break down exactly what Amazon announced, why the new store is going to leak into the main Amazon search results whether Amazon admits it or not, and the four-step defense strategy I am using in my own store at Bumblebee Linens to stay competitive.

Below is the full breakdown of Amazon’s new direct-from-China store, why the pricing gap is impossible to close under current FBA fees, the Temu and Shein numbers driving Amazon’s reaction, and the ecommerce playbook that still works when generic products go to zero.

Key takeaways

• Amazon opened a new online store shipping unbranded goods directly from China in 9 to 11 days, initially targeting clothing and household items under 20 dollars and one pound.
• Chinese sellers on the new store avoid US import duties under the 800-dollar de minimis rule, skip the middleman, and skip most Amazon FBA fees.
• Temu had 82.4 million active US shoppers in September 2023, up from 4.6 million a year earlier, and was the most-downloaded ecommerce app of 2023 with 120 million-plus downloads.
• Identical products already sell for 5x to 40x more on Amazon than on Temu (a 40-dollar Amazon floor mat is 1.06 dollars on Temu).
• Amazon’s own new 2024 fees (inbound placement fee of 21 cents to 6 dollars per unit, low-inventory surcharge) make the FBA pricing gap even wider.
• The four defenses that still work: sell premium and trust-heavy categories, offer personalization, own your website and email list, and build a real brand.

What Amazon just announced about its direct-from-China store

Amazon has opened a new online storefront that lets Chinese factories sell unbranded goods directly to US consumers, with shipping times of 9 to 11 days instead of the usual Prime 1 to 2 days. The rollout is phased. The first phase targets unbranded clothing and household items priced under 20 dollars and weighing under one pound.

Amazon is actively recruiting Chinese factories into the program right now, and the model is essentially identical to Temu: factory-direct, cheap, slow. The goal is to stop the massive market-share drain Amazon has been suffering to Temu and Shein over the last two years.

Why Amazon is copying the Temu and Shein model

Amazon is copying Temu and Shein because Americans have proved they will happily wait 9 to 11 days to save 5x to 40x on generic products. Amazon’s own apparel revenue is down roughly 30 percent year over year, and tens of millions of shoppers have shifted spend to the two Chinese platforms.

How big Temu and Shein got, in numbers

The scale that forced Amazon’s hand is startling. Below are the September 2023 monthly active shopper counts for the major US ecommerce platforms, per GWS Magnify.

Temu was also the most-downloaded ecommerce app in the world in 2023 with more than 120 million downloads, per Statista, surpassing Amazon. Two years after launching in the US, Temu already has more than half of Amazon’s monthly shopper base.

How much cheaper Temu is on identical products

The price gap on identical products is enormous. On a foam floor mat, Amazon lists 40 dollars while Temu lists 1.06 dollars, a 40x difference. On a neck fan, Amazon lists 23 dollars while Temu lists 6.95 dollars, roughly 3x cheaper.

The products are literally the same items shipped from the same Chinese factories. The only difference is that the Amazon listings sit behind US import duties, FBA fees, and a US-based middleman.

Why Amazon FBA sellers cannot match direct-from-China pricing

US-based Amazon FBA sellers cannot match direct-from-China prices because the FBA fee stack, plus US import duties, plus the middleman markup, is structurally 30 to 60 percent of the retail price before the seller earns a dollar. A Chinese factory selling direct on the new Amazon store skips almost all of that.

The Amazon FBA fee stack in 2024

Here is what a US FBA seller pays on a typical product, on top of the cost of goods and shipping to the US.

The inbound placement fee is new in 2024. Amazon now charges 21 cents to 6 dollars per unit just to accept standard and bulky items into a fulfillment center. The stated justification is to cover the cost of distributing your inventory across the network.

The low-inventory surcharge is the other new 2024 fee. In the past you only got penalized for holding too much inventory in FBA. Now you also get penalized for holding too little.

What Chinese sellers on the new store pay instead

A Chinese factory selling direct on the new Amazon store bypasses most of that stack. Packages under 800 dollars enter the US under the de minimis rule with no import duties or tariffs. There is no US middleman, no US warehouse, and no FBA fulfillment fee because Amazon ships directly from China.

The combined effect is a 30 to 60 percent structural pricing advantage. A US FBA seller cannot beat that gap on a generic product no matter how efficient the supply chain is.

Why the new store will bleed into regular Amazon search

Amazon has said the new low-cost store will live in its own section on the site. In practice, the cheaper direct-from-China listings will almost certainly show up alongside regular listings in normal Amazon search results, because Amazon has done exactly this before with its own private-label products.

Amazon makes money either way. Whether a shopper buys your FBA product or a 3x-cheaper direct-from-China alternative, Amazon takes its cut. The incentive to hide the cheap listings from mainstream search does not exist.

The likely search experience: a shopper types in your product, sees a Chinese direct-from-China listing at one-third the price sitting right next to your listing, and clicks the cheaper option. Brand loyalty on Amazon is close to zero for most categories, so the price gap wins.

How to fight back: the 4-step defense for ecommerce sellers in 2024

The four defenses that still work against direct-from-China competition are picking trust-heavy categories, offering personalization, owning your web presence and email list, and building a real brand on emotion instead of price. Below is how I am applying each of these in my own businesses.

Step 1: Move into categories a Chinese factory cannot easily replicate

The first move is to reposition your product portfolio into categories where trust, safety, or expertise matter more than price. A student in my course sells skincare, and skincare is a great example. Consumers are not going to buy a no-name skincare product from a Chinese factory at one-tenth the price because they have no idea what chemicals are in the formulation.

Other trust-heavy categories to consider include supplements, baby products, pet food, kitchen items that contact food, and anything with a safety certification. In each of these, buyers reliably pay a premium to reduce perceived risk.

Step 2: Add personalization Chinese sellers cannot match

The second move is to add customization that a bulk-shipping factory cannot deliver cost-effectively. At my store Bumblebee Linens, we have doubled down on personalization: custom embroidery, custom printing, custom monogramming on almost every product we sell.

Personalization is a real operational pain, and that is exactly why it is a moat. A Chinese seller shipping thousands of identical units per day cannot easily monogram a linen handkerchief for a wedding and get it to a US customer on a deadline.

Step 3: Own your website and email list

The third move is to stop building your business exclusively on Amazon and start building assets that you own. Your own website, your own email list, and your own SMS list are all channels where no platform can undercut you or change the rules overnight.

Amazon is a distribution channel, and it should be one channel among several. Every Amazon sale should be treated as an opportunity to capture a customer into an owned marketing channel that will still be there in five years.

Step 4: Build a real brand that sells on emotion, not price

The fourth move is to actually build a brand around your products, because a brand insulates you from price competition on commodity goods. The technical definition of a brand is just a name that identifies your goods, but a real brand triggers an emotion that makes price irrelevant.

Dr. Squatch is the textbook example. The company sells bar soap for 8 dollars while a comparable Chinese-made bar sells 50-for-79-cents on Temu, and Dr. Squatch is a nine-figure business because their commercials sell masculinity and sexual companionship rather than soap.

True Classic Tees is another one. A plain colored t-shirt from True Classic costs 30 dollars while 8 similar shirts on Temu are 13.49 dollars, and their commercials sell the promise of looking buff and hiding your gut. That emotional payoff is why they became a nine-figure company on a commodity product.

The through-line is simple. If you are competing on price on Amazon in 2024, you are competing directly with Chinese factories that ship for free under de minimis. If you are competing on brand, personalization, trust, or premium positioning, you have a business that can survive the shift.

What US Amazon FBA sellers should do in the next 90 days

The next 90 days matter, because the new Amazon direct-from-China store is going to accelerate the pricing pressure faster than most sellers expect. Below is the short-list of actions I would take right now if I were still primarily an Amazon FBA seller.

• Audit every SKU. Any generic, unbranded product under 20 dollars is at risk of being undercut. Plan an exit path or a premium upgrade.
• Move into premium, trust-heavy, or customizable product lines that direct-from-China sellers cannot easily replicate.
• Stand up an owned Shopify or WooCommerce site and start driving Amazon buyers to it with insert cards, warranty registration, and free content.
• Build an email and SMS list. These are the only marketing channels no platform can shut off.
• Start producing content (video, podcast, blog) that builds real brand recognition off Amazon.
• Diversify sales channels. Sell on Shopify, TikTok Shop, Faire, wholesale, and other platforms so no single platform can end your business.

Frequently asked questions

What is Amazon’s new direct-from-China store?

Amazon’s new direct-from-China store is a low-cost online storefront that lets Chinese factories sell unbranded products directly to US shoppers, with 9 to 11 day shipping. It is Amazon’s competitive response to Temu and Shein, and it initially focuses on clothing and household goods priced under 20 dollars and weighing under one pound.

What is the 800-dollar de minimis rule?

The de minimis rule is a US customs provision that allows packages valued at 800 dollars or less to enter the country without paying import duties or tariffs. It is the loophole that lets Temu, Shein, and Amazon’s new direct-from-China store deliver factory-direct products to US shoppers without the fees a US-based importer has to pay.

How much bigger is Temu than a year ago?

Temu grew from 4.6 million US monthly active shoppers in September 2022 to 82.4 million in September 2023, an 18x jump in one year (source: GWS Magnify). Temu was also the most-downloaded ecommerce app in the world in 2023 with more than 120 million downloads, per Statista, surpassing Amazon.

Can Amazon FBA sellers still compete in 2024?

Amazon FBA sellers can still compete in 2024, but not on generic sub-20-dollar products against direct-from-China listings. The winners will be sellers who move into premium categories, offer personalization, build a real brand, and diversify sales onto owned channels like their own website and email list.

Will the direct-from-China products show up in regular Amazon search?

Amazon has stated the new low-cost storefront will have its own section, but direct-from-China products almost certainly will appear alongside regular listings in normal Amazon search. Amazon has repeatedly promoted its own private-label products in mainstream search, and it collects fees on the cheaper Chinese listings either way.

What product categories are safest from direct-from-China competition?

Categories where trust, safety, expertise, personalization, or brand matter more than price are the safest. Skincare, supplements, baby and pet products, food-contact kitchen items, personalized gifts, custom apparel, and premium branded goods all resist commodity price pressure from direct-from-China sellers.

What is the best defense for a small ecommerce business right now?

The best defense is to build an owned direct-to-consumer store, capture every customer into an email and SMS list, and use marketplaces like Amazon as one distribution channel rather than the whole business. That way, when Amazon or any other platform changes the rules, your customer relationships and margins survive.

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 49:57 — 57.4MB)

The formula for running a record-breaking email sale campaign is to segment aggressively, send more than twice a day, use price-slash graphics instead of raw percent discounts, and rotate through 8 to 10 distinct email angles (points reminders, low-stock alerts, gated coupon batches, personal-style text emails, category-specific product highlights) so you never send the same message twice. In this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, my co-host and email consultant Tony Rowland walks through the exact 30-plus-email playbook she built for her largest client’s biggest sale of the year: an 11-day, 25%-off, site-wide sale that generates the majority of the store’s annual revenue.

Tony is an email consultant who runs Klaviyo email programs for ecommerce brands, and this client sells homeschool curriculum and Bible studies on Shopify. The mid-July sale window matches when homeschool parents actually plan the next school year, which is why timing matters more than most stores realize.

Below is the full breakdown: the segmentation strategy, the day-by-day email cadence, the specific tactics that changed conversion (price-slash graphics increased sales by 30 percent overnight), the loss-leader trick that turned a 1.50 dollar product into a 10,000-dollar email, and the exact discount stack Tony uses to re-activate purchasers, non-purchasers, and rewards-heavy customers.

Key takeaways

• Run a long sale (10-plus days) only when your margins can absorb the discount profitably. This store runs 25 percent off site-wide because paper products have high margins.
• Send 30-plus emails across 11 days, average 2 per person per day, using dozens of tight segments rather than one blast.
• The two most important segments are purchasers vs. non-purchasers, then a rewards-tier split (500+ points vs. under 500 vs. never bought).
• Slash the original price on the product page and show the sale price next to it. This single change increased sales by 30 percent and has held.
• Use automatic discounts, not coupon codes. Codes cost you conversions and complicate ads.
• Watch your Shopify dashboard on Day 1 for a surprise best-seller, then build a same-day loss-leader email around it (Tony’s 1.50-dollar Bible study drove ~10,000 dollars).
• Rotate between hard-sell graphic emails, plain-text “personal” emails, gated-coupon-batch emails, and pure social-proof emails so no group gets fatigued.

When is an 11-day email sale worth running?

An 11-day email sale is worth running when your product margins can absorb the discount and still leave a healthy profit, and when the seasonality of your niche gives you a real reason for the sale window. Tony’s client runs a 25 percent off site-wide sale for 11 days every July because homeschool parents plan curriculum for the upcoming school year in mid-July, and paper-product margins are high enough that 25 percent off is still profitable per unit.

The wrong reason to run a long sale is because everyone else is discounting. If your margins are 30 to 35 percent and you take 25 percent off, you may generate a lot of revenue and net 3 to 5 percent, which is not a business. Never run a discount you cannot sustain profitably for the length of the sale.

The July timing is deliberate. Tony’s client tried moving the sale to June once and revenue dropped roughly 20 percent, because homeschool families had just finished the school year and were not ready to think about buying curriculum yet.

The 3 core segments that structure the entire campaign

The three core segments that structure the entire 11-day campaign are purchasers vs. non-purchasers, rewards-tier splits inside purchasers, and behavior-based sub-segments (recent viewers, category-specific past buyers, non-openers). Below is how each layer works.

Segment 1: Purchasers vs. non-purchasers

The single most important cut is whether a subscriber has ever bought before. Purchasers already trust the brand, so the messaging is about spending, not convincing. Non-purchasers need heavy social proof and the strongest incentive, because they still need convincing that the product is worth buying at all.

Segment 2: Rewards tier (500+ points vs. under 500 vs. never bought)

Inside the purchaser group, Tony splits by rewards balance. Customers with over 500 rewards points get a “cash in your points” message because they are hoarders waiting for a sale (like a Costco cash-back user waiting to redeem).

Customers with under 500 points get a value-focused message. Non-purchasers get social-proof-heavy emails on best sellers only.

Segment 3: Category-specific and behavior-based sub-segments

The third layer is dozens of small behavioral segments: purchased Bible study but not curriculum, purchased cards but not a Bible study, viewed product X in the last 180 days without buying, opened emails but did not click.

Each segment gets a targeted product email highlighting the specific product they are most likely to buy, at 25 percent off.

The 11-day email cadence: what goes out each day

The 11-day cadence sends roughly two emails per person per day, drawn from a rotating set of about a dozen email templates. Below is the day-by-day plan.

Send-time spacing (12 hours apart)

Emails go out 12 hours apart when there are two on the same day, typically 6 AM and 6 PM in the customer’s timezone. Anyone who purchases in the previous 24 to 72 hours is excluded from the next general-blast email so recent buyers do not get pestered.

The 5 tactical email plays that drove the most revenue

Five specific plays inside the campaign drove disproportionate revenue: the price-slash graphic, the surprise loss-leader email, the gated-coupon batch, the triple-points event, and the text-only “personal” emails. Below is exactly how each works.

Play 1: Slash the price on the product page (30 percent sales lift)

The single highest-ROI change Tony made was showing the original price with a strikethrough, next to the discounted price, on every product page. Before this change, the store simply lowered the prices during the sale, so a 10-dollar item became 7.50 dollars with no visible reference to the original price. Buyers had no idea they were getting a discount.

Adding a slash-through of the original price alongside the sale price (using a Shopify sale-price app) increased sales by 30 percent immediately, and that lift has held. People cannot do the math on 25 percent in their head, so they need to see the before-and-after visually.

Play 2: The same-day loss-leader email

On Day 1 of the sale, Tony watches the Shopify dashboard in real time to see which product is unexpectedly hot. This year it was a clearance Christmas Bible study, priced at 2 dollars because of typos, which dropped to 1.50 dollars with the sale discount.

Tony threw together an email that same evening, sent it out with a big red X on the 2-dollar price and 1.50 dollars alongside, and it drove roughly 6,000 dollars in three hours and nearly 10,000 dollars total. The mechanism is the loss-leader effect: the 1.50 dollar item is the gateway that gets people into the cart, and once they add it, they add another 50 to 75 dollars of full-price merchandise.

Play 3: Gated-coupon batch email (limited-quantity codes)

Around day 8, Tony sends purchasers-who-haven’t-purchased-during-the-sale an email with a batch of limited-quantity codes. Each code applies a different perk (free shipping, 5 dollars off, BOGO, 5 percent extra, 10 percent extra), and each code has a fixed number of uses.

The scarcity is real: once the free-shipping code runs out, it is gone. Tony monitors the redemption rate throughout the day and can add uses to codes if needed (except free shipping, which has a real cost). This email routinely generates around 20,000 dollars on its own by forcing on-the-fence purchasers to act before their preferred code is used up.

Play 4: Triple rewards points event (day 5)

On day 5, when the sale enters its natural mid-week lull, Tony runs a 24-hour triple-rewards-points event for the purchaser segment. The follow-up email 24 hours later goes to everyone who earned points during that window, showing their new balance and pointing them at items they can cash in on. This turns the free credit into another purchase inside the same sale.

Play 5: Text-only “personal” emails on day 10

Two days before the sale ends, Tony sends text-only emails styled to look like a personal note from the store owner. Three versions run in parallel, keyed to past purchase behavior:

• Never bought: “I noticed you haven’t shopped the sale yet, have you heard about it?”
• Past buyer, didn’t buy this sale: “You might not know this, but here’s how to save 25 percent.”
• Bought this sale: “Wanted to say thanks. If you regretted skipping X, here’s a free-shipping code for you today.”

Text-only emails work because they land like a real person wrote them, and they should be used sparingly (a few times per year) to keep that effect intact.

Automatic discounts vs. coupon codes: which converts better

Automatic discounts convert better than coupon codes in almost every scenario, because coupon codes cause a measurable drop-off at checkout: shoppers forget the code, mistype it, or confuse an “O” for a “0”. Tony’s store applies the 25 percent off automatically, so the discount is visible on the product page (via the price slash) and again at checkout.

The one exception is when you want to gate a discount to a specific list. In that case, use a code, and use it inside a specific email so the audience is already highly qualified.

The other big benefit of automatic discounts is that they play nicely with paid ads. When a cold ad-traffic visitor lands on the product page, the price slash is already visible, so they see the discount without needing to remember a code from the ad copy.

How to write emails that get opens after subscribers are already fatigued

The trick to keeping open rates from collapsing during a long sale is variety of format, not variety of subject line. Tony rotates hard-sell graphic emails, plain-text personal emails, social-proof heavy emails, product-education emails, and pure-scarcity emails so no subscriber sees the same style twice in a row.

Watch these deliverability metrics daily

• Unsubscribe rate baseline: about 0.1 percent per send. If it spikes above that, pull back on frequency.
• Spam rate: near zero is healthy. Any real signal here means immediate cadence cut.
• Open rate: expect to slide from 45 to 50 percent on Day 1 down to 35 to 40 percent by Day 8 to 10. That is normal.

Tony over-sends rather than under-sends because every additional email generates revenue, provided unsubscribes stay in the healthy range. The lost subscribers are people who were never going to buy anyway.

Email flows to update BEFORE any big sale

Every automated email flow that will fire during the sale must be audited before Day 1. This includes the abandoned-cart series, welcome series, post-purchase upsell series, browse-abandonment flow, and any winback flows.

• Refresh all product images. Redesigned products break automated emails without warning.
• Test every link. Old landing pages get deleted and flows keep pointing at 404s.
• Verify pricing references. If you say “up to X percent off” anywhere in a flow, make sure the number still matches this year’s sale.
• Confirm the automated upsells align with the sale (Tony uses OneClick Upsell, which lets you schedule upsells to fire during specific email campaigns).
• Check that segments feeding your flows still contain the right people.

How to run this sale in your own store: a starter framework

A starter version of this sale for a smaller store looks like a 3 to 5 day sale, 10 to 20 percent off, with 5 to 8 emails total. You do not need 30-plus emails on day one. Below is the minimum viable version to run first.

1. Pick a sale window tied to real seasonality. Match your customer’s buying rhythm, not the calendar.
2. Verify your margins. Model the discount at expected sales volume and confirm you are still profitable.
3. Segment purchasers vs. non-purchasers at minimum. Add a rewards-tier split if you have a loyalty program.
4. Slash the original price on the product page. This alone often lifts sales double digits.
5. Send Day 1 (kickoff), Day 2 (top-seller call-out), Day 3 (social proof), Day 4 (personal text email to non-buyers), Day 5 (last-day countdown).
6. Watch the dashboard for surprise winners and build a same-day email around whichever product is trending.
7. Save every email you write. Next year, you duplicate and tweak, saving 20-plus hours of work.

Frequently asked questions

How many emails should I send during a big sale?

For an 11-day sale, plan for roughly 30 emails total, sent to different segments so each person receives about 2 emails per day. For a shorter 3 to 5 day sale, 5 to 8 emails total is a reasonable starting point. The rule is over-send rather than under-send, and monitor unsubscribe and spam rates daily to make sure you stay in a healthy range.

What discount is too big for a sale?

A discount is too big when it turns your net margin negative or unsustainably thin. Most ecommerce stores should not run more than 10 to 20 percent off site-wide unless margins are 60 percent-plus, because after ad spend and processing fees, larger discounts erode all profit. A 25 percent site-wide discount only makes sense for high-margin categories like paper goods, digital products, or custom-made items.

Should I use automatic discounts or coupon codes?

Automatic discounts convert better than coupon codes in nearly every scenario. Shoppers forget codes, mistype them, or confuse similar-looking characters, and every point of friction costs sales. Use coupon codes only when you want to gate a discount to a specific email segment or to run limited-quantity redemption plays.

Why does showing a slashed-out original price increase sales?

Showing the original price with a strikethrough next to the sale price visually communicates savings without asking shoppers to do percentage math in their heads. In Tony’s store, adding this on-page price slash increased sales by 30 percent, and the effect has held. People do not compute 25 percent of 15 dollars on the fly, so they need to see the discount visually.

How do I keep open rates high across a long email sale?

Rotate email formats aggressively so subscribers see hard-sell graphics, plain-text personal emails, social-proof emails, product-education emails, and scarcity emails in different weeks. Segment tightly so people get emails about products they actually care about. Expect open rates to slide 5 to 10 points over an 11-day window; that is normal, not a failure.

Is it OK to send more than one email per day during a sale?

It is fine to send two or even three emails per day during a big sale, provided each email goes to a distinct segment or has a distinct angle (loss-leader alert, cash-in-your-points reminder, low-stock alert, gated coupon). Exclude recent purchasers (past 24 to 72 hours) from the next general blast so buyers do not get pestered right after they check out.

How far in advance should I plan a big sale email campaign?

Plan a big sale email campaign at least 4 to 6 weeks in advance, and audit every automated flow (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase, browse abandonment) in the week before Day 1. Refresh product images in old flows, test every link for 404s, verify pricing references, and confirm segments still populate correctly. Broken automations that fire during a sale destroy trust and revenue.

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Google just stopped accepting credit cards for ad payments, TikTok launched AI avatars and gave creators real search-metric data for the first time, Reddit rolled out in-content ads, and Adobe quietly tried to grant itself rights to your creative work. This week’s episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast covers the biggest platform shifts hitting online sellers right now, and my co-host Tony Rowland and I break down what each one actually means for how you run your business.

The credit-card payments change is going to cost heavy Google Ads spenders millions in lost credit-card rewards. TikTok’s new avatar tools and search analytics start closing the gap on Google. And every platform announcement this week points in the same direction: content-creation costs are approaching zero, and the moat is now trust, demonstration, and real expertise.

Below is the full rundown of every update: what changed, why the platform did it, and what to change in your own business today to stay ahead of the shift.

Key takeaways

• Google Ads no longer accepts credit cards. Payment options are ACH, wire transfer, or paper check. This wipes out a common travel-hacking play where advertisers earned huge credit-card rewards on ad spend.
• TikTok launched licensable AI avatars that let creators publish videos without appearing on camera, and creators can also license their own likeness.
• Adobe quietly updated its terms of service to imply broad rights to user content for AI training, and reversed course after backlash.
• Reddit started running native in-content ads inside threads. Combined with Reddit’s SEO surge, this means ad fatigue is landing on a platform that used to be ad-light.
• TikTok now shows creators real search metrics inside the app, mirroring what Google Search Console used to provide before Google removed keyword data.
• User-generated content ads are underperforming plain image ads for several sellers, likely because audiences can now detect scripted, paid UGC.
• Wix released an AI website generator, but Wix still lacks the third-party app ecosystem to support a serious ecommerce business.

Why Google stopped accepting credit cards for Google Ads payments

Google stopped accepting credit cards for Google Ads payments to save on interchange fees, which typically run 1.5 to 3 percent of every transaction. Advertisers must now pay via ACH bank debit, wire transfer, or (surprisingly) paper check. For high-spending accounts, the interchange savings for Google are enormous, but the collateral damage to advertisers is real.

For years, savvy advertisers used credit-card rewards on Google Ads to earn massive travel points, cash back, and sign-up bonuses. Some of my friends earned millions of points a year on ad spend alone, funding first-class travel entirely from advertising budgets that were going to be spent anyway. That perk is gone.

Why ACH is a worse deal than a credit card

ACH is worse than a credit card in three ways: no rewards, no float, and much weaker dispute rights.

• No rewards. You forfeit the 1 to 5 percent cash-back or points you were earning on the same spend.
• No float. ACH pulls money directly out of your bank account within days. A credit card gives you roughly 30 days before the balance is due.
• Weaker dispute rights. Credit-card chargebacks are well-defined consumer protections. ACH disputes exist but are slower and less favorable to the account holder.

The other risk is standing authorization. Once Google (or any vendor) has your ACH details, they can pull funds essentially any time. If Google over-charges or double-charges, the money is already gone from your account while you dispute it.

Why Facebook and TikTok Ads are likely to follow

If Google can push advertisers off credit cards, Meta and TikTok will notice. Facebook and TikTok have exactly the same interchange-fee bill, and if they can eliminate it without losing advertisers, they will. Expect similar payment-method restrictions from those platforms in the next 12 to 24 months.

What TikTok’s new AI avatars mean for content creators

TikTok’s new AI avatars let creators generate video content without ever appearing on camera, by combining a stock or custom avatar with a voice (yours or a licensed one) and a script. TikTok showed working demos where the avatars are close to indistinguishable from real humans on screen.

The two use cases are stock avatars (a library TikTok provides) and custom avatars (a digital twin trained on your likeness). The custom-avatar version is what changes content strategy, because you can now film once, then generate hundreds of videos of “you” saying anything, in any language.

The avatar production pipeline creators are already using

Some creators are already stringing this together with automation tools. The flow looks like this.

1. ChatGPT writes 20 TikTok scripts in one prompt.
2. Make.com or Zapier passes each script into ElevenLabs, which converts the script into your cloned voice.
3. The voice file feeds into TikTok’s avatar tool (or a comparable video generator), producing a publishable video.
4. The video posts automatically to TikTok.

The economics are dramatic. A creator who used to film and edit ten videos a week can now publish 100-plus, at close to zero marginal cost per video, without touching a camera.

The identity theft risk from AI avatars

The obvious risk is impersonation. If your face and voice can be cloned by anyone with a few seconds of your content, someone can create videos of “you” endorsing products, courses, or scams that you never approved. TikTok requires creators to label AI-generated video, but enforcement will be uneven.

Our friend Andrew Youderian recently cloned my voice as a demo and made me say things I would never say in real life. The technology to protect against this does not exist yet, which is why some sellers (like Emmaloos Boutique’s Tiffany Ivanovsky) are already dealing with cloned TikTok accounts diverting sales to knockoff stores.

Why user-generated content ads are underperforming plain image ads in 2024

User-generated content ads are underperforming plain image ads because audiences have learned to spot paid, scripted UGC and are no longer swayed by it. Several Facebook ad buyers have reported the same trend independently: creator-style talking-head ads used to convert better than static images, and now the pattern is flipping.

The reason is exposure. Once shoppers see enough perfectly-lit, perfectly-spoken, perfectly-attractive “regular people” reviewing products, they figure out that these are paid UGC creators reading a brief, not real customers. The illusion breaks and the persuasion breaks with it.

What still works for ecommerce video ads

Product demonstration content still works, because demonstration is harder to fake than testimonial. A video of the product being used, installed, cleaned, or in action shows the buyer what they will actually experience, and the format resists AI replication because it requires real physical setup.

The kitchen sink ad Tony has been served 30 times in a week is a textbook example: a real person drops the sink in without removing the countertop, washes glasses on the built-in bar, uses the built-in cutting board, and demonstrates each feature. That kind of demo is far more persuasive than a talking-head UGC creator saying “I love this sink so much.”

Expertise-signal content also still works. A licensed pediatrician recommending a baby product converts far better than a Kim Kardashian mention, because the expertise is directly relevant to the purchase.

A friend of ours had Kim Kardashian organically post about his baby blanket and it drove roughly four sales. A “Dr. Sharon Williams, board-certified pediatrician” placement on the same product could plausibly do 10x that.

Adobe’s terms-of-service AI training scandal, explained

Adobe quietly updated its terms of service in early June 2024 with language that implied Adobe could access user-created content and use it to train AI models. After massive public backlash from Adobe’s professional creative user base, Adobe reversed course and issued a clarified terms-of-service update within days.

The scandal matters because Adobe touches roughly every professional creative workflow on the planet: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, InDesign, Lightroom. If Adobe can train on user content by default, the entire creative industry’s output becomes AI training data by default.

The precedent is worse than the specific reversal. Every major creative-software vendor is now on notice that professional users will read the TOS and revolt if training-data language appears. Expect very careful, very lawyered-up TOS updates going forward.

Reddit’s new in-content ads: what they look like and what they mean

Reddit rolled out native in-content ads that sit inside thread pages, rather than only in the sidebar or above the header. This is a meaningful expansion of Reddit’s ad inventory, and it lands at the exact moment Reddit is receiving the largest search-traffic bump in its history from Google.

Reddit went public in March 2024, which is the classic trigger for a platform to raise ad load. Public shareholders demand quarterly earnings growth, and expanding ad inventory is the fastest path to it. Expect Reddit’s ad density to keep climbing.

How Reddit search traffic and in-content ads collide

The unfortunate combination is heavy search-traffic entrants (new users who arrive from Google without knowing Reddit’s UX) plus native ads that look like real posts (users can accidentally click ads thinking they are content). For search-driven sellers, this means the Reddit citation strategy for AI answer engines is still valuable, but user experience on Reddit is degrading.

TikTok search metrics: the analytics Google took away

TikTok now shows creators real in-app search metrics, including which queries brought users to their content, search-driven view counts, and search-based discovery data. This is data Google Search Console used to provide before Google removed keyword-level data in 2011 with the “not provided” change.

Why TikTok search is the next Google for many queries

TikTok search has been quietly replacing Google search for younger users on a growing set of query types. My kids search TikTok for restaurants, product reviews, and how-to content. TikTok returns a video showing the food, the menu, the atmosphere, and real reactions, which is a better answer than 10 blue links plus an AI Overview.

For ecommerce sellers, TikTok search analytics unlock a Google Search Console-style workflow: find the queries driving your content, optimize titles and captions for those queries, expand into related queries. This is a real SEO opportunity, and it exists inside a platform where search intent is already visual.

Wix’s new AI website builder: why I still would not recommend Wix for ecommerce

Wix released a new AI website generator that builds ecommerce sites from a text prompt describing what you want to sell and how you want it to look. The generated sites look good visually, but Wix remains a poor choice for a serious ecommerce business for one reason: the third-party app ecosystem is not there.

Why designing the website is the easiest part

Designing the website is the easiest part of an ecommerce business, and it only has to be done once. The hard parts are the ongoing work: email marketing, SMS, upsell flows, subscriptions, reviews, loyalty, wholesale, POS integration, accounting, ad-platform integrations. Every one of those needs a third-party app, and most of the best ones do not support Wix.

Klaviyo integration with Wix requires jumping through additional hoops. OneClick Upsell and similar Shopify-native tools do not exist in the Wix ecosystem. Every integration friction point compounds into recurring maintenance costs.

What to use instead

For a serious ecommerce business, use Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce. Each has a mature third-party app ecosystem, deep integrations with every ad and email platform, and a large enough developer community that whatever you want to build will already exist as an app.

What every online seller should do in the next 90 days based on this week’s changes

The specific actions that matter for online sellers based on this week’s platform news are: adjust ad-payment workflows, experiment with TikTok avatars carefully, shift ad creative toward demonstration over UGC, and audit your Reddit and TikTok search presence.

1. Set up an ACH funding account for Google Ads that is separate from your main operating account, so a mistaken charge cannot drain everything. Keep only 1 to 2 weeks of ad spend in it.
2. Test TikTok avatars for supplementary content (evergreen product education, restock announcements) but keep a real human on camera for your brand-defining content.
3. Rebalance ad creative away from generic UGC talking-head ads toward product-demonstration videos and expert-voice-of-authority content.
4. Audit your TikTok search analytics the moment they are available in your account, and optimize captions and hashtags for the queries driving your discoveries.
5. Read the terms of service on every SaaS you use. Adobe will not be the last vendor to try to expand rights to user content for AI training.
6. Do not migrate to Wix even if the AI site generator looks compelling. The third-party app tax will hurt you within a year.

Frequently asked questions

Can I still pay for Google Ads with a credit card?

You can no longer pay for Google Ads with a credit card. Google has switched to ACH (bank debit), wire transfer, and paper check as the only accepted payment methods. This change is happening across accounts globally and removes the credit-card rewards play that heavy advertisers used to fund travel and cash back.

What is a TikTok AI avatar?

A TikTok AI avatar is a digital character (either from TikTok’s stock library or based on your own likeness) that TikTok can animate to speak any script in a chosen voice. The result is a publishable video that looks like a person talking to the camera, without any actual filming. Creators use them to scale video production without appearing on camera themselves.

Is Adobe using my content to train AI?

Adobe rolled back the June 2024 terms-of-service update that implied broad rights to user content for AI training, after significant backlash from the creative community. As of the revised terms, Adobe states it is not using customer content to train its Firefly AI models. Users should still read updated terms carefully whenever any creative-software vendor issues a TOS change.

Are user-generated content ads still effective?

User-generated content ads are still effective for some audiences and products, but effectiveness has declined as consumers have learned to recognize paid UGC. Several ecommerce advertisers report that plain image ads and product-demonstration videos now outperform talking-head UGC ads in their accounts. The safest current strategy is to test formats side by side in your own account rather than assume UGC always wins.

How do I check TikTok search metrics for my account?

TikTok search metrics are available inside the TikTok Creator Center under the analytics tab, and inside the Business Center for business accounts. The rollout has been gradual, so if you do not see search data yet, check back in a few weeks. The data mirrors what Google Search Console offers, showing which queries drove users to your content.

What is the safest way to fund a Google Ads account after the credit-card change?

The safest way to fund a Google Ads account is a dedicated bank account holding only 1 to 2 weeks of expected ad spend, connected to Google via ACH. This limits exposure if a billing error or fraudulent charge occurs, since ACH pulls funds directly and dispute processes are slower than credit-card chargebacks. Keep your main operating account separate.

Is Wix a good platform for a new ecommerce store?

Wix is not a good platform for a new ecommerce store planning to scale, because Wix lacks the mature third-party app ecosystem that ecommerce operations require. Klaviyo integration is more difficult, popular upsell tools are not available, and every integration friction becomes ongoing maintenance cost. Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce are all better foundational choices.

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Chinese sellers are officially back on Etsy. Etsy quietly added China to its approved Etsy Payments country list in mid 2024, and that single administrative change is the marketplace equivalent of rolling out the red carpet for 1.4 billion new potential sellers. On this solo episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast I broke down exactly what to expect, and this post is the fully organized version of that breakdown for anyone who sells on Etsy in the US.

Etsy sellers should assume history is about to repeat itself. Amazon opened its platform to Chinese sellers in 2016 and it took years of stricter onboarding, video interviews, utility bill verification, and constant seller pushback before things stabilized. Etsy has a fraction of Amazon’s resources to police the flood.

Below is what changed on Etsy, why Chinese sellers have a structural cost advantage on the platform, and what US handmade sellers can do right now to stay visible when the seller pool doubles.

Key takeaways

• Etsy added China to its Etsy Payments approved country list in 2024. That is the operational step that lets Chinese sellers list, get paid, and ship, so treat it as the real signal that the return is happening.
• Chinese sellers were on Etsy until 2021, when they were quietly removed to protect the handmade brand. Etsy needs revenue growth (gross sales slipped from $13.49B in 2021 to $13.16B by 2023), which is why the door opened again.
• Expect a repeat of the 2016 Amazon playbook: a flood of new accounts, rampant trademark and copyright violations, and Etsy scrambling to build stricter onboarding after the fact.
• Chinese sellers ship direct from China under the $800 de minimis threshold, so they skip import duties and sales tax. US sellers already paid duties on their raw materials.
• Around 50 percent of top Amazon sellers are already Chinese. If a similar share moves onto Etsy, the seller pool roughly doubles from about 7.5 million and product visibility collapses for everyone else.
• Etsy’s $15 account setup fee will not slow this down. Amazon tried the same, and Chinese seller networks routinely spin up new accounts whenever old ones are banned.

What did Etsy actually change with Chinese sellers?

Etsy added China to its Etsy Payments approved country list, which is the technical prerequisite for Chinese sellers to open shops, receive payouts, and process orders on the platform. Etsy has not made a formal announcement, so many sellers have not noticed, but adding a country to Etsy Payments is functionally the same as opening the door.

Chinese sellers used to be on Etsy up until 2021, when they were silently removed over concerns about protecting the integrity of the handmade marketplace. From an Etsy financial perspective, letting them back in unlocks a market of 1.4 billion new people almost overnight.

The financial pressure is the driver. Etsy’s gross sales went from around $13.49 billion in 2021 to $13.16 billion in 2023, and shareholders want growth. Bringing China back is the fastest way to inflate seller count and listing volume without changing the product.

Why did Etsy remove Chinese sellers in 2021?

Etsy removed Chinese sellers in 2021 because the marketplace was being flooded with knockoffs, stolen product photography, and factory-made items being sold as handmade. Etsy’s brand identity is built on handmade and vintage, and the influx directly threatened that positioning.

Thousands of Chinese sellers were pulling images from legitimate handmade shops and listing cheap factory versions at a fraction of the price. The cleanup was significant, and it worked for a few years.

The 2024 reopening reverses that decision under financial pressure. The same enforcement problems that caused the 2021 removal have not been solved, only paused.

How Etsy is about to repeat Amazon’s 2016 mistake

Etsy is about to hit the exact wall Amazon hit in 2016 when it opened up to Chinese sellers, which is a wave of new accounts, mass trademark and copyright violations, and no stringent onboarding in place to catch bad actors. Amazon was overwhelmed and spent years building the verification stack we know today.

To open an Amazon seller account in 2024 you have to complete a 10 minute video interview, submit legal identification, and provide utility bills that prove your real address. Etsy currently does none of that at scale. The $15 account setup fee is not a verification system, it is a speed bump.

Because Etsy is smaller than Amazon and has fewer resources, this will play out worse before it plays out better. Bans get issued algorithmically, so legitimate sellers get caught in the crossfire while spam accounts spin up replacements the same day.

The unfair advantages Chinese sellers have on Etsy

Chinese sellers have three structural advantages that no US Etsy seller can match on price alone: no US import duties under the de minimis rule, radically lower labor costs, and much faster cheap shipping thanks to the direct-from-China logistics network Temu and Shein already built. Every one of those advantages compounds on top of the algorithm boost that new listings usually get.

The $800 de minimis rule advantage

The de minimis rule states that a seller does not pay US import duties on shipments valued under $800, and almost every Etsy product falls well under that threshold. Chinese sellers shipping direct to US buyers avoid duties entirely.

US Etsy sellers do not get that treatment. If you source raw materials domestically, the duties and taxes are already baked into your price. If you import fabric, blanks, or components in bulk from China, you pay duties on the containerized shipment.

Labor cost advantage on handmade competition

Chinese factories can produce printed shirts, jewelry, home goods, and craft items at labor rates that are a fraction of US wages. A mom and pop shop selling a genuinely handmade item is competing against a factory paying workers roughly one tenth what an American maker pays themselves.

Etsy’s terms of service already allow production partners as long as handmade items are made or designed by the seller. That gray area is about to be exploited at scale by factories willing to check the box.

Cheap and fast shipping from China

Shipping from China used to be slow and expensive. Temu is now offering free or low cost shipping to the US with delivery windows of 4 to 15 days, and in one year Temu already reached roughly one third of Amazon’s shopping traffic.

The same logistics network powering Temu is available to Chinese Etsy sellers. Cheap and reasonably fast is enough to win the buyer who is comparing a $12 mass produced item to a $34 handmade one.

How Chinese sellers will affect Etsy search visibility

Adding Chinese sellers to Etsy roughly doubles the seller pool and multiplies the listing pool by an order of magnitude, which crushes visibility for existing US sellers. Etsy’s algorithm ranks products by quality score, and quality score is driven by sales, so aggressive low-price sellers win share and then keep it.

There are roughly 7.5 million sellers on Etsy today. Amazon has about 10 million sellers and about 6.3 million of those are Chinese. If Etsy tracks even part of the way toward the Amazon distribution, existing sellers get diluted quickly.

Listings scale even faster than sellers. Chinese sellers tend to publish many more SKUs per shop than the average Etsy maker, so the item pool could balloon 10x while the seller count only doubles.

Trademark and copyright infringement risk on Etsy

Trademark and copyright infringement is about to spike on Etsy because Chinese factories moving onto the platform have a documented pattern of listing counterfeit branded goods, fake celebrity merchandise, and stolen designs. Etsy will fight it, but algorithmic enforcement always produces collateral damage, so legitimate shops will get banned along with the actual bad actors.

Look inside Etsy seller forums and you already see complaints from shops with hundreds of sales getting banned with no clear reason. One example that made the rounds is the YouTuber Matira Made Jewelry, whose Etsy account was banned after three years of selling and hundreds of positive reviews.

Banning Chinese sellers is a game of whack a mole. Because they operate offshore, a banned account is easily replaced with another, and the cost per replacement is trivial compared to the sales generated before the takedown.

Etsy vs Amazon vs Temu for handmade sellers in 2024

Here is how the three platforms compare for a US maker deciding where to compete.

What Etsy sellers in the US should do about Chinese sellers

US Etsy sellers should stop competing on price with factories they cannot beat and start competing on the things factories cannot copy fast: brand, story, custom personalization, real photography, and a customer relationship that lives off Etsy. That is the same playbook that saved handmade Amazon sellers when China arrived in 2016.

Build an email list of your existing buyers so you own the relationship if Etsy visibility craters. Diversify to your own Shopify store or another marketplace so Etsy is one channel, not the only channel. Lean into personalization, made to order, and product categories that ship poorly from China because of weight, fragility, or customs classification.

If you sell truly handmade items, say so in your photography and your listings in a way that a factory cannot fake. Show the workspace, the hands, and the process. That trust signal is what your buyer is paying the premium for.

Frequently asked questions

Are Chinese sellers actually allowed on Etsy again?

Yes. Etsy added China to the Etsy Payments approved country list in 2024, which is the operational step that lets Chinese sellers open shops, get paid, and ship. Etsy has not made a formal announcement, but adding a country to Etsy Payments has always signaled that country going live on the platform.

Why is Etsy letting Chinese sellers back onto the platform?

Etsy is under significant financial pressure from investors after multiple years of declining gross merchandise sales, which fell from about $13.49 billion in 2021 to $13.16 billion in 2023. Opening to Chinese sellers is the fastest way to grow listing volume and seller count without changing the product itself.

Will the $15 Etsy setup fee stop Chinese sellers?

No. A $15 setup fee is trivial for organized offshore sellers and does not include the identity verification (video interview, utility bill, government ID) that Amazon now requires. Chinese seller networks routinely absorb far higher account creation costs on Amazon and eBay.

How did Chinese sellers change Amazon after 2016?

Chinese sellers now make up roughly 63 percent of top Amazon sellers, and Amazon spent years building the verification stack (video interviews, ID checks, utility bill address verification) after being overwhelmed by low quality and counterfeit listings. Even with those controls, counterfeit and trademark enforcement remains a constant issue.

What is the de minimis rule and why does it matter for Etsy?

The de minimis rule lets shipments valued under $800 enter the US without paying import duties, and almost every Etsy purchase falls under that threshold. Chinese sellers shipping direct to US buyers avoid duties that are baked into US sellers’ costs, which is a permanent price advantage of 10 to 30 percent depending on category.

Should I move my Etsy shop to Shopify?

You should build a Shopify store (or similar) as a second channel so Etsy is not your only revenue source, but for most handmade sellers Etsy is still worth keeping for its built-in buyer traffic. The right frame is diversification, so a bad Etsy month or a wrongful ban does not end your business.

Is Temu going to hurt Etsy sellers directly?

Yes, indirectly and directly. Temu has trained US shoppers to accept 7 to 15 day shipping in exchange for very low prices, which sets the price ceiling in categories that overlap with Etsy, and the same Chinese sellers on Temu can now open Etsy shops too.

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The ugly truth about print on demand is that the margins are much thinner than any guru will admit. A quality Printful shirt costs about $16.25 plus $4.69 shipping for a total of $20.94, so hitting even a $5 profit means selling at $26, and hitting $10 means charging $31, which is out of reach for anyone who is not a celebrity or influencer. On this solo episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast I walked through the real numbers of running a print on demand business, and this post is the organized version of that breakdown.

Print on demand is easy to start, and that is exactly why so many people fail at it. There is no inventory, no fulfillment, and no upfront capital, but the flip side is razor thin margins, limited product control, and direct competition from Temu shirts that land for about $7 including shipping.

Below is the honest math, the DTF printer alternative I switched to at Bumblebee Linens, and the specific negatives of print on demand that no guru will tell you.

Key takeaways

• The Printful math: a quality shirt is $16.25 plus $4.69 shipping = $20.94 all in. To make just $5 profit you have to price at $26, and to make $10 you have to price at $31. Very few buyers will pay that for a non celebrity brand.
• To net $100,000 a year at $5 per shirt, you need to sell 20,000 shirts a year, or about 55 shirts every day. That is a real business, not a passive side income.
• Buying a DTF (direct to film) printer flips the math. My Sublistar Star 4 printer paid itself off in about 3 months, and a shirt now costs me about $5 all in ($4 blank plus $1 ink), which is a 3x margin at a $15 sale price.
• You have to be familiar with Photoshop and a bit of scripting to run a DTF printer efficiently. I wrote my own Photoshop script that pulls orders from my site and packs designs onto the film automatically.
• Temu now sells fully printed shirts for about $7 including shipping (7 to 15 day delivery from China). A viral design will get copied on Temu inside a week.
• Common POD gotchas: 97 percent of Printful orders ship within 5 business days (about half in 3), product discontinuations force manual re-creation of listings, stock outs on popular sizes only surface after a customer orders, and most POD providers do not allow custom packaging or inserts without an upcharge.

What is the real profit margin on print on demand?

The real profit margin on print on demand is around $5 to $10 per shirt at retail prices most buyers will not accept, which is why so few POD stores scale into full time income. A quality Printful tee runs $16.25 with printing on one side, shipping adds $4.69, and your all-in cost is $20.94, so a $26 sale price only nets $5.

If you want a $10 profit, you have to charge $31, and most people will not pay that for a shirt from a brand they have never heard of. Cheaper Printful blanks exist, but the quality drops quickly, and quality is what saves POD from being a one-time-purchase business.

You do control retail pricing, but the market caps you. The most I have ever paid for a shirt is $40 at a concert, and that was a memento with emotional value. A pure design tee has no such premium.

How much do you have to sell to make a living from POD?

To net $100,000 a year in print on demand at a $5 per shirt margin, you have to sell 20,000 shirts a year, which works out to about 55 shirts every single day. That is a genuine ecommerce operation with real marketing spend, not a set-it-and-forget-it side income.

The math looks better at $10 per shirt (10,000 shirts a year, about 27 shirts a day), but hitting $10 per shirt means pricing at $31, which crushes conversion. So the math tightens either way.

This is why POD is a good first ecommerce experiment and a bad long term business model unless you either build a real brand or move fulfillment in-house.

Why I bought a DTF printer for my ecommerce store

I bought my own DTF printer (a Sublistar Star 4) in 2023 because print on demand margins on my custom linens were too thin to run a real business on, and paying for my own printer let me collapse cost of goods from about $16 down to about $5 per shirt. Everything printed after the payoff month is basically gravy.

DTF (direct to film) is the same technology many POD companies use behind the scenes. You print your design onto a special film, dust it with DTF powder, bake it in an oven for about 60 seconds, then heat press the film onto the garment. Print quality is dark, crisp, and holds up through many washings.

The Sublistar Star 4 runs about $6,000 to $10,000 depending on configuration. If you sign up for their newsletter, they occasionally run sales (they had a $3,000 deal in 2023). We recouped the printer cost in profit within about 3 months of ownership.

How the printed-in-house cost math actually breaks down

Doing it in house drops cost of goods per shirt from about $16.25 (Printful) to about $5 (in house) using US-blank shirts, or as low as $2 using bulk China-sourced blanks. That is a 3x to 7x margin improvement at the same retail price, which lets you either lower prices to sell more units or keep prices flat and buy ads profitably.

An apples-to-apples US blank tee runs about $4 or less in bulk. Bulk from China lands closer to $1 per shirt. Ink and DTF consumables run about $1 per shirt for a complex design with heavy solid coverage, and closer to 25 to 30 cents for simpler designs like our handkerchiefs.

That means the same shirt Printful charges $16.25 for costs me about $5 to produce, and I can list at $15 and still triple my money. At $15, far more people actually buy.

The hidden work of running a DTF printer

DTF printers take real weekly maintenance, and running one efficiently at volume means being fluent in Photoshop and comfortable with a bit of scripting. The machine is messier than a desktop inkjet, needs cleaning at least once a week, and the print head clogs if you skip periodic cleaning cycles or leave it idle for too long.

I have ruined a couple of print heads learning this the hard way. The rule is that a DTF printer is not a machine you use occasionally. Consistent use is required or the heads clog and you pay to replace them.

Efficient production also requires packing many order designs onto one film sheet so you do not waste material. I wrote my own Photoshop script that pulls the day’s orders off my website, aligns them, packs them tightly, and sends them to the printer. Without something similar, throughput drops fast and film waste eats your margin gain.

Product and design limitations of print on demand

Print on demand ties you to a narrow catalog of blanks, and no POD company will print on merchandise it does not stock, so anything custom is off the table. If a customer wants a specific branded towel or an odd substrate, you cannot fulfill it through POD, but with your own printer you can print on almost anything, including canvas shoes.

Some POD providers restrict where a design can go on the garment. Custom Cap (the provider my kids use for kidincharge.com) does not allow prints on garment sleeves. Owning the printer removes every one of those rules.

Print quality is also inconsistent across POD networks. Printify, for example, is many different contractors under one interface, so the same order placed with two providers can look noticeably different. When we ordered 50 shirts through a POD provider for my daughter’s school team, about 20 percent came back with poor print quality, and by the time they were refunded there was no time left in the season to reorder.

The annoying operational issues of print on demand

Print on demand is not truly set-it-and-forget-it. My kids’ store at kidincharge.com is four years old, and in that time countless products have been discontinued, each of which forces us to rebuild the listing from scratch on the POD site. Multiply that across 50 or 100 or 1,000 products and it is a real time cost.

Stock outs are the other constant. Providers regularly run out of medium size shirts (the most common size), and you only find out when a customer has already ordered on your site. One holiday season we had to scramble to a different shirt brand with no time to check the print quality first.

Branding is limited too. Most POD companies do not allow custom inserts, and any that do charge extra, which further squeezes an already thin margin. Since printed apparel has almost zero barriers to entry, brand is what separates a POD store from a commodity, so this restriction hurts.

Print on demand vs in-house printing (DTF) at a glance

Why Temu is the biggest print on demand threat right now

Temu is the single biggest threat to print on demand shops in 2024 because it sells fully printed shirts direct from China at about $7 including shipping, which is a third of what your POD store has to charge to make a profit. Delivery takes 7 to 15 days, and buyers keep ordering anyway.

The other Temu problem is design theft. If you build a design that starts to sell, expect a copy of it on Temu inside a week at a price you cannot match through a POD provider. In-house printing is the only way to bring your unit cost close to competitive, and even then you win on shipping speed and quality, not price.

Print on demand is still fine as a way to dip a toe into ecommerce and validate whether people want your designs. If you plan to make life-changing money selling printed merchandise, you almost certainly need to do more of it yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Is print on demand still profitable in 2024?

Print on demand is still profitable but only at a small scale, because the $5 to $10 margin per shirt at $26 to $31 retail limits both volume and marketing budget. Most POD stores that scale past hobby income either build a real brand with premium pricing or move fulfillment in house.

How much money can you actually make with print on demand?

To net $100,000 a year at a typical $5 per shirt margin you need to sell about 20,000 shirts a year, or 55 shirts every day. That is a real ecommerce operation with real marketing spend, so treat POD like a business, not a passive income scheme.

What is a DTF printer and is it worth the investment?

A DTF (direct to film) printer prints your design onto a special film that you powder, bake, and heat press onto fabric, producing dark crisp prints that survive many washes. At a $6,000 to $10,000 price point it pays back quickly if you already have volume, and my Sublistar Star 4 paid for itself in about 3 months.

Which is better for margins, Printful or Printify?

Printful gives more consistent quality and shipping because it is a single-supplier operation, while Printify is a marketplace of many contractors where results can vary significantly between providers even on the same order. Margins are similar on both, so choose Printful for consistency and Printify only if a specific product is exclusive to it.

Can print on demand compete with Temu on price?

No, print on demand cannot compete with Temu on price because Temu sells fully printed shirts for about $7 including shipping direct from China, and no POD provider can get anywhere near that cost. The only ways to compete are in-house printing, faster shipping, higher print quality, and building a real brand that justifies the premium.

Do you have to know Photoshop to run a POD or in-house printing business?

You can start a POD store with almost no design skill by buying or commissioning designs, but running an in-house printer efficiently requires Photoshop (or similar) fluency to pack designs onto film without waste. Scripting Photoshop to auto-pull orders from your site becomes worth the effort once you are printing more than a few shirts a day.

What are the biggest hidden downsides of print on demand?

The biggest hidden downsides of print on demand are constant product discontinuations that force listing rebuilds, hidden stock outs on popular sizes that only surface after a customer orders, inconsistent print quality across providers, restricted branding and packaging, and long fulfillment windows that hurt during holidays. All of these get worse the larger your catalog grows.

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The Google Content Warehouse API leak (about 2,500 pages, published May 2024) confirmed three things Google’s public reps had denied for years: site authority as a per-domain score exists, click data from Chrome is used to boost, demote, and reinforce rankings, and a “host age” parameter throttles brand new sites in what most SEOs already called the sandbox. On this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, my co-host Toni and I broke down what the leak actually revealed and how it fits with Google’s AI Overviews backfiring in real time.

The one thing Google apparently was not lying about is expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). The leaked API tracks author signals and applies a separate scorecard to YMYL (your money, your life) topics. So the E-E-A-T playbook still holds.

Below is what the leak confirmed, how Google’s AI Overviews are producing dangerous answers (eat rocks, add glue to pizza sauce, jump off a bridge), the Reddit and Quora ranking farms marketers are now exploiting, and what to do about all of it if you run a site.

Key takeaways

• Site authority is real. Google’s leaked API includes a “siteAuthority” score, even though public statements have denied a domain-level authority signal for years.
• Chrome click data feeds the ranking algorithm. This is a big part of why Google originally launched Chrome, and it now factors into boosts, demotions, and reinforcement.
• The sandbox exists. It is called “hostAge” in the leaked API and throttles new sites, exactly as veteran SEOs described for over a decade.
• E-E-A-T signals are tracked at the author level, and YMYL (your money, your life) content has a separate scorecard. Author authority and topic focus still matter.
• Backlinks from high-authority pages that get no traffic are devalued. Paying Forbes to publish a link on a dead page is close to worthless.
• Google AI Overviews are producing dangerous answers by parroting Reddit jokes: “eat one to two rocks per day,” “add a cup of glue to your pizza sauce,” and “find the nearest bridge and jump off it” in response to “I’m depressed, what should I do?” Google has since dialed AI Overview coverage back from around 80 percent of queries to under 15 percent.
• Reddit and Quora farms are now a real industry. One SEO (Spencer Haws) drove about 11,000 monthly visits by aging Reddit accounts to 1,000 karma and seeding links across subreddits.

What was in the Google Content Warehouse API leak?

The Google Content Warehouse API leak is a roughly 2,500 page internal API document published in May 2024 that describes the variables Google’s ranking systems track, and SEOs have combed through it to confirm behaviors Google publicly denied. It reads like technical API documentation, not a strategy memo, so the signals are inferred from parameter names and definitions.

The credible summaries (many people ran the document through ChatGPT to make it navigable) point to three big confirmations: site-level authority scoring, click-based ranking feedback loops, and a new-site throttle. These are all things the SEO industry believed for years and Google reps kept denying in public.

The gap between Google’s public statements and the leak is not accidental. Google withholds and sometimes contradicts information about the algorithm to discourage gaming, which the leak now makes explicit.

Google’s leaked “site authority” score explained

The leak confirms a “siteAuthority” variable, which is a per-domain authority score, even though Google’s public reps have denied domain authority as a ranking factor for years. This matches what every SEO could see happening in the results: Forbes can publish about a topic and instantly outrank an established niche site.

The trick was the terminology. Google denied “domain authority” (the term Moz uses), while the internal system uses “site authority.” Same idea, different label, and technically not a lie.

This is the same behavior that produces the “kid didn’t tell you everything” defense. Google’s public messaging keeps the exact API name off limits, so denials read as true even when the underlying capability exists.

How Google uses Chrome click data to rank pages

The leak indicates that Google tracks click data from Chrome and uses it for boosting, demoting, and reinforcing rankings, even though Google has publicly downplayed clicks as a ranking signal for years. That is likely a large part of why Google launched Chrome in the first place, because building better search required real click behavior data at scale.

Click signals are exactly the kind of feedback loop that other platforms like TikTok have used from the start. TikTok gives new content a small initial audience and then either boosts or demotes based on how people react, which is arguably a better model than throttling every new site by default.

The obvious concern with click-based ranking is manipulation (paid clicks, click bots), which is part of why Google historically avoided admitting it. The leak makes that avoidance harder to sustain.

The sandbox is real (it is called “hostAge”)

The leaked API includes a “hostAge” parameter that throttles very new sites, which matches what SEOs have called the Google sandbox for years and Google reps have consistently denied. Brand new domains get held back from ranking their own content for weeks or months, ostensibly to limit spam sites.

I lived this personally at Bumblebee Linens. When we launched, I could not even rank for my own domain name for about four months, which is unheard of today. What eventually pulled me out was a Google-authored blog post my sister in law happened to write that mentioned our store, after which our pages started appearing in results almost the next day.

The sandbox controls spam, but it also punishes legitimate new sites indiscriminately. A better model would be TikTok’s: show new content to a small audience, promote what performs, demote what does not.

What Google was actually telling the truth about (E-E-A-T)

Google’s public statements about E-E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) hold up in the leaked API, because Google does track author-level signals and applies a separate scorecard to YMYL (your money, your life) content like health and finance. Focused, expert authors on a tightly defined topic are advantaged.

The API also includes a “site focus score” that rewards sites that stay tightly on-topic, at least in theory. In practice this parameter is clearly not fully enforced, since Forbes now writes about everything from supplements to housing markets and still ranks.

For a new site, the E-E-A-T angle is the most actionable takeaway. Go deep on a specific niche (something like ultra marathon running in cold weather, if you have real expertise) rather than broad and shallow.

Google’s AI Overviews are backfiring right now

Google’s AI Overviews launched in May 2024 as front-and-center AI answers on search results, and they are backfiring because they parrot Reddit jokes and sarcastic answers as if they were fact. Google has already scaled AI Overview coverage down from roughly 80 percent of queries at launch to under 15 percent, but the damage to trust is already done.

The examples that made the rounds are cartoonishly bad: “I’m depressed, what should I do” returned a Reddit-sourced suggestion to “find the nearest bridge and jump off it.” “How do I keep cheese from falling off my pizza” returned “add a cup of glue to your sauce and that ought to thicken it up.” “How many rocks should I eat a day” returned “one to two rocks per day” from a Reddit joke thread.

For everyday searches, this destroys trust. Toni was recently searching Klaviyo documentation for dynamic coupon codes, spent three minutes reading what she thought was Klaviyo’s own knowledge base (it was even in Klaviyo’s brand colors), and only then realized it was an AI-generated summary that was partially wrong.

Why Reddit and Quora are gaming Google search now

Reddit and Quora threads now outrank most independent publishers in Google search, which has spawned an entire ecosystem of Reddit and Quora farming services that seed links into high-ranking threads for paying clients. Whole agencies have appeared in just the last few months to run this at scale for larger companies.

Our friend Spencer Haws is running the individual version of this strategy. He builds Reddit accounts up to around 1,000 karma each, then posts other people’s content plus occasional links to his own inside relevant subreddits. Last month that approach drove about 11,000 visits from Reddit alone.

The second half of Spencer’s play is owning a subreddit outright, which functions like a Facebook group you control. You can post more freely, but you have to grow the community first.

Quora is the same pattern. Instead of blogging on your own domain, marketers publish directly on Quora because Quora ranks for the query and their site does not.

What the Google leak means for backlink strategy

The Google leak indicates that backlinks from high domain authority pages that get little traffic are devalued in the algorithm, so paying $500 to Forbes to run a paid guest post is close to worthless if that post is buried on a low-traffic page. Sponsored placements on high-DR sites almost always land on exactly this kind of low-traffic archive URL.

Parasite SEO (placing content on a high authority site to piggyback on its rankings) got a partial crackdown in early May 2024, mostly through manual demotions on coupon and deal pages. Whether the crackdown is fully algorithmic yet is unclear, and most enforcement so far looks like case by case penalties on large sites rather than a systematic filter.

The takeaway is that the link needs to sit on a page people actually visit. A quiet link on the trafficked Wikipedia article for your topic is worth more than a paid Forbes placement on a dead page.

Google leak confirmations vs public denials

Here is the map of what the leak confirmed against Google’s long-standing public statements.

Is blogging still worth it after the Google leak?

Blogging is still worth it if the site sells a product, service, or brand, because Google is favoring content attached to a real business over pure affiliate and review sites. If the plan is a pure affiliate site or a review site that survives entirely on search traffic and affiliate revenue, 2024 is a rough time to start.

Ecommerce blogs are far less affected. Bumblebee Linens actually gained traffic in the latest updates, which is anecdotal but consistent with what I hear from other ecommerce operators. A product site tied to a real business has stronger E-E-A-T signals and is less exposed to helpful-content style demotions.

For an ecommerce brand, use WordPress on a subdomain (or a directory) rather than Shopify’s built-in blog if you have the time, mostly because of plugin flexibility. If setting up WordPress is going to keep you from blogging at all, the Shopify blog has improved enough in the last five years that it is fine.

What to actually do after the Google leak (playbook)

The right response to the Google leak is to lean into the signals it confirmed: build a real per-topic authority profile, earn links on pages that actually get traffic, and stop expecting new domains to rank quickly. That is a different playbook than the “publish 500 thin affiliate pages and pray” model that dominated the last decade.

Focus your site on a narrow topic and build depth (real E-E-A-T beats broad and shallow). Chase backlinks from pages people actually read (a link on a trafficked page beats a paid Forbes placement on a buried URL). Assume the sandbox is real (new sites need patience, plus off-platform signals that reference the brand by name).

Then diversify off Google entirely. YouTube, TikTok, email, Reddit, and Quora are all where a growing share of the click and trust flow is going, and Google’s own AI Overview mess is only accelerating that shift.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Google Content Warehouse API leak?

The Google Content Warehouse API leak is a set of internal API documentation (about 2,500 pages) that surfaced publicly in May 2024, describing the variables Google’s ranking systems store and pass around. It is written like technical API docs, so SEOs have been extracting the ranking implications by cross referencing parameter names and definitions.

What did the Google leak actually confirm?

The leak confirmed three things Google’s public reps had denied for years: a per-domain “siteAuthority” score exists, Chrome click data is used for ranking boosts, demotions, and reinforcement, and a “hostAge” parameter throttles brand new sites (the long-suspected sandbox). It also confirmed that author-level E-E-A-T signals are tracked and that YMYL content has a separate scorecard.

Are Google AI Overviews still being shown on all queries?

No, Google scaled AI Overview coverage back from about 80 percent of queries at launch (May 2024) to under 15 percent after high profile failures like “eat one to two rocks per day” and “add a cup of glue to your pizza sauce” went viral. AI Overviews still show on many informational queries, but not everywhere they did at launch.

Do backlinks from Forbes and other high-DA sites still work?

Backlinks from high domain authority sites still help, but only if the specific page hosting your link actually gets traffic, because the leak indicates that link value is tied to source page traffic. Paying $500 for a guest post that lands on a buried Forbes archive page is close to useless.

Is the Google sandbox really a thing?

Yes, the sandbox is real. The leaked API includes a “hostAge” parameter that throttles new domains, which matches what SEOs have described as the sandbox for over a decade even though Google’s public messaging denied it. Off-platform brand mentions and press coverage can help a new site exit the throttle faster.

Is Reddit farming a legitimate SEO strategy in 2024?

Reddit farming (aging accounts, then seeding links across relevant subreddits) is a real strategy driving real traffic in 2024, and paid Reddit posting services now exist. Anything Google is rewarding this hard usually gets throttled once the abuse becomes obvious, so treat Reddit as a supplement to owned channels, not a plan.

Should I still blog for SEO after the Google leak?

You should still blog if the site is attached to a real product, service, or brand, because Google is favoring content tied to genuine businesses. Pure affiliate or review sites that rely entirely on search traffic and affiliate revenue are the profile currently getting hit hardest.

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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.

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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