This Issue's TLDR...

• What to expect during Prime Day 2026
• Amazon AI generated images are sneaking into your image stacks
• The Amazon fees are too damn high

👉 Did someone forward you this newsletter? First of all, give them a crisp high five when you see them. Second, head over here to subscribe and read past issues.

And, be sure to read my most popular issue ever: 15 Cool Hacks For Your Amazon Business.

**PROGRAMMING NOTE: Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be transitioning this newsletter to Beehiiv, so posting might be less frequent.

SPONSOR TrueOps Smart Sellers Audit with TrueOps. Let's keep this simple: They find money others miss. They only charge you when Amazon pays you. Their rates are some of the best in the industry. You don't need to switch providers right now. You just need a free audit. It costs you nothing. But ignoring it? That could cost you thousands. Get Your FREE Audit Today PS: One of my Best@Amazon readers recently emailed me a recap of their first 90 days of recoveries after switching to TrueOps. On this reader's $8mm revenue business, TrueOps found $615k in recoverable funds, and clawed back $166k of that in the first 90 days. This reader also mentioned that their existing reimbursement provider was failing, egregiously, and seeing claims denied repeatedly. TrueOps fixed that.

Because Amazon waits until the last minute to reveal the actual Prime Day dates, most of sellers' Prime Day preparation is already baked.

Inventory is already inbounded to FCs (I hope), deals are set up, PPC budgets are (mostly) locked.

People like to act as if it's this massively busy and overwhelming period for sellers, but the reality is that the work is pretty spread out.

And, increasingly, many sellers are opting NOT to participate in Prime Day (that's been me for the past 3 years).

But for those brands and sellers that are "betting the farm" on Prime Day this year, what can they expect?

Well, I went back and looked at post-event data from Prime Day 2025, when the event was first expanded from 2-days to 4-days.

I don't have a crystal ball, but I think it's highly likely that these patterns repeat.

What *are* those patterns?

Well:

1. Activity peaked on Day 1, declined through the middle days, then saw a partial rebound on Day 4 as shoppers finalized purchases.
2. Days 1–2 saw high browsing/click-through rates (product discovery and cross-marketplace comparison). Days 3–4 showed surging conversions and average order values as pent-up demand hit (shoppers waited until the end).
3. The day before Prime Day (July 7) generated more orders than official Day 1 in some datasets (+4%). Build-up period clicks averaged 61% higher than during the event itself.
4. Day 1 had balanced volume with clear evening peaks (Eastern/Pacific time). Days 2–4 had slower mornings and pronounced spikes around 6 PM PST.

As seller or brand, first of all, I would front-load your deals and PPC budget to capture Day 1 traffic.

Second, we know that browsing is happening in the lead up to the event, and during the event, so adjust your pricing -- even just by $0.01 -- to trigger Amazon's automatic push notifications to customers that have items in their cart.

And third, if you're going to day-part, bias your budgets and/or bid adjustments toward the evenings of Days 2-4.

Hope this helps, and I wish you all a successful Prime Day! (whatever that means for you)

FRIENDS OF B@A SmartScout Most of you probably know...I'm a BIG SmartScout fanboi. I use it daily, and I bother Scott Needham and the team there with feature requests every month. EVERY seller and brand should be using it, IMO, and, to that end, I asked the SmartScout team for a special offer for my Best@Amazon audience. This is ONLY available to Best@Amazon readers. And, here's the offer: Free SmartScout trial for 10 days and then 35% off for 3-months You won't find this offer anywhere else. Go ahead and look. Or, just take the offer. Get the "JON SPECIAL" offer

​

BEST from LinkedIn

Three call-outs here:

1. At my agency, Color More Lines, we're seeing this happening in ~40% of our client accounts, and regularly monitoring/escalating.
2. Sellers currently cannot opt out of these AI-generated images at the account level
3. If you're a service provider, you may not see the "Brand Catalog Lock" feature, if you don't have the correct Brand Registry permissions

Thanks for flagging this, Nik.

BEST from X

This is a long read, so out of respect for your time, I'll keep my commentary to a minimum here and just say...

This is the canary in the coal mine for Amazon.

Large sellers are aggressively diversifying away from Amazon, and in 2-3 years time, that impact will be felt.

Amazon can continue to recruit new sellers, but mathematically, it needs 1000s of new sellers to replace the GMV of every 1 large seller that has moved off-platform.

Amazon would be well-served to get ahead of this, and remember the 80/20 of which sellers pay the lion's share of the platform fees.

BEST from X [BONUS]

This is a year old, but I'm dusting it off because Prime Day is once again around the corner, and I am once again preaching to all the brands that I talk to:

1. Know your Unit Economics
2. Know your CAC

Drew Fallon @drewfallon12 As we embark on prime day, one of the most important things that is most often missed by operators is the gross margin impact of the promotion, and its subsequent impact on LTV:CAC One of my gripes as a CFO in dealing with existing analytics & finance tools on the market is that 1:8 PM • Jul 9, 2025 1 Retweets 34 Likes Read 17 replies

​

​​​