Jeff Talajic

Helping entrepreneurs scale their Amazon businesses | Need help: | 20M+ of Amazon sales under management.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@AndySkraga REC

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@publisherinabox Amazing stuff, thanks for sharing as always.

If I'm reading this right, there are no Ads on Reels, so are you really just pushing Image posts?

I'm going to revive a page I have with 26k followers and wondering if I should focus on images or reels.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@publisherinabox @Aswinroy01 Do you recommend Reels as part of your strategy or is it really all about the images?

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@publisherinabox @vibrantdad Interesting. Are they likely sending over a document to sign or this is just over DM?

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@iannuttall The truth connected with all of us.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

This is gold.

[jack friks @jackfriks]

i think the best choice i’ve made on the internet it to avoid publicly criticizing anyone specifically. instead i’ve chosen to encourage specifically and it’s come back ten fold. show love, get love.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@johnrushx @levelsio What happened on LinkedIn? That’s messed up

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@marclou “Oh you’re absolutely right!” 😂

Shut up and fix it!

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@BillZanetti The LL fees are way up, we’ve been using them less and less.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

Using Grok to PRD, Cursor/Claude to code, and GPT to ask questions and get advice along the way.

[Allie K. Miller @alliekmiller]

I’m surprised how much is solved in AI by just having another AI.

Examples:
Use one GPT to write, one GPT to edit
Use one model for ideas, one for tone
Use o-family reasoning to lay out research tasks, GPT-family to execute
Use one to suggest strategies, one to predict outcomes
One for newsletters, one for subject lines, and one for tweets to promote it

And you can quickly see how splitting tasks, stacking, coordinating improves the output from LLMs beyond a traditional generator-discriminator setup.

The killer app in AI is… more AI.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@thepatwalls The Gemini snippet eats up so much real estate. Every SEO guru is now a FB guru.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@levelsio I was surprised to see @elevenlabs has a voice agent designed for use in games. It’s too expensive but yeah that makes so much sense.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

The hottest new programming language is English

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@iannuttall I’ve been comparing it to using performance enhancing drugs. Not that I actually know what that’s like 😂

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@JHartFlips Seeing way less FBA everything these days. I think sellers are jumping ship.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@thecharmco I saw so many Halloween costume sellers get destroyed on returns last year.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@johnrushx @gregisenberg @meetLCA Oh wow. I haven’t heard “blockchain” in so long. AI is different though. It’s much more tangibly useful.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

Solid rundown.

[Scott Needham @itsScottNeedham]

63% of Amazon Sellers think that Amazon is not a fair marketplace.

If we just look at Private Label Brands, that number jumps to 74.2%.

But what about the 1/3rd that think it's fair? Any compelling reasons?

CONTEXT

Amazon is the largest online marketplace. Hauling in over 40% of every dollar on e-commerce, it's the center of universe for ecom if we're being honest. With the leading sellers being small and medium sized businesses pulling in most the revenue, being a fair marketplace and being perceived as a fair marketplace is critical. Amazon needs trust from small brands and established brands.

Here's five ways Amazon isn't "fair".

1. Black Hat Sellers - Whether it's putting in blacklisted keywords into competitor listings, or going so far as getting competitive sellers taken down. This is where the stories of being the nice guy winning end. It's demoralizing when it's a repeated issue. Sometimes they wait until shopping holidays to take action.

2. Pay to Win - More and more it takes money to make money. How many great products never made it because they didn't have an advertising budget. Sure this isn't particularly unfair, but it doesn't leave new and emerging entrepreneurs able to succeed.

3. Amazon Private Label - This has all sorts of conflict of interest. Looking inside competitors data. Free advertising. If there's one thing Amazon can do to change perception, I'd look here first.

4. Buy Box Issues - Whether it's fighting for control with other sellers or Amazon's opaque suppression algorithms. It leads small and large brands throwing their hands in the air. After selling on over 100k Amazon FBA listings, I'm still seeing head scratchers.

5. Seller Support and Compliance Issues - Why does it feel like you're the only one getting scrutinized by Amazon. Or seller support is slow or unable to respond to a repeated listing takedown that is completely bogus.

So what about the case for Amazon being fair? It's easy to argue that Amazon has shortened the product improvement lifecycle. Every year, better and more compelling products are launched. Many of these are chosen by customers. These products win and get accelerated growth. The entrepreneurs dream. Amazon does take this seriously and makes changes rapidly.

TAKEAWAYS

Perception is truth. Even if there are a lot of fair parts to selling on Amazon, people don't feel that way right now. If that were Amazon's end goal, they'd certainly make changes. But they have many competing incentives and ultimately they're a business responsible to their shareholders.

Sellers are shareholders too. They have passion for thriving business and I for one hope that Amazon continues to improve.

Source: The Voice of the Amazon Seller report from SmartScout. For further insights like this, link in the comments.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

@guyfosel Those annual renewals can be brutal. You save 20-30% but then you’re locked in. And if you miss your cancel date you’re f-ed for another 12 months.

[Jeff Talajic @jefftala]

Amazon doing Amazon things. Making fee hikes sound like fee reductions.

[Bearded Egg FBA 🛠️ @guyfosel]

Another sneaky fee hike from Amazon...