You and 3,990 others are here to enjoy this newsletter or I’ll start to write it with only AI like every other lazy writer (just kidding, f—that).

Welcome back friend!
And a big welcome to the +114 new readers this week!

If your customers have to think to much, that’s a problem. Make things simple for people, and they will reward you with their hard-earned money.

I wrote a post recently about how the way that most people show their product dimensions is a flat-out wrong. If you’re curious, it’s here. 

Here's another example of giving customers a little “brain shortcut” that's going to convert a lot better for this brand.

Finding more of these sorts of mental shortcuts will help your Amazon listings in a big way. And any time you can make things simpler for people…do it.

Sponsored by Seller Snap

Seller Snap Launches Walmart Repricer!

Trusted for Amazon. Now for Walmart.

Seller Snap, the team behind the most trusted algorithmic repricer for Amazon sellers, has officially launched its Walmart Repricer. With instant setup (just plug in your min and max prices) and no complicated rules, it brings powerful, AI-driven automation to Walmart sellers.

Designed to win the Buy Box without price wars, this solution helps multichannel sellers stay competitive while protecting their margins, all from one platform.

✅The Instant Value Section (IVS)✅

(aren't you glad you opened the email now?)

Huge thank you to my new friend Oana Padurariu for supplying this week’s IVS. Along with Andrew Bell, Oana has been on the frontier of all things RUFUS & COSMO. You may remember their huge Blueprint. She was kind of enough to provide a simple & easy way to find out if Amazon AI understands your product listing. Check it out, below. Thanks, Oana!

Last year, COSMO became the hot topic in every serious Amazon conversation. Everyone agreed it mattered (but no one could explain how to actually optimize for it). That ends here.

I’m finally sharing what no one else pointed out: the 15 core relationships Amazon’s COSMO framework actually relies on to understand, rank, and recommend your product… straight from their own science paper. These aren’t guesses or hacks. They’re the foundational building blocks Amazon’s AI uses to connect your listing with what shoppers actually want.

I built a set of 15 diagnostic questions, each mapped to one of these COSMO relations. These are the same relations Amazon’s system uses to evaluate if your listing is complete, contextually relevant, and behaviorally aligned. Run these questions through any AI against your content. If the AI can’t answer them, COSMO can’t either. That’s your blind spot. That’s what’s holding you back.

This isn’t about stuffing more keywords. It’s about speaking the language COSMO understands. Directly from Amazon’s own framework. For the first time, I’m sharing that language with you.

SFTB Note: We tested this out - check out the loom, here.

Use RUFUS for Price Alerts

Did you know you can now use RUFUS to set price alerts for Amazon products?
Perhaps you’ve been eyeing that huge bouncy castle for…important and mysterious reasons?

Set a simple price alert! Check out Mansour’s post to see how. Pretty darn cool!

Setting up our new House in Costa Rica

The last two weeks have been all about wrapping up the house and getting settled. The punch list is shrinking, but we’re still fixing a few things. Why won’t the garage door close every time? Why are the gym lights acting up? Can we get the Cat 6 cable working at both the TV and below it? First world problems, I know.

The good news is the mancave (also known as the LEGO room) has been a hit with the whole family. It probably helps that the internet is faster in there than in the kids' bedrooms, but I’ll take the win.

Next week’s focus is getting the office ready for podcasting and cleaning up the Lego room, which is currently a disaster. And yes, I got him a chair.

A Free PPC Tool that is Guaranteed to Save you Money

My good friend Anthony Nguyen over at Adscrafted has been quietly building the most useful PPC toolset I’ve ever seen. Raw practical utilities that solve real problems for Amazon Sellers.

Here’s one of my favorite tools of his. A Bulk RENAMER! This thing has already saved me a ton of time by helping me fix unorganized campaign names quickly.

FWIW, here’s the structure I personally use (steal it if you like!)

FWIW, here’s the structure I personally use (steal it if you like!)

The Deep Dive (Premium Content)

STOP YELLING AT YOUR CUSTOMERS!

I honestly never thought about ALL CAPS being an issue in your images until I talked to my friend Oliver Bradley. He’s obsessed with friction, clarity, conversion rate, and making images accessible to everyone.

Here's why using ALL CAPS in your images & packaging sucks:

When we read, we don’t go letter by letter. Our brains recognize word shapes. These shapes are made by a mix of tall letters like b and h, short ones like a and e, and letters that drop below the line like g and y.

That’s how reading stays fast. We’re pattern matching.

But when you type in ALL CAPS, every letter becomes the same height. You lose the shape. You flatten the word into a block. Every word becomes a rectangle. No visual contrast. No cues for the brain to scan.

(As an aside, I had a science teacher in high school who wrote notes on an overhead projector ALL IN CAPS ALL THE TIME. I guess that's why it was so hard for me to concentrate? 😅)

...Anyway...

So what happens?

• Reading slows down

• Understanding drops

• Mental effort goes up

And your conversion rate takes a hit.

This isn’t just an aesthetic choice. It’s backed by research. Reading all-caps slows you down by up to 20 percent. It increases fatigue. It reduces comprehension. Especially on mobile, where shoppers are scrolling at speed.

If your key info is buried in a hard-to-read wall of text, no one’s reading it. They’re skipping you.

Check out the example above. Great product. Great idea. But the text design is killing their click-through rate. If you're doing this on your own packaging or image overlays, fix it now.

Use sentence case. Use line breaks. Make it scannable.

And if you want to get your conversion leaks caught before they go live, talk to Oliver. He sees stuff most people miss.

AMEX US Business Gold finally has competition

If you've been in the Amazon space for any length of time, you'll likely know that the Amex Business Gold is the best credit card you can use to put your USA PPC spend on.

But… there’s finally a new competitor.

If you’re running serious ad spend, the new Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business might be the best points card on the market right now. It gives you 3× points on digital advertising. Most importantly, it’s uncapped. You can spend $10K or $500K and you’ll still earn 3× on all of it. Compare that to Amex Business Gold, which gives 4× points but only on your top two categories and only up to $150,000 per year. After that, you’re earning a weak 1×.

The Amex Business Gold is still better, but you have to switch cards every $150,000 of spend. I personally know people who have 10+ cards and are constantly switching them… a big hassle.

What do you think?

Flamingo’s JP’s Bar and Grill

A newer spot opened earlier this year in Flamingo, run by JP and Mary, a couple originally from New York. It’s a solid sports bar, but what makes it fun is that it’s a real example of two people chasing the dream of owning their own place.

They’ve been coming to the area for over 20 years, and opening a sports bar in Costa Rica was always part of the dream. Now they’re living it. Pretty much every night, both of them are there. JP usually greets you at the door, hands out popcorn, and gives the kids old-school bottled Coca-Cola from the vintage machine.

The whole place is decked out in sports memorabilia they’ve collected over the years. It’s a cool little hangout spot near the Flamingo Marina. Personally, I love that they actually went for it and seem to be enjoying every minute.

If you’re in the area and want to catch a game, check it out: JP’s Bar & Grill

• Max looks for a new company to receive Amazon returns & resell the stuff on eBay.

Amazon Kills Prep Services in 2026

Did it just become easier for Amazon to lose your stuff and blame you for it?

Starting in 2026, Amazon is ending all FBA prep services: no more polybagging, bubble wrapping, taping, or relabeling. From now on, if it needs prep, you do it yourself.

Why? Probably because it costs them money.

Here’s a spicy theory from Noah Wickham: Amazon loses inventory during receiving all the time. Right now, if something goes missing, you get reimbursed. That means they eat the loss. But if they can say you didn’t label it properly, that’s a different story. No reimbursement. No responsibility. Just “your fault.

According to Noah, Amazon’s about to blame sellers more often, keep the product, and avoid liability.

Personally, I don’t buy the full conspiracy theory. I don’t think Amazon is scheming to lose your inventory on purpose. But I do think this opens the door to a much bigger issue: What happens when you actually mislabel something?

Before, Amazon would fix it. Now? They won’t. If you send in 500 units and there's a label error, it's coming back to you. That’s cost. That’s delay. That’s risk.

Have you ever used Amazon’s prep services? Does this change mean anything to you?

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To your peaceful future,

Rob & Max