Is Google hijacking Amazon Prime Day...!?️ [MDSR #25]

Hot Off The Presses 📰

From secretly working on a ChatGPT-killer to taking some (perhaps overdue) steps towards saving the earth, Amazon is quite literally always up to something — to the point that most of us forget they even sell books until a leaked document pops up to prove that 30 years later, their original business continues to thrive.

Nature is healing. People still read. And even angry Amazon sellers seem to be adjusting to a new normal rife with seller fees… At least until Amazon’s summer Prime Day event rolls around next month. 

As marketplace competition leads sellers to invest heavily and early in Prime Day ads despite having less leeway in their margins to offer the deep discounts consumers expect, Walmart is planning a competing summer shopping event this July — and whether Prime Day will be the windfall everyone expects remains to be seen. 

Complicating matters even further is the arrival of Google’s expanded shopping tools for price comparisons and deal-hunting. The timing begs the question whether Google really is the Switzerland of online shopping** or whether Google Shopping’s new exec — who worked at Amazon for 15 years — is planning to hijack Prime Day. 

**Where brands have to pay to play at the top of search results…

For Google, Amazon is both friend and foe. Sure, Amazon is one of their largest advertisers. But of the many retailers who have recently become full blown ad platforms, Amazon is by far Google’s biggest threat with 84% of marketers using retail media networks injecting at least some of their budget there — and making the most of Amazon’s new AI-powered tools for ad ROI.

Not to mention, it’s unclear whether Amazon’s ~200 million Prime members compare prices and shop around outside the Amazon ecosystem. Time will tell — with Google’s new Shopping search performance insights, merchants will soon find out…

Noise in the market is hardly deterring other players from (re-)entering the ring. Target and Shopify are teaming up to expand Target’s third-party marketplace, which currently hosts 1,200 sellers — a fraction of Amazon’s 2 million and Walmart’s 135,000. Elon Musk is trying to woo advertisers back to X. 

And pending ban or not, TikTok is winning the battle for younger social shoppers — but Pinterest is a platform to watch when it comes to growth potential and access to Gen Z audiences.

Now over to you…

Million Dollar Advice 💸 

If it feels like the Amazon sellers who manage to pump out a steady stream of social media content must have more hours in their day — or at least some secret weapon no one else knows about — then you need to hear this:

There’s no special tool to guarantee consistent content publishing. The only secret to steady success is the practice of batching.

Whether that’s batching the production of all content for a certain channel for the week — or batching all calls and meetings on a certain day so you can clear your schedule for content creation — Corey Ganim is here to tell you that content production is a lot more efficient without constant context-switching.

Listen to Corey Ganim: How to Batch Produce Content for YouTube, Twitter & Instagram

Amazon Data Trends To Know 🧠

Amazon is a defining force shaping the eCommerce landscape, and savvy sellers need to keep tabs on sales data, revenue trends, seller stats, and user demographics to fully grasp the platform’s performance — and what it means for them. 

To that end, Jungle Scout’s latest roundup of staggering Amazon stats is worth the read.

Here’s the Cliff’s Notes:

🛍️ Nearly 70% of consumers plan to shop on Amazon Prime Day this year — last year, Prime members bought more than 375 million items during the 2-day sales event

🍰 Amazon owns takes the largest slice when it comes to eCommerce sales, accounting for 37.6% of US online sales, compared to Walmart (6.4%), Apple (3.6%), eBay (3%), and Target (1.9%)

🧑‍💻 56% of consumers start their product searches on Amazon, beating out search engines (42%), YouTube (13%), and Facebook (10%)

💰58% of Amazon sellers start making profit within a year of launching their business, and 19% of small business sellers are surpassing $10,000 in average monthly sales

🍳 Home & Kitchen is the most popular category among SMB Amazon sellers (35%), followed by Beauty and Personal care (26%), and Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry (20%)

Think this list is helpful?

Purchasing behavior on Amazon 🗒️

According to a recent report on US consumers’ purchasing behavior, the vast majority of influencer-driven purchases happen on Amazon. 

Here are the 5 takeaways sellers need to know: 

1. Influencers themselves do most of their shopping on Amazon. Compared to other social media users, influencers are 2.1x more likely to shop on Amazon more than once per week.

2. Consumers are 7.6x more likely to make an influencer-driven purchase on Amazon compared to other sites and social shopping platforms like TikTok or Instagram.

3. Consumers aged 45-to-60 are most likely to make influencer-driven purchases on Instagram, while consumers aged 30-to-44 were more likely to make this type of purchase via an in-app shopping platform. 

4. 63% of weekly Amazon shoppers and 83% of influencers surveyed use social media to research their purchases prior to buying.

5. Video content influences Amazon purchasing decisions for 67% of consumers aged 18-to-29, beating out photos, blog posts, and all other types of online content. 

Get the full scoop here

How to upgrade those listings 🛒

Thinking about ways to 10x the quality of your listings and allow customers to visualize your products before purchasing?

Then you should know about caspa AI — the best way to upgrade your Amazon listings with lifestyle photos of your products and ultra-realistic AI human models. No Photoshop skills required.

caspa AI provides a platform for sellers to rapidly generate product images for listings, infographics, A+ content or social media that can make you stand out from your competitors and increase sales.

🚀 The platform offers a single, convenient solution for tasks like editing existing photos with AI, changing ethnicities of models to reach different demographics, creating unique AI stock photos, upscaling photos, and generating AI backgrounds — to name just a few.

There’s even a free trial and hands-on support when you’re getting started. So, what are you waiting for?

Struggling with your bookkeeping? 🧾

Do you wish you knew your numbers better on a monthly basis? 

Better yet, do you wish you didn’t have to spend time on handling your books each month? 

We’ve got 2 special offers for you today from our friends over at EcomBalance. 

Offer #1: Grab their Monthly Finance Meeting Agenda Download that they’ve been using and improving for the past 10 years. 

Consistently following this agenda each month helped them to scale FreeUp to 8 figures and eventually exit in 2019. They continue to use it today as they scale EcomBalance.

Click here to download their Monthly Finance Meeting Agenda

Offer #2: Get 1 free month ($499 to $1,000+ value) of bookkeeping. 

Click here to sign up and get a custom pricing quote on working with them. They’ll then be in touch to chat more about your business and your free month.

MDS community in the wild 🐾

Making meaningful relationships, the MDS way  🤝

Looking for connections like these? Look no further than MDS Inspire 2025…

Did you see that post 📲

Prime Day is obviously a great day for product sales, but it’s also a huge day to research your next products to source… 

Until Next Time ✌️

As always, thanks for sticking with us until the end. 

If you’d care to share your thoughts on this newsletter, we’re all ears. Just hit reply to sound off. 

See you next time with more of the latest and greatest content you need to succeed this year 🔥

Sincerely, 

Looking for a mastermind community?

Million Dollar Sellers (MDS) is an exclusive community of 650+ like-minded Amazon and DTC sellers from all over the world. Collectively, our members generate more than 8 billion in annual sales and dominate some of the biggest categories on Amazon. MDS offers world-class events, chapters, industry discounts, resource libraries full of SOPs, templates, and video recordings of private trainings, workshops, events and so much more.

If you are looking for a business professional community made for ecom entrepreneurs, then consider applying today. 

*To qualify, you must be a full-time seller or brand owner and do at least 1 million in verified annual revenue.