Amazon FBA Under Attack: Bans, Tariffs, and Freight Chaos (What You Must Do NOW)
In this live mentorship session, the host walks viewers through several urgent developments affecting Amazon FBA sellers and offers actionable advice. The first segment details the high‑profile Amazon ban of the "Evil Goods" brand owned by veteran seller Rob the Bank, explaining how review‑manipulation tactics led to a multi‑million‑dollar shutdown and underscoring Amazon’s zero‑tolerance stance. The discussion then shifts to the looming impact of new U.S. tariffs and rising freight costs, presenting a timeline of container delays, projected trucking shortages, and the resulting supply‑chain squeeze. Sellers are urged to audit SKU profitability, pre‑emptively raise prices, and avoid stock‑outs to survive the expected recession‑like environment. The host also highlights the imminent end of the $800 de‑minimis shipping loophole, describing how Chinese drop‑shippers have been exploiting it and what the closure means for Amazon sellers reliant on low‑cost imports. A brief tool comparison follows, where SmartScout is championed over Helium 10 and Jungle Scout for PPC‑driven keyword intelligence. Finally, the presenter advocates buying existing Amazon FBA businesses as a faster path to market, outlining the risks of launching from scratch versus the efficiencies of acquiring an established brand. Throughout, the host fields live questions from Discord and YouTube, reinforcing the mentorship’s interactive nature.
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Trying to see if things on. I think we're good. I think we're good, guys. Let me see. Perfect. We are good. All right, guys. All right. So basically in this live, I kind of want to go over. It's mostly geared towards our mentorship. People that have any questions. There are going to be some information that I want to go ahead and share as well. Basically information that's going on in the Amazon actual space that is very important to everyone. So without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and start sharing my screen. While going ahead and doing that, we'll also, you know, I'll also look for like Q&As, whether that comes from the Discord Primarily, or going ahead and coming from the YouTube. So what I wanted to share is a few things that's going on in the Amazon FBA space, primarily have to do with Rob the Bank. And if you guys don't know who he is, he's probably started Amazon FBA a few years before I did. He used to own the Genius brand, which they're currently selling today. He sold that brand to private equity. For I think like $10 million plus. And now he's still a big figure in the actual space. He came out with products like what we're going to mention here, Evil Goods, with a partner. And he came out with Her Loss, Top Shelf. And basically all of those brands are actually not currently selling on Amazon anymore, which is a good thing to do, right? It's like if you are in the space of Amazon FBA, You still have to play by the rules, right? And if you don't play by the rules, there are some consequences. And that's kind of what happened there. And if you guys saw his previous video or his latest video, you can see that, you know, he basically lost $15 to $20 million in net worth in just one day because this happened. So without further ado, basically here, Amazon brand over $20 million in revenue banned by Amazon. Again, which is crazy. It's called Evil Goods. And again, this is one of his brands that he did with one of his students with another famous YouTuber. I don't know his name currently right now. Maybe somebody in the chat can go ahead and drop it. But basically what they went ahead and did was they manipulated reviews and not so much for that they paid for the reviews. What they did was they went to competitors' listings and started comparing themselves to You know, the ones that they actually that customers are actually going ahead and looking to purchase. So this is probably really crazy, right? Because reviewers and people that are looking to go ahead and purchase these actual products were going ahead and you know looking to go ahead and purchase this. They look at the reviews; they gave them a five star, but they said evil goods is so much better. This this product is so good, but this one is even better. Which again, it is crazy. So let's kind of go into the context. Like new brands emerge on TikTok shop. And are exploding right now, which again, that's what Rob does, right? He goes ahead and finds these TikTok shops. That's what he goes ahead and preaches right now. I even, I'm even a part of his mastermind program. So that's kind of crazy right there, right? So by leveraging creators, they make a good commission, which again, it is a goldmine right now, right? If you, if you have a product that has, I want to say like a placebo effect that you don't know if it's actually working or not, you can easily convince someone to go ahead and purchase your product and still leave a good review just because of that placebo effect. So whatever, what do evil goods do, right? But one of the best examples, there are days where you know they're the single best selling product on TikTok shops. So this is how crazy this actual product is, right? Like it goes up toe to toe with like Goalie, right? Which is another big supplements brand. They cashed out over twenty million dollars in revenue on Amazon as well, right? So over two million per month that they're going ahead and doing on Amazon, and they just literally fell off the face. Of Amazon. As you can see the photos below, they got top reviews placed on competitors. The reviewers said that they liked the product but preferred Evil Goods. They used some black hat tactics to get pinned to the top and they wouldn't back down. This is review manipulation. The FTC sues over stuff like this. So of course, you know, Amazon's going to take this action. Finally, Amazon got bad guys and we all got to see it. The word is the top executive of the marketplace and they decided to keep Evil Goods down. So that's the craziest thing, right? Like, they make Amazon so much money on referral fees, on Amazon PPC, on storage, and they still ban them, right? We're talking about $2 million per month, and Amazon takes 15% of that, right? So Amazon lost out on a lot of money there. So takeaway, this is one, one place that Amazon keeps no prisoners. Review manipulation is the most Serious crime on Amazon. Yes, people get away with it, but if Amazon catches a whiff, then you're on the wrong side of the tiger with the tail, right? So that's a crazy thing, right? So again, that's that's why you want to stick to what's actually on Amazon, right? Like stuff that is legit and legal to go ahead and do. So do not go ahead and try and do any type of review manipulation, anything in that nature, because Amazon eventually. It's going to go ahead and catch on. And the crazy thing about it is that like you sleep more in peace when you're actually playing by Amazon's rules, right? So use the Vine program, go ahead and, you know, if you are going to try and get 1 or 2 reviews, that's friends or family, right? Like people have that have never went ahead and been hooked onto your Wi-Fi or, um, you know, have had stuff delivered to your actual place of business. That's always like a good rule of thumb. Um, but hopefully, you know, audio is good. I haven't got any complaints as far as like the audio not being, not being good or anything. So I think we're good to go. Um, okay. No messages right now on Discord. We're good there. All right. So moving on to the next thing that I wanted to go ahead and talk about, and that's tariffs, right? And not necessarily like tariffs as far as the cost of tariffs. But the impact it's going to have for like the economy moving forward. And I mentioned before that right now is probably one of the cheapest prices as far as freight is concerned. Just the freight costs, right? We're not talking about the tariff costs because tariffs are going ahead and having an impact on a lot of businesses. And if people try and tell you that it's not, most likely they're going ahead and trying to just sell you a course, a service, trying to tell you that everything is okay. But in reality, that's not what the experts think. And what do I say this, right? So I'm going to zoom out just a little bit here on my actual computer. Give me one second, guys. There it is. So what I want to go ahead and show you guys here is basically I have the Discord up. Sorry, guys. Okay, we're good. All right. So, so what you can go ahead and see here is this guy Craig that you can see right above my head right there. He's basically in the space of last-mile freight, or like you know once it gets to the United States, like what ends up happening, right? So he's basically saying that Apollo is one of a firm is going ahead and predicting a recession and stagflation coming to the U.S. by June with mass layoffs in trucking and retail. And this is kind of crazy, right? Because when I sell a variety of different products, and you can see that. If I share this with you right here, this is one of my suppliers that told me, look at this is what's being impacted, and this is basically the price of your actual goods. So you can see, like going Ontario is 1.35 per kilogram, 1.65, 1.85, 1.45. There's a typo here, so it's 1.45, and you can see where it's going, right? So this is from the West Coast, the quickest way to go ahead and get into Amazon FBA and Ontario eight. All the way down to something like IH3, which is you know sort of in the East Coast. But I didn't I didn't realize that this is only for heavy items, right? So I sell weighted vests, and this is probably for the weighted vests where I'm assuming that they can go ahead and kind of work a little bit with the tariff fee, right? Well, I just got a bill for my shoe cleaning business. It's almost three or two to three times this amount right over here, right? So I thought everything's gonna go ahead and be fine and dandy, but I was actually wrong, right? So we have to go ahead and kind of go into our SKU count on Amazon, try and see what our actual profitability is per item, see exactly the price and if you're actually profitable or not. And you have to determine like right now is the time to go ahead and raise your prices. Like Be the first one to raise your prices. I'm telling you this right now that you're going to go ahead and it's going to hurt from the very beginning. But once you go ahead and kind of solidify yourself as being profitable again, now you can go ahead and actually make good business decisions. Okay. So that's one thing you don't want to run out of stock in this situation. And I'm going to show you exactly why. So Craig basically is showing exactly the timeline of what's going to happen in the future when it comes to a lot of us Amazon FBA sellers. Which again, it's going to happen even if Trump announces right now that these tariffs are gone. There's still going to be some effects. And obviously there's been reports that these tariffs are actually going to last 2 to 3 years as far as trying to find middle ground or negotiating. So let's actually kind of get through the timeline, right? So April 2nd is when they announced all of these tariffs, right? Liberation Day, containers departing from China to the US slowly slowing rapidly, right? Right? Because that one day that they went ahead and said that it's going to go ahead and be effective in a week from now, these tariffs, these new tariffs, people started going ahead and shipping out these products almost immediately. I was one of those cases, right? Like whatever I have like on a boat right now or like something that's in my, you know, freight forwarder's warehouse, I went ahead and just as quickly as possible get it out of there. So this is kind of the timeline, right? So the thing is that like once he announces these tariffs, it's not like Overnight, people start raising their prices, right? People started started speculating that it's only going to go ahead and last a week, two weeks, and now we're almost a month in, and these tariffs have not gone away, right? So we kind of have to play it as if these tariffs are here to stay. So what's going to actually happen, right? So obviously, it takes around forty days to actually get into the United States somehow, some way with. When it leaves April, right? So now we're kind of early May, mid-May, as far as container ships in the U.S. ports come to a stop, right? This is literally a week to 2 weeks away where all the goods that have rapidly left China have basically, you know, before the tariffs hit, have already left. And now we're entering a space where people decided to wait, right? So that's what they're saying, that container shipping by mid-May is going to look like Insane. And then 1 to 10 days later, trucking and rail transit to the cities, right? So it takes time for these containers to arrive to the LA port. And then from the LA port, they get onto truckers. So they're saying that by mid-May to late May, which is a month from now, trucking demand comes to a halt, right? So which is— I mean, it's not good to see, right? So let me kind of move myself out the way right there too so you can see the rest of the portion. And they're saying that there's going to be empty shelves and companies respond to lower sales, right? So at that point in time, It's going to be late May, early June, layoffs in trucking and retail industries start going ahead and happening. Right. So we're about a month to a month and a half out as far as us really feeling this pain of no more supplies from China actually coming into the United States. So you can start seeing that if we start raising our prices now, we start going ahead and accounting for it now. Not only— I know our sales will go ahead and stop now, but people's sales are going to come to a halt. In May or June, and they went ahead and lost on so much profitability in April, May, and June. You see, if you go ahead and raise your prices now and your sales are slow now, that means that somebody else is getting your sales, right? And that might mean that they didn't raise their prices, which means that they're selling units profitably right now, but maybe they are planning on going out of stock, right? So this is that push and pull. It's called like game theory, right? Like, what do you do and what are your competitors going to go ahead and do? I forecast basically if you raise your prices right now, those customers are going to go elsewhere. Those people are going to run out of stock and they have no choice but to raise their prices if these tariffs don't go away. Right. It's a big if. But based on it right now, you can see a recession coming because people are likely going to go ahead and not reorder or have, you know, be out of stock for a certain period of time. And then we're going to be in summer where there's not enough goods. And now you're still in stock because your supply or your demand went down because you raised your prices. In April, but by June you might be the only one available to actually purchase, right? So that's why I'm strategically planning on raising my prices. I've raised a lot of my prices already, but I'm planning on raising my prices a little bit further now that I know as far as what my freight cost is, what my profitability is. You see, like, none of us can operate at a loss, especially us Amazon FBA sellers. Like, we're, we're small-time sellers, right? So just keep that in mind. Let's go ahead and see. So no chats there. I'm actually going to go on YouTube to make sure everything's going ahead and going smoothly. And again, guys, this, this whole live stream and why I do it is to answer questions as well. So if you guys have any questions, um, I know I'm coming after news and stuff like that, but if you guys have any questions whatsoever, go ahead and make sure to to leave them in the chat. Okay, and then going on Discord. No questions there. So one thing I also wanted to go ahead and share with you guys here is you guys can go ahead and share my screen. So again, these freight costs, right? So as I mentioned before, I got this email from one of my suppliers. I don't use them as freight. Like, I have my own freight company that I go ahead and use, and I've been using for the last 7 years of me doing Amazon FBA. But you can see for heavy items, again, and we all do DDP shipping. So our freight forwarder goes ahead and takes care of all the customs paperwork, X, Y, and Z, as far as what goes on in the actual business, right? So this is basically what my freight forwarder— I mean, the supplier sent me as far as their freight forwarder. And I thought to my— in my head, I was like, okay, well, if these prices are the new prices for everything, I'm okay, right? But at the end of the day, this was only for heavy items. So I would be interested to see as far as like what other people are going ahead and getting quoted, getting charged. Because, um, I'll go ahead and unshare my screen because I have to go ahead and go into WeChat and see. A different person quoted me for my shoe cleaning business right around $3.40 per kilogram. So, and what I was used to before was right around 1.5, right? So 1.6, 1.7. So for my shoe cleaning business, it's going to be impacted dramatically. So, um, so take that with a grain of salt, right? So I'm going to go ahead and look for any more questions that you guys might go ahead and ask. It's like, are you planning to use first sale rule for tariff migration? Okay. So that's another thing I want to go ahead and bring up, and I wasn't going to go ahead and bring up for until another livestream when it actually went to effect because we all know what's going into effect regarding the the eight hundred dollars. So let me go ahead and see exactly China shipping, and this is one thing that the duty-free demands shipping whatever, right? So Let me go ahead and kind of share my screen with you guys on this one. So as you guys know, or if you guys don't know, if you have less than $800 coming out of China, they qualify for like almost free type of shipping, um, which this thing here, this rule that goes ahead and goes into effect, um, I want to say May 2nd, so in just a few days We're literally talking about the end of this week, which I was going to go ahead and go over on Friday's livestream. So again, we're going to be having these livestreams every Monday and Friday, just so you know anything that went on on the weekend, we can go ahead and discuss anything that went on during the week. We can go ahead and discuss. So May second, this goes into effect where there is no more loophole. So basically, before people that are going ahead and traveling from different countries and trying to bring you know merchandise back, they don't get charged any type of duties because. You know, it's under $800. So that is going away. And there is a loophole that was being used by a bunch of Chinese sellers that, you know, this is why China is primarily, you know, scrambling because what they would do is, you know, they would go ahead and manipulate invoices, manipulate what's getting shipped into, um, into the United States. And they would say a bunch of their goods are $800 and below. And what they would do is they, instead of shipping, you know, a big package, um, big container shipments every single day, what they would do is they would go ahead and do drip systems into the United States. Um, and again, I'll have more information for you guys. I've already been going ahead and digging, but what they would do is they would literally manipulate a bunch of different types of documentation so they can get the cheapest shipping possible. So we're talking about places like Temu, places like Shein, Basically, whatever you can think of that's coming from China, all these dropshippers, they're able to go ahead and kind of manipulate all this. This is coming to an end. And I hope that this thing passes because this is going to be impacting a lot of Chinese sellers from Amazon FBA. So what I'm trying to say is, what they would do is they would drip, they would ship items every single day instead of going ahead and waiting for a big container to go ahead and ship out. Right. So They were saving so much on shipments, so there's no way around it. They have to go ahead and pay tariffs if they go ahead and take this away. So that's why a bunch of you know Chinese sellers on Amazon FBA are scrambling because obviously 50% of all sales come from Chinese sellers. So now that they're impacted by this and they're closing up this loophole, you know they're they're some way or another have to go ahead and pay. So I'll have more information on that on Friday. So, so I'll stay on for a little bit longer, guys, if you have any questions. Yeah, I have a question. And guys, there's like no way really around these tariffs, right? There's a lot of my suppliers that are already moving into like Indonesia, but they're building out plants, right? Like there's always— there's, there's already stuff that China already took into account when before this trade war even happened, where they have other countries like in Asia that they've already partnered with and they're already building manufacturing plants and some already are live. Right. But for most of us right now, um, there's no way really around it. Right. So trying to find a different supplier and trying to go ahead and find different goods and this and that, like this, that takes time, right? That takes like 6 months of work to try and find a different supplier. And in 6 months, you really don't know if these tariffs are going to still be here or not. Right. So instead of trying to do any drastic movements, focus on what's the most important thing with Amazon FBA, and that's do not run out of stock. Right. Try and figure out your profitability. Do not run out of stock because again, when COVID happened and they were limiting shipments into the United States, basically all my goods that were in China could not leave China. I was out of stock for a very long period of time. And if you find a different supplier and that happens to you, you may never regain ranking again. Like there's stuff right now, like for the shoe cleaning business that People that didn't run out of stock during COVID are like the best sellers that are selling 20,000 units per month. And it's kind of crazy to like, you know, think about that, that based on just one time of history, they were able to go ahead and get so much market share, so much repeat customers that because they didn't go ahead and run out of stock and they were like a US manufacturer at the time that was still facilitating in certain states that they were still open during COVID Like they benefited till now, which is again, I and I was out of stock for a long period of time. We're talking about two months that I was out of stock, and back when I was in 2020, I was in a way different position than I am now. Right? Like I was, I needed those Amazon FBA payouts during that time. That's all. Well, I mean, I guess everybody did, right? Because that's why PPP loans and EIDL loans, which you know at the time I didn't qualify for any PPP loans. I did qualify for an EIDL loan, but. Certain things to keep in mind. All right, guys. So if you guys don't have any more questions, I'm looking here. I mean, again, I'm giving you guys the opportunity to ask any type of questions, right? Whether that be in your business, me doing any type of deep dives or reviews. Go ahead and ask them. I'm an open book. So, and I'm looking at Discord right now. None of the members in the mentorship program are asking. Any questions right now? So take advantage if you are not in the mentorship program to ask some questions. You guys probably saw my dog in the background right now. You can kind of see him. Okay, so you think Smart Scout is better than Helium 10 for keyword research? The thing is, Smart Scout is good by analyzing PPC way better. And what I mean by PPC way better is that not only are they kind of telling you as far as what the price per click is going to go ahead and be, but they're telling you where your competition is going ahead and advertising on. So what Smart Scout does, and Jungle Scout Cobalt is the same thing. So not just Jungle Scout, you have to kind of upgrade to the Cobalt edition. We'll tell you exactly where the competitors are actually spending most of their money on. So what Smart Scout does is they'll take, they'll take information day to day, week to week, month to month, as far as who is at what spot in certain keywords. So for instance, let's take my shoe cleaner business, for example, right? So what they'll do is they'll scour, they'll go ahead and, you know, take data from shoe cleaner, shoe cleaning kits, sneakers cleaning kits, shoe cleaning kit for Jordans, whatever it might be, right? And they'll take a snapshot. It's like, okay, well, Um, you know, 25% of the time during every single day, Factory Lace, which is my brand, is 25% of the time they're at, they're on sponsored brands. So what this means is that you're not only are you able to dictate as far as like what the price per click is, but you're able to dictate what your competitors are spending most of their keywords, um, money on. I hope that makes sense. Right. So you're able to actually figure out which keywords are resulting in sales. For your competitors. So, because if they're not spending a bunch of money on a keyword, or if they're spending a bunch of money on a certain keyword, that means that it's profitable for them, right? So now you're going ahead and wasting a bunch of time. What I will say is though, in the very beginning, when you're launching a product, if you are brand new to launching a product, I would say that auto campaigns are going to be your best friend. Because you might think that you know exactly what keywords a customer is going to go ahead and resonate with your actual product. But that's why I go over like STP, customer avatar, this and that, because every product on Amazon FBA might be the same product, but it's targeted at a different person. So by going ahead and utilizing auto campaigns, you're allowing Amazon to really go ahead and analyze your listing page, your photos, your secondary images. And Amazon is sophisticated. Like people really don't understand how sophisticated Amazon is, right? So they know exactly based on your secondary images, your bullet points, your A+ content, X, Y, and Z, who your target market really is, or Or trying to get to your target market. So by allowing Amazon to do all the work with auto campaigns, that's why they're so good. Like, that's why people still use auto campaigns, right? Because it's powerful data. So if it's a brand new product, yes, I think auto campaigns are going to be the way to go. You can go ahead and create a keyword master list and this and that. But at the end of the day, I think Smart Scout is far and away better than any platform out there. Unless you have like Jungle Scout Cobalt. Which is very expensive. We're talking about like $1,500 a month. All right, guys. So it looks like we don't have much other questions here, but it's all right. We're gonna do this every Monday and Friday, guys, for the time being. Take advantage, ask your questions, especially people in the mentorship program. A lot of people are like are currently Amazon FBA sellers, and we already identify their bottlenecks and what they're going ahead and doing moving forward. But if you have any questions, like even if it's these tariffs or anything like that, like make sure to ask them. Who did you video for the weight vest? What do you mean? Who did I video for the weight vest? Elaborate a little bit more and I can go ahead and answer that question. Oh, who did my video for the Way to Vest? Okay, I get, I get what you're saying now. So who did the actual, like, uh, like the product videos? So you guys have to understand that Maverick, my Way to Vest, uh, the brand, I purchased it back in 2022. Uh, and when I purchased it, there was already a bunch of different, um, yeah. Who did it? Yeah, so there was already a bunch of videos, photos that were already done when I went ahead and purchased it. But last year, I went ahead and started hiring like UGC creators. So I have a bunch of different other videos that we try to do like Facebook ads. I can give you the number of the agency that I went ahead and used. They're okay. But yeah, I primarily go ahead and already have established you know videos and photos when I because. Because I only purchase Amazon FBA businesses now. And the best thing about, you know, that this is the reason why I kind of work with Amazon FBA sellers currently right now that already have a product. Because the hardest part of Amazon FBA is actually going ahead and launching a product. Because you can have everything, you know, figured out as far as like who you're going to target, this and that. But you still have to make sales, right? So that's why I purchase Amazon FBA businesses. Because not only does it take like 4 or 5 months to get started from scratch, There's no guarantee that you know it's going to be profitable at the end of the day because we can make a mistake on you know our STP. We can make a mistake on the product cost. We can make a mistake on advertising costs. We can make it. There's a lot of things that can go ahead and go wrong when you're first launching a product by going ahead and purchasing. Yes, you have to. You have a bunch of money tied up going ahead and you know you know starting from scratch takes a lot of time plus a lot of money. But but Let me rephrase that. You're saving so much more time by going ahead and purchasing the business. So I'd rather go ahead and spend that money knowing that all I have to do is identify what the inefficiencies of another owner did, go ahead and fix that, whether that be going ahead and lowering manufacturing costs, shipping costs, going ahead and scaling out with PPC. So yeah. All right. So, all right guys. So again, Friday, we're going to go ahead and do the live stream, 6:15 AM Pacific time. So, um, go ahead and make sure to have the questions in there, but we'll bring you all the news, latest strategies. Um, when it comes to Amazon closely, cause I want to go over how like coupons have changed with Amazon FBA too. Um, things that are changing within itself as well, as far as doing like brand promotions and this and that. So as they get closer and once they become more important, we'll obviously go over it. But that's why you guys subscribe to this YouTube channel, watch us, because, you know, we're always going to go ahead and give you the latest news as far as what's going on in Amazon FBA. But if you guys like this video, I'll go ahead and keep it up. You'll be able to watch it on 2x or whatever it might be. But enjoy, like, comment, subscribe. But until next time, guys, peace.
