#477 – Hijacked Amazon Trucks + TikTok Shop Strategies
Audio Version Above. Video Version Below.
In this episode, Bradley Sutton kicks off a brand-new era for both the AM/PM Podcast and the Serious Sellers Podcast with co-hosts Carrie Miller and Shivali Patel. This simulcast episode sets the tone for what’s coming next: more Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and AI-driven strategies designed to help you make money in the AM and the PM. Bradley also shares the new format for both shows, including Weekly Buzz moving to AM/PM Podcast, expert-led trainings, and a renewed focus on real seller stories on Serious Sellers Podcast every Monday.
From there, things get wild. Carrie tells the story of a truckload of her Amazon inventory being hijacked on the freeway like a scene straight out of Fast & Furious, complete with a fake carrier, turned-off tracking, ransom demands, and a loss that ballooned to around $70K after tariffs. She breaks down what she learned about freight, tariffs, switching manufacturing from China to Turkey, and why sellers need to be more hands-on with carriers and agencies alike. Shivali then shares her own hard lesson: a high-margin product that kept failing customers, forcing her to pull the listing and rebuild the brand off-Amazon using a digital-first strategy that pairs a makeup mastery course with a physical product bonus and a new funnel powered by Google Ads.
To round out the episode, Shivali walks through exactly how she became a TikTok creator in just 12 days, qualified for the Creator Pilot Program, and started monetizing with TikTok Shop using existing camera-roll content, smart reposting, and product tagging. She also reveals some under-the-radar AI tools like Higgsfield and Arcads that can help sellers generate before-and-after content, influencer-style videos, and scalable creatives without always needing the physical product on hand. Carrie closes with one more key reminder for Amazon sellers: start paying attention to Rufus and optimize your listings around the real questions shoppers are asking, because AI-driven search is already changing how people discover products on Amazon.
In episode 477 of the AM/PM Podcast, Bradley, Carrie, and Shivali discuss:
- 00:00 – Bradley kicks off the new era of the AM/PM & Serious Sellers Podcasts
- 02:03 – Fast & Furious moment: an Amazon shipment gets hijacked
- 03:20 – How the thieves impersonated the carrier and held the load for ransom
- 05:14 – $70K in losses and what sellers MUST know about subcontracted carriers
- 07:48 – Turning a product failure into a digital-product-first business model
- 15:50 – Carrie moves manufacturing from China to Turkey – costs vs. tariffs
- 16:55 – Major announcement: Weekly Buzz moves to the AM/PM Podcast
- 22:10 – How Shivali became a TikTok Creator in 12 days &
- 27:45 – Carrie’s Amazon PPC agency disaster & how she rebuilt with Helium 10
- 34:05 – AI tools sellers haven’t heard of
- 36:45 – Optimizing Amazon listings for Rufus AI
- 37:55 – The future format of both podcasts moving forward
Transcript
Bradley Sutton:
Today, we talk about the completely new and revamped AM/PM podcast and Serious Sellers podcast, and we talk AI strategies. And we hear from Carrie who had a whole container of her Amazon product hijacked on the freeways of California like a Fast and Furious movie.
Bradley Sutton:
And guys, for the first time, we are here. We are doing, I guess you would call this a simulcast. This is a special episode on a special day that we normally don’t release podcasts on, but this episode is duplicated on the AM/PM podcast and the Serious Seller’s podcast because we are about to enter a new era of both podcasts at the same time. And to help us, you know, go through this, we’ve got our other cohost of the podcasts and weekly buzz, Carrie Miller and Shivali Patel. Welcome to our show.
Carrie Miller:
Thank you.
Shivali Patel:
Thank you so much for having us on.
Bradley Sutton:
Now before we get into all the new changes that are happening on the both of these podcast, guys, make sure to stay tuned for that because it’s very important. You know, some of the podcasts that you’ve been listening to, like Weekly Buzz is moving to another one and other things are moving around. And so it’s very important that we get to it and you guys know the new schedule and stuff. But let’s just do like we always do on both of these podcasts and talk some strategy and just ecommerce in general. Carrie, let’s start with you. You’ve had quite a year on Amazon.
Carrie Miller:
Yeah.
Bradley Sutton:
Including some things that would be great for the Fast and Furious-
Carrie Miller:
Yes.
Bradley Sutton:
Eleven movie. Talk about your fast actually, what happened was from the Fast and Furious first ever movie of a truck being hijacked with your products. So can you tell us a little bit about what in the world happened to a container of your Amazon products?
Carrie Miller:
Yes. But, yes, it has been a very interesting year. So, the first thing that happened this year, not only we had tariffs that are introduced, which is a challenge, but then this truckload, we actually moved, we’re moving our warehouse from Moreno Valley to Reno, Nevada. And so we have we are working with Mainfreight, and that was our 3PL, and so we’re just moving it. And, basically, we hired a trucking company to go in and ship. There’s gonna be four truckloads of our stuff up to this new warehouse. And so, we were actually doing it in increments just to make sure that we had available inventory. So, we kind of split it up so that it was just a smarter way to do it. And so, we did the first truckload. And the first truckload, they loaded it up in Moreno Valley, and this was the email that we got. It says, we have some unfortunate news. Received a notice from the carrier that is it possible that a load was stolen and or transloaded? The carrier booked on this load had their identity compromised and was impersonating them. While the load was tracking, the driver or bad actor turned off their location. The fraudulent party is now contacting the carrier holding the load hostage for ransom.
Carrie Miller:
So basically, we had an entire truckload stolen, and they said they were possibly holding the truckload hostage for ransom. And it says, we contacted the shipper to provide the driver log information with the correct truck, trailer, and motor carrier information in order to report the stolen cargo to the local police department. Unfortunately, this is the extent of the information we have and we’ll advise as more details arise.
Bradley Sutton:
Did they think it was like some South American gang or something like that? They even had some suspects, or were they just speculating?
Carrie Miller:
No. But I’ve actually talked to some other people, and I actually talked to, just some other kind of well-known people in this industry that work with it, like an agency owner. Some other people who said that bigger brands are just taking huge losses on this, and that this is a kind of a newer thing that’s happening. And what they’re doing is they’re stealing these truckloads, and they’re just going straight to Mexico. It’s especially in Southern California, it’s super easy to get go straight to Mexico. I mean, we’re what, like an hour from the border there. So, it’s like-
Bradley Sutton:
Alright. I’m gonna be on the lookout here in San Diego. And then when I go down, my dentist is in Mexico. If I see a lot a very organized cartel or big gang and they’re all wearing these great socks that Carrie has, well, now I know that-
Carrie Miller:
Yeah.
Bradley Sutton:
Carrie is not sponsoring these gangs, guys.
Carrie Miller:
No.
Bradley Sutton:
If you ever see that. She is not involved in the criminal underworld, but that those are the ones who are responsible for hijacking on the streets of L.A.
Carrie Miller:
Yes.
Bradley Sutton:
A container of Carrie’s Amazon products. But did that result in you guys, like, know, seriously speaking here, did that result in you guys, like, running out of stock of those things? I imagine that it was probably like a few months of inventory. Right?
Carrie Miller:
The challenge was we so we had forty thousand dollars’ worth of inventory stolen. That’s forty thousand of what it would have been before the tariffs, but then after it was more like a seventy thousand. So, we actually got recovered forty thousand dollars, but then when we had to repurchase it, it was much higher amount. So, it was definitely you know, you know, it’s not that great. But I do have some recommendations for people. The trucking company that we hired, they subcontract out. So, if you talk to a trucking company, you want to make sure that they have their own employees, their own drivers. Because I know a lot of trucking companies do this, but this has become a huge problem. And I know that other people have dealt with this. Or if you’re, you know, able to somehow get some air tags into your load, that might help as well. But the sad thing is, especially in California, that the police do not act quickly. Like, they’ve never even acted on it. There was no there was no movement in terms of the police trying to figure out what happened to it. It was just gone. So, I thought it was crazy though. I’m like, ransom? What are we like, done in South America? This is crazy.
Bradley Sutton:
That was a bad story. Now, Shivali, you had a similar bad story on your Amazon product where it was more let me call it mainstream problem as opposed to a, you know, shipment getting hijacked by terrorists. But, you had some big quality issues that kind of, like, killed one of your listings. Right?
Shivali Patel:
Yes. Correct. And it was a great product too with forty-five plus percent margins. But thankfully, that built in some space for me to do something with the actual product. It gave me some time to think about what to do next. But I did end up having to pull that product from Amazon because I was getting so many returns simply due to the quality. And this product, you the next question you might be thinking is, well, did you do an inspection check? I did. And it failed that inspection check, which is why I waited until that product had better quality. You know, it actually passed the inspection. But even then, by the time that the product arrived and people were receiving that product, they were not happy with it. So, I did have to take other measures.
Bradley Sutton:
If it passed, the ended-up passing, like, can you go to the inspection company? Hey. Why did you guys pass this the second time? Or it still sucks, this product. Is that something you can do?
Shivali Patel:
I definitely could. But at the end of the day, right, the product’s already been received.
Bradley Sutton:
Yeah.
Shivali Patel:
And we already have it. And I ended up pulling the product, whatever it was at the Amazon facilities to my house, and I was able to inspect that product myself. And it was quite literally falling apart. I did an in-person event here actually in Raleigh where I took some of the products and I put them out. And as it was sitting outside, people would open it and it would fall apart in their hands. It was like the worst-
Bradley Sutton:
Wow.
Shivali Patel:
Thing. And like, I knew that there’s some of the quality had an issue, but I didn’t expect it to fall apart that way just sitting there.
Carrie Miller:
Wow.
Shivali Patel:
So that’s how bad it was. And thankfully, I’ve taken steps to pivot that. That brand is still very much alive. It’s just not on Amazon.
Bradley Sutton:
Now, Shivali, like one thing I think you’re still not gonna like, I have your product stored at my warehouse. You haven’t asked me to throw it away, but, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you have a plan where you’re gonna almost, like, flip the complete game and you had offered, like, a course with as a bonus for the product, but now you’re switching and, like, offering the course is the main product, and then you’re gonna almost, like, just give away some of these defective things. Is that, was that am I oversimplifying your game plan there, or can you get give us more detail?
Shivali Patel:
That’s absolutely correct. Last year, I was a really big proponent of saying you should sell a digital product with your physical product. I still very much believe that because I think that’s the whole reason that that brand had success on Amazon, why it flew off of the shelves. It wasn’t because necessarily I just did great product research with Helium 10. I think beyond that, it was the perceived value that that product came with. It was piped up because people said, oh, you’re not only just getting a product, you’re getting an experience out of it. And it’s a great gifting opportunity because of it. I also offered live coaching classes. Now what’s really cool is that’s the reason I had great profit margins, and that’s why when things went wrong, when there was a quality issue, I have that backup plan of being able to change out that marketing component. So, this year has been very much about just setting great foundations and making sure that you’re selling a digital product with the bonus of a physical product. So, all of my funnels have been set. We’re prepared for q four and looking forward to a brilliant closeout for the year because of that. However, it’s not an Amazon. So now I’ve been very much experimenting with Google Ads primarily.
Bradley Sutton:
What’s the general flow of how this course and then the product, like what’s your go to market strategy? Like, how are people gonna find this offer? You know, are you going to marketplaces with it like TikTok, or is it just gonna be on a Shopify website? And then what’s, like, the hook and at what point do people know that they’re getting this package or this makeup, you know, bag package that that’s gonna be shipped to them? Like talk a little bit about that.
Shivali Patel:
Yeah. So the way that it’s positioned right now is you get a course, learn how to master makeup for your face, for your features. A lot of makeup courses out there, they teach you about all the trends that are working in the space right now. People get very excited about the trends, but truthfully, everybody’s face is different. And you also want versatility in your day. Some people want to just get ready for their workplace. Some people want to actually go out for a date. Some people want to feel confident in their skins for a promotion. It’s just very different. I have this lady who actually bought the product on Amazon. She’s shown up to every single live coaching class I’ve ever had. And when I stopped doing them because I was like, ah, well, the the people that are coming to the live coaching class has kind of dwindled down and I had some things going on in family that took over priority. She actually reached out and she was like, I wanna know what the next step is because I’ve realized that your product has the thing I need in my life because she has immense social anxiety.
Shivali Patel:
And so she was telling me that the product not only changed her life, but she sees it as the vehicle that’s gonna get her to the next level for her own life. And she asked me what more she could she do. And so that’s when a second tier came into our marketing plan, which is now gonna be a subscription model for the live coaching segment. So, you have the original basis still, which was built all when the product went live. You have the digital product. You have the physical product. But now people are buying the digital course to master makeup for their face. The first five hundred customers only who are based in the US get the bag. Now I said five hundred because of course we’ve had some quality issues, and I just honestly don’t know how much of the quality is bad. But I know that there’s at least a good five hundred that I can definitely just give out. So, it’s marketed as a freebie. And then anybody else that wants to do more than one live coaching class, because now the base plan is just one live coaching. And then if they want more, if they want lifetime, or if they wanted to do like a twelve week program, that’s a different additional cost.
Bradley Sutton:
Carrie, over the last couple of years, you know, you’ve been talking about looking into other countries for manufacturing socks and things.
Carrie Miller:
Yeah.
Bradley Sutton:
Like, I believe, you know, you’ve taken a couple trips to Turkey, and you might have looked into Vietnam or something. I believe you were making them in China first. Right? China?
Carrie Miller:
Yeah.
Bradley Sutton:
What first of all, what was the reason for you and your dad to start looking into other countries? Was it tariff related? Was it quality related? Price related? What did you end up doing, and how is it how has this transition been working for you?
Carrie Miller:
I think the first time we started looking was just to diversify where our manufacturing is, just in case, you know, so that you know, if something happens with one country, you still have the other options. But then and that was I think it was two years ago that we went to Turkey the first time. But then recently, it’s become the tariffs because the tariffs were just they’re just really unstable, and it’s just not easy to predict. And so we’ve moved everything to Turkey.
Bradley Sutton:
When did that happen? Or like, when were you a hundred percent in Turkey?
Carrie Miller:
Well, we still have some inventory left. We had a shipment come in from China. We still have some products that are that were actually sitting over there from like, every time we try to ship them, the tariffs kinda go up. So, we’re trying to think they’re we’re gonna ship them soon here. But we’ve just been trying to get them at the right time. And so basically, all the new orders are going to Turkey now.
Bradley Sutton:
What’s the difference? I don’t need, like, dollar and cent exact, but, like, percentage wise, up or down. The manufacturing cost difference between for your product Turkey and China, and then the landed cost, you know, which would include the shipping and tariffs and stuff like that.
Carrie Miller:
Shipping wasn’t actually as as bad. It was actually less in some circumstances. But and-
Bradley Sutton:
Then tariffs obviously.
Carrie Miller:
And tariffs are less. But overall, it ends up being less because of the tariffs. But in terms of what it was before, I don’t know the exact percentage, but it’s definitely more expensive in Turkey. So, it’s you know, we’re definitely cutting into those margins, and then it’s challenging with more fees going up. So, it’s a balance. We’ve had to raise our prices a little bit, slightly.
Bradley Sutton:
But the quality, you think, is better?
Carrie Miller:
I think it’s amazing quality. Yeah.
Bradley Sutton:
I’ve tested a couple of them. You guys who, follow me on my Serious Sellers podcast Instagram will see me do my legroom check, and whenever I take my shoes off, there’s my bamboo socks are right there. That’s pretty much I wear anywhere to play basketball. I wear it to church because there’s black ones there. Like, that’s I don’t wear anything other than bamboo socks anymore.
Bradley Sutton:
Alright. Before we get into the next, you know, strategy or ecommerce information, let me let you the listeners out there know the first change that we’re doing with podcast. And that are is the Weekly Buzz that you guys always hear on Serious Sellers podcast comes out in the past, usually every Thursday or every Friday. It’s a quick, you know, fifteen, twenty-minute episode with whatever is happening in ecommerce, all the news you need to know about things that affect you, and we give you guys a strategy of the week that could be or about Helium 10 or other things. We also give a, you know, let you know what new features that Helium 10 has because we’re always adding things. That twenty-minute episode will now move to the AM/PM podcast. It’ll be on Fridays. Alright? So, if you’re listening to this on the Serious Sellers podcast, you rely on the weekly buzz to get your ecommerce news, make sure to subscribe to AM/PM podcast right now. Just whatever you’re listening to this on, type AM slash PM podcast. If you’re already if you’re listening to the AM/PM podcast right now, obviously, you don’t have to do that. But if you haven’t subscribed there, hit the subscribe and then hit the bell button so you can get notified for new for new episodes.
Bradley Sutton:
But starting I think this week this week, we’ll be starting. This week or next week, the Weekly Buzz will be moving to the AM/PM podcast, which by the way, you’re like, oh, is Kevin King gonna do it? No. Kevin King’s last episode was last week. We talked about that on the Serious Sellers podcast a little while back. We thank him for his service. He has done more AM/PM podcast episodes than anyone, out of all the hosts. I’ve only hosted one episode of the AM/PM podcast, I think, way back when I first started. Manny Coats started it. He did about hundred and fifty episodes or so. Hundred eighty, I think. And then we had another podcast host, Tim, who did about a hundred or so, but Kevin did over two hundred, I believe, episodes. So, we would definitely thank him for all the great hosting and all the guests that he has had.
Bradley Sutton:
Back to Shivali now. You’re known to have a lot of strategies with KDP and stuff, so just skip over that. You have a lot of content out there for KDP. Let’s talk about some of the newer things you’ve been getting into. You know, we have a lot of tools for creators and influencers at Helium 10 for TikTok shop. And so you’ve decided to, like, you know, kind of, like, hop in and kind of understand the other side of the aisle where you’re basically an influencer slash creator. So first of all, talk about what it took for you to qualify. Like, know, not just anybody can just say, hey. I wanna be a TikTok creator and TikTok gives you a badge. Like, what did you have to do to qualify and then talk about your journey so far once you became a creator? What you’ve been doing? And is it generating money, etcetera?
Shivali Patel:
Yeah. So I obviously, working at Helium 10 have access to a great amount of resources. And when we were coming out with all these things, I thought, you know what? Why not see how the other side lives? And we have the content. We know how to be on camera. So, I went in and I started posting content that I already had in my camera role. This is for TikTok. Before we even cover the eligibility, I wanna talk a little bit about the process to get there, which for a lot of people, they think, oh, I gotta get on camera. I gotta, like, post stuff. Carrie will even attest to this. She’s literally just shot something and, like, posted it, and it’s got decent views. You can shoot videos off the cuff, or you can do what I did, which was just go into my camera roll and find a video to post every single day with, the information that you want to create an audience in. Sometimes it’s just something fun. You can do a diary style thing. I know that I have interest in stuff that’s related to money, business, finance, and investing. And so that’s kind of where I went with it. I took my old content, posted it, and then made the description and the niche relevant. Of course, you wanna have great profile photo, great bio, really tell people what the value is in following you. Sometimes that’s as simple as entertainment.
Shivali Patel:
But my goal was really to get to one thousand followers because that’s when you get access to TikTok’s creator pilot program. That’s not the full-fledged affiliate program. Full for the full-fledged affiliate program, you need 5k followers. But for just getting started out, one thousand is enough. Now this isn’t gonna be readily shown to you inside of your notifications or if you’re checking out your monetization programs. You’ll have to go into creator insights in the search bar and then click the advanced, the top banner that you’re seeing. And then when you go through and you select it, you’ll see the eligibility, which is gonna be the one thousand followers. It’s gonna be you’re at least eighteen years old. And then there’s a third criteria, which I can’t think of off the top of my head, but it is pretty simple. The biggest drawback is literally just the one thousand followers, which you can do very easily. For me, it took twelve days. So, twelve days of posting one video a day. I know a lot of people out there say post three to five times a day. There’s a girl out there who is posting twenty-five times a day. That is absolutely okay, but that takes a lot of time.
Shivali Patel:
And something else to know, I’ve found a lot of really interesting things when you’re posting is some people will go on, and if you find a video that does really well organically, you can either put money into it, or what you can do is post that same video again. Because the way that TikTok works is it pushes it out to people. And if they watch it, it continues to keep pushing it out if they’re seeing engagement on it. I would recommend turning off the toggles for, you know, your contact seeing it, Facebook syncs happening because then it’s gonna be the people that are in your network seeing it first, whereas I find it to be more beneficial if it’s getting pushed out to people that I don’t know. So that’s a little bit about how I got into the TikTok creator pilot program. Since then, I’ve started adding products to my showcase. Bamboo Sports was literally one of the first products that I added because, like Bradley, I mean, outside of, you know, shameless self-promoting Carrie, I just think the product is great. And so, I added that, plus I added some stuff I was using in my day to day. So, for example, makeup. I know I wear that when I’m doing content. It’s really easy to tag products like that when you’re posting your own face. Other things that I just really believe.
Bradley Sutton:
Woah. Hold on. What does that mean? So that means you didn’t necessarily make a video for it. It’s like you made a random video, but then you tagged a product?
Shivali Patel:
So there are some stipulations to that. You wanna have the product in shot. But because I literally have a brand that’s about makeup, I had content with makeup products in video already.
Bradley Sutton:
Got it.
Shivali Patel:
So just make sure that you are reading the terms and conditions. You are staying compliant. If TikTok is saying that you’re promoting something, you will need to have some sort of show. Maybe that’s not the entire product, but at least, like, part of the product. And so that way, it people know that that’s actually a promotional video for that product. But you can go in and add it to your showcase. There’s a few things that can happen when you’re even adding products to your showcase. Maybe you already have them, so you don’t need to get a sample.
But other times, you’ll be able to access that from TikTok Studio and go in, check out shop, see if it’s a refundable sample if you’ve made three sales or something like that. So, you’ll still pay for the product upfront, but then later on, once you’ve made a few sales, is when you’ll actually be able to get that product refunded to you, the price point for that. I think this is a good place for me to also talk about the hot videos resource that Helium 10 now has, because you can go in and find videos that are doing really, really well for a product and copy the script. Of course, this is not just as a creator, but also as a seller. I think this is a really great thing to do because TikTok is top of funnel.
Shivali Patel:
Like, a lot of people are on there to scroll. They spend their time. They get entertained on the app. They’re not looking necessarily to buy, but a lot of us do end up buying, a.k.a me, when I bought a walking pad a few nights ago. But if you find a video that’s doing really, really well or if you’re going in and you’re saying, hey, I wanna, you know, have that halo effect on Amazon, a great place to start would be TikTok shop. We have all the resources for you to kind of link all your listings to sync them over to TikTok shop. And then you can use something like hot videos to figure out what sort of videos are popping off for influencers and then take that script, put it into ChatGPT, come up with something similar, and then create that for your own products, be it using AI, using your own voice, your own product, or even going to Eleven Labs for AI voice and then meshing it with Arcads, a-r-c-a-d-s, is an interesting site I’ve been exploring recently too.
Bradley Sutton:
Okay. So that’s, that’s interesting there. I’m gonna ask you about AI in a second. But.
Shivali Patel:
Okay.
Bradley Sutton:
Carrie, again, more negative stuff from you, but your business was taking a hit in, like, profitability and other things this year. But I think you have stopped the bleed and perhaps, you know, you’ve improved it from where it was. So, what was happening with your brands? You and your dad’s brand on Amazon and how were you able to kind of like stop the bleed?
Carrie Miller:
We had an agency that we switched to in January. And it was actually doing fine until about May. And then in June, we had a competitor that kind of flooded the market with a ton of money. You could see that there’s a ton of advertising going on. Just they had money to just cover everything. And they’re all you know, I’m in a really competitive niche, so it’s not an easy thing to do. Right? And in general, in in this particular niche. And so we had a competitor just completely flood us out. And at that time, also, our ads, you know, what happened, what I can see in hindsight from looking at doing some audits on our ads, is that two of our most profitable campaigns were shut off by the agency for no reason. And then on Prime Day, we also shut off the ads, and then they were supposed to be turned back on, but that was actually a really bad idea. You shouldn’t do that ever on Prime Day, you should always just let it keep going. And so, you know, we really lost our traction, and it just kept going getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And so we basically just got rid of that agency, because and here’s the thing is maybe some things happen with an agency, and they, you know, do whatever they can to solve it, and they work with you, and that we’re like, okay, we’re all problem solving. We’re trying to figure out what happened here. Let’s make sure we get these sales back up. They did not do that. They were like, oh, no. It’s fine. You know, they didn’t really care. And it was really, really-
Bradley Sutton:
They sounded like that on the call? Oh, no, Carrie. Don’t-
Carrie Miller:
They’re like, oh, you know, you ran out of stock, but it was like one SKU that we had no stock on. We had completely, you know we had we kept our stock. And so it was pretty much that tone. Yeah. It was really frustrating and infuriating, to be honest. And so I find that, you know, it’s fine when maybe a service provider, they make mistakes or there’s something that goes wrong, but it has to do with how they address it, how they communicate with you, and how they work with you. And so this particular agency did not do any of that. They did not care, and it was extremely frustrating and upsetting. And so, basically, I said, hey, I’ve gotta just take this over and figure this out. I’m really good at keyword research, so I already have that part down. So then that was our journey into the outsource to optimize series that we had and basically about taking over your business. And I think everyone should understand how to kind of audit your business. And what’s really cool with Helium 10 is you can actually see things very easily.
Carrie Miller:
In sellers, in Seller Central or in the campaign managers, it’s harder to figure things out because you can’t filter. But we have a way, you know, within Helium 10 that you can take a look and see things pretty clearly and pretty easily. And so, yeah, that that’s something that I would recommend that everyone knows.
Bradley Sutton:
What’s in there? Like, what were some of the things that you changed where it immediately gave you or the bad things that you stopped. Like, what in the world? What were they thinking? Why did they do this? And then was there anything in particular?
Carrie Miller:
Yeah. Yeah. So ,the first thing was just trying to figure out those campaigns. They had paused some campaigns, you could see that, oh, these campaigns were doing really well. Why are they shut off? That’s number one. Also, there were some high spending campaigns with, you know, terrible, terrible ACOS, and there were a bunch of words in there that were wrong. Also, we have different types of products. Right? So, keywords for campaigns should be related to that product, but they were just kind of blanketing, and they had edited some campaigns, and there were wrong creatives were in there. So, creatives that should not have been with specific products were it was basically the wrong creatives. So, they had wrong creatives. One thing another thing was I noticed they were doing VCPM campaigns. And that’s like these display ads, and you basically pay by impressions. And it looks like they’re doing super well, but Destiny pointed out to me that that’s not necessarily the case. And that, so it’s basically these display ads show on your actual listing. And so if, you know, it’s basically a defensive thing. So, you’re not paying by click, you’re paying by impression. So, if you’ve got a lot of people coming onto your page, you’re paying a lot more for this, but it’s attributing sales, even though it shouldn’t be attributed to those, if that makes sense. So just kind of these kind of weird different campaigns that we were able to see. But yeah, targets was a big thing. You know, okay, this target, we’ve got, you know, twenty clicks and no sales, we need to turn this one off. Or we’re targeting these ASINs, and it’s not working out, we need to be turning these off. You can see that very, very quickly. So those are, that’s just a few of the things. But there was actually quite a bit that was going wrong, and I really think that that’s why it’s important to kind of understand what’s going on, and being able to kind of follow along. And having Helium 10, can just kinda go in and monitor it.
Bradley Sutton:
That’s a good segue. You mentioned outsource to optimize into but let me talk about the rest of what the new podcast situation is for all our listeners out there. So before, we would have kinda like strategy sessions about a specific, like, Helium 10 tool or about a topic. Like, well, we have shows that are we have Tacos Tuesday. It’s a monthly training about something about advertising. And right after, it’s at Ask Me Anything. We have a monthly show called AIM, AI monthly, where it’s about AI and the world of AI and how it intertwines with ecommerce. That is going to the AM/PM podcast. We have a monthly general training with Ask Me Anything. And we also have one show called TikTok Thursdays where it’s all about TikTok. And so all of those shows previously were on the Serious Sellers Podcast. Now that’ll be the second episode of the week on AM/PM Podcast. I already said that the weekly buzz will be on AM/PM podcast, and the main host will be Shivali. Carrie will be there sometimes. I might be there sometimes. But now you guys can listen to that on the AM/PM podcast. And that all kind of, like, goes to the roots of AM/PM podcast. In the beginning, Manny was talking about his story about selling on Amazon, and that was around the time he started Helium 10. He talked about some Helium 10 tools, that were helping him grow his business. And that’s the main crux of what we wanna do on the AM/PM podcast is to show, hey. You can make money throughout the AM and the PM, and here, is the strategies that can help you do that. If you have questions, that’s why there’s gonna be Ask Me Anything. We’ll have it actually live. A lot of these episodes will be live on YouTube and other places you guys will be able to sign up for. And we also need to know what is going on in the world of ecommerce and that’s why we’re gonna bring you guys the news.
Bradley Sutton:
So since Manny, you know, would have those news things, we’re gonna have the news also on the AM/PM podcast. So what is the Serious Sellers podcast gonna be? Here’s something interesting. There will be only sellers now on the Serious Sellers podcast as guests. We’ve always had sellers as guests, but we’ll intertwine experts on there and service providers and things because they’re knowledgeable people. But now, Serious Sellers podcast will only be one episode a week and it’s gonna be dedicated to like talking to real brands, people who aren’t trying to sell you something or a course, would there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Helium 10 sells courses. Nothing wrong with that. But we wanted to have a safe space where it’s like, hey, let’s just listen to the people who are in the trenches like you guys and what they’re doing, what’s works, what doesn’t work. Like, we talked about some things today with Carrie and Shivali, some negative things that have happened. And how they’re succeeding, you know, with their serious strategies for serious sellers. That’s our motto still on the Serious Sellers podcast. So that is gonna be every Monday starting next week. You’ll have a serious sellers podcast where you’re guaranteed you’re not gonna be sold to from a service provider. We’re not gonna be talking about, like, Helium 10, but strictly about stories of sellers. And so if you’re an AM/PM podcast listener, that’s what you’ve been used to. On the AM/PM podcast, you’ve had a lot of sellers. Not everybody’s a seller on here, but if you’re if those are the kind of episodes you liked, continue listening to them on the Serious Sellers podcast every Monday.
Bradley Sutton:
And we have YouTube channels for both of these guys, so subscribe to both of them. If you guys are visual, we record everything in video. Our video team, Andre and Nico and Mhel really work on a lot of good graphics to make the podcast versions or the video podcast versions lively. So just look up Serious Seller’s podcast, Helium 10 on YouTube for the SSP. And for the AM/PM podcast, just type in AM slash PM podcast, and you’ll find the YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe and turn notifications on. So that’s our new format for podcast. One Serious Sellers podcast a week on Monday with sellers, one podcast with a expert coming on to give a training and Ask Me Anything on Wednesdays for the AM/PM podcast. And then Fridays will be the AMPM podcast weekly buzz. We’re going back to the original intros that the AM/PM podcast started with. We’re trying to bring back a lot of, like, old flavor and remember our roots, but also bring you some new things as well. So be exciting times for our podcast here.
Bradley Sutton:
Now back to Shivali, thinking about, you know, some strategies. You’ve been experimenting a lot with different AI tools and things like what’s an AI tool that you use that is not ChatGPT or something that everybody knows about, but something a little bit under the radar that people might be surprised when they even find out that that it exists, but it can help them in their ecommerce journey.
Shivali Patel:
I’ve been experimenting more recently a lot with Arcads and with Higgs Field AI. What I like about Higgs Field AI, actually, was talking about this earlier today with an elite member in our office hours call, and that was how do you really generate before and afters that are pretty consistent with the product? And one of the things you can do, this starts with ChatGPT, is you can put in the front and the back of a product and then an avatar and try to get a very hyper realistic rendering of that person holding that product. From there, you begin to take that frame, reinput it back in, and get the next frame. And then what you can do is go over to something like higgsfield.ai and go into selecting cling.ai, so it pulls from that, and select the before image and then the after image, and then write in the prompt that you want how you want it to transition over, basically. So that’s a little bit more of before and after, and you can do it for four or five frames. So, you have a short video that’s kind of scrolling through and following that product through different settings, so different backdrops. So, it’s an interesting way to create a video.
Shivali Patel:
But then, obviously, there are stationary ones. So, you have an influencer maybe talking in a car, and I’ve seen a lot of these because I was consuming mad amounts of content to see if there was a way to create videos with AI for specific products. Especially because I was thinking a lot of these influencers, they’re creating they need to get so much product on hand. They can’t be necessarily buying all the product, and they’re not. Because if you go and you watch a lot of these videos on YouTube where the influencers are actually making great money with what they’re doing, they’re actually not even getting the product. They’re doing exactly what I just said, which is starting with ChatGPT and then going into something like Arcads and saying, hey. Take this avatar. Take this product and create an influencer that’s sitting in the car that’s just talking to the camera saying this script, and the script is completely from ChatGPT. Many businesses, their success really depends on having great systems. And I think if you can find a AI system that really works for you, you have an endless resource of just videos that will do well. You can begin to create a lot more content. If you learn how to use the AI tools well, you will really end up with a great amount of content that you can put onto any of your brand pages and make sure that people really have the brand awareness for what your product or your service really is.
Bradley Sutton:
Alright. Before we close our episode, back to Carrie. Any last strategies you’re either using or you’ve heard about that are intriguing that, you’d like to share with audience?
Carrie Miller:
In terms of strategies, I think that everybody should be paying attention to Rufus, like we’ve been talking about, and optimizing their listings. We’ve seen some bumps with that. So just make sure you answer a lot of questions that the AI is basically providing to people. So, you know, when you look at Rufus, can see what kinds of questions people are asking. And so, yeah, just kind of making sure to start optimizing for that and start learning those kinds of things.
Bradley Sutton:
All three of us are here, guys, because we’re all now the new cohost of all these shows. And we’ve got a lot of exciting things, you know, coming up on both the AM/PM podcast and the Serious Sellers podcast, which is why we did this kind of, like, cobranded episode. But the bottom line, everything we do is designed to bring you guys as strategies that’ll help you succeed in ecommerce. And when we say ecommerce, it’s not just Amazon. The original AM/PM podcast is, like, ninety nine percent about Amazon. That’s we’re in a different world today in 2025 2026 where it’s about being on TikTok shop. It’s about being on Walmart. It’s about being on Shopify. And so that’s the kind of stuff we’re gonna be talking about. How can you succeed online? Subscribe to both of these podcasts, and you will get the best strategy. So, Carrie and Shivali, look forward to working with you on these, new podcast, and we’ll see all of you guys in the next episode.
Carrie Miller:
Bye, everyone.
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