#536 – Q4 Holiday Deadlines Are Here! New Buy Box Changes & Ways to Cut Return and Storage Costs | Weekly Buzz 7/9/26
Audio version above. Video version below
We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Manager of Education and Strategy, Carrie Miller. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.
Amazon Seller Central: Holiday 2026: Same fees, same eligibility, earlier deadlines
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHU1g0VUNBUjQ3N1RSR0VZ
New Claude Skill for Listing and PPC Optimization
https://pages.helium10.com/amazonlisting-skill-opt?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=listing_skill
Amazon Seller Central: Updates to Featured Offer eligibility requirements
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHR0ZTV0tCQlNSSkRSQzg2
Amazon Seller Central: Reduce return costs with returnless resolutions
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHTTRWUllGS1JKNkxQNTRR
Amazon Seller Central: Send to Global Warehousing and Distribution and get 30 days of free storage
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHMllVUUI2MjZXRzY2NEdE
In episode 536 of the AM/PM Podcast and Weekly Buzz, Carrie talks about:
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 00:43 – Holiday 2026 Deal and Inventory Deadlines
- 04:07 – New Claude Skill for Listing and PPC Optimization
- 10:14 – Updates to Amazon Featured Offer or Buy Box
- 11:32 – How to Track Top Clicked Amazon Products Over Time
- 14:38 – Returnless Option to Reduce Return Costs
- 16:24 – 30 Days Free Global Warehousing and Distribution
Transcript
Carrie Miller:
Q4 holiday deal and inventory deadlines announced. There are new changes to the featured offer eligibility and new ways to reduce return and storage costs. This and more on this week’s episode of the Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the AM/PM podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Carrie Miller, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has, and we also give you a training tip of the week. So let’s get started and see what’s buzzing.
Carrie Miller:
All right, let’s go ahead and get into the first thing, and that is that the Q4 deadlines are already actually here. And if you’re planning to run deals or send inventory for the holiday season, this is the time to start mapping everything out. Now, this is actually really cool because Amazon doesn’t usually do this, and I’m really appreciative of getting these dates ahead of time so that I can also plan. So Amazon just announced the key dates for holiday 2026, including Prime Big Deal Days, Black Friday Week, and Cyber Monday. And while the fees and eligibility requirements are staying the same, the deadlines are actually coming up faster than you think. I know it’s the summer, but it’s actually coming sooner than we think it’ll be here in a flash.
Carrie Miller:
So the deal submissions are now open. So for Prime Big Deal Days, you can submit deals from July 8th through September 8th. For Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday, you can submit submissions from July 8th through October 20th. So Amazon is also bringing back the early submissions discount. So if you submit Prime Big Deal Days by August 5th, or Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals by September 5th, you can save $50 on the upfront promotion fee, which that’s actually good. Every little bit helps. For deal fees, Amazon says there are no new eligibility requirements and fees will remain the same as Prime Day, a $100 upfront fee promotion plus a 1.5% variable fee on promotional sales capped at $5,000. One important detail is that Prime Big Deal Days promotional prices will not count against the 30 day or 60 day look back window. So they won’t impact the maximum deal price required for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which is definitely important.
Carrie Miller:
So now the biggest thing to pay attention to is inventory. Every year, we’re always talking about inventory in our elite group, just how to manage it. So for Prime Big Deal Days, inventory needs to arrive by September 2nd for AWD and September 9th for FBA with minimal shipment splits and September 16th for Amazon optimized shipment splits, which is what most sellers use. For Black Friday week and Cyber Monday, the deadlines are October 14th for AWD, October 21st for FBA with minimal shipment splits and October 28th for Amazon optimized shipment splits. Holiday peak fulfillment fees will also apply again from October 15th, 2026 through January 14th, 2027 for FBA, remote fulfillment with FBA, multi-channel fulfillment and buy with Prime. Amazon says the increase will average about 32 cents per unit and the 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge will apply on those top peak fees. Amazon is also warning sellers to plan ahead for capacity.
Carrie Miller:
So fulfillment centers will be focused on receiving holiday inventory in September and October, but in November and December, they shift more towards processing customer orders. So that means sellers are gonna see lower capacity limits later in the season. So definitely important to plan ahead with inventory. This is very, very key. So the recommendation is to send inventory early, especially if you’re expecting higher Q4 volume. Amazon also suggests using Amazon Warehousing and Distribution or AWD to store extra inventory and automatically replenish FBA when needed. So sellers can also use Capacity Manager to bid for additional fulfillment center space if they need it. If you’re planning Q4 deals, don’t wait is basically what I’m trying to say. Check your margins, submit your promotions early if you want the discount and make sure your inventory arrives before the cutoff dates so you’re ready for that peak time. Now that’s key. So plan ahead. I’m really glad they gave us these dates. So go ahead and take control of that and make sure we have the biggest Q4 ever.
Carrie Miller:
All right, this next thing that I wanna share with you is actually not news, but it’s our latest listing skill. And it’s called a listing skill, but it also has some PPC in it. And I worked on this for quite a while just with my own business. And I really wanted this information just to kind of go through and audit my listings and then also look for some new PPC targets. So the first thing that you’ll get when you upload this skill to Cloud and you’ll also for this skill, you’ll need a Cerebro download of yourself and your competitors and then screenshots of their listings on Amazon. So that’s pretty much what this needs. It’s pretty simple to do, but it’s gonna give you a keyword gap first of all. And I like this because it shows your listing and it shows where the most important keywords are and it highlights where you’ve placed them in the phrase form. And then if you go down to your competitors, it also shows you where they have those keywords in the phrase form. And so I put in a bunch of different competitors here.
Carrie Miller:
So you can see there’s a bunch of listings with all of that information. I really like seeing that. It also shows kind of some title density keywords like that maybe the title density is really low. So it might be really easy to rank for those particular keywords. For example, like a title density of zero means that there are zero sellers on the page one for that particular keyword with that exact phrase in their title. So if you put the exact phrase in your title, potentially you could maybe rank a little bit faster than those competitors for that keyword. So again, all these different competitors, we’ve got that. And then it’s gonna show you some competitor gaps. Like a competitor has this keyword in their listing and like the phrase form, but you don’t have it. So we’ve got that list right here, which I really like to see. So these competitors are putting in the phrase form, it’s potentially important and maybe you missed it. So we’ve got the gaps here of, and looks like right here, we’ve got 28 gaps on this one.
Carrie Miller:
And CPR opportunities as well, it’s gonna show how like kind of lower hanging fruit. So maybe you need a lower amount of sales to get to the top 10. And our CPR number is that Helium 10 number that we calculated how many sales you need to get in an eight day period in order to start ranking in the top 10. So over eight days, 161 is pretty low all the way to 63 there. And then we have this particular look at the listing and I’m gonna actually go in more into detail with a spreadsheet that comes with this that has this information and more. But next up, we also have listing advice. So this one is actually kind of a listing overview analysis and it gives you some actionable things that you can do to help optimize your listing. So it’s talking about keywords and that if you’ve written in a lot of important keywords, but it also talks about rank, which is really, really important. So you might have optimized your listing, you’ve written these really important phrases in there, but if you’re not ranking for them and a lower spot, it’s gonna be hard for you to get those up in sales for those keywords.
Carrie Miller:
So we have some specifics on how you compare to your competitors in that way. And it gives you kind of a head to head score with price and all that kind of stuff. So really kind of shows you why maybe your competition is winning. So we’ve got all of that information in here and then it gives you some recommended title and bullets and it shows it in 75 characters because that’s now gonna be the new limit. And then it gives you kind of at the very end, a prioritized action plan of things that you should do based on their suggestions here, which I absolutely love. So that’s another thing that you get with this skill. And then the final thing that I really like, so this is gonna show you 50 keywords that competitors have beat you on and that you could potentially start ranking for. So if we go over to this far right column, it says win ability. So basically what it’s saying here, it says hard, you’re buried, you’re like in the top, you’re basically in page six or 70, it’s gonna be really hard for you to rank.
Carrie Miller:
But these close push with PPC. So this one, for example, your organic rank is 137 and your competitor is 25. So it’s probably an important keyword for this particular product. And if it says close push with PPC, that means you’re within a good amount of reach where you can potentially push PPC and get some sales. And if you look at this CPR number, we also put the number of sales you need in 10 days in order to get ranking in the top 10. So 52 sales over an eight day period is actually not that hard. And especially if you already are ranking, you actually might need less than that to get to the top. So this is a really cool thing to see because basically you can see, okay, these are kind of the low hanging fruit keywords where I’m kind of ranking, like even here we’ve got, let’s see the competitor rank is 12, I’m 81. That’s not too bad.I’m 56 here. These are the close PPC pushes. So this gives you something to target with your PPC.
Carrie Miller:
Also make sure that these keywords are written into your listings so that you can take advantage of these keywords that your competitors are beating you on, but that you wanna also overtake. Because the more keywords they’re beating you on, that’s why they’re having potentially more sales because they’ve got more visibility. So the more visibility that you have, the better. So that’s why I love this spreadsheet. It’s so helpful to not only see what keywords are kind of lower hanging fruit that I can push with PPC, but also how many sales I would need in 10 days to get that. And obviously, you can stay within your budget. You just need to kind of manage your sales. Make sure over the eight day period, you’re getting that number of sales and you’ll probably see pretty quickly how your rank moves. So that is the skill that I built.
Carrie Miller:
And it’s really, really interesting to see your listing overview and just the breakdown of why your competitors might be beating you based on what the analysis is with your keywords and then what Claude says overall. Definitely download this keyword. We have the link in the description. So you basically just download this skill and then you’re gonna upload those files that I told you was Cerebro file with you and your competitors and then screenshots of your competitors listings. And just specify which ASIN is your ASIN and which one’s your competitors and then go from there. And it’s definitely worth it, especially if you’re kind of wanting to optimize for Q4, you’re wanting to really prepare and get yourself going and getting some traction. This is a great way to do that. If you want this skill, go ahead and download it. It’s free to download. And if you already have Helium 10, obviously you have these spreadsheets and things. So it’s a great resource for you to start using that right now, basically.
Carrie Miller:
Okay, next we have a Featured Offer Update. Amazon is making a major update to how sellers are considered for the Featured Offer. Starting in July of 2026, which is right now, Amazon will begin removing the separate seller eligibility requirement for the Featured Offer. This change will roll out gradually across Amazon stores globally and is expected to be completed by the end of 2026. So what does this actually mean? Well, right now, Amazon first looks at whether a seller meets certain performance-based eligibility requirements. Then from that pool of eligible sellers, Amazon ranks the offers for a product and chooses which ones become the Featured Offer. So Amazon says that first eligibility step is no longer adding extra value for customers, so they’re removing it. The important thing to know is that no action is required from sellers. Existing offers will automatically be included as this update rolls out, but this does not mean every seller will automatically win the Featured Offer.
Carrie Miller:
Amazon says the way the Featured Offer is selected is not changing. Offers will still be evaluated based on what matters more to customers, including competitive pricing, delivery speed, and seller performance. So the takeaway is that more sellers may now be considered for the Featured Offer, but winning it will still depend on having a strong competitive offer. If you sell on Amazon, this is a good reminder to keep your eye on your pricing, fulfillment, speed, and overall account performance because those factors actually do play a role, a major role actually, in whether or not your offer gets featured. All right, up next we have Bradley with the strategy of the week. So take it away, Bradley.
Bradley Sutton:
How to view the history of who were the top three click products for a keyword over weeks or months of time. Now, Amazon Brand Analytics top search terms has been a great data point for probably over six years now. It was one of the first data points, even before search query performance came out, where Amazon is telling you, hey, who were the top three products that were clicked after the search of a keyword and which ones of them actually got sales? Now, Helium 10 is the only tool where you can actually search the history of it. Like, hey, let me put in an ASIN and see what was the history of all of the keywords where this product was one of the top three clicked and it had sales, right? We’ve talked about that on the show before, but there’s also a newer feature where I can now see the history of the top three click products for any keyword.
Bradley Sutton:
How would you do that? The first thing you wanna do is here in the black box brand analytics, select a whole bunch of weeks or even months. Like, I’m just gonna go ahead and select about like 10, 15 weeks here. And then what I can do is I can enter in a keyword, like for example, coffin shelf. And once I hit search, it is going to tell me what were the top products week by week for this keyword coffin shelf. Now, take a look. Once I hit this expansion, now I can see from February 15 to 21st, from March 12th to 28th, from May, et cetera, et cetera. Look at this complete list of every single product that was one of the top three clicked. What can I do with this? I can now export this and download this. This would be a great way to do ASIN targeting. This would be a great way to do product research.
Bradley Sutton:
If I’m trying to get into a new niche, I’m just wondering, hey, over time, who are the top products consistently week by week for this? Is it consistent? Like, look at this. This Gothic Curiosities was the top click product like for weeks and weeks at a time. And my product, the Manny’s Mysterious Oddities, only a couple of times. Here’s a product that probably is out of stock right now. I’m not sure. No, it’s in stock right now, but for whatever reason, they’re not really selling much anymore. But back in the day, they were with a top click product and they actually had 28% of the purchases as well. So this is a great way to do research, not with any estimations or Helium 10 data, but this is data direct from Amazon. And again, this is the only all-in-one tool where you are able to research and within seconds be able to see what the top three click products were over a long period of time. I would export this, maybe do some consolidation in AI or Claude if I wanted to get deeper insights. But guys, start using this, add some of these to your ASIN targeting campaigns and see who are your top competitors over time.
Carrie Miller:
All right, thank you so much for that strategy of the week, Bradley. Let’s go ahead and keep on moving to the next piece of news and this is return list resolutions. Amazon is actually highlighting a way for FBA sellers to reduce return costs through a program called return list resolutions. And this is a program that allows sellers to automatically issue refunds without requiring the customer to send the product back. The idea is very simple that in some cases it actually costs more to process the return than the product is actually worth. So for example, if it costs $8 to $12 to ship back and process a $5 item, it may make more sense to refund the customer and skip the return entirely.
Carrie Miller:
With return list resolutions, sellers can set their own rules based on things like price range, product category or return reason. Then when a customer return request matches those rules, Amazon can automatically issue the refund without requiring the item to be shipped back. This can help lower return costs by reducing shipping inspection and restocking expenses. It can also create a faster customer experience since shoppers can receive an immediate refund instead of waiting for the return process to be completed. Another benefit is that sellers stay in control. You can decide which products or return reasons qualify, set price thresholds and address your rules over time as your margins change.
Carrie Miller:
So this may be especially useful for low cost items, perishable goods, hygiene sensitive items or products that lose value once they’ve been opened. So to set it up, you need to go to FBA settings in Seller Central and select return list resolutions under the FBA returns evaluation ownership settings. So the key in this is that return list resolutions won’t make sense for every product, but for the right items, it could help reduce your costs, simplify operations and resolve customer issues faster. Now, this is something that’s kind of iffy because we also don’t want customers to just get in the habit of returning things and keeping the product. I don’t really like that either. So I wouldn’t do this for all of your products and I would just be kind of careful and watch it if that’s something that you do implement.
Carrie Miller:
All right, last but not least, we have global warehousing and distribution. Amazon announced a new storage promotion for sellers who sell in the US and they source products from China. So from July 1st through December 31st of 2026, sellers can get 30 days of free storage with global warehousing and distribution, also known as GWD for every shipment received at the active GWD distribution center. This is on top of the GWD storage rates that Amazon says are already up to 45% lower than US Amazon warehousing and distribution rates. So what is GWD? GWD allows sellers to store inventory in China closer to where many products are manufactured and then Amazon helps replenish the inventory to the US FBA fulfillment centers based on demand.
Carrie Miller:
The goal is to help sellers stay in stock without having to manage as much of the international logistics process themselves. Amazon is also expanding the program starting July 16th, 2026. GWD will add a new facility in Shanghai in addition to Shenzhen. So since Shanghai is one of China’s major manufacturing and export hubs, this could help some sellers get inventory into the GWD network faster. Amazon is also adding support for a free on-border FOB across all GWD locations. This gives sellers more control over export documentation and can help with things like export declaration and origin port handling charges. So the big takeaway of this is that sellers sourcing from China may be able to reduce US storage costs by keeping bulk inventory in China and moving it into the US FBA only when needed. And this can be especially helpful heading into Q4 when storage planning and inventory placement becomes even more important. So to get started, sellers can go to send to Amazon warehousing and distribution, select a China ship from address, choose a GWD distribution center, select the SKUs and quantities they wanna send and submit the booking.
Carrie Miller:
The free storage promotion applies automatically once the shipment is received at a GWD facility. After the first 30 days, standard GWD storage fees apply. So if you source from China and sell in the US, this could be a good time to test GWD with a smaller shipment before the main Q4 peak season ramps up. All right, that is all I have for you on this week’s episode of the Weekly Buzz. I hope you enjoyed all of these news updates and we will see you again next week to see what’s buzzing. Bye everyone.
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