Here's what you missed yesterday on the AI for Ecom 2.0 Workshop:

Nine hours. Eight experts. Discounted replay access closes Tuesday, then the price jumps $100.00.

The Tariff Refund Most Sellers Are Sleeping On Courtesy of Andrew Erickson, founder of Inventory Hero.

Andrew just got $25,242 wired back from CBP. Tariff refund plus interest, straight into his bank account. Most sellers he knows don't even realize the money exists.

Here's the deal. The Supreme Court killed the IEEPA tariffs in February (the "reciprocal" and "fentanyl" duties).

CBP is now paying that money back through a tool called CAPE inside the ACE portal. This may be the biggest one-time cash event your brand will see this decade. If you imported $500K from China in 2025 at a 25% IEEPA rate, you're sitting on roughly $125K.

Andrew's playbook, stripped down:

Step 1: Confirm you're owed money. Pull any 2025 CBP Form 7501. Scan for HTS codes 9903.01.xx or 9903.02.xx. Those lines are your IEEPA duties. That dollar amount is your refund. Five minutes tells you your ballpark. No code, no refund.

Step 2: Confirm you're the one who gets it. The refund goes to the Importer of Record on line 22 of the 7501. That's it. Your EIN has to be there.

The trap that costs sellers the most: If you shipped DDP and your supplier "included duties to your warehouse," they were the Importer of Record. CBP refunds them, not you. Getting it back becomes a private fight with your supplier, not a CBP claim.

Good news for AGL users: You're eligible. Amazon acts as your broker, but you stay the Importer of Record. Your EIN, your refund. Amazon Customs and Trade will even email you a pre-built CSV and offer to file the claim for you.

Step 3: Check your timing. Phase 1 covers entries that are unliquidated or liquidated within the last 80 days. Past 80 days, you're waiting on Phase 2 (no timeline yet) or you file a protest under 19 USC 1514, which has a hard 180-day window from the liquidation date. Don't sit on it. The clock runs.

Step 4: Get set up. Open an ACE Portal account. Set up a US bank account and enroll it for ACH refunds inside ACE. Note: ACH set up for paying duties does not count. It has to be the refund enrollment.

Step 5: File the CAPE claim. Upload your CAPE declaration in the CAPE tab in ACE, or authorize your broker to do it. If Amazon brokered your entries (prefix INL), use the Pulse survey link in their April email to let them file for you.

Step 6: Get paid. Refund hits your ACH account, usually 3 to 5 weeks after liquidation. Andrew's took about 30 days start to finish because he had a bank account ready.

One thing your CPA needs to hear: This is not income. It's a refund of cost. For most sellers it reduces COGS in the year it relates to, not the year it lands. And don't redeploy it at your old tariff-inflated landed cost. Your forward cost is lower now. Reorder on the new math.

Bottom line: the money is yours, but only if you go get it. Open the ACE account this week. Read Andrew’s full step by step here.

Amazon just opened a new front in the AI shopping race, and it's not aimed at shoppers. It's aimed at other retailers.

AWS is now licensing the technology behind Alexa for Shopping (the agent Amazon rebranded from Rufus earlier last month) so any retailer can spin up its own AI shopping assistant.

Amazon is handing over the architecture, starter code, and "learnings," and says a brand can launch something tailored to its own catalog and branding in as little as 60 days.

This is the AWS playbook, again. Build it internally, solve your own problem, then sell the solution to the industry, competitors included. Same move Amazon made with cloud, cashierless checkout, and its logistics network.

The smart part: it's being sold through AWS, not the Amazon retail side. That's deliberate. Retailers who would never share catalog and customer data with the Amazon storefront might trust the cloud unit they already pay every month.

First customer out the gate is Kate Spade (Tapestry), which used it to build a gifting assistant. More brands are in testing.

The pitch to retailers is the interesting tension. Amazon is telling everyone else not to hand their shopping experience to "an intermediary," arguing brands know their products and customers better than any general-purpose AI.

Meanwhile Amazon is the intermediary for its third-party sellers, and its Buy for Me feature reaches onto rival sites to complete purchases.

The AI shopping layer is consolidating fast. OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity are chasing the shopper directly. Now Amazon is arming every other retailer to build agents of their own.

For brands selling on and off Amazon, the storefront is no longer just a place customers browse. It's becoming a network of agents deciding what gets surfaced and bought.

Optimizing for how these agents read your listings (the AEO/GEO work) stops being optional.

Two weeks ago Amazon put Auto Buy in front of every US shopper.

Here's how it works. A customer taps "Add to Auto Buy" on your product page. They set a max price ("$29.99 or less, the 90-day low"), a start date, and an expiration date.

Then they leave. The second your listing hits that number, Amazon buys it for them. No return visit. No second decision.

The button is rolling out inside the new Alexa for Shopping experience, right next to the "Ask Alexa" prompt chips. Vanessa Hung was one of the first to spot it live and share a screenshot (below). Some categories already have it. Others are days away.

Here's the take that matters if you sell anything people reorder.

Auto Buy is a one-time deal-catcher. One unit. Fires once, at the shopper's target. No coupons. No promos. FBA only.

So on a consumable, you now have two automated paths fighting over the same reorder:

Auto Buy only fires when you drop to their number. So every promo you run now clears the Auto Buy queue at your deepest price, instead of turning those shoppers into subscribers.

The buyer who would have subscribed at 10% off? Parked on a 20%-off trigger. Waiting you out.

The part that messes with your data

Every Auto Buy rule is a conditional purchase order sitting in a queue. A loyal repurchaser sets the rule once and stops coming back to comparison shop.

So your search and demand data goes quiet on customers who are still very much in market. They're not gone. They're in line at a price you haven't hit yet. Read your numbers like those shoppers churned and you'll make the wrong call.

Make S&S the easier yes before the target ever gets set:

Your one action item this week

Open one of your hero ASINs and check whether the Auto Buy button is on the page. Knowing it's there changes how you read everything else.

Then answer the only question that matters. If your product gets reordered: would you rather your customer subscribed on S&S, or parked on Auto Buy waiting for your next dip?

In the hyper-competitive world of YouTube, your title is often the difference between a video that flops and one that goes viral.

Jake Thomas analyzed over 800,000 YouTube titles to identify which specific words consistently drive above-average performance.

Here are the top 10 power words for YouTube titles right now, ranked from 10 to 1, along with performance lifts and some real examples:

10. Never (+3%)

Videos containing “Never” performed 3% better than average.
This word works especially well as a strong warning or personal boundary.

Example:
“Three Popular Family Dog Breeds I Will NEVER Allow in My Home”

9. Habit (+4%)

“Habit” taps into people’s desire for self-improvement and routines. The massive success of books like Atomic Habits proves audiences crave this word.

Example:
“6 Nordic Habits That Cost $0 But Change Everything”

8. Stop (+4%)

“Stop” is effective in two main ways: as a warning or as a solution to a problem.

Warning Example:
“STOP Doing 10,000 Steps After 40 (Do THIS Instead)”

Solution Example:
“This Stops Hair from Greying (and it works fast)”

7. Only (+9%)

“Only” creates a sense of exclusivity or extreme constraint, both of which spark curiosity.

Examples:
“What Happens If You Only Eat Sardines for 5 Days?”
“The Only YouTube Strategy You Need to Quit Your 9-5”

6. Change (+9%)

Humans are wired to notice change. The word also leaves viewers wanting to know what changed.

Example:
“YouTube’s BIG New Update Just Changed EVERYTHING”

5. Forever (+12%)

“Forever” is the ultimate time word — dramatic, extreme, and emotionally charged.

Example:
“The Movie That Broke Animation Forever”

4. Regret (+13%)

Regret is a deeply emotional trigger. People are obsessed with avoiding it, making this a highly clickable word.

Example:
“5 NBA Teams ALREADY Regretting Their 2025 Draft Picks...”

3. Every (+14%)

“Every” gives titles a sense of completeness and scale, making content feel comprehensive and epic.

Example:
“Every Rare Space Event We’ll Actually See Before We Die”

2. Any (+16%)

“Any” lowers the barrier and makes advice feel universally accessible.

Example:
“How to Get Tack Sharp Photos with ANY Camera!”

1. 2026 (+30%)

The clear winner: including the current year made videos 30% more likely to perform above average. It signals freshness and relevance in fast-changing niches.

Example:
“7 NEW Airport Rules in 2026 Catching Travelers Off Guard”

While creative titles still matter, data shows that strategically using these power words can give your videos a significant edge.

The standout lesson? Timeliness wins — simply putting the current year in your title was by far the strongest performer.

If you're a YouTuber or content creator, test these words in your next few titles. The algorithm (and your click-through rate) will thank you.

✌🏼 See you again Thursday …

The answer to today’s STUMP BEZOS is
Revenue per seller in the U.S. is $200K above the next-largest marketplace.