Three minutes.

That's all it takes to enter for over $25K in prizes including a luxury mastermind in Greece, a 12-day sourcing trip to China, and a VIP ticket to EcomMastery.AI in Nashville.

Plus you'll walk away with $4,000+ in free tools and the industry report every serious seller will be referencing this year.

Take the survey now to enter at 2026sellersurvey.com before it closes March 4th.

Jesse Lakes recently posted on LinkedIn, with the contributions of many, a rethinking of how to map the Amazon Affiliate Ecosystem.

If you're a brand or seller working with affiliates and creators to drive external traffic to your listings, pay attention, because this framework changes how you should think about the entire ecosystem.

Most people organize the affiliate landscape by tool type. That's wrong. The smarter way? Follow the creator journey, from discovery to optimization.

Here's a clean 5-layer model that maps how creators actually move from "what should I promote?" to "what's actually working?"

Layer 1: Creator Commerce Intelligence

This is where creators decide what to promote and who to work with. They need confidence before investing time into content and putting the trust they've built with their audience on the line. Think influencer discovery tools, Creator Connections, seller networks, affiliate agencies, and product seeding platforms.

Why sellers should care: If you're not showing up at this layer, creators don't even know you exist.

Layer 2: Demand Creation (Audience & Intent)

This is where creators actually influence shoppers before Amazon ever sees them. Trust and purchase intent are built before anyone lands on your product page. This layer includes content publishers, social creators, deal sites, and AI/programmatic content.

Why sellers should care: This is the external traffic Amazon keeps rewarding. Creators operating here are building demand you can't buy with PPC.

Layer 3: Conversion Infrastructure

The pipes that turn creator influence into trackable Amazon clicks. Great content isn't enough to drive results. You need completed, attributed actions. This is where CTA tools, widgets, plugins, and link management platforms live.

Why sellers should care: Broken infrastructure means lost attribution, which means you're paying for traffic you can't measure.

Layer 4: Tracking & Monetization Models

The tech that determines how traffic gets credited and how everyone gets paid. Attribution, tracking, reporting, and payments are the backbone. This includes Amazon Associates (onsite and offsite), attribution-based seller networks, Creator Connections-based networks, and CPC/CPA alternatives.

Why sellers should care: Understanding this layer is the difference between a profitable affiliate program and lighting money on fire.

Layer 5: Content Performance Optimization & Intelligence

The feedback loop that tells creators (and you) what to scale, what to fix, and what to kill. Creators grow by learning, not guessing. Boosting platforms and reporting/link health solutions live here.

Why sellers should care: The best affiliate partnerships aren't set-and-forget. This layer is how you identify your top performers and double down.

The bottom line: If you're building an affiliate or external traffic strategy, stop thinking about individual tools and start thinking about which layers of this ecosystem you're strong in and where you have gaps. The brands winning with creators in 2026 aren't just "doing affiliates." They're operating across all five layers.

If you want to meet 100+ creators in person and strike deals, including with some of the top GMV creators on TikTok Shop (one for example is driving $370K per month in sales to a brand), then you need to be at Kevin’s Ecom Mastery AI event in April in Nashville.

Everyone thinks direct mail is outdated.

Meanwhile, it’s still delivering $12 for every $1 spent, reaching every household in America 6 days a week, and producing engagement rates digital marketers can only dream about.

In this episode of Marketing Misfits, Norm Farrar and Kevin King sit down with Dr. Wilson Zehr, founder of Zairmail, to break down why direct mail still works, how it integrates with digital marketing, and how automation is bringing this “old school” channel into the AI era.

If you sell online, run e-commerce, build lists, or care about ROI, this episode may completely change how you think about marketing channels.

BDSS Dream 100 member and Nashville Ecom Mastery AI speaker Ritu Java recently posted this in the Billion Dollar Sellers Club (if you’re not in it, you are missing out!).

Amazon has been placing your Sponsored Products inside RUFUS conversations. And most advertisers don't even know it's happening. It's called Sponsored Products Prompts.

Here's the deal:

When a shopper asks Rufus something like "Does Mrs. Meyer's have a dish soap that's plant-based?" -- your Sponsored Product ad can now show up as the answer.

Not as a banner. Not as a search result. As a conversational response inside an AI chat.

Two types of prompts are being auto-generated by Amazon:

🔸"Why choose [Brand] [product category]?" -- comparison-style prompts
🔸"Does [Brand] have a [product] with [feature]?" -- feature-specific prompts

You didn't write these prompts. Amazon's AI did. It pulled from your detail pages, Brand Store, and campaign data to generate them. And your campaigns were automatically enrolled.

She pulled the SP Prompts Report for one of her accounts covering Jan 5 - Feb 14, 2026:

🔸35 prompt entries across 18 unique questions
🔸~5,000 total impressions
🔸41 clicks
🔸$0.00 total spend (it appears to be free during beta)
🔸4 orders totaling $512.71 in sales

That's $512 in sales. Zero ad spend. During a beta most advertisers haven't noticed.

Amazon generated 18 different questions about one brand's products:

🔸"Does [Brand] have a dish soap that's plant-based?"
🔸"Does [Brand] have a laundry detergent safe for sensitive skin?"
🔸"Does [Brand] have a multi-surface cleaner with essential oils?"

These aren't random. These are questions shoppers are asking Rufus. And Amazon is matching YOUR product as the answer.

The gap: If you click the Prompts tab inside an ad group, you'll likely see "No data available." You need to download the SP Prompts Report to see the actual data.

Action to take TODAY:

🔸Download your SP Prompts Report
🔸Study the questions Amazon is generating for your products
🔸Are these questions relevant? Is Rufus positioning your product correctly?
🔸If a prompt is irrelevant -- toggle it OFF
🔸If it's spot on -- make sure your detail page reinforces that answer

The prompts reveal how Amazon's AI understands your product. That's free competitive intelligence most brands are ignoring.

👉👉Ritu’s prediction:

Right now, Prompts is just an on/off switch. No bidding. No targeting. Just a toggle.

Enjoy that simplicity while it lasts.

Amazon will eventually turn this into an auction. And the brands who studied their Prompts data during the free beta will have a massive head start over everyone scrambling to figure out what just happened.

The free ride is now. The toll booth may be coming.

And don’t forget to subscribe to Ritu’s weekly AI for Ecom newsletter too!

Most sellers build their listings like they're writing a product manual. But your customer isn't sitting down to study. They're mid-scroll, half-distracted, one thumb away from your competitor.

If your "great content" keeps underperforming, it's probably not the product. It's how you're presenting it. Shoppers don't reject value, they reject effort. Your job is to make the value feel instant.

This applies everywhere: A+ Content image modules, carousel ads, Brand Story sections, even your bullet points. Every element should remove doubt, not add it. The moment a shopper thinks "wait, what does that mean?" you've created friction. And friction kills conversions.

Here's the hard truth: nobody reads your listing. They scan it. Their eyes move in an F-pattern or Z-pattern across your content, hunting for a reason to stay, or a reason to bounce. They're not reading for comprehension. They're checking for a point. And if they can't find it fast enough, they leave.

What the Brain Is Looking For

The mind is drawn to contrast: what's big vs. small, what's light vs. bold, what's short vs. shorter. These visual cues create a hierarchy that tells the eye where to look first. That's what great listing design does: it guides the scan.

On the flip side, the mind avoids three things: too much text, too little structure, and no obvious point. If your A+ Content modules are stuffed with paragraphs no one asked for, you're not adding value, you're adding friction.

And here's the kicker: annoyance is a faster emotion than curiosity. You'll lose them to frustration before you ever win them with information.

Design for the Scan, Then Write for the Read

Think of your listing content in two layers. First, design for the scanners. Use white space, font hierarchy, and visual contrast to make your key points pop instantly. More space equals faster scanning. Less space equals more work for the shopper (and they won't do that work, they'll just leave).

Second, write for the readers. The ones who slowed down because your design earned their attention. Reward them with clarity and a single clear point per section.

The Cheat Code

Make your headline and supporting text do different jobs. The headline grabs attention. The subtext clarifies and builds buying confidence. If both say the same thing, you're wasting prime real estate. If neither clarifies, you're relying on hope, and hope doesn't convert.

The goal with every piece of listing content is a three-step sequence:
→ Scan (earn attention with design hierarchy)
→ Read (reward them with clarity and a point)
→ Save/Buy (give them something structured enough to act on).

Stop writing listings like product manuals. Start designing them like someone's deciding in 3 seconds whether you're worth their time, because they are.

✌🏼 Have a great weekend.

See you again on Monday.

The answer to today’s STUMP BEZOS is
Sparky product baskets are 35% larger than normal