High Voltage Business Builders Podcast

Black Friday is November 27. A new open commission on TikTok Shop takes 30 days to take effect, so a change you make today lands after the holiday. A target commission takes five days, and it always overrides the open rate. This episode shows how to set your TikTok Shop affiliate commissions before the Black Friday rush, in three steps with a check on each.

In this episode:

• Why an open rate change made today misses Black Friday

• Why a target rate takes effect in time and wins over the open rate

• How to pick one commission rate between 1% and 80% per product

• Today's Voltage 3: three actions to finish before the peak

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

0:32 The Black Friday commission timing problem

1:13 Open collaboration vs target collaboration rates

1:24 Why an open rate change misses Black Friday

1:44 Why the target rate overrides the open rate

2:36 How to set it inside a real account

4:33 Today's Voltage 3

5:35 Where this lands for your week

Related: the channel side of this is in EP427, TikTok Shop vs Amazon FBA: Where to Put Your Black Friday Stock.

The High Voltage Business Builders podcast, the ecommerce podcast for sellers on Amazon, TikTok Shop, Shopify and Walmart. Hosted by Neil Twa.

Voltage AI Workshop: https://voltagedm.com/aiworkshop

Amazon holiday return policy: items bought on Amazon from November 1 to December 31, 2026 can be returned until January 31, 2027, and what that longer window means for the orders you plan around.

Amazon posted the announcement to sellers in the Seller Central seller forums. It covers both FBA and FBM orders. For Apple products in the same window, the return deadline is January 15, 2027. Amazon told sellers that no action is required and that existing return and refund conditions remain unchanged, and that the policy will apply every year. What changes is the timing you plan around. In this episode: review your January cash plan against holiday returns arriving through January 31, review your January reorder plans, and confirm who owns your FBM returns through January 31.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

0:25 The January return window

1:18 Why the longer window matters

1:38 What Amazon did not change

2:15 A yearly pattern to plan around

2:39 How to check your own business

3:58 The Voltage 3

The High Voltage Business Builders podcast, the ecommerce podcast for sellers on Amazon, TikTok Shop, Shopify, Walmart Marketplace and Target Plus.

Voltage AI Workshop: https://voltagedm.com/aiworkshop

Canada tariffs explained: which products come off the list of products of Canada that carry the additional 50% Section 338 duty, and which go on, for goods entered or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption on or after October 30, 2026.

The source is a White House proclamation dated October 23, 2026, and its Annex I product list. Part A products no longer carry the additional duty, and Part B products now do. The duty stacks on top of Section 232 duties, and it applies regardless of USMCA origin. The annex says product descriptions are informational only, so the HTS line decides, not what you call the product. In this episode: list every product and packaging item you bring in from Canada with its current HTS code, match each code against Annex I Part A and Part B, and review the list with your customs broker. This is not legal or customs advice.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

0:25 What changed on the Canada list

1:15 Annex I Part A and Part B

1:54 The paper packaging trap

2:25 The HTS line decides

2:46 How to check your own products

3:32 The process step by step

4:06 The Voltage 3

The High Voltage Business Builders podcast, the ecommerce podcast for sellers on Amazon, TikTok Shop, Shopify, Walmart Marketplace and Target Plus.

Voltage AI Workshop: https://voltagedm.com/aiworkshop

Amazon account health at risk: that's the yellow on your dashboard. Who pays when that yellow turns into a Black Friday shutdown? You do. And most operators are staring at that flag like it's just another notification to swipe away.

Here is what that yellow means. Amazon has flagged a policy violation on your account. It means a score between 100 and 199 on their scale, and it means you are one missed step away from a suspension. If you don't address it and Amazon can't reach you, Amazon says the account will most likely be deactivated. Amazon also says to address all violations in a timely manner, prioritizing those with the greatest severity. Not by date. This episode shows you how to find those flags now and work them in the right order before the rush.

Here is the order to work it. Someone outside the account sees the flag you miss, because you're too close to the dashboard. You work the most dangerous flag first, not the one that popped up yesterday. And you treat it like a maintenance log: read the exact policy language linked to the flag, document the fix in a shared sheet, date it, note the action, then move to the next one.

Open the dashboard this week, not after the rush. An account suspension during Black Friday costs you the entire event. For more on keeping your seller account safe, go back to episode 418 on Amazon's passkey requirement for seller accounts.

This is The High Voltage Business Builders Podcast.

Chapters (runtime 4:49):

00:00 Intro

00:23 Amazon account health at risk

01:35 Why outside eyes catch the flags you miss

02:07 Work violations by severity, not by date

02:33 A yellow flag on a brand doing well

03:05 Treat it like a maintenance log

03:52 The Voltage 3

PS: Voltage AI Workshop: https://voltagedm.com/aiworkshop

Amazon MCF TikTok Shop: how to fill your TikTok Shop orders from the FBA stock you already have, using the same Amazon fulfillment network that powers Prime.

If your account is eligible, TikTok Shop sellers get 35% off Amazon Multichannel Fulfillment rates for TikTok Shop orders for 12 months, and the Fast Badge shows Shipped by Amazon branding and delivery estimates right on the ad. Holiday peak fulfillment fees apply from October 15, 2026 to January 14, 2027, and your FBA inventory pool also fulfills your MCF orders. In this episode: review your inventory allocation so MCF can pull from the pool without stockouts on Amazon, confirm the 35% discount on your recent MCF invoices, and enable Fast Badges with delivery estimates showing in your ad previews before launch.

Chapters:

0:00 Intro

0:29 What Amazon MCF does for TikTok Shop orders

1:14 Why Amazon opened its network

1:50 Holiday peak fees through January 14

2:27 One FBA pool for every channel

3:08 What the Fast Badge shows

3:46 The Voltage 3

The High Voltage Business Builders podcast, the ecommerce podcast for sellers on Amazon, TikTok Shop, Shopify, Walmart Marketplace and Target Plus.

Voltage AI Workshop: https://voltagedm.com/aiworkshop

Amazon Ads Q4 is where your budget either builds your brand or burns it down. Most sellers throw money at the account and hope, like leaving the faucet running while they shower.

Amazon tells you plainly that negative targeting helps you exclude the keywords, products, or brands you do not want your ads associated with. Then it tells you to wait for at least 20 clicks before you pause a term. The target we shoot for is 10 clicks to 1 sale. Amazon also says daily budgets are spent as quickly as possible, so early in the day you can be out of budget. This episode shows you how to clean up Sponsored Products before peak: audit the search term report, add the terms sitting at 20 clicks with zero sales as negatives, and check your daily budget pacing.

Here is what changes when you do it. You stop paying for search terms that pull clicks and never convert. You keep your daily budget from running out early in the day. And you let your negatives run for two weeks, so you are reading the data instead of reacting to the noise.

Open your search term report today. If it looks like the junk drawer of your account, full of old data and clicks going to competitors, clean it out before peak season, not during it. For the fee side of Amazon ads, go back to episode 407 on the FTC's allegations about Amazon's ad auction surcharges.

This is The High Voltage Business Builders Podcast.

Chapters (runtime 3:53):

00:00 Intro

00:23 Amazon ads are eating your cash

00:46 What Amazon says about negatives and 20 clicks

01:27 Daily budgets spent early in the day

01:58 Fundamentals first

02:27 Clean up Sponsored Products before peak

03:01 The search term report junk drawer

PS: Voltage AI Workshop: https://voltagedm.com/aiworkshop

Amazon Lightning Deals can look like a win and still leak your full price sales. A Seller Central forum post lays out the fee structure: one hundred dollars upfront per promotion, plus one and a half percent of promotional sales, capped at five thousand dollars. But the fee is not the whole cost. Amazon uses a thirty day and sixty day lookback window when it sets the maximum deal price required for Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday deals, and Prime Big Deal Days promotional prices are excluded from that window. The submission window for Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday deals ran from July 8 to October 20, so it has already closed. In this episode of The High Voltage Business Builders Podcast, I break down the full deal math, what the closed window means for deals you already submitted, and three checks to run in your own account. In 2021 we raised close to $100M to buy 50 brands and pulled the plug. "The numbers didn't work." A deal that looks big still has to pass the numbers too.

See how we run our own Amazon brands at voltagedm.com: https://voltagedm.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep428

You think you have one hundred units for peak season. You do not. You have one hundred units split between two channels that might share the same warehouse. That is the trap. TikTok Shop vs Amazon FBA is not just a channel choice. It is an inventory survival test. Most sellers treat their FBA stock as a single pile. They do not see the flow. So they starve one channel to feed the other. The result is lost sales on Black Friday and a margin collapse that takes weeks to recover.

TikTok Shop moves two hundred units in week one. Amazon moves one hundred and fifty. If you have eight hundred units in the warehouse, you are not safe. You are guessing. This episode breaks down how to review inventory levels to account for both Amazon and TikTok Shop orders since they draw from the same FBA pool.

Listen to The High Voltage Business Builders Podcast to get three concrete moves. First, confirm your current FBA stock against projected demand for both platforms. Second, stop treating inventory as a static number and start modeling the flow. Third, protect your Black Friday margins by preventing stockouts on either channel.

This is not theory. This is operator experience. Neil Twa has managed brands at every level and knows that running out of stock on one channel while the other sells out is the fastest way to kill peak season performance.

Action: Check your FBA inventory levels today. If the split between Amazon and TikTok Shop feels like a guessing game, you are not alone. But you can fix it. Listen now and get the framework to protect your Black Friday stock.

See how we run our own Amazon brands at voltagedm.com: https://voltagedm.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep427

Amazon FBA storage fees already jumped for Q4, and if you missed it, the higher bill is running right now. On October 1st, standard size storage went from $0.78 to $2.40 per cubic foot. Oversize went from $0.56 to $1.40. Then on October 15th, the holiday peak fulfillment fee kicked in, and it runs through January 14, 2027. Two different fees. Both are live on your account today.

That means every slow-moving SKU sitting in an Amazon fulfillment center now costs more than double what it cost to store in September. Amazon charges storage monthly based on your daily average volume, so every day that stock sits between now and the end of December adds to the bill at the peak rate.

In this episode I walk through the math, why storage is a variable cost and not a fixed one, and how to decide which products stay. Every cubic foot you store in Q4 has to earn its spot. We have more than twenty-five brands of our own. Run this math on every SKU before you place a purchase order.

Action: Run the cubic feet calculation for your slow movers today. The peak rates are already running, so the exit plan starts now. The High Voltage Business Builders Podcast gives you the operator view on how to manage inventory without losing money. Check your account. See you tomorrow.

See how we run our own Amazon brands at voltagedm.com: https://voltagedm.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep426

Amazon FBA inventory planning is where your holiday cash lives or dies. It is not your ship date. It is your arrival date at Amazon. Two different dates. One broken plan. A restock that misses Black Friday or Cyber Monday is not a bad product. It is a timing error. When we bought one business, we found an inventory bill we did not plan for. The old owner bought on a gut feel, not a plan. You just find things in the back of the warehouse that cost you the season. This is not theory. This is the trap that leaks your margins before the first sale of the holiday rush. of The High Voltage Business Builders Podcast, I break down why your current restock schedule is likely broken. I show you the specific dashboard fields you need to check right now. I explain how to find each top seller's arrival date. I walk you through the Shipment Performance Dashboard. I tell you what to do when a shipment is late. I share the exact steps to fix the leak before it costs you the season. If any of this hits close to home, that is a good sign. It means you caught the leak before it cost you the season. But catching it is only half the battle. You have to fix it. And you have to fix it with a plan. Not a guess. Not a gut feel. A plan. This is for sellers at every level. From your first brand to your tenth. From ten thousand dollars a month to a million. The math is the same. The timing is the same. The consequence is the same. Listen now. Check your arrival dates. Fix the leak. Save your holiday cash flow. This is the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast.

See how we run our own Amazon brands at voltagedm.com: https://voltagedm.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=ep425