Date: August 13th, 2026Summary: On the newsletter's third birthday, Kevin King walks through John Aspinall's AI system that builds a full Amazon image stack in about 13 minutes, and a club panel on why AI hasn't replaced Amazon SEO but now sits on top of it. He also makes the case that Shopify is a payments company rather than a software company, covers an AI scam that stole close to a billion views from one brand, and calls out bad information circulating in the seller newsletter space. Key Points Discussed: John Aspinall's AI image system: product URL plus one photo produces a complete 6-image stack in about 13 minutes, with a strategy doc, competitor research, and a QA check that regenerates anything that failsRolling a locked-in image standard across every flavour, colour, and scent with accurate packaging, plus Premium A+ built for desktop and mobileOne product shot turned into 20+ social variations across Meta and Pinterest, and Grok Imagine for animated labels, pours, and spins for Sponsored Brands VideoA9 still builds the candidate pool; Alexa for Shopping re-ranks it using personalisation, context, and shopper persona — classic optimisation is additive, not replacedAdd bullet points 6 through 10: Alexa for Shopping reads up to the 10th bullet, but most sellers stop at 5, and 8–10 bullets are now showing for 3P sellersRewrite for inference, not keywords: chain feature to benefit to who it's for to emotional payoff, because humans infer missing links and AI does notRun your main image through AWS Rekognition (free) to see approximately what Amazon seesAmazon's AVEN system reads the product in the image, not just OCR'd text — a crew-neck photo can drag down your relevance for "V-neck"Building a real avatar from Brand Analytics demographics, Market Basket Analysis, Product Opportunity Explorer, and Search Query Performance, fed to a top-tier LLMPulling your own Amazon data report — Kevin's came back as a 742-page PDF going back to 1999; US only, blocked in Europe under GDPRThe AI scam that cloned a brand across 277 deepfake channels, and Manny Suarez's 6-month legal war with YouTubeTikTok Shop stats: sellers doubled, but roughly 54% of stores recorded zero sales in 2025, only about 2,100 cleared $1M GMV, and only around 135 cleared $10MThree years of the newsletter: 312 editions, twice a week, never a missed Monday or Thursday, 97,000+ subscribersInboox: a searchable swipe file of 1.5M+ real emails from 10,000+ Shopify brands, filterable by journey stage and promotion typeShopify's Subscription Solutions did $802M last quarter against $2.9B in Merchant Solutions — 78% of the companyShopify Payments and currency conversion are roughly 82% of Merchant Solutions; GMV hit $116B in Q2, up 32%, with payments penetration climbing from ~60% to 68%Your real cost on Shopify is the take rate, not the plan fee — about 3.2 cents of revenue per dollar of GMVGuru Bullshit Meter: there is no A10 algorithm, and Rufus has been phased out in favour of Alexa Shopping Links Mentioned: Watch John Aspinall's full AI image-stack replayBuild it live with John: four 2-hour Wednesday sessions on a real ASINTry the Billion Dollar Seller Club for $9 and watch the full 90-minute SEO panelAWS Rekognition — see what Amazon sees in your imagesRequest your own Amazon personalisation data reportTitan AI — 14 days free accessMarketing Misfits: the AI scam that stole 1 billion views, with Manny SuarezInboox — 1.5 million competitor emails, searchableScot Wingo's analysis behind the Shopify breakdown Hot Picks: Every day goods drive the future growth of e-commerceTitan Network buys ProfaseeBack to school is bigger than you think on AmazonYour next customer might be an algorithmAmazon limits access to customer reviews for some usersTrump ditches small business reporting mandate Stump Bezos Answer: $43.3 billion will be spent on back-to-school items in the USA this year — about $864 per family. Pa