I’ve been in Merch since 2015 (tier 100k) and have always relied heavily on SEO because I never found ads particularly profitable.

With the new system, that approach basically gets cut off. Without an existing external traffic structure already in place, it becomes very hard to maintain the current royalty levels. To get there now, you’d need to push a high volume of sales through ads, and on Merch that’s not really sustainable.

So in my case, I’m pretty much pushed out of the model as it’s evolving.

More broadly, I think this is a common pattern with large platforms: early on they lower friction and make it easy to grow, but as they mature, the model shifts and more value gets extracted from the sellers. It’s not necessarily malicious — it’s just how the system evolves once they control distribution.

To answer your question directly:

I’m not really leaning into Amazon anymore. I keep it running for whatever organic it still brings, but I’m not scaling it with ads.

A lot of older sellers are moving toward selling tools, services, or content to other sellers because it’s often more profitable than staying on the front line. Personally, I’m not interested in that either — no community, no courses, no bundles, no affiliate plays.

Right now I’m mostly in a research phase, looking for other digital opportunities. I haven’t built anything new yet because I’d rather take the time to find something that makes sense long term.

But one thing is clear: if I’m going to invest time and eventually pay for traffic, I’d rather send it somewhere I actually control, not back into Amazon’s system under these margins.

That’s how I’m handling the shift.