☕ Your Ecommerce Coffee Break (Issue 193)

👋 Happy Thursday! Here’s your latest ecom news roundup: Amazon slashing EU fees up to 39%, TikTok Shop prices up 30-70%, Shopify outage drama, ChatGPT +28% traffic.

Grab your coffee—skim in 60 sec or read in 3 minutes.

In Today’s Edition:

📰 Top Headlines: News, Marketplaces, and Platform updates
🎧 On the Pod: How I Built A 480 Episode Business Podcast
🗨️ Claus’s Hot Take: The Revenue Lie That’s Killing Online Stores

Feedback? Hit me up at [email protected] — I love hearing from my readers.

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📰 WHAT’S HAPPENING

📈 General Ecommerce News

• $1B in online spend on Cyber Monday [read more]

• ChatGPT Spikes Retail App Traffic 28% Black Friday [read more]

• Shopify Outage Disrupts Cyber Monday [read more]

• AI already capable of replacing 11.7% of U.S. workers [read more]

🛒 Platforms & Marketplaces

• Amazon to Lower Fees for European Sellers [read more]

• Shopify: BFCM by the numbers [read more]

• TikTok Shop is getting more expensive [read more]

• Retail Category Strategies for YouTube [read more]

📱Social Media & Advertising

• America's most-used social media site [read more]

• Meta shows you how to use Reels [read more]

• Meta's AI Ad Creative Generator: What Actually Works [read more]

• Best Text Message Strategy for 2026 [read more]

🎙️ ECOMMERCE COFFEE BREAK PODCAST

How I Built A 480-Episode Business Podcast

In this episode, Claus Lauter, host of the Ecommerce Coffee Break Podcast, dives into his journey of building the show.

He gives a recap of 2025, shares lessons learned from growing a slow social channel, and explains how the podcast evolved from a side project into a full-time, monetized business.

He also highlights the growing impact of AI on online shopping and ecommerce for both customers and suppliers.

🎧 Listen on: [Website] [Apple Podcasts] [Spotify] [YouTube]

Don’t forget to rate the ECB Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

🗨️ CLAUS’S HOT TAKE

The Revenue Lie That’s Killing Online Stores

Most online sellers chase revenue like it’s the truth. It’s not.

Revenue is vanity. Profit is reality. Cash flow is survival.

Here’s the trap:

• Many new sellers only track COGS, not the full cost of running a business.

• They skip app fees, team costs, shipping losses, returns, ad waste, and payment fees.

• That “7–8 figure brand”? Many run on <5% real profit.

• One bad week—stockout, frozen gateway, ad spike—and they’re on the edge.

Why it matters: If your numbers lie, your business is weaker than you think. Cash flow-driven stores die fast when the math is wrong.

Do this now: Check your true net profit. Track every cost. Fix reporting. Build cash reserves.

Want a deeper dive? Read this guide.

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