Uncertainty is part of selling on Amazon. Sorry, but it's true. The algorithm WI
By Max Sigurdson-Scott · February 9, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Uncertainty is part of selling on Amazon. Sorry, but it's true.
The algorithm WILL change. Fees WILL go up. Someone WILL copy your product. This is not something you can control. It is the benchmark... But the mistake is that people assume everyone gets hit by this stuff the same way.
They do not.
These changes punish sellers who are stretched thin. Sellers who optimized everything for today and left no room for tomorrow. Sellers running on tight margins, exact inventory, and cash that is already spoken for.
On paper, those businesses look efficient. In real life, they aren't.
I've seen it happen to others. It's happened to me. One fee change wipes out profit. One ranking shift causes a stock out. One Chinese clone forces a price cut they cannot afford. Nothing catastrophic happened. The structure just could not absorb the hit.
How many times have you seen LinkedIn posts about the sky falling on Amazon's latest fee increase?
Meanwhile, other sellers stay standing. How?
They have margin in their pricing. They have cash when others are scrambling. They have inventory depth and more than one SKU carrying the load. When things change, they do not panic. It's the same old chaos with very different results.
If you want a useful exercise, ask yourself this. What breaks first if Amazon changes something tomorrow? Is it cash flow? Is it inventory? Is it your ability to adjust pricing or ads without blowing things up?
Then build buffers where you can. More pricing margin. More cash on hand. More flexibility in how you operate.
Amazon will always be chaotic. You cannot control that. But you can choose whether chaos destroys you or... doesn't.
Philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a word for this. Antifragile. The sellers who last are not the ones who avoid shocks. They are the ones built to benefit from them.