June 20, 2025
PHOENIX – Selling on Amazon and/or Walmart is not easy, and many online sellers don’t have the bandwidth to focus on details such as listing optimization, SEO, advertising, account health, and compliance.
Prosper Show presenter Robyn Johnson, CEO and founder of Marketplace Blueprint, started her business as a reseller back in the relative “wild west” of Amazon. She has seen the evolution of Amazon and now Walmart, as well as the increasing reliance on AI.
However, when is it a bad idea to rely on AI? What kind of automation can help to better run the business? Prosper Show sat down with Johnson to get a better idea about what types of automation are actually worth the effort.
Prosper Show: What’s a specific example where you helped a client by incorporating automation?
Johnson: If you run Amazon ads, you know that you want the Amazon inventory to be fully available—not just at the warehouse, but fully checked in and ready to go—otherwise delivery dates are longer, which means conversions for the ads drop. We had a client who had issues managing his inventory, so we started to create an automation. We started with an Excel Macro that would download information, and then we would upload those changes to the ad platform to turn off ads when there was less than 15 days-worth of stock. We would only turn the ads back on when there was at least 15 days of inventory fully checked in. We eventually created a more advanced version of that automation using optimizer to be able to have that run in the background—with a lot less manual intervention.
Prosper Show: What type of automation is worth pursuing?
Johnson: First we look at what tasks are getting repeated over and over again. Then we look at how many of those have an element of ‘copy copy click click’ where you’re moving data around, or there’s a very clear if/then statement. Those can be great as a first step. The next level would be to look at tasks that are getting repeated over and over again that might need something a little bit more complex. For those you can hire somebody to write a Python script. Sometimes it makes sense to use an existing tool, but sometimes it makes more sense to build a tool on your own so you’re not paying that monthly fee. You really have to look at the labor costs, and who can you free up on your team by providing those automations.
Prosper Show: How does AI factor into all of this?
Johnson: Sometimes we focus so much on AI. People will spend three hours to write a prompt to write a tighter title and bullets for a product, but they only have three products, so they could’ve done it faster manually, or hired a professional writer. AI is really good at summarizing data and analyzing data. It’s great at ideation, but there’s a lot of things that it’s not great at. Sometimes people will spend a lot of time trying to get an AI tool to work when there are more predictable tools.
Prosper Show: What’s an example of a more predictable tool?
Johnson: We use optimizer for managing our ad budgets for clients. It’s a rule-based tool, and that gives us more clarity into what’s working and what’s not working on accounts. Sometimes people get so focused on an AI solution, and then they get frustrated when it does not provide predictable results.
Prosper Show: How sophisticated are online sellers these days when it comes to automation?
Johnson: Because Amazon has changed so rapidly, some sellers really struggle with automation and they still do a lot of tasks manually. People have been looking for better ways to automate tasks and that is why there has been so much interest in AI—because people are looking to streamline and lower their labor costs—especially as margins have gotten tighter.
Prosper Show: What’s an overriding philosophy for automation?
Johnson: When you’re creating automations, don’t feel like you have to start at your final solution. Sometimes start with an easy solution that is accessible to your team—even if it’s just using flat files and Excel—is a good place to start to make sure you really understand what you need the automation to do, and then building out something more complex once you better understand how that automation will work in your organization.
Prosper Show: What’s your level of optimism these days?
Johnson: There’s still a lot of room for growth in online selling. There’s room for expansion. Online shopping is not going anywhere and it’s still a great place for brands to get customer awareness.
Prosper Show: What’s particularly important right now for brands?
Johnson: Brands need to be aggressively managing their cash flow and looking at profitability on a regular basis to make sure that they always have room to maneuver. I do think that there are brands that are going to have a rough year—just because the cost of money has gone up and owning an inventory-based business takes a lot of cash flow.
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