Most sellers walk into the Platform Dependence Audit expecting a passing grade. Steady sales, good reviews, a few years in and that feels like proof you're doing fine. The Audit isn't measuring that though. It's measuring four separate things: where your traffic actually comes from, how much of your revenue runs through one channel, whether you can reach a past customer without going through a platform inbox, and how exposed you are if fees or policies shift under you. Sales volume doesn't move any of those numbers. That's usually where the gap between "expected score" and "actual score" comes from. I broke down all four areas and what to do with your score once you have it — linked here

Most sellers treat September like a warm-up but it's the last month where your decisions actually change what November and December look like. Here's the trick: holiday buyers don't find you in November. They find you now, or they find you never. Search algorithms need weeks to learn what you sell and email lists need time to warm up before you ask for a sale. If you're still relying on marketplace search to bring you holiday traffic, September is your deadline to build something that doesn't disappear when the algorithm shifts. That means: An email list that's actually warm, not just collected and content that's already ranking before the holiday search volume hits. You need a clear answer to "why buy from me" that doesn't depend on being featured. October is for execution, November is for selling and September is for building the thing that makes both of those possible. What are you building this month that isn't dependent on a platform deciding to show you?

Quick question for the group: when a holiday buyer finds you through a marketplace, what happens to that relationship after the sale ships? I've been thinking about this heading into October. A strong November doesn't mean much if every one of those buyers disappears back into the platform in December. The sellers who get compounding growth are the ones who move at least some of that traffic onto something they own, an email list, before the season peaks. Curious what people here are already doing, if anything, to capture holiday buyers past the one-time sale.

What is one thing you are setting up this week to prepare for the holidays?