Chris Malta's EBiz Insider Podcast

Research has a great reputation. It sounds smart. It looks disciplined. Nobody ever got mocked for "doing more homework." In ecommerce, research is the one activity everyone agrees is responsible, even when nothing else is working. That's exactly why it becomes dangerous.

At some point, product selection stopped being a decision and turned into a scavenger hunt. Scroll this list. Watch that video. Copy whatever just went viral. If it sold for someone else, it must be worth selling for you. That's the story everyone's been fed, and it's why picking products now feels like trying to grab smoke.

Right now, a lot of sellers are treating AI like an unpaid intern who somehow got promoted straight to CEO. They hand it decisions, accept whatever comes back, and then act confused when the business starts drifting in weird directions. AI didn't do that. You did.

There's a special kind of stuck that only hits people who actually know what they're doing. Beginners flail loudly. Smart people stall quietly. They read more. They compare more. They make very reasonable arguments for doing absolutely nothing. If that feels familiar, welcome to the club nobody brags about joining.

If ecommerce advice feels overwhelming right now, it's not because there's too much truth floating around. It's because there's too much confident nonsense being delivered like it's universally applicable.

Somewhere along the way, a whole bunch of sellers decided that publishing content was the same thing as building authority. If the blog keeps updating and the AI dashboard says "12 posts generated," it must be working. Right? That's like assuming you're in great shape because you own a treadmill.

The loudest pitch around AI isn't just that it can help you research products. It's that it can decide for you. Ask the right prompt, get a clean list, and suddenly you're staring at "high demand, low competition" ideas that look suspiciously easy to act on.

Right now, everyone's being told the same bedtime story. You can spin up an online business in a weekend. AI builds the site. AI tells you what to sell. AI writes the content. AI does the SEO. You just sit back and watch Stripe notifications roll in while someone on YouTube gestures wildly at a dashboard. It sounds amazing. It also explains why so many people feel busy, broke, and vaguely...

December thirty first has a strange energy to it. People talk about reflection. Closure. Fresh starts. New intentions. All of that sounds responsible, but none of it fixes a business. It just makes people feel better for a night. Selling online doesn't care that it's New Year's Eve. Your ecommerce business doesn't pause, reset, or magically realign because the calendar flips at midnight.

December 30th is a strange day in ecommerce. It feels quiet, almost polite. The inbox slows down. Social feeds soften. People tell themselves they still have time. That's the trap. Today isn't the end. It's worse than that. Today is the last day you can still adjust things without pressure forcing your hand. Tomorrow isn't flexible. Tomorrow is a line in the sand, whether you acknowledge it or...