"I'm all for data feeds... Call me when it makes money."
Kurt pulled the agentic sales numbers on a store doing $1.8 million a month. ChatGPT drove $4,200 of it. So he dragooned business partner Paul Reda into an unscripted reaction to Shopify's Editions announcements. No pre-cleared questions, no talking points, just two people who've optimized eight-figure stores for AI search comparing notes on what's actually real.
They get into why Universal Commerce Protocol is legitimately impressive tech still waiting for its payday, what the app store review crackdown means for honest developers, and a discovery buried in Shopify's dev docs: a commission-based paid placements program that might finally be the part that makes the money.
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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt Elster • 00:00.001
This episode is brought to you in part by Swym. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swym actually activates that data. When someone wish lists a product, you could trigger price drop or back-in-stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Klaviyo or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wish lists for gifts, and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in-store. And unlike card abandonment, wishlist data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this. Just not right now. Swym's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes You can try it for free today at getswim. com slash Kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M. com slash Kurt.
Paul Reda • 01:11.560
I'm telling you right now, before we start, you have dragooned me into this out of nowhere.
Kurt Elster • 01:17.080
Yes.
Paul Reda • 01:17.480
I have not prepared anything. Correct.
Paul Reda • 01:19.480
I have no background knowledge. Go this is a truly gonna be a conversation between the two of us and damn the torpedoes.
Kurt Elster • 01:27.140
Great great all right Cause I'm man, it sounds like our audience, based on feedback, may be sick of prepared talking points. So instead of talking points, let us discuss
Paul Reda • 01:39.439
All right, so yeah, pretty much my two pickups from all those podcasts are point of sale and agenc. Is there an agentic point of sale? Maybe will that will Claude come into your store and you can use point of sale agentically?
Kurt Elster • 01:53.100
Yeah, this is what's just thing. They they'll never pick a specific AI. We say agentic, really we're referring to ChatGPT plus agen, you know, plus ChatGPT plus Claude, you know, plus Google Gemini. Who uses that?
Paul Reda • 02:06.660
Who uses Gemini? Come on.
Kurt Elster • 02:08.020
There's really there are two AIs, as far as I'm concerned. Uh and also Groc, why not? He's kind of fun. Do whatever. It will do whatever. If I were able to just mute a Gentic in my DMs. I would stop all spam from the last month.
Paul Reda • 02:25.720
If I hear the word agentic again, I'm gonna jump out a window.
Kurt Elster • 02:31.240
Really, it it's be and AI became such a loaded, dirty word that we I think we just replaced it with agentic.
Paul Reda • 02:37.960
Well it just smurf now? It's just, well, you know, it's the new Smurf feed for the Smurfing Smurfs and then and Brainy Smurf invented smurfing. That's all it is.
Kurt Elster • 02:49.720
The agent invented agentic.
Paul Reda • 02:51.480
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 02:51.799
But it's Papa Smurf. But okay, let's establish where we are with our AI usage now. You use AI.
Paul Reda • 03:01.700
No, I mean I'm like, this is annoying. Here is a job that I have to do that is annoying that I don't want to do. I bet the A can I make the AI do it? And I do. That's it. That's pretty much it. Because the AI is really good at churning out code of Crap, I want to get off off my plate. So yeah, that gets used maybe once I'll do that like once a week.
Kurt Elster • 03:23.440
Okay. And I'm using it constantly.
Paul Reda • 03:28.480
Daily to make choices about your life.
Kurt Elster • 03:33.280
I don't know about that. For sure I am running
Paul Reda • 03:37.840
My stupid dad does.
Kurt Elster • 03:39.360
Oh no.
Paul Reda • 03:40.000
Oh yeah. And let's be clear here. My dad, a senior citizen in America, has access to Medicare. He also has a not insubstantial amount of money, can go see a doctor whenever he wants. Also, within his family of children, there is a doctor, a pharmacist, and a nurse. And he could talk to them at any time about anything, but don't worry, he asks Dr. ChatGPT how he feels about things. And sometimes goes by that recommendation instead.
Kurt Elster • 04:09.280
Tell him the next time it he's like settled on a recommendation with it to ask, are you sure about that? And then watch how often it flips. God. Frequently does. About half the time it'll change its mind if you're just like, eh, you sure? Because it wants to please you. Yeah. Right? It's a system built to keep you engaged. I love AI and I hate AI. I do. I use it all the time. I do not want to give up my tools. I think it is fabulous at software development. I love that. Uh I think it is, you know Any technical task that has a clear pass fail state, it is good at because it could test for it. It is a goal-oriented algorithm. I am driven insane when people personify it, anthropomorphize it, name it.
Paul Reda • 04:55.000
Wait, can I talk about something? You were on a sales call with someone. And they had an AI agent and it was like they named it like Steve. So you ask Steve and you deadpan on the sales call, go, it's a computer. I don't give computers names. And they and they would they just see the look on their face. It was incredible.
Kurt Elster • 05:14.360
Yeah. I said, no, I well I I said it's a It's an algorithm. We don't name the algorithm. It doesn't have pronouns. It doesn't have a name. It's not a person. The quickest stepping stone to AI psychosis are the people who go through the effort to build a team of fake employees in a slack.
Paul Reda • 05:34.860
I mean that's what people want.
Kurt Elster • 05:36.300
That's what you know what that's what agentic is.
Paul Reda • 05:38.620
I mean that and that's what the r I mean that's like what the return to office stuff was all about is because the bosses didn't have anyone to boss around.
Paul Reda • 05:45.039
That's the reason why, you know, for my whole damn life, anytime anything with uh artistic judgment calls need to be made. Designs, what do you think of this color? What do you think of this font? We had to go back and forth 30 times and the initial design was never good enough. And so, you know, we really had to dial in on this. And I really got thoughts out. Oh yeah. But the second they ask an AI agent to make some slop for them, and it turns out some C minus slop, they're like, look what I made. This is great. Isn't this great? It's just like, oh really, that requires no revisions at all. The slop that got churned out. It's like cause you had a slave make it for you. That's all you wanted this whole time. was you wanted someone to boss around and you were getting off on boss on bossing around the designer, but now that you bossed around the AI, you've gotten your little cookie that you needed to boss someone around.
Kurt Elster • 06:33.600
Ah, let's talk about the cookie. When I when you achieve something, when you build something, ship something, create something, make something. You get that hit of dopamine. Whether I make a fabulous meal, I make a piece of software, I complete a great document, whatever it is, there is a a reward, a chemical reward in my brain that occurs AI has robbed me of that. And I'm not the only one. With an AI, I can now build things Bigger, better, faster, things I could have never built or done before, but conceptually I knew how to do it. So I could describe now to an AI This is what I'm looking for. This is how you're gonna do it. This is where I you know, I don't know, and you gotta fill in the blanks, and then you know, we're gonna talk about that. We could construct plans. All I can do is construct and approve a plan. And then I pass that off. To an AI that builds it. And I built some cool thing. I built a whole video game pricing research tool. Incredible And it didn't quite work the way I wanted. And I just went, meh, screw it. I just deleted it. Because who ca there's no no effort, no skin in the game beyond, you know, I I knew where how to connect all the pieces and explained it. But then it went and did the work. And so, you know, in the past, if I got this this giant hit of dopamine from achieving anything, now I could build stuff way better than that. But like it just feels so meaningless now. But I wouldn't give it up because I could just build any custom piece of software I want whenever I want. But it doesn't feel exciting anymore. That's strange.
Paul Reda • 08:11.760
No, I mean it makes complete sense. It's part of being a human. You kinda want to make things.
Kurt Elster • 08:16.539
Yeah. We're tool users.
Paul Reda • 08:18.379
Yeah. So we are fragile meat. Yeah, and so you didn't uh you didn't actually do anything when the AI did it.
Kurt Elster • 08:25.840
This is why I don't understand way people I have had several friends and colleagues show me their vibe coated thing that they think they're gonna take to market. And every time I'm like, hey, all you did was write some text to a robot that built you the thing that just transforms text. That's all you've done. You know, nothing really occurred here. There is nothing special here. And if I want to like you've already figured out how to make it work, if I want to recreate it, your marketing page becomes my spec doc. I even tried this with a few things. I said, hey, based on this marketing page, build like that's our spec doc. And then I handed it off to Clor Code. Go build this. It succeeded. And then the thing is it's building the second version of what you already built. And so it does a better job on V2. And so I could then ship that. The next person sees it, you know, whatever like person from R slash vibe coding sees it. And it goes, oh, wow, looks like they're making money with that. And the same thing happens, right? And so we're in this weird software arms race where I mean you could build anything and yet none of it matters. And so I think the use case for me is open source software is customization is like full-on personalized one user-only custom software.
Paul Reda • 09:44.960
No.
Paul Reda • 09:45.840
No? Because outside of like a very simplistic pass-fail use case, you know, your Barbie search page.
Kurt Elster • 09:54.660
Oh, Doll Scout.
Paul Reda • 09:55.700
Doll Scout. Doll Scout.
Paul Reda • 09:57.060
com. What does that page do? It leverages an API to search a subset of Shopify stores.
Kurt Elster • 10:04.500
Commercial commerce protocol.
Paul Reda • 10:05.780
Nice. Cool. That's not that hard. Not at all. That's not hard. No. We get a lot of stuff. We're starting to get things from clients and potential clients. They have an idea for a page or a feature they want. They tried vibe coding it. It gets like 80% of the way there, but they don't have the knowledge or ability to get it the final 20%. Then they turn that over to us and they're like, fix it. So outside of very simplistic use cases, I don't think that's the case. You know, there's a there's an axiom that You know, in in writing software, 90% of job 90% of the job takes 90% of the time, and the final 10% takes the other 90% of the time. And it's like, that's exactly it. Like on the Montana knife page I made. If I sat down and was like, I know nothing. I don't know any CSS. I don't know any liquid. I don't know about image encoding. I don't know anything. But I'm gonna get Claude to make that Montana knife landing page. Impossible. Could not be done. Couldn't impossible for it to be done. But because I have the base level of knowledge on how to do all that, I was able to pick and choose my spots on it. And be like, oh no, I'm writing all of this myself because I know about all of these things and I can get it done. I don't know about this little part of the animation library. So Claude, all you're doing, and I wrote that, I broke that page out into individuals individual sections. There's like 11 sections or 12 sections on that page. All the sections are modular. And I just went, Claude, in ID section 11, do X, Y, and Z using the animation library. Boop, done. And that's how you do it. But to be like, well, I'm starting from scratch with zero um God, what's the word I'm looking for? Experience. Experience, but I'm looking for like domain knowledge. Okay. With uh I have zero domain knowledge, all I know is what I want, and you gotta get there for me.
Kurt Elster • 12:07.220
That's tough. Couldn't happen
Paul Reda • 12:09.120
You know, frankly, a lot of these people that are approaching you with zero domain knowledge showing showing off their new SAS that they built entirely with Clos when they Claude when they have no SAS knowledge. No knowledge of how to create any of this stuff, but they made something. They don't have the domain knowledge to understand that the thing that they made is simple and easily copiable. And then when you tell them that, they're devastated.
Kurt Elster • 12:38.500
Yes. You know what's funny, it's like, hey, if you made a cool thing for yourself, that's fine. But it's like everyone the f they make something cool for themselves Their immediate reaction is I should sell this. Mm-hmm.
Paul Reda • 12:50.579
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 12:51.380
You know? You're reselling what a robot made of the case.
Paul Reda • 12:59.880
This is incredible.
Kurt Elster • 13:00.680
That is a hundred percent an excellent metaphor for what's happening here.
Paul Reda • 13:05.560
They didn't even make the bowl of pasta. They had the pasta making robot make the bowl of pasta for them. And they should be like, I should open a restaurant with my robot pasta.
Kurt Elster • 13:12.480
Yeah, so you bought a microwave. Made some popcorn and you're like, I'm starting a theater. Um with obviously for we with Shopify. Agentic is their their big push. And they have, yeah. If I go in the agentic sales channel, I'm looking at a store right now. Let's see, let's see how much sales, 30 days, we have managed. This is a store where you've like, we have done everything right, checked all the boxes.
Paul Reda • 13:38.180
And this score does this store generally does what a year? 20 million?
Kurt Elster • 13:42.900
All right, hold on. All right. In a store that has done $1. 8 million in online store sales in the last 30 days. How much of that came from ChatGPT?
Paul Reda • 13:54.520
Under $5,000.
Kurt Elster • 13:56.920
Correct. Oh, $4,200. $4,200. Uh it's the future, Kurt. I know it's the future, man. So you can see why people are skeptical, why it's hard to get excited. This is In all of our client stores, I have checked all the boxes. If Shopify says to optimize for your AI future, jump. I will be like, you know what? I built an AI that tells me how high to jump and what optimal height to jump and when and implemented it and it's already done. Right? And this, you know, this is what I'm getting here. $4,200 on $1. 8 million.
Paul Reda • 14:34.779
But you know, you gotta be ready or else you're gonna be left behind.
Paul Reda • 14:37.600
I'm gonna be able to do that.
Kurt Elster • 14:38.560
You're gonna be left behind. You're gonna be you're just gonna be left behind.
Paul Reda • 14:41.920
I mean, you know, if you implement this 18 months from now, your store's gonna fail because you'll be left behind. Because no one has ever learned anything in their entire life.
Kurt Elster • 14:50.900
I'm really well, I you know, I learned my lesson w when I missed the train on blockchain and NFTs.
Paul Reda • 14:56.260
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 14:56.820
You know, if I had only implemented those in my business, I'd be okay now.
Paul Reda • 15:00.839
So, and I feel like you know, let's go, let's talk about agentic. What is agentic? Agentic just means shit having to do with AI.
Kurt Elster • 15:07.560
It used to mean you gave the AI some autonomy. That it was more than just text in, text out.
Paul Reda • 15:12.360
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 15:12.760
Now it was just question, answer, question, answer.
Paul Reda • 15:15.160
It was, you know, it's it spins off and starts doing stuff by itself. Now, because it got smurfed, uh agentic means any shit that has to do with AI.
Kurt Elster • 15:23.640
I'm just I'm watching b the blockchain thing happen all over again.
Paul Reda • 15:26.440
And so uh the Shopify agentic storefront means it's a data feed. Of your store that AIs can read and then maybe sell people things, but doesn't look like they can.
Kurt Elster • 15:39.400
Support for this episode comes from Zippify, makers of shop rank. Consider this. AI may be hiding your Shopify store and you wouldn't even know it. Today, more than 800 people use large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini to shop for their products. And those AI engines are deciding who to recommend. The question is whether they're picking you or your competitor. The trouble that most Shopify stores have airs. They may not be aware of missing alt text, weak descriptions, JSON schema that is simply wrong. AI sees those errors and moves on without a second thought. And there goes the sale. Now you could do something about it. Shop rank checks your product catalog against seventeen critical factors that can keep you from appearing in AI search. But unlike other audit tools, which only tell you what's broken, ShopRank fixes it for you. Automatically. No tech skills required. ShopRank gives you your store's AI visibility score in under 60 seconds. And then helps you improve it for free. You can see your AI score right now by visiting zipify. com slash AI. That's zipify. com slash AI. Do take a moment to do this today before AI gives away any more of your sales. Yeah, Universal Commerce Protocol is on the other end of this. And so anyone can qu send a query to Universal Commerce Protocol, and we just covered this in other episodes, and then Shopify will return, hey Here are the products that match that. And like that is a huge undertaking. They've a billion products and it instantly comes back with 40 that fit.
Paul Reda • 17:11.880
I mean, cool. I'm all for data feeds, and if Shopify wants to put forth the effort And, you know, the lift to like get all this done and get all this set up, like, great. Thank you. Call me when it makes money.
Kurt Elster • 17:24.919
Well, that's where they're at now. It's like, all right, we built the th like we we did the hard part of make of opening this information up in a fantastic way and making this available.
Paul Reda • 17:35.560
Good for them, thank you. Yes. We will sit hopefully it makes money, but I'm not looking at it.
Kurt Elster • 17:41.800
Now step two is someone has to do something with it. Okay, ChatGPT could pull this info. Right. And then there's tons of like tiny high specific tools or like small apps that could pull this info in. You know, like I built Doll Scout. There's like 10 versions of similar things. Yeah, um I guess I saw a guy who built one just for fishing gear, right? I thought it was cool. But it so I in Chat GPT I go in there and I can ask it, you know, for a recommendation. And in theory, it's gonna come it might come back with your store's product and the person can click buy now and it drop I don't know if ChP does this, but Universal Commerce Protocol makes this possible. It could drop you straight into the checkout of that store with the product already in it, or potentially it could do the checkout in ChatGPT. I have yet to see this.
Paul Reda • 18:29.600
But I mean, I think they stopped that. That got canceled.
Kurt Elster • 18:35.440
Yeah.
Paul Reda • 18:36.320
Because they just couldn't work out probably like Because it's got to work with Stripe. Because I think it's Shopify is Stripe on the back end, right? Shopify payments. Shopify payments. So yeah, it's like, well, Stripe's got to get involved. And then Chad DPC wants a cut, I'm sure, because they're not going to be able to do that.
Paul Reda • 19:01.240
recorded, uh I really need this bubble to pop. I need this bubble to pop so we can figure out what the future looks like. Because right now, the future they're pitching is fake. And so, you know, Pandora's not going back in the box. Like, this shit's not going away.
Kurt Elster • 19:18.520
Oh no, we're we're never giving up these tools.
Paul Reda • 19:20.520
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 19:20.920
Like, let's agree on that. The tools are overhyped, but they're good.
Paul Reda • 19:24.100
But we might be giving it we might be giving up these specific tools. Yeah, cats out of the bag there. But this whole thing where it's like, oh yeah, for $50 a month. You're gonna get, you know, a high level coder at coder at your disposal for as much as you want it. No, you're not. Nope. This is all fake. And it's like You know, is ChatGPT or Anthropic or Oracle going to exist in five years? I don't know. Maybe not.
Kurt Elster • 19:52.780
When this money spigot When you got a debt load like they do.
Paul Reda • 19:55.740
Yeah, when this fake money spigot turns off. We gotta shake out, you know, things have got to shake out and see what the real prices are, what the real advancements will be once people just stop burning dump trucks full of money every day. And I we need in order to accurately predict the future of how this is going to work, we need to get to accurate pricing and accurate model abilities. Because right now it's all fake. It's all fake built on cheap money. It's like Uber. You wrote in an Uber, oh my God, Uber was so great. Cost me nothing. Oh uh oh fake money spigot ran out.
Kurt Elster • 20:33.840
Well th I think DoorDash is a better example of that. Same thing. Yeah. Yeah. DoorDash is like, wow, how convenient. Now DoorDash. If you compare the DoorDash menu prices to the actual store prices, you're paying like 50% more.
Paul Reda • 20:45.140
Yeah. And so this thing where the monthly fee, that's going away. It's all going to be token based.
Kurt Elster • 20:51.360
For sure they're they're clearly like easing us into that concept.
Paul Reda • 20:54.880
Yeah. And so when the token base hits, and then it becomes, oh, you used $1,000 worth of tokens this week. I think a lot of companies are going to start pumping the brakes on, well, you need to be using as much AI as possible. That shows that you're advanced
Kurt Elster • 21:11.120
Oh yeah. I mean that's already happened.
Paul Reda • 21:17.760
That happened to my brother.
Kurt Elster • 21:18.860
Man, that's such an easy thing to game. I'd be like, hey, can you just go summarize every encyclopedia you could find?
Paul Reda • 21:24.539
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 21:24.940
Oh man, I will burn through tokens all day.
Paul Reda • 21:26.940
It's like, could you go through our entire code base and like You know, clean it up a tiny bit, like change the name of all variables to one letter or something, you know, just to like zip it up a little bit.
Kurt Elster • 21:36.740
Some code base reviews.
Paul Reda • 21:37.620
Yeah. Do an audit. Just have a run through.
Kurt Elster • 21:39.860
Oh man. Yeah, no, I could really if someone like if you just want to burn tokens, I am happy to help.
Paul Reda • 21:45.160
Yeah, so that we've hit the end of that with the increase in token-based billing. Now we need the token-based billing to also stop being fake. And then we'll actually get some real numbers here. Anyway, fact shop fly.
Kurt Elster • 22:03.580
Yeah, a lot we are we're really mixing a lot of AI, you know, open AI, anthropic discussion. Software development into Shopify.
Paul Reda • 22:12.919
Well, because if we're if we're going all in on Agentic, which is that was the number one thing in this Shopify update release.
Kurt Elster • 22:21.320
Um then it deserves discussion.
Paul Reda • 22:23.320
It deserves discussion. Who are you making this feed for? Because if the users aren't there, as we've seen with Less than 0. 1%.
Kurt Elster • 22:32.919
And then yeah, that was one example store. I you we have multiple stores that do 25 to 50 million client retainer stores. We have done everything right the way we're supposed to for SEO and for this agentic search. And none of them did better than that scenario. Yeah. I mean, I I pulled what was the best performer. You know, so now in the past, like it this started in November where we start seeing referrals from ChatGPT and they're low. And then every month they start going up. This is the first time I've seen it go down.
Paul Reda • 23:01.540
Oh, when it's gone down.
Kurt Elster • 23:03.140
Yeah. So I'm like, oh you know, did this plateau, is this temporary? But yeah, it used to continuous every month it would go up. This is the first month that it dipped. Last 30 days. Just go and last 30 days compared to previous thirty days. Is it a fad? What if it's a fad? That's you know the There's no way to know. Right? It's like, okay, your dad is using Chat GPT, right? Like a lot of people are using these tools.
Paul Reda • 23:29.840
My dad is notorious for his bad health choices though.
Kurt Elster • 23:32.240
So maybe he's like But he's not using it for shopping Right? He's using it as his medical professional. That's a different discussion. Who hasn't asked Dr. ChatGPT advice? Me. Oh, I've asked.
Paul Reda • 23:47.380
Uh the other thing that I would like AI to work at and be good at is Shopify just announced they're finally gonna police the app store better. Because that's a problem, because all the AI, the all the dilettants making their slop AI apps have flooded all app stores everywhere with their garbage.
Kurt Elster • 24:07.480
Yes.
Paul Reda • 24:07.880
Including the Shopify app store.
Kurt Elster • 24:09.900
Yes.
Paul Reda • 24:10.220
So that's a problem.
Kurt Elster • 24:11.180
Well, you know what their solution there? Well, they had really long lead times on reviews, which we dodged. Uh we got in just ahead of that. They are now appear to be using uh they really like just compressed the time to get an app reviewed. And as far as anybody could tell, an AI reviews your app.
Paul Reda • 24:29.500
Yeah.
Paul Reda • 24:30.780
And then the other problem with that was a lot of these slop app makers were then buying reviews for their apps. in order to goose themselves on the Shopify app store to get more installs. Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 24:45.440
This one is, I mean, there, this is not a theory. This is not a feeling. This is factual.
Paul Reda • 24:49.360
This is factually happening. Um, we were super pissed about it. And because like we don't do that, and we've been we got promo party pro our new app and we've really been grinding on it. It's been a real grind. To get this thing surfaced and get this thing installed. And we see stores out there that are unlock hiding features and being like, well If apps out there hiding features that's like, oh well if you give us her a view, we'll unlock the feature for you. Or if you give us her a view, we'll give it to you give the app to you for free now.
Kurt Elster • 25:20.899
I saw one uh guy shared on Twitter. It was they'd give you a $40 Amazon gift card for writing a five-star review. Forty bucks for a review? I mean what's that? That's a good deal. Yeah, give me reviews all day. 25 bucks is my minimum. All right. Pay to play, buddy But hold on. You know, why go through all this hassle? Well, we've seen it. The algorithm in that app store is a it appears to be quite influenced by both reviews and recency of reviews. Anytime we get a five-star review on an app, there will then be a series of installs on that app directly afterward. And then you can see they fall off if you don't get another five-star review. And so if you are an app developer in the Shopify App Store and your app works like you nail everything else, your game then becomes, you know, largely Get reviews. This is not a software arms race on features, you know, on on experience.
Paul Reda • 26:13.740
It's purely manipulating Shopify's algorithm. Correct. Manipulating is a A loaded term, I don't really mean in an evil way, I mean like gaming it. Or like figuring out how to work with it, work within it. You need to get reviews in order to work within it. So these companies were and so it's just part of surviving in the app store is you gotta get reviews. Although if you don't get if you don't get frequent five-star reviews You will fall underneath the surface and you'll die.
Kurt Elster • 26:42.020
You don't yeah.
Paul Reda • 26:42.660
You'll drown.
Kurt Elster • 26:43.220
You will not get installs.
Paul Reda • 26:44.340
At least not from the app store. And yeah, you will not get installs and then you're not getting more reviews. So you're not getting any more installs. So you're not getting any more reviews and bye-bye. So these ultra shady companies were manipulating the reviews. Occasionally Shopify would bust them and they'd get like banned until they were temporarily. They'd get temporarily banned. until the banner that literally was like, hey, do a crime for us was removed from their store. And then Shopify was like, great, you removed the crime banner. You're back in. And also those 500 fi like scam reviews you kinda got, that's fine. You can keep 'em. Like look at your great app now. Thumbs up, great job.
Kurt Elster • 27:20.900
Oh, it gets better. This the like there, all right, the the company uh we're talking about specifically Did they just they waited? They just put the banner back?
Paul Reda • 27:30.360
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 27:30.920
They put it back. They just went straight back to doing it as soon as they were back in the app store. And it's like they don't have one app doing this. They have several. And if you're do like if you're willing to go this far, why not make another shell company make clones of your own app with like different branding and do it again? Yeah. Right? And then it just turns into a cat and mouse game.
Paul Reda • 27:50.100
So we were peeled about that. And a lot of people were mad about it because Shopify was just. Not there. They were just not there to police this. Like we're trapped in their app store. Like we can't. That's how we sell.
Kurt Elster • 28:12.140
So I get part of it it part of it's finite resources. Part of it is and then you know part of it's like, okay, how do you do this without you're you're gonna anger somebody, right?
Paul Reda • 28:23.640
Well, I'm fine angering people that are running scams.
Kurt Elster • 28:26.600
I agree.
Paul Reda • 28:27.480
But anyway, within the last week, Shopify announced that We're sorry. We're going to be policing this way harder now. And we will be removing reviews that we determined were gotten fraudulently or made by AI bots or whatever.
Kurt Elster • 28:46.200
You know, this is a thing they've done before. Yeah. Cleared out reviews. And what's funny is like we I I I would think all of our re reviews should have passed. The last time they purged reviews, there were a few we lost. I don't know why.
Paul Reda • 28:58.980
Yeah. I don't I mean, and they even said, I mean, th obviously there's gonna be
Kurt Elster • 29:02.540
false positives like you can't be 100% all the time.
Paul Reda • 29:04.700
But yeah, they even said that like some stores may like with lots of reviews will see some reviews go away.
Paul Reda • 29:10.060
Like even that didn't engage in manipulation.
Kurt Elster • 29:12.100
Yeah. Yeah, you get well and then so they know from past experience the people who lose reviews, like who get those false positives. Oh man, then they're really mad. And then on top of it, like there were, you know, the announcements um about profit sharing the partner program. Like that's a recent thing too. And I was like, all right, how you know, I was thrilled, right? If I if we bring in a store to Shopify that does 50 million over four years, I think it would work out to 300,000 in commission. That gets paid out. Yeah. A rising tide lifts all boats. Like you want that you want to align incentives. This is what that helps that it's like, you know But hold on. Between those two those two announcements are like within a week of each other. Hey, we're gonna we're gonna clean up the app store. Hey, profit sharing. Unequivocal good news on both fronts. I go to s I go in my Slack communities, I want to see how people are reacting. First thing I see, they're like, man, as an it it was like, as a theme developer, I just don't feel recognized.
Paul Reda • 30:13.540
Well they didn't they didn't get a cookie.
Kurt Elster • 30:15.380
Yeah. You know.
Paul Reda • 30:17.300
Theme developer, oof. That's yeah. People spend four hundred dollars with you once and they expect support until the heat death of the universe.
Kurt Elster • 30:26.620
That's why we do it.
Paul Reda • 30:27.660
Because I gave you $400 three years ago.
Paul Reda • 30:30.140
Like get out of here.
Kurt Elster • 30:31.660
Front end development is our bread and butter. Do you think we could build a custom theme? Hell no. Yeah. Of course we could do it. I'm just not gonna do it. That seems like a lot of
Paul Reda • 30:41.500
Yeah, I don't want to support that.
Kurt Elster • 30:43.820
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Paul Reda • 31:45.840
Yeah, there is. I mean, I mean I'm there have been moments I'm kind of like, am I gonna have a job in two years?
Kurt Elster • 31:50.640
Yeah. Should I just like really should I pick welding back up?
Paul Reda • 31:53.140
Yeah, like I'm worried that I'm not gonna have a job in two years.
Kurt Elster • 31:55.940
Maybe I just go be a bike mechanic again. Is all are complaining just like existential anxiety?
Paul Reda • 32:02.000
I think that's part of it. I think, well, again.
Kurt Elster • 32:04.400
Well, I think that's why you have to be sensitive about how you approach talking about and messaging AI. Cause it's a hot button issue. For a lot of people and for different reasons. Software developers, existential crisis. Yeah A lot of people are just like, hey, my electricity cost went up 50%. Mine did. This is why.
Paul Reda • 32:27.880
Yeah, it's like I'm not buying a new video card anytime soon.
Kurt Elster • 32:32.120
Right. Right. I mean there's just a lot of stuff that's like negatively impacted just by the sheer existence of AI.
Paul Reda • 32:38.360
Yeah, it's I mean it all sucks. There's nothing pot there's no positive impacts other than like four companies stock prices have gone up by a ton. Right
Kurt Elster • 32:48.279
And I still I just want to get back in terminal with my man Claude Code.
Paul Reda • 32:51.320
That's and that's get my slash code. That's the problem is that you're you are a little too excited about it. about it because you're a fiddler. You're a fiddler and you're obsessed with optimizing.
Kurt Elster • 32:59.960
Yeah, it's just it fits my personality too well.
Paul Reda • 33:02.519
Which is great for me, because you when you're constantly optimizing our business That means I get more money. So I'm like, go to it, Colonel. You just do it as much as you want. That's great, baby. I love it. When you're like, okay, so I made Claude. Look at the com ed constant electricity. So I know that I make my house turn off the lights and turn off things when elect when the electricity prices are too high and then Claude turns the things back. I'm like, I don't care, dude.
Kurt Elster • 33:28.740
Okay, Claw doesn't run that up.
Paul Reda • 33:30.180
You spent so much time doing that and you're like, look, it saved me five bucks.
Kurt Elster • 33:33.860
That's the worst part. Once I had the idea, I was just like, Fable, plan it, implement it, it just worked. I mean literally it was like minutes.
Paul Reda • 33:41.620
So my our conversation before you should not be proud about it at all. Because you did nothing.
Kurt Elster • 33:48.620
You know, I was proud that the idea worked. Yeah. But if I were like, you know, if I were a home automation person and I had built something like that before manually and then made a slightly better version with Claude Don't feel anything about it.
Paul Reda • 34:03.580
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 34:04.380
That's the thing.
Paul Reda • 34:05.180
You didn't have the you didn't have the domain specific knowledge before.
Kurt Elster • 34:08.380
Well, getting like You gotta write home assistance its own thing.
Paul Reda • 34:12.419
And I just don't know what And this is maybe just me whistling past the graveyard, is that's my thing, is that the people that potentially want to replace me are clients. In order for me to not have a job. Don't have the domain specific knowledge to do the things they want me to do Like we've seen they get 80% of the way there, and then they cannot do the last 20% because they don't have any base on it. And then they need me. So if they still need me, I can still have a roof over my head.
Kurt Elster • 34:46.240
You know, and it depends on like the level of software work you're doing and you know the level of sophistication of the people you're doing it for. All things are relative If I know 10% more than you, I am the expert with AI that it is a force multiplier. And so layperson giving a plan will produce a C plus you know, a C minus result, a software engineer producing a plan can produce, you know, a a B plus result. With AI, but on its own, left to its own devices, I think it is always shooting for a very average C plus result.
Paul Reda • 35:20.920
I mean, it's not shooting for, that's all it can.
Kurt Elster • 35:23.120
Yeah.
Paul Reda • 35:23.760
Do because i if you're too general and don't know the language in order to prompt it to be like, I want this and it's gotta do Y and Y will connect to Z. And to know How to plan that in your head in order to tell it that it will not be as effective. Like my again, my brother, my brother
Paul Reda • 35:44.580
You know, he got into like uh data science and machine learning about 10 years ago. So, you know, that's worked out for him. That's worked out for him. Uh, you know, works at multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies. He has not written a single line of code in like eight or nine months. He says, and has lamented, like you, that he now has no more joy whatsoever in his work. Like he does not get The like runners high of like debugging something or solving something anymore because like claw just does it for 'em. Yep. But Uh I am certain the high-end machine code he is producing for his giant multi-billion dollar company he works for is way better than anything I could have churned out or you could have churned out because he has the domain-specific knowledge. Correct. Even though we have the exact same tools.
Kurt Elster • 36:35.500
Now early on in AI, people would be like, Kurt, are you worried that this is gonna take your job. I said, no, it's not smart enough. And they'd be like, it's not smart enough yes. No. Yeah. And no, I think like there I think there's just, you know, fundamental limitations to what an LLM and what that technology is.
Paul Reda • 36:51.180
I mean is it is it truly like Uh there was a isolated there was a a s a series of artisan monks and they were the only people that had access to screwdrivers And everyone was like, learn to screwdrive, idiot. Like get a screwdriver if you want a real job. Now the screwdrivers have been discr distributed to the masses. And so they got power drills. They got power drills. Damn. And so now is it like, well, you're gonna have a job anymore. Cause they other people know how to use screwdrivers now too. And it's like, I'll you'll never build a house again. Because everyone has a screwdriver. It's like just because you have a screwdriver doesn't mean you know how to build a house.
Kurt Elster • 37:27.440
It's true. Yeah.
Paul Reda • 37:29.440
Let's turn this back to Shopify. We've gone too far afield.
Kurt Elster • 37:32.940
Yeah, it's going in a circle. Okay.
Paul Reda • 37:34.619
Do you it what was the list of uh the stuff that came out?
Kurt Elster • 37:37.260
For their their AI agentic stuff, it really is like build for that universal commerce protocol. And I still think, hey, you should do that because it is not that hard. And also I built a clawed skill that'll do it for you.
Paul Reda • 37:48.700
So really the additions announcements boil down to Point of sale, we made it faster.
Kurt Elster • 37:54.240
If you use point of sale, good for you.
Paul Reda • 37:55.600
If you use point of sale, great, good for you. Not the focus of this podcast, not something that we're really interested in on this channel. Um secondly Shopify now has the agentic channel, which is I think they call it the agentic dashboard, but it lives in sales channel.
Kurt Elster • 38:11.660
They kept correcting me.
Paul Reda • 38:12.460
It lives in sales channel, but it's an agentic dashboard. And but the online store is a store, also in sales channel. It should be like web channel, agentic channel.
Kurt Elster • 38:24.760
Well, the Shopify dashboard is an Easter egg hunt. Whenever you go into it, you get to discover where your stuff moves. But what about shop? You know, shop and shop app and shop pay. Is it shop or shop app?
Paul Reda • 38:36.040
And shopcom shop. com Or shop. app? Shop. app?
Kurt Elster • 38:40.680
I think it's shop. app.
Paul Reda • 38:42.920
I don't know. In which case you could set up the uh a the AI feed store. I'm calling it the AI feed. It's not very hard. You've set up you've got like a tool how to do it. What what do you even really have to do? I mean, I don't understand. There's like Google shopping. What's Google shopping? Just a data feed. I don't understand how is this as materially different from Google Shopping? Just JSON feed. Just JSON feed the stuff in the store. Why is this like the most incredible thing in the entire world? We've been doing this for years.
Kurt Elster • 39:10.200
All right, conceptually conceptually really similar the overlap here between it gener shop Shopify's creating a a feed, but the Google feed is static. It's just here is a structured output of what is of the catalog of this store. And it can you can send it to other places, but it's like it really is only going into Google. Universal Commerce Protocol, all right, that you is doing the heavy lifting here, universal. Anyone, doesn't matter who, me or Google, can just search through all of Shopify's products. You're opted into it by default. You're already in there. So essentially there is like a shadow search engine just for commerce that is now existing underneath, you know, regular web search. If I want to optimize for that, what Shopify has done is they say, hey, just fill in the category. And they even suggest it to you. They're like, please just confirm what category this item is. And over time it's gotten better and more specific. Where in the past, if I had a handbag, it would just be like, yeah, that's like luggage. Well, that's too broad. Then it would be like, well, this is it it's a handbag. And now it's pretty specific. When you pick that, then it'll immediately turn around and go, hey, we've already defined specific attributes for this item. Fill them out. And it'll be like, you know, if it's If it goes a handback, all right, well what's it made out of? What features what features does it have? What color is it? You know, what material is it? Like the basic stuff. And so then you fill those out. If I have ten products, I'm just filling that out by hand, no problem. And then whenever someone, a person, a search engine, a robot, whatever, does a query in Universal Commerce Protocol I have a better chance of appearing. For sure in the future, we would assume that I will be able to pay to get sponsored results in this. And there will be a commission structure for people who are promoting products from this.
Paul Reda • 41:04.400
That's the main thing. So yeah, you've created Doll Scout.
Kurt Elster • 41:07.080
Is a tech demo.
Paul Reda • 41:08.440
Search or whatever, yeah.
Kurt Elster • 41:09.160
Dollscout. com.
Paul Reda • 41:10.360
Yeah, it's a tech demo of Universal Commerce protocol. It searches Barbies that are being sold using the protocol on Shopify stores. On Shopify stores, and you could buy used and new Barbies. You sent traffic to the store and a purchase was made. Generally, you should get a commission. There is currently no commission. And they need to implement that in order for people, I feel like. To leverage this.
Kurt Elster • 41:37.160
I believe that that is coming this year. That's my that's my belief.
Paul Reda • 41:41.400
That's the thing, is that it's your belief It's it's very weird to me that they released this. I mean, this is interesting. This is a huge This is a huge force multiplier. I could see this being very useful.
Paul Reda • 41:54.460
You know, this is a thing where You know, you go on things like Wirecutter and Blu-ray. com and when you buy thick when you buy things through wirecutter and blu-ray. com, 90% of the time you're getting sent to Amazon because Amazon has affiliate fees.
Paul Reda • 42:08.640
They have commission fees. That's how these those sites make money. For Shopify to then start including that, that means it's more likely huge. That could be more likely your stuff is featured on Wirecutter. Your stuff is featured on Blu-ray. com. and it could be a huge side moneymaker for the store owners. They they did all this work to create this foundation that's really cool and really impressive.
Kurt Elster • 42:34.480
Now monetize it.
Paul Reda • 42:36.000
I realize my job on this podcast is to like speak the harsh truths. And I want to be clear, I think this is awesome and really cool, the Universal Commerce Proto. I think it could be a huge force multiplier for stores. I like it a lot. The problem is they built this whole foundation and then like everything else for the past three years. We were like, great, what do we use that for? And they go, psh, AI. How about that? And it doesn't do anything. Build the part that makes the money.
Kurt Elster • 43:08.020
We want that.
Paul Reda • 43:09.780
We want to make the money. Give us the part, give us the commission fees, give us the affiliate affiliate codes. Like that, we want to make the money. Don't just go AI, stock goes up. Like, that doesn't impress anyone anymore, or it impresses people that annoy me. So Like I just don't understand why they haven't announced anything around that, why they aren't they're not giving me the good parts.
Kurt Elster • 43:31.440
Hold on, because I ooh, all right, we gotta we gotta change this here. Oh damn it. All right, in the Shopify dev docs Agents slash catalog. There is this a header here. Earn with paid placements. Developer Preview. So this is early. Limited and invite only at the moment. You gotta join the wait list, but it looks like what do we got here? Promoted placements include a placement object. Organic variants omit. When Shopify discloses the commission, oh it's a variable Placement dot commission dot percentage dot value returns the rate. And the example given is one and a half percent commission. So what does this program ultimately end up looking like? Is it I say hey I'm willing to sponsor? You gotta fill out the In Doll Scout I had to add a feature where it could it would flag promoted stuff as sponsored. I added that. So I the fact that I can surface that, I know, you know, something is going to occur here. The I read this as it's saying if I'm the merchant I can decide what that percentage payout is on my placement. And if all right on the other end, if it says earn with paid placements, okay, that means in that catalog, I could probably sort by the commission.
Paul Reda • 44:50.500
Uh all right, so I was wrong, but it's hidden in the docs, and I would like it if it was not hidden. So I yeah, I guess you're I don't like that it's like bidding. That's weird. I feel like it's good this is too machine controlled. Like I just want I just want an ability to be like, you know, you make the link and then it gets it. It's kind of weird to me that that it's automatically like Well, if you increase the affiliate commission, you're gonna quote unquote win more on your placements.
Kurt Elster • 45:21.380
We don't know that, but it just it under in this doc how it works. Register for placements, so Shopify enrolls you. Meaning, I'm I'm guessing there's a review process to be like, hey, you know, do you disclose affiliate commissions on this site properly?
Paul Reda • 45:35.540
Oh, yeah. So like on Doll, yeah. Okay, so they will leave it up to the store owner like on Doll Scout, you would have to put like, we receive a commission, you know.
Kurt Elster • 45:43.300
Yeah, I yeah. And then all right, then step two is request placements. So in the catalog, I think I have to like specifically ask, like when I make the query. So like sear like, hey, here's my search term, and then placement is affiliate is one of the options.
Paul Reda • 46:00.220
Okay.
Kurt Elster • 46:00.779
Yeah. And then it's going to return, okay, here are the products, these are their affiliate, and then here's the commission, like percentage value that it pays.
Paul Reda • 46:09.540
So obviously you could sort by surface the highest paid ones first, obviously.
Kurt Elster • 46:14.020
Yeah. So now what Shopify is building here, our complaint is like you built you built Universal Commerce Protocol, Catalog API, these really cool tools. Now what? Well, this they're they are developing the demand generation for their own system, for their platform, for their merchants. Okay, that's cool. Right? Like there there are legs here. Just gotta get it going. Yeah. Man, let's leave it there. Well, the good part. Which is the bunny. But you know, I I think we're getting there. I think we're getting there. Fun time in software development. Think twice about going to market with a vibe-coated sass. And uh weird time. Fun time. See you guys. Hey, before you go, I was hoping you would check out our new app, Promo Party Pro. It is what I want to be the single best, easiest way to run a free gift with purchase promo on Shopify. We just put it live in the App Store. We've got less than 50 users. We want your feedback. So if you need to run a free gift with purchase promo in the near future, install it, try it. There's a live chat. I check that all the time. And so if you have any issues at all, you know, or any suggestions on how we can make it even easier to use, let us know. We're happy to help. If you want to try it, search promo party in the app store. Promo PartyPro is the app. Give it a shot. It's got a free trial. Thanks