Losing Shopify Payments out of nowhere is every ecommerce brand's nightmare.

This week we get into what's really behind it, alongside other insights you don't want to miss.

In today's newsletter:

• Winning product find
• Shopify Payments disabled? Now you know why 
• Does AI traffic convert?
• One damn good ad

See it for yourself

We don't cover high-ticket dropshipping often. It's not for everyone, and the entry barriers are high. But this product is too interesting to skip.

These compressible sofas ship vacuum-sealed in a compact box and expand into a full couch after unpacking. It's the kind of product that makes IKEA uncomfortable: solid build, fraction of the delivery cost.

Right now, with tariffs squeezing margins on imported goods, high-ticket products that naturally justify their price point are where the smart money is moving. 

And the target customer isn't hard to find either: anyone tired of expensive, painful furniture deliveries.

Finding a product that sells is step one.

But without knowing your real profit on every order, you could be scaling a loss without realizing it.

Real-time profit visibility is what keeps you ahead of that. And TrueProfit is the only way to know that with confidence Start your free trial.

Getting your Shopify Payments disabled when you have a chargeback rate sitting comfortably under 0.5% is one of the most infuriating things that can happen to any Shopify brand.

And the worst part is that for the longest time, nobody could tell you exactly why.

But last week, Shopify finally shed some light on it. Turns out, your chargeback rate is just one of many signals.

Product listings that don't match what's delivered, sketchy subscription terms, fake reviews, and unreliable fulfillment can all quietly work against you.

What Shopify is really judging is whether your store feels like a legitimate business, not just whether it performs like one.

And while Shopify doesn't fully disclose their risk criteria (understandably, since telling everyone the rules would just make them easier to abuse), here's what you need to get right.

The basics you can't skip

• Products that actually deliver on what you promise
• Orders fulfilled and shipped fast
• Tracking uploaded for every single order
• Great customer service
• Tracking numbers uploaded for every order
• Non-generic policies and T&C on your website 

Common flags

• Deceptive subscription terms (like Kaching Precheck-style subscriptions)
• No fake reviews / AI-generated testimonials on the site

A test worth running

Put your store into an LLM and ask it where things look untrustworthy. Fix what it flags. AppLovin uses the same approach when reviewing ad accounts, which makes this a useful gut check.

If your account gets disabled 

• Write a legal-sounding response backed by hard evidence.
• Attach manufacturer invoices, tracking numbers with delivery confirmations, proof of address, proof of inventory.
• Always have a backup payment processor ready. No matter how clean you run things, you can never be 100% sure you won't get hit out of nowhere.

More on Shopify's take >>

If you haven't thought seriously about AI as a traffic source yet, Shopify just gave you a reason to.

In Q1 2026, visitors arriving from AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity converted at nearly 50% higher rates than organic search, and spent 14% more per order.

There's a reason for that, and Shopify has a name for it: journey compression.

When someone types a query into Google, they're at the start of a long road: multiple searches, multiple tabs, maybe a purchase days later. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity to recommend a product, the research is already happening inside the conversation. By the time they click through to your store, they've already made up their mind. Full analysis by Shopify

See the full ad

Sometimes the winning ad isn't the highest-production one. It's the one that makes people stop scrolling.

First Day's current top-performing ad is ridiculously simple: someone flipping through handwritten pages while delivering sharp copy point after point. No fancy editing. No expensive shoot. Just a proven format executed really well.

Here's why it works:

• Handwritten text naturally pulls attention.
• The flipping-paper format adds movement and curiosity, making people stay to read the next line.
• The copy does the heavy lifting. Every page creates momentum and keeps the viewer engaged.
• Production costs are tiny compared to the performance it can generate.