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Although I have only been in the industry for more than a year, I have seen too much evil on Amazon. The vicious competition is serious. The platform overwhelmingly favors buyers and does not provide any protection for sellers. Here I will briefly share a few thoughts. You can read it if you have nothing to do. It is just a complaint, no practical information...
1. Customer reviews
The recent closure of stores and brands is all about manipulating reviews, and public opinion is overwhelmingly against sellers who manipulate reviews. But in fact, one thing is overlooked: if there is a market demand, there will naturally be someone to serve it. In previous years, FB could offer ultra-low discounts for testing and give away dozens of products for free to get good reviews. Later, FB evolved into a large number of specialized "scammers" who accepted the sellers' products and refunds, and then initiated a refund~ So this path is considered to be cut off.
Then find a service provider. Wow, the service providers are even more sophisticated. Some are machine-generated, some are real people, and the commission ranges from 50-120. They use PayPal payment records, foreigner chat records, and order records to prove that they are real service providers. In the end, they harvest waves of leeks. After the harvest, Amazon will come to buy the store. Those who can successfully cooperate with service providers in a stable manner have basically walked a bloody road before. So there is no need to laugh at Damai. They have already paid a lot of bills for their resources before they have resources.
We always say that to do business on Amazon, you need resources (service providers, personnel, supply chain, etc.), capital, and capabilities (experience or talent, etc.). The earlier you enter the industry, the easier it is to accumulate resources, and the longer you explore and roll around, the more resources you have and the more solid they are.
Gift cards are just an option. The real review rate on Amazon is actually extremely low, so it is understandable to give some discounts to promote reviews or even good reviews. Sellers need reviews, and then give buyers a money-saving option, and buyers accept it. In fact, the reason is very simple. I didn't put a knife on the buyer's neck to ask him to give me a good review. I just gave him a choice. Why is this a review manipulation behavior in the eyes of Amazon? (Just a few words, when geocentrism was the mainstream, advocating heliocentrism was paganism. Abortion is also very controversial abroad. Sometimes it is a crime that infringes on the human rights of unborn babies, and sometimes it is innocent. It depends on who has the right to sanction and the right to speak.) So don't worry about it. If the platform says you manipulated the reviews, then you are manipulating them. The platform can say whatever it wants. The right to speak and the right to sanction are in the hands of the platform. I hope everyone can look through the phenomenon and look at this issue rationally.
2. Common causes of death of Amazon sellers’ stores/links
Shops: Affiliation. If Amazon says you are affiliated, then you are affiliated. Don’t make excuses because Amazon is absolutely fair and just. Manipulating reviews. If Amazon says you are doing reviews to fake orders for gift cards, or you are contacting buyers privately to give reviews, or your competitors are giving you fake reviews, then you are manipulating reviews. That’s it. Don’t make excuses. Intellectual property infringement. Directing Amazon traffic to your own independent website (not common now, but it doesn’t mean no one does it. Hahaha, there are always people doing it)…
Links: Hot-selling products were judged to be in the black room; safety issues; counterfeit and inferior products were infringed; product information was tampered with to become pesticides, drugs, insecticides, etc.; it was tampered with into sensitive categories, adult products, baby products, and some sensitive toy categories; there were also some basic common sense, such as complaints and returns were often taken off the shelves, the late delivery rate was high, and the order defect rate was high...
In short, it is too easy. If you want to kill a store or a link, I can easily make your link disappear, remove the inventory, and start over. What's more, some big sellers monopolize the category, monitor competitors, snipe all potential threats, and wait for your large goods to enter and beat you to death. Therefore, various service providers have emerged to rescue stores and links. In fact, as long as you are familiar with Amazon's platform policies, there are basically too many ways and methods. And in most cases, they are from pranks between peers...
3. The essence of black technology
The essence of this is actually an Amazon bug that was discovered by some people.
Breaking through the delivery limit (creating a time-stuck bug for multiple shipments at the same time, such a low-level bug was quickly fixed by Amazon; multi-channel delivery consumes inventory and creates more shipments, then cancels channel delivery, still a time-stuck bug, which has not been fixed yet. The shipment was canceled because it exceeded the limit, but was still shipped, and Amazon received it, which also caused a bug, and it is unknown when it will be fixed).
Another BUG is follow-selling (the essence of zombie links is to follow-sell links that no one uses; cross-site follow-selling can synchronize comments and change link information at will; multiple stores are set up, small accounts follow-sell to brush reviews, and large accounts reap the benefits; if the store is closed, the link is still in the system and can be picked up and continued to be sold; of course, it will also be maliciously followed by others to snatch orders and traffic, and the follow-sellers sell counterfeit and inferior products, which leads to constant bad reviews. Therefore, many service providers have evolved to catch follow-selling (Text buy; AZ; complaints and reports on counterfeit, second-hand, shoddy, safety accidents and hidden dangers; various ERPs develop follow-selling monitoring software, and vice versa there are follow-selling ERP automatic price adjustment and automatic follow-selling software; the funniest thing is that Amazon itself launched a bunch of official plans such as Zero Plan, Transparency Plan, Brand Accelerator, etc. to catch follow-selling).
There are many other weird operations. Following sales itself is the biggest BUG. As long as this BUG is not corrected, it will continue to get worse and worse, and more and more small BUGs will appear.
There are many other bugs, but we are used to them. For example, they attach great importance to intellectual property rights (leading to constant complaints about copyright, trademarks, and patents; independent sites copy and paste their own Amazon information to file copyright complaints; PS fake copyright and patent information, malicious complaints are successful); for example, continuous monitoring outside the site (Amazon does not allow sellers to sell the same product at a higher price than other platforms); for example, VC accounts have higher permissions and can do whatever they want to SC accounts; for example, multiple variants of unlimited flash sales... and so on, I can only say that there are too many.
4. Amazon’s caring service
There is no need for service providers or training institutions. Amazon's official training institutions will teach you how to get started. Amazon also has an official team of advertising managers to promote your products step by step. There is no need to operate on your behalf or recruit an operation team. Amazon has an official first-leg logistics channel, so you no longer have to worry about various potential fraudulent freight forwarders in China. Amazon even has official overseas warehouses to solve your problems in warehousing large goods. Amazon also has a VAT registration service, so you no longer have to worry about VAT registration, tax filing and other tedious issues. Amazon also has a special evaluation service (VINE, up to 30 reviews, only US$200, which is rounded off to free) so that you will no longer be harmed by unscrupulous evaluation service providers. Amazon is also committed to protecting merchant brands and has launched brand incubation projects, brand accelerators, and transparency plans to protect your brand.
Are you tempted? Come to Amazon and sell without thinking. There is no one who takes care of sellers more attentively and comprehensively than Amazon. As long as you pay, you can experience the pleasure of selling on Amazon. It is hard to say whether you can make money or not, but you can definitely experience worry-free sales.
(Well, a full range of services means we want to make money from sellers in all aspects, that’s it…)
5. Seller’s Burden
In addition to the basic commission and delivery fees, there is also the digital service tax (advertising will be taxed later, and Europe is the first to do so); insurance (the insured is actually Amazon, so buying insurance for Amazon gives Amazon peace of mind); free returns (some buyers take advantage of platform loopholes to get free stuff); potential policies that can change at any time (for example, the recent uproar, where accounts were inexplicably deducted hundreds of thousands of dollars, it turned out that Amazon deducted the entire historical sales of a recalled product, and the seller had no choice but to abandon the account and leave); Europe’s plastic ban and light bulb sales policy; self-delivery policy... I can only say that the market environment changes at any time, policies are constantly being updated, and market risks are always there. Please rationally assess market risks to see if they are within your tolerance range.
Some people say that I am a fool for leaving Amazon like this, but in fact it is because I have seen too much. Amazon's philosophy and thinking are essentially American hegemonic thinking. In the role of the world police, it emphasizes its fairness and justice, and it will continue to issue various policies to continue to emphasize its fairness and justice. Naturally, there will be surviving sellers who will explain Amazon's policies and its fairness and justice. But don't forget that Amazon is just a platform for cross-border e-commerce. Before selling on the platform, Amazon has made all preparations for self-exculpation (you can read the agreement carefully), so sellers should also prepare for themselves to move forward and backward before entering the market. In the end, I still saw too much (I would be blind if I continued to see), so I left. |
