“Are there any followers in the group who can’t be driven away?”

“Another follower came today.”

“This follower is like a dog-skin plaster. What should I do if I encounter a stubborn follower who can’t be driven away?”

Such conversations are common in seller communication groups. Follow-selling has always been a sensitive topic among sellers. As long as you sell well, you will be followed by others , which has become a well-known fact in the cross-border circle.

The huge profits gained through follow-selling have made this group grow day by day, and many sellers have suffered from the trouble of being followed. For powerful big sellers, it may be easy to get rid of follow-selling, but for small sellers, sometimes even if they try their best, they can't solve the problem, and they may even be blamed by follow-selling and lose both their money and their store.

Recently, a seller experienced this personally. The seller submitted a post saying that after his store products were copied, he was threatened to close the store. Below, the editor will sort out the details of the incident.

After the product became popular, it started to be copied

On July 13, the seller launched a mask holder. After a month of optimization, it was ranked 2000 in the beauty category and top 50 in the subcategory, with a peak order volume of 300 to 400 orders a day. But after only two days of popularity, it attracted many low-priced copycats.

The seller checked the follow-up store and found that it followed many products, including those of the best seller, so he determined that the other party was a professional follow-up seller. According to the listing analysis, some of the stores belonged to a distribution company in Shenzhen. Later, the seller determined that the account belonged to this company through some connections.

▲ (Screenshot of the seller’s product being copied)

The seller’s reaction after being copied

1. Send a warning letter

After being copied, the seller sent several warning letters to the other party. After that, some people cancelled the copy selling, but soon there were new accounts copying the seller all day long. And they all copied the seller at a low price. The seller's $10 product was copied and sold at $2.98 or $3.98. Even if they only made $10 per order by ordinary mail, they would still copy it.

2. Actively file complaints and communicate with relevant personnel

The seller tried to complain about the follow-selling behavior on the platform, but the complaints were unsuccessful. At the same time, the seller had some communication with relevant personnel through his connections, but the seller did not provide screenshots of the specific communication process due to privacy issues.

3. Modify the product main picture and five-point description

After being copied all day and causing the seller to lose 75% of his orders, the seller modified the main picture and five-point description and made some warnings.

However, the above actions did not have any effect. Instead, other products in the seller’s store (within 10,000 products in a major category) were also targeted, and the seller could only modify the main pictures of other products.

The seller's store received a large number of malicious orders

Two days after modifying the image, the seller found that the number of follow-up sales decreased significantly, but the ranking of the link also plummeted, and FBA was also affected. At this time, the seller found that the other three products in the account that had never been sold suddenly received 100 orders in a row. Subsequently, the seller received nearly 100 emails requesting cancellation of orders and refunds.

At the same time, other products in the store were also ordered by someone, totaling 200 orders. Subsequently, the seller's account was restricted on the grounds of fake orders. Since the seller was good at appealing, the account was restored within a day and the products were sold again.

The seller received a threatening letter from the site

Among the many refund emails, the seller found an email from a certain technology company, which stated that its team would continue to pay attention to the seller's store and asked the seller to abandon the store and not sell products anymore.

The team stated that the seller followed the sale of stores that should not be followed, but the seller claimed that he did not follow any store and actively communicated with the sender in the hope of a peaceful resolution, but the other party was firm in attitude and kept sending threatening emails, claiming that they would destroy the seller's store.

The seller guessed that the other party was not targeting a certain link, but him and his store. After receiving a large number of malicious orders and threatening letters, the seller had no choice but to remove all products from the shelves and apologize to the other party via email. Then he received the sixth threatening email from the other party.

▲ (Apology email from the seller)

Finally, the seller decided to give up the store and declared that XXXX Technology was not the company that copied his account. The matter ended here. The seller said that the purpose of posting the article was to hope that other sellers would learn from it and strictly protect their own accounts.

About Follow-Selling

The seller also compiled his experience into a post and posted it on a cross-border forum, which aroused the resonance and sympathy of many sellers. Some sellers said that the sense of substitution was too strong, and small sellers were trembling; some sellers gave him advice and shared their own successful complaint methods; more sellers directly expressed their disgust and hatred for the act of copycat selling.

From the seller's experience, we don't know whether he touched someone else's cheese, but no matter what the other party's reason is, malicious competition and threats to close the store are not worth promoting. If this is the case for sellers who do business honestly, how should more small and medium-sized sellers deal with it?

Some people say that following others is stealing people's jobs and cutting off their financial resources. As more and more people follow others, what should those sellers who are doing business honestly do? We believe that this is a phenomenon that most sellers do not want to see. Business requires competition. We advocate healthy competition, but it does not mean that we can tolerate unscrupulous pranks.

The topic of following others and stopping those who follow others is already a commonplace. We may not be able to stop those who follow others, but we can take measures to protect our own accounts and avoid being followed by others.

The editor has compiled some methods to prevent follow-selling. For details, please click on the previous article "Being Followed by Others? These 10 Tips to Prevent Follow-Selling". I hope sellers can put this into practice and take proactive precautions.

At the same time, we also advocate that more sellers can share the big pie of cross-border e-commerce through legitimate channels. Only when everyone works together to maintain a good market order can practitioners gain long-term benefits from it.

What do you think after listening to the seller's story? Maybe you have had this experience before, please share your story in the comment section.