Amazon's "fake orders" changed my life! The sad story of a boss with annual sales of hundreds of millions becoming a snack stand owner

When I arrived at the company this morning, I found that I had received a warning from Amazon about too many fake orders. Friends who are still doing fake orders should be careful!

The general content of the email: We have learned that you have faked orders, which is a serious violation of Amazon's policy! If you continue to do this, we will block your account!

Every Christmas Eve, my brother-in-law would prepare a big gift for the sellers and would never forget to do so no matter how busy he was.

On a special day, with the same Amazon warning, I received a submission from a special seller.

I hope that after reading her story, everyone can focus on products and run their business in a proper way .

01

Last year on this day, I was addicted to fake orders and closed my business due to debt. I was forced to leave Shenzhen, the city that once made me excited and strive for it! I ended my more than 3-year Amazon seller career.

He went from being a boss with 170 employees to a street vendor selling snacks in Changsha.

The culprit behind all this is: fake orders! Of course, there is also my impetuousness and greed.

This year after returning to Changsha, my life seems to be a little more comfortable than before, but I still wake up in a sweat because of friends and credit companies collecting debts in my sleep.

02

I thought I would forget everything about Shenzhen, or everything about Amazon, but I found that I couldn't forget it at all.

Today I overheard a few customers talking about Amazon's new policy while eating skewers in my store, so I walked a little closer.

They said that sales are not good at the moment and they are afraid of having their accounts blocked by their brother-in-law if they fake orders. Several of them have been discussing how to fake orders reliably.

After hearing their conversation, I was impressed by the large number of Amazon sellers and their far-reaching influence.

At the same time, it also inspired me to write down my own views on the pros and cons of fake orders on Amazon, to give some warnings and inspiration to my former sellers who want to or are currently doing fake orders!

03

After graduating from university in 2014, I worked on an independent website. In May 2015, I started my own Amazon business. With the help of the promotion experience of independent websites, I quickly applied the promotion methods of independent websites to Amazon's operational practices!

Based on our research on Amazon's algorithm, we have concluded the importance of sales and reviews to keyword rankings.

Without sales, it is impossible to rank high.

There can be no natural sales without traffic.

Even if you have traffic but no reviews, the conversion rate won’t be high, and there will be no natural sales.

So we chose to go the route of brushing orders.

We outsourced order-brushing in the beginning, and later we set up our own 5-person order-brushing team, and the effect of order-brushing was immediate.

In the end, we had more than 20 people in the order-placing team alone, and we placed more than 2,000 orders every day.

Although fake orders directly led to a rapid improvement in our category rankings and keyword rankings, and our number of best sellers gradually increased, the team relied too much on fake orders and there were too many reviews. Later, we received multiple warnings from Amazon about manipulating reviews!

04

Maybe they are addicted to fake orders! The team always takes chances and will continue to fake orders!

It wasn’t until 2017 that Amazon began to tighten its scrutiny of fake orders and a large number of accounts were blocked for fake orders. We started to get scared, but it was too late.

It just so happens that Amazon is not ignoring fake orders, but is used to “paying the price later”.

The day before Black Friday in 2018, my account, which had a turnover of 4 million US dollars for two consecutive months, was directly closed. I had no way to appeal. The large amount of FBA backlog could not be converted into cash, which led to my closure due to debt and I had to move away.

During this year, I also reflected on what would have happened if I had put the monthly order-placing cost of more than 300,000 yuan into product research and development.

But human nature is to seek profit and avoid harm, and the effect of brushing orders is too tempting.

Even though Amazon has such strict policies against fake orders, many sellers are still thinking about how to fake orders.

05

Of course, I am just one of the thousands of Chinese sellers on Amazon, and my experience may not be of much reference to many sellers.

But what I want to say most is that facing Amazon, which is almost the most powerful big data analysis company in the world, all the actions of sellers are almost transparent.

Therefore, behind our self-righteous behavior of brushing orders, everything is actually exposed nakedly with no secrets at all.

Finally, I hope everyone will not lose sight of the main goal, hold on to short-term speculative mentality, and engage in fraud, which will only end up being a waste of hard work and a night of erotic dreams!