Some thoughts on the 525 store closures

At the beginning of the article, let me briefly talk about the 525 incident from my perspective. This wave of store closures was very sudden for ordinary sellers, but in fact there were signs before the incident broke out.

For example, it was visible to everyone that many people's listings were unreasonably split, thousands or tens of thousands of reviews were inexplicably added, and the review content was split into fractional variants, etc. However, it did not attract enough attention at the time, and then on May 25, a large number of accounts were closed, including a certain Taobao account.

According to what I have learned from senior officials, the more than 70,000 accounts that have been closed now are all from the wave on May 25, and there are no new accounts that have been closed. If you who are reading this article have not been affected by this wave, the good news is that you can temporarily put your mind at ease and have temporarily escaped the annual reshuffle. The bad news is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for black technology players to move forward. They have to use small accounts to deploy troops and formations to test Amazon's red line time and time again. Unfortunately, Amazon is determined to do day one, and the red line keeps changing. If you continue to do the black things, you will eventually end up losing both your money and your accounts.

I am not exaggerating when I say this. Let's review the accounts that closed on 525. Basically, those who closed their stores were players who took shortcuts. The reason Amazon gave for the closure is very simple:

Violation of ASIN creation policy.

Let’s analyze carefully, which ASIN creation policy did the sellers whose stores were closed violate? Which one is so serious that Amazon said the listing has been removed and the funds will not be transferred out?

First of all, will the merger of sub-ASINs in your own store lead to the closure of the store? There is a rule in Amazon's variation policy that you cannot create a listing that is not a variation relationship.

Will this item lead to the closure of the store and the withholding of funds? Amazon's store closure email seems to specifically refer to this item, but as far as I know, almost every seller friend around me with good sales has operated the splitting and merging of their own stores, but there has been no account suspension phenomenon . Obviously, the ironclad facts have filtered out this reason.

Although it is not compliant if you look closely, it is not serious enough to directly suspend the account . Next, what other parts are related to variant relationships?

This reminds me of the fact that many black technology players use small accounts to post reviews on ASINs in order to avoid the risks of large accounts. Some sellers even create dozens of auxiliary listings at the same time for speed, and then use large accounts to merge the reviews after they are posted, in order to obtain a large number of reviews in a short period of time.

This action has seriously violated Amazon's red line . A large number of false reviews have been put on the shelves in a short period of time, which has had a great impact on Amazon's own image . This is what Amazon refers to as duplicate creation of ASINs.

Therefore, on the surface, this policy seems to be that Amazon is checking variant relationships, but in fact, Amazon is checking reviews . It even mistakenly kills some sellers who have registered for UPC exemptions but are still using UPCs to list their products, and is mistakenly believed by Amazon to be manipulating reviews.

Among the cases of account hacking before the 525 outbreak, two cases stood out:

Sales growth too fast (manipulation of sales)

Abnormal review growth

These two reasons directly point to the importance Amazon places on real sales and reviews . Since becoming the overlord of e-commerce, Amazon has been sitting on pins and needles every day and needs to be monitored by many buyers. Any false part is suspected of fraud or even fraud, so it is not surprising that it took extreme actions on May 25.

So, in this situation, how can sellers move forward to survive for a long time, and how can they continue to make profits on the Amazon platform? I would like to give you the following suggestions:

Some sellers don’t know how to distinguish between black technology and white operations. I will teach you the simplest way to judge. When you make a product (at least the Top 100 is considered a very preliminary one), how many orders have been faked in total?

Those who faked less than 20 orders are called operationalists, while those who faked hundreds or thousands of orders are called black technologyists. The ultimate operationalists can even achieve BSR without fake orders. For operationalists, fake orders are just a matter of accelerating the creation of hot products, and are not a necessary step.

For example, if an order is not fake, a product will still be produced, but it will take 2-3 months. If you want to make a product take shape within 1 month, it is unrealistic without reviews. After all, consumers don’t want to be the first to try something new.

Therefore, the purpose of fake orders by operations is to get reviews to promote conversion rate, while the purpose of fake orders by black technology is to increase keywords and sales. There is a fundamental difference between the two.

I have personally seen many people who do training creating content based on a certain direction. When it comes to black technology, their technology is more advanced than anyone else’s . But when they see that black technology is not working, they immediately change their tone and say that advertising and operations are the core .

Anyone with a little bit of intelligence can realize that the operation routine was not formed overnight, and each step is refined to the extreme. For example, if the seller asks me a detailed operation question, I can answer it without checking any information. These experiences come from the accumulation of six years. It is not black and white.

Many sellers will find that when doing business on Amazon, the number of orders for their products has indeed increased after participating in on-site LD or off-site activities, but the increase is not sustainable and they immediately return to the starting point once the activity ends.

If you think about it carefully, whether it is through off-site or on-site activities, the traffic is only increased significantly in a short period of time, and it is not sustainable in itself . If you want to continue it after the activity is over, you cannot get the help of advertising.

What does it feel like to have a good advertisement?

For example, we can promote a product without any off-site assistance or fake orders, and rely purely on advertising to increase the BSR. The black technology faction relies on fake orders and fake words, while the operation faction relies on advertising to push to the right position to generate orders and then strengthen the word weight.

Amazon has delegated more and more advertising functions to SC accounts, from headline ads to competitor ads to classified ads, and even opened up dynamic price adjustments to sellers. This shows how much importance Amazon attaches to advertising . Don’t think that advertising is your shortcoming and always skip this link. Don’t forget that the shortest plank determines how much water you can put in your bucket.

Investing in Amazon is actually an investment. No one can tell you whether this investment will make money or lose money. What we need to do is to be aware of risk diversification and put our eggs in multiple baskets.

If the purpose of running a company is not to make the plate bigger or to show the biggest plate to others, there is no need to concentrate all sales on one plate.

Whether from the perspective of the 525 account suspension incident or the VAT incident, it is not recommended to adopt the "big tree attracts the wind" approach. Another advantage of multi-account layout is that it can be used for style positioning and multi-angle monopoly of the Top 100

Many sellers have realized that Amazon will not concentrate all traffic in one account. Multiple accounts can not only disperse risks but also increase sales. Why not do it?

Regarding the high-profit brand route, I have elaborated in detail in the article "Winter is Coming, How to Profit in the Post-Amazon Era" . The profit margin must be guaranteed to be above 30% after deducting various expenses, otherwise you are working for Amazon.

Amazon has now developed into a very mature state, with various expenses being complicated. Many bosses judge whether they have made money or not by seeing whether they have more or less money in their pockets at the end of the year.

This method is not feasible at all. It is easy to run into problems midway without knowing it. You need to refine your financial system and even calculate the profit margin of each sku. Only then will you know whether you should participate in the event and how much discount to offer. The effect we want is not to lose money by participating in the event to gain publicity, but to increase the number of orders dramatically, with less profit, but the event is worthwhile based on the change in the number of orders.

You can upgrade your products when you have enough profit, from the product itself to the packaging to the VIP system. At this time, your product has a reason to be expensive. The ultimate goal is to build a brand . With the popularization of e-commerce today, the cost of building a brand has been reduced a lot. The future of Amazon is like Tmall. In the end, the ones who make a lot of money will always be those high-profit stores with brands.

Finally, I hope that everyone will not cry in frustration or be a bystander about the 525 incident, but learn from it what to do in the future. I also welcome more and more sellers who want to take the white operation route to join our team.

Because of white, we know clearly what can be done and what cannot be done;

Because of Bai, we can get support from all sides when one of us is in trouble;

Also because of Bai, I can proudly say that among our nearly 200 core members, none of them were affected by the 525 account suspension incident.

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If you want to discuss this store closure incident with me further or learn more about operational methods, scan the QR code below to add me as a friend.

PS. If you want to join the seller discussion group, you can also private message me to let me add you to the group

Source: Cross-border Business School

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