ever wonder why the cheap junk flooding Amazon has keyboard-mashing brand names like MOFFBUZW?
let's dive into an example... the 2nd organic result for "baby moccasins" has:
- 0 reviews
- no Prime offer
- 20 day shipping (lol)
- a brand name that literally looks like Dog Shit
the seller behind this offer has a lifetime negative feedback rate of 20%.
small sample size, but that is MASSIVE (ours is 0%).
legit sellers are routinely suspended for a bad run of several negative feedback in a row. yet bad actors run rampant.
want to get in touch with DOTTAVR?
did your kid get hurt or sick from something you bought from them?
well, they're on Amazon... surely they are a legit company and Amazon is covering their bases... good luck!
here's a great example of why this is important...
someone bought a retractable dog leash from a Chinese seller. they hit the "retract" button on the leash and it whiplashed toward their face at Mach 5 💨
it rendered them permanently blind in one eye.
the Chinese seller of the dog leash was one of tens of thousands hiding behind shell companies, impossible to track down or hold liable.
now create a case with amazon support / bribe an employee / DIY in Amazon's backend to:
let them know that actually 😉 this iPhone case is the green version of your new spatula! it (and its 6,078 reviews) should be included on your listing.
very common, instant social proof.
3. TRIGGER WORDS 🤫
get (or ask someone with) an Amazon Vendor account to sneak fun words into the invisible backend of a listing like:
"cures cancer"
"pesticides"
instant suspension 👏🏻
bonus points for doing it on an international listing, making it super hard to track down!
4. WISHLIST BOTTING 🧞♂️
amazon roughly ranks products by keyword, in order of sales velocity.
you can buy your way to the top (temporarily at least) by generating a ton of orders - legitimately or fraudulently. that's expensive though!
well, clever sellers figured out that adding an item to a user's Amazon Wishlist has a similar effect and doesn't cost a thing.
just hire a bunch of bots on different VPNs, or professional wishlisters in Bangladesh, to move your brand new product to the top of search results.
5. "UPDATE" YOUR COMPETITOR'S IMAGES 🍆
simple, effective, and hilarious for all.
best executed on Prime Day or Black Friday.
marketplace antics are one thing, but product safety is serious business.
we spend a ton of money on safety testing, compliance, taxes, and insurance to make sure we're offering products that are safe for customers.
black-hat sellers are cutting scary corners on safety.
product testing is sporadically enforced by Amazon. submitting fake or questionable documentation is no problem if you're using a burner account.
there are "ungating" services to help you sell into restricted categories.
the bottom line is that most amazon sellers - who know how the sausage is made - wouldn't dare trust an unknown brand's random kitchen or baby product in their house.
i'm always shocked how little attention this gets by the media.
how can you protect yourself as a consumer? i think about my amazon purchases in 2 categories.
1. i just need some commodity cheap and fast, and am not too worried about safety or authenticity. ok MKFFUDU, you have earned my business 🤝
2. safety/quality is a concern. some pointers:
- buy from legit brands, make sure the seller matches the brand name (or is Amazon themselves).
what's legit? you know it when you see it. if the name is PLMMBON and the address is "asdfasdfasdf, Shenzhen" you are rolling the dice.
- place more weight into number of reviews than star rating. if a product has a ton of reviews, it has at least (most likely) moved a lot of units without killing someone or being removed for excessive customer complaints.
- sort reviews by "Most Recent" to see what recent customers think of the product. older reviews are less relevant and can be from totally unrelated products that were merged onto the listing.
even that isn't foolproof. anyone can sell anything on Amazon.
our good friends DOTTAVR can list a "totally 100% authentic" @simplemodern water bottle.
until Amazon shuts them down it will be sold alongside @mikebeckhamsm & @jBryanPorter's legit, safe inventory.
in the meantime hopefully no buyers are slowly poisoned by a heavy metal leak.
despite all of this, i still mostly love Amazon as a customer. it played a big role in getting my e-commerce business off of the ground and i'm grateful for that.
but it's sad to see where their marketplaces is headed, and how little they seem to care.
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geez, that thread really blew up! appreciate all the responses, feedback, and stories.
one thing that stuck out to me was how so many ordinary Amazon customers (not sellers, not tech nerds like me) now realize this is an issue from their own personal experience...
i loved this ep because Dan told so many stories and used specific numbers for each topic, rather than just talking about things in theory.
some interesting themes they covered...
@cmsholdings@ericgoldenx 1. $USDT - Tether Truthers loves to hound on the idea that billons of USDT is printed out of thin air to pump the crypto markets.
1. buy cheap BTC with USDT on overseas exchanges like Bitfinex 2. sell it at a higher price on Coinbase for USD 3. use the USD proceeds to mint USDT 4. repeat
here's a CRAZY story about a post on a niche internet subforum that resulted in at least one billionaire (yes with a *B*), and several deca-millionaire degenerates...
Subject: Bitcoins - digital currency
04-02-2011, 02:44 AM
"Any value to this idea or will it never work?"
from 2000-2015, the Two Plus Two poker forums were the primary hangout for professional poker players. i made countless friends through 2+2.
it's hard to overstate how busy these forums were. 24/7 there was a ton of activity discussing everything from poker hands to politics.
one of my favorite subcategories on 2+2 was "Business Finance and Investing"
BFI had posts about everything from real estate to day trading.
on April 2nd, 2011 the legendary "Bitcoins - digital currency" thread was started...
i've heard from a lot of poker players asking for advice on moving on to start a business.
this quote always comes to mind:
"i know lots of extremely rich people. plenty of them are solo operators. plenty of them are happy people. but there is no overlap between the two groups"
* bought a 6 figure domain name in 2011
* got insanely lucky to get bailed out ten years later
* cemented my number 1 rule of investing: value liquidity above all else...
back in 2011, a friend-of-a-friend was trying to sell a domain name he had owned for a long time.
i can't say the actual URL, but think something like "animated.com"
i had ZERO experience buying domain names.
but just two months earlier, all of the top online poker sites had exited the USA market in what's known in the poker world as Black Friday (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St…)
as a mostly online, American poker pro, i was scrambling trying to figure out what to do.
some key points and my thoughts on a few of them...
1.) Zhu: Ethereum maximalism is much more dangerous for ETH than Bitcoin maximalism is for BTC.
Couldn't agree more. Bitcoin doesn't really need to "do" anything to win as the leading store of value. If Ethereum wants to win as a tech product, maximalism is a weak approach.
I love Ethereum. I use it a lot, along with plenty of other chains too.
The smart contract space is moving so fast, with so much innovation.
Writing off anything non-Ethereum (when new users clearly love L1s like AVAX, SOL, MATIC, LUNA etc) is going to lead to huge blind spots.