Amazon News: New Metrics, Fewer Competitors & Prime Day Prep

Amazon News: New Metrics, Fewer Competitors & Prime Day Prep Unknown Speaker: Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Sellers School podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle, and anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Hello, hello, hello. Speaker 2: Amazon Seller News Live is back and I am back coming live from Duncan, South Carolina now instead of Ruskin, Florida. Big move on my part, and you can see my whole office is empty behind me still, so I got to get everything set up, but happy to be back on the show. And I appreciate, Danan, you taking over last week. Hopefully everything's for you. Speaker 3: I hope so too. I admit nothing. Speaker 2: And we got Leslie joining me and Corey as well. I appreciate you both coming on the show this week as well. Speaker 1: Good to be here. Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me back, Todd. Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think we've got some fun stories today that we can all dive into and we can all relate to. Some good stuff, potentially good stuff, some not so good stuff. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into the first story here. So Amazon is less competitive than four years ago. Amazon sellers now enjoy 31% more traffic per seller than in 2021, as the number of active sellers dropped from 2.4 million to under 1.9 million, despite continued new signups. So people are dropping faster than they're signing. This shift has increased visibility and opportunity for those who can navigate Amazon's rising fees, stricter policies, and growing competition from Chinese manufacturers. Third-party sellers now account for 62% of units sold on Amazon, and top sellers tend to be long-established brands, showing the power of marketplace longevity. For Amazon sellers, this signals a maturing yet potential more profitable landscape if you can withstand the headwinds and stand out. So thoughts, who wants to dive into that one first? It's not too surprising, but very interesting indeed. Speaker 4: Yeah, so I can kind of kick us off here. So I absolutely think that it's less competitive than it was four years ago. Because when you think back to four years ago, that was right during the COVID boom, when FBA businesses were worth way more than they should have been worth, realistically. And there was a thousand different courses to choose from at the time. And a lot of people who had never heard of Amazon jumped into the space. So the fact that the number of active sellers is down, it definitely is less competitive. And if anything, I think there's more opportunity than ever if you're willing to pivot within Amazon's guidelines and Amazon's terms of service. So, for example, a lot of the wholesale strategies that people were employing in the past are no longer work. But strategies like Partnering directly with brands and Brand Direct Wholesale is thriving, extremely profitable and still largely untapped. So I think that this is a good sign for people who are sticking in the game and for the people who are coming into the game new but are willing to learn and do things the right way. Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of the people who are probably dropping off are going to be more in the arbitrage world, which is getting harder and harder along with dropshipping. Speaker 3: In Chinese sellers that were selling low dollar items, I'd say are probably dropping off as well, direct from China that is. Speaker 2: You think so just because of the tariffs recently or why do you think that? Speaker 3: Well, I mean, if you look at how many new Amazon seller accounts, seller central accounts are created on a daily basis or weekly or monthly or whatever it is, it's extreme, right? So, I think that we've also seen a drop-off there in these companies that can't just make a quick buck before they get booted off or because of political changes. So, I think that it's a contributing factor. It's not everything, but I think it's a contributing factor to these numbers. Speaker 2: So you think that Amazon is enforcing their policies better of creating multiple accounts or they're just not doing it as much? Speaker 3: I think they're not doing as much because they haven't figured out a way around it yet. They will. Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, interestingly, we're not, I don't have it on the list to talk about today. But, you know, Trump reached the deal, well, quotes deal with China, where they they cut the tariffs down a ways. And part of that was a decrease, a significant decrease in the de minimis percentage as well. I believe it went from like 200 and some percent down to 54% or something like that. So that could make us see an uptick in that once again, but we'll have to wait and see. Speaker 1: I think one thing that skews some of this marketplace data is also some consolidation in some of the largest sellers. So imagine, if you will, the folks like Pattern. Pattern has grown massively. They have brought in a lot of brands that before were either selling individually on the marketplace or using an agency. And now Pattern has hundreds of brands underneath them. So they're showing up as one seller on the marketplace. And they're not alone. They're just like the most obvious and probably well-run example. But there are so many other, like Corey had mentioned, the strategy of working with brands. Well, there's a lot of these companies that that's what they specialize in doing. They work with these brands and they actually serve as the reseller for their brands as part of that. I'm not saying this is a giant percentage of what's going on here, but it is enough, I think, to make some of an impact. Like Todd said earlier too, it makes some of the retail arbitrage less attractive because there are a lot of brands that that's the reason that they sign with a pattern, is because there's so much retail arbitrage around their brand on Amazon and so they sign with them to get all these small sellers off. That action has made it more difficult. I think hobby sellers, I wonder how many of the people who have dropped off were really hobby sellers or like, this is my second side gig and I'm only trying to make $1,500 a month. Speaker 4: I bet it's a large percent. Speaker 3: Right. Speaker 1: People who do it to pay their kids tuition or to go on vacation and it's just gotten too hard for that to be the way you make the extra money. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as you mentioned previously, Corey, you said the amount of people who are talking about, you know, wholesale and such on Twitter slash X has significantly declined. Speaker 4: Significantly, yeah. I mean, it's actually crazy the difference between, say, two years ago, two and a half years ago when I first got on Twitter versus today. I mean, today it is an absolute ghost town on Amazon Twitter versus two, two and a half years ago. Thriving, hundreds, like no exaggeration, hundreds of people on there every day, networking, talking to each other. And unfortunately, 95% of those people probably are no longer selling. Speaker 1: Well, and look at the Nike announcement this week also. Speaker 4: Yep. Oh yeah. That gets resellers or arbitrage sellers hard. Speaker 1: And I really wonder, are they a portent of more to come? Brands that abandoned selling on Amazon The retail arbitrage people kind of took over and now they're coming back and they're going to strong-arm Amazon into gating all of those sellers out of Nike. And that would be even more a kind of consolidation around either a vendor brand or some kind of a market hero seller-like pattern. I personally am not a fan of the Nike thing because my favorite part of their announcement was that they said they were doing this in part so that consumers weren't going to get gouged by the prices. The third-party sellers were charging for the shoes, but then in all of the news stories, they're like, yeah, and the prices are going to be higher. Speaker 4: Right. Imagine that. Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. So disingenuous to say that this more Marketplace based, you know, where people are going out and hustling to find the deals on the shoes that the pricing is going to be higher than with the vendor controlling every that part just gagged me. Sorry as an internet. Speaker 3: I do think that this is going to accelerate over time. I think these big brands are going to remove all possibilities of this and because On one side, that's not what Amazon wants because originally they said, hey, if you have it, you can sell it. But I think these big brands, they're going to be continuing to take these actions to push out these small sellers. I mean, we've known for a little while now that Amazon is taking action to actively prevent arbitrage and these resellers, right? It's been happening for a while. So this is just, I wouldn't say it's cascading up to the brand, but I think the brands are coming to realize the same or have realized the same thing is that in order to protect their brand image, they have to shut the gates. Speaker 2: And that's one of the big reasons, if I remember right, why Nike stopped selling on Amazon or didn't come on to Amazon in a big way is because of all of the resellers and they were claiming knockoffs and stuff like that. So they just said, okay, we want nothing to do with Amazon. So now that Amazon's cracking down on that more, that might be why they're starting to come back. Speaker 1: Well, and the real push and pull here though is, so Amazon has been putting pressure on sellers for a long time that you have to offer your lowest prices in the marketplace on Amazon. You cannot have higher prices elsewhere. So, and they always want to be the low cost leader. They want to get people in, you know, it's kind of very Walmart-esque. So now they're both going to decrease selection. And Race Prices for a brand that you know makes a ridiculous amount of money. And I personally, okay, my personal bias is I'm really annoyed because now all the big and tall shoes are going to be gone. I love Amazon because I can buy big and tall shoes for my kid with enormous feet. Seriously, for consumers, this is not good news because I'm not the only person with these issues that you're like, well, crap, they're going to have the same shoes they have on nike.com, which they have nothing oversized, 14 and hardly anything over 12. You look right now on Amazon, you can find 16. So less selection, Amazon's going to lose revenue. They're going to lose money on this. Speaker 4: Back to eBay, I guess, to find stuff like that. Speaker 2: I was having that thought as well, if we might see some kind of eBay renaissance, but that's kind of got to be, the sellers can go there, but that doesn't mean the buyers. Speaker 4: Buyers, that's true, yeah. Speaker 2: But if you can't find those Nike shoes on Amazon, then yeah, maybe you jump over to eBay and look there. So you may see a little bit of an uptick. I don't think it'll be much, but you may see something. The it's gonna be Nike mark calm Nike mark calm Yeah, it's uh, it'll be interesting to see they I I Amazon has really been cracking down hard. I'm in the process of trying to get a listing back that we've been selling literally for, I don't know, six, seven years, eight years maybe. And we have a direct relationship with the brand. I've got an agreement with the brand. We buy direct from the brand. I've got a letter of affiliation from the brand and they will so far have not reactivated. They're like, oh, thanks for giving us all that. Now we want you to prove the supply chain and get invoices from Aunt Sally's for products that they buy, plus a manufacturing certificate. I'm like, What are you talking about? It's just they're doing everything they can to try to lock me out of this product, which makes no sense because I'm the main seller for the brand on behalf of the brand. The automated systems went crazy, and then the people don't want to do their jobs and actually- That's right. Speaker 3: ... Speaker 2: paperwork I'm submitting. Speaker 4: Todd, do you have a SaaS core rep? Is this something that they would be equipped to help you with? I think they would. Speaker 2: I don't know. Do you? Speaker 4: I don't know. I know some bigger sellers that do have one. It's my understanding that, well, a very big seller told me that When you get to a certain size, you almost have to have a Saskore rep and he called it blood money that you have to pay Amazon. It's basically insurance, especially if you're selling these health and household or beauty, super high volume, super prone to authenticity complaint type products, which a lot of mega sellers are. Speaker 1: This is the exact stuff that we help our clients with every day. And I'll tell you, when you get to this point where you've provided all the documentation, you just need to bail on seller support and escalate. Because the people on the frontline, a lot of the training is so bad at this point, so bad at this point with these people, frontline seller support and seller performance. They have no idea what they're doing. And a lot of times they're literally afraid to approve. And so they just keep tossing it back because they're afraid to hit yes. Um, so this is where you have to, I would do the Jeff app at this point, which I know sounds crazy, but Jeff app is still, um, it's the primary frontline escalation team. It's executive seller relations. So I would take it to Executive Seller Relations and say, I've provided everything. Refer to the case ID. Don't send them all the documents again because the attachments could get it kicked out. And say, I've provided all of this. The brand wants me selling this is kind of the message you need to get across, and I would go there. And then if that doesn't pick it, call me because we can help you with that, absolutely. But you're totally right. They're setting up these barriers that don't even make sense because if their goal is to serve the brand, make the marketplace super safe, make sure there's nothing inauthentic, but you actually have a relationship with the brand that you've proved, it's insane. It's insane. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my next step is the Jeff At. This morning I resubmitted everything along with their FDA certificate and their manufacturing certificate. And so if that doesn't go through, then yeah, I'll send it to Jeff At and escalate it from there. And if that doesn't go through, yeah, maybe I'll give you a call, Leslie, and we'll go from there. But yeah, it's just annoying and that's part of the reason I think why we're seeing all these sellers drop off, right? Especially the ones who are just doing it for fun, as a hobby, as a side hustle because dealing with this stuff that we have to deal with every day, every week is just, it's not worth it for a thousand or two thousand a month. Right. Speaker 1: Well, it's just like how you've seen so many people shift away from FBA in the last year. I know a lot of sellers who used to just send everything to FBA, set it and forget it. And with the fees, they can't do that. So they either have to say, yes, I'm going to commit to shipping my own orders or hiring someone to do it, or I'm not going to sell because their margins were not rich enough or they just didn't run enough inventory through FBA to make it make sense. Which could be another reason that the hobby sellers are falling off, right? Because if you can't ship it all to FBA and still make a profit, then you might decide it's too much hassle. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I still find FBA for most things cheaper than shipping it myself because I sell a lot of smaller products that might sell for $12, $15, $20, something like that. If we ship it ourselves, it might be $4 shipping, but the fulfillment charge through FBA will be like $2.30 or something like that. So that $2 difference makes it more profitable a lot of times or about equal for me to just send it into FBA instead of fulfilling it ourselves. Speaker 3: I'm curious though, with the placement fee and all the other fees, does it actually end up being that much of a savings? Let's take the work side out of it because obviously if you're self-fulfilled, then there's a lot more work involved. Speaker 2: It's so you'd add in the if you had to pay the inbound placement fee, what what is that like 30 cents or something per unit and then you know a month or two of storage so five ten cents there and Really the shipping as well. Maybe you're adding on 50 to 75 cents You can buy a unit by getting it into Amazon where you are potentially saving a dollar or two on shipping. So it could end up being a wash depending on the product. Speaker 3: Yeah. I've done FBA for, I don't know, a long time, since 2012 if I had to guess. So I haven't done anything self-fulfilled in a long, long time. Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm doing some. Not a lot. We ship maybe 10 to 20 units a day. But most of the stuff is FBA. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 1: I'm with you, Todd. I do about 10 things a day that are FBM because there have met. And there's a kind of hazmat that you can ship once you choose the regular mail and it's no problem. Uh, but if you have to ship into the Amazon warehouse, the fees get so high, it just doesn't make sense. So, you know, if I were selling hundreds of units, I wouldn't want to do that. But you know, five, 10, 15 units. Um, I'm, I'm sure you remember Dana and that when you ship enough, you can do it in your sleep really fast. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. We got, we got to the point. So we were doing a, Let's see, we're talking beginning days, 2010-11 here. We, in our living room, had an assembly line set up and one would tape, one would create the box, the other would tape, and then one would stuff, and then the Each one had a packing label and it was just my wife and I was just like, we cranked, you know. What'd you say? Oh, yeah, that's right. My wife said she used to handwrite thank yous on every single one of those. Unknown Speaker: That's awesome. Speaker 4: It's a nice touch. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2: All right. Well, let's go ahead and jump on to the next story here. This one's pretty cool from Vanessa. I am not seeing this yet in mine. Me neither. Amazon adds new minimum inventory metric to help sellers avoid fees. Vanessa Hung reveals that Amazon has rolled out a new minimum inventory level metric to help sellers prevent the low inventory level fee. This feature is different from recommended replenishment quantities and now provides a clear weekly updated threshold tailored to each seller's demand, volatility and restocking behavior. Visible in the FBA dashboard, it's already appearing in U.S. accounts and offers insight into how to stock efficiently to avoid hidden penalties. For Amazon sellers, this gives rare visibility into Amazon's fee structure and helps improve delivery speed and inventory control. Yeah, I don't see this yet, but we were talking before we got going how crazy it is that they're just rolling this out now. What has it been, like years or something? Speaker 3: Wait, I see it. Speaker 4: Well, Todd, yeah, exactly. Like we were talking about before we hit record, the fact that they didn't roll this out when they rolled out the low inventory fee is absolutely outlandish to me, right? It's like, hey, we're going to roll out this fee, but how much is the fee going to be? I don't know. Figure it out, right? Which to me is absolute insanity. I mean, I guess it's good that we're getting it now better late than never. But to me, that's just very classic Amazon. Speaker 3: Yeah. So I see recommended minimum level. To help us keep your inventory closer to customers, plan your next shipment to arrive at Amazon before your on-hand inventory drops below this recommended level. Note, following minimum inventory level recommendations reduces the likelihood of incurring a low inventory level fee, yet it does not guarantee fee-avoidance. No kidding. So my recommended minimum level is about half of my current inventory. Speaker 2: Okay, well that is good. Speaker 3: And so, yeah, my current inventory has zero. Speaker 2: 28 days, right? 28 days, I believe, if I remember right. Is that right? Is there inventory level? Speaker 3: So that sounds about right. With my current inventory, I have all the units are in the zero to 60 day range. And so it's about half of my total inventory. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 1: Now, not to be legalistic here, but when they say to avoid the fee, have it arrive at FBA, does that mean hit the dock at FBA? Get unpacked by FBA, scanned by FBA, make it through trans-shipment and land in the final warehouse to FBA. Just wondering, just a small question. Speaker 2: Well, if you remember, Leslie, Amazon promised that if your inventory was delayed because of their fault, they would reimburse you the fee. So you've got nothing to worry about. Speaker 3: My wife has something- I trust them completely. My wife, I think, do you have something to add to this? Unknown Speaker: All right, never mind. Speaker 3: I'm not letting you in. Get out of the podcast. My wife is the one that handles our inventory, so this is, I took my headphones off so that she could hear what we're talking about, because she'll probably have some value to add here in a little bit, unless we're switching subjects. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Before this, which assuming it's accurate, you just had to do lots of funky math to try to figure out what your minimum was supposed to be and hope that it was correct. But what I think is interesting here is that it says that, yeah, this is the number you're supposed to have in here, but even if you follow this, you still might get a fee. Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly what it says. What was the exact words? Following minimum inventory-level recommendations reduces the likelihood of incurring a low inventory-level fee, yet it does not guarantee fee-avoidance. Basically, hey, we're definitely going to charge you this, but we also maybe charge you this. Speaker 2: Hedging their bets so that no matter what, they can be like, oh, well, we told you. Speaker 3: Like you said, it's like, hey, Amazon, I'm suing you for this reason. Like, yeah, but we interpret it this way, so we're not, we're fine. Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't actually say that you could avoid the fee by following our recommendations. Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: Well, obviously everyone needs to hire a psychic, put them on staff to tell you exactly what demand for your product will be over the next 30 days. And to make sure that you can actually order more to replenish in time. I mean, so you need a psychic who can go out at least 90 days. When you're interviewing them, say, how far out can you go? Speaker 3: So don't get a psychic from the Philippines. You actually want one from India because they've got a lot more history on Psychic abilities. Take it from me, I can tell the future. That's right. Speaker 2: Yeah. It's just crazy the difficulty of planning inventory in Amazon these days to try to avoid the fees. You've got to jump through so many hoops because you've got the minimum inventory level, you've got your storage fee, and then you've got too much inventory fee, and then you've got the inbound placement fee if you're running out of stock early and you can't send it to AWD, and then you've got the AWD fees, fees on the fees. Speaker 3: Dimensional fees. Dimensional weight fees. Speaker 2: It's one of the most difficult things, I think, in Amazon is just managing your inventory and ensuring you're moving your inventory around to the right places at the right time. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 2: Hey, Amazon sellers. Tired of losing money on storage and shipping fees? Well, Amazon Storage Pros is here to take the headache out of logistics. We manage everything from inventory and creating efficient shipping plans to working with 3PLs and Amazon's AWD so that you can focus on growing your business. Start with a free storage cost audit and discover exactly where you're overspending and how to fix it. Don't let logistics eat into your profits. Visit AmazonStoragePros.com. That's AmazonStoragePros.com to get your free storage cost audit and start saving today. And now back to the show. What do you guys typically carry in Amazon currently, or in FBA, I should say, for a number of days? I usually try to keep about 45 days to 60 days, give or take. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: I try to use the microphone. Unknown Speaker: So, hello. On the Amazon half. I try to predict based on my sales because our sales go up for certain times of the year and then also we have a steady uptrend. So with that, I try to keep in at least 60. Sometimes I go for more because it's going to go kind of fast and I don't usually hit that 61 to 90 days for more than like a week or two. Speaker 2: Okay, very good. And are you utilizing AWD for upstream or you're just sending in direct to FBA? Unknown Speaker: Honestly, I do a comparison. I know that Amazon says that AWD is less expensive, but I have sometimes found that if I do it the old way and just go through all the options, I'm still saving $100 on my shipment. So I always price check. I never just send blindly. Plus, everything says that it's an estimate, you know, and you never actually know how much you're spending on the shipping until it all comes through. And then I go back and look at what I actually spent because they don't, it's not very, It's not very open. Speaker 2: It's very true for sure. Speaker 3: The only transparency program in Amazon is called Transparency and they're not transparent at all either. Speaker 1: And you have to pay for it. So, you know, anything transparent has a price tag. Speaker 3: Yeah, the Transparency Fee Program. Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what it should be called. Speaker 2: Transparency, I mean, the invoicing and transparency was completely non-transparent until recently. I remember we had some invoices in there and I'm like, I messaged them, I know we paid some of these, which ones are actually due? And they're like, I don't know. They just all show like I have to pay them. They don't actually mark them as paid when you pay them. Nice. Speaker 4: Shocker. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 4: Why would they do that? Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: How about you, Corey? Do you try to keep a specific amount of days in FBA? Speaker 4: Yeah, 45 to 60, ideally 30 minimum. Speaker 2: Yep. And are you utilizing AWD at all or? Speaker 4: No, so we haven't touched AWD yet. It is something I want to look into, but I think for the most part for what we're selling, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Speaker 2: Yeah. I started using AWD for some of my brands that ship direct, that don't have to come to our warehouse and I'll ship the case packs to AWD instead of bringing them to our warehouse because that avoids labor costs at our warehouse for storage and stuff like that. It's a little cheaper to send them in to AWD and let them feed into FBA that way for us. How about you, Leslie? Any experience for you? The number of days you keep? Speaker 1: So a lot of the stuff that I sell, I'm selling smaller quantities. I get things that are closed out but are still actually allowed to sell on Amazon. So it's like when manufacturers are changing their packaging kind of stuff, I have some good resources for that direct with the manufacturers. So I'm literally taking everything that they've got and send it in and usually it turns really fast. So I don't do as much replenishment stuff as y'all do. Speaker 2: Okay. Very good. That's a cool, cool model. So you just got some connections for closeouts from brands and you're flipping the closeouts. Speaker 1: Right. And since it's direct from the brands, I don't have to worry about Amazon. Well, I do have to worry about them rejecting the invoices, but ultimately they take them eventually. But yeah, I really love the model because it's, you know, I've been doing this for so long. I mean, 15 years, just like y'all been around. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: That I have people from way back in the day that I still have relationships with. And they just want to get rid of stuff and it's all legit. And they're going to have another listing for the products with different packaging. And I'm just on the old listing, you know, blowing out what they've got. No competition. It's really nice. Speaker 3: And then you sell those listings to the Chinese so that they can utilize all the prior reviews and switch it out with the new listing and that's where you make your real money, isn't it, Leslie? Speaker 1: I think when they do that, they just kick them. I don't think I get anything out of it. They just zombify those suckers and move them over with their overseas vendor account. I wish I had an overseas vendor account that I could manipulate everyone's listings with. Speaker 3: I know, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, you just one day you log in and be like, why is this brand Zylogob now? I don't get it. What's going on? And then of course, seller support is like, Oh, it's brand registered, so we can't change it back. It's like, what are you talking about? That's one of the most annoying things is when you get a listing brand changed and it's obviously changed and they're like, oh, there's nothing we can do about it. Sorry, they're brand registered, so it's theirs now. Speaker 1: I have a crazy little fact to tell you all about that that blew my mind when I learned it from my ex-Amazon employees. A lot of people in seller support and seller performance do not have access to the audit trail tool that shows how detailed pages have been changed over time. They literally can't see it. And so I'll do things like run sales reports. And you know, you can run sales reports that have the icon of the product and show everything. So I'll run a sales report for my account and I'll say, if you look in my account and you look at these order IDs and you look at this over time, you'll see what this was. And then sometimes you can get them to investigate further and actually, I don't know what they do. I don't know if they tap someone who does have access to that. I don't know, but it's ludicrous to me. That seems like it would be one of the things that they would absolutely want access to, especially in a state that is forced against people for changing PDEs. Speaker 3: Yeah, fraud, fraud avoidance. Speaker 1: There are people there who do have access to that, but a lot of the frontline people don't have access to that tool. It's mind-blowing. Speaker 2: Crazy. That should be a basic thing that they would have access to, you think, the versioning of the page so they could see. It should be such an easy thing to fix. If somebody, in violation of the terms of service, changes the brand, you should be able to just flip it back. Speaker 1: And if you just run Sales History, just like they show with the icon of the product in your Seller Central and in your buyer account, you run Sales History on that item, you're going to see that change of what the title and the image. It seems so basic. What do we know? We just have common sense and actually work on Amazon every day. Speaker 3: Yeah. Common sense, experience, pedigree, knowledge, IQs. Speaker 1: They don't care what we think. Speaker 2: Yeah, that they do not, that is for sure. We got a comment in here that we can touch on before we move on here. Corey, you can take that one if you want. From Leah Don, is this what deters new sellers from going into wholesaling? Speaker 4: Yeah, and so what is he referring to specifically, do you know? Speaker 3: He asked that about 12 minutes ago, so something we're talking about earlier. Speaker 4: Probably, maybe something to do with the supply chain and just the difficulty that sellers have in getting Amazon to approve their documentation. Yeah, I mean, that could be something that deters new sellers from going into wholesale or just deters them from selling on Amazon in general because At the end of the day, if you're doing wholesale the right way and you've got legitimate documentation that can prove the supply chain, then you've realistically got nothing to worry about. It might prevent some people from getting into it, but it shouldn't. As long as you're doing things the right way, you'll be fine. Speaker 2: Yeah. You got to be doing the legitimate wholesaling. Like you said, make sure you're getting it from a real wholesaler or distributor, I should say, or a brand direct. A lot of people get sucked into those websites that they give you a list of a thousand ASINs of products that they have and their Legos and Disney and stuff like that. That is not wholesale products. Most of those companies, I don't think, have a direct relationship with the brand. They're just getting those products. From somewhere, close out or something like that. So those invoices are not gonna be accepted. You have to make sure you're working with a legitimate distributor or direct with the brand. So if you come across a wholesaler and they give you a list of ASINs, run away. I've never seen a legitimate distributor or brand give me a list of ASINs to look at. Speaker 4: Correct. Speaker 2: So that's your red flag for sure that they're not legitimate. All right, let's go ahead and jump on to this next story. Dana and Leslie, I think you'll like this one. So how FBA sellers can stay safe from Amazon's review crackdown, review manipulation. Amazon is aggressively enforcing its review manipulation policies with penalties ranging from listing suppression to account suspension, even for unintentional violations. As an FBA seller, you must avoid tactics like incentivized reviews, biased inserts or email sequences that ask only for positive feedback. Amazon's AI systems track suspicious behavior, so sellers must regularly audit marketing practices and eliminate risky tools or language. If accused, respond quickly with professional, well-documented appeal and know how to report competitors who cross the line. This article is all about how white hat sellers can avoid getting hit with Amazon's review manipulation crackdown. But as you know, Dana, and what you work with a lot, and I'm sure Leslie, you as well, is black hats taking advantage of this and trying to do this on purpose. Speaker 3: Yeah. Leslie, I want you to go first because It's about to go down when I start talking. Speaker 1: Let me just tell you some new stuff that's going on in this field. One is that Amazon has now found ways to detect review planting. Review planting started pretty much last summer. It was kind of a newish technique last summer. Review planting is where you either yourself or you get people who are your buddies to buy a competing product or even a complimentary product to your product. Speaker 4: I've seen this. Speaker 1: And then write a review that gives that product five stars or four stars, but then include sometimes even a photo of your product and a link and the name of your product. Like, Hey, if you like this, you know, I tried it. It's really great. But what I really like is this thing over here. Amazon has started detecting those. And on a case that I worked on recently, if you Googled Amazon reviews and put in their product name, it would actually pop up these review plans. So Amazon has found ways to do those. So if you think that Amazon doesn't know how to find those, you're wrong. Don't do them. They really, really hate them. Like they really hate them. Secondly, there is another new trend where People who have viral TikTok products, they are entrusting their agencies Today, we're going to talk about how to get creators to create the content for their viral TikTok products. Then the agencies, sometimes with the knowledge of the brand, sometimes without, the agencies are having the creators buy the product on Amazon and then paying them for it. Venmo, PayPal, whatever. Giving them a bonus for buying it. And then the creators, bless their hearts, don't know. And so they'll actually do a five-star review before the product is even delivered to them. Amazon figures that out when they see the reviews of products before they are delivered. They know that this is a bad thing. So there are TikTok products going viral that the agency for the TikTok product is actually getting the Amazon seller suspended for this. Speaker 3: And then I may not know. Speaker 1: They may not. The ones I've worked on, they did, but I think it's conceivable that they may not. And then the last thing I want to mention is in the past, used to, you could get reinstated from review manipulation multiple times. Like so many times. And then a few years ago, Amazon changed that two strikes and you're out. So you get suspended once. And then the next time it's over and an act of God will not get you back. It's like done forever. Then, late last year, we started seeing some where someone got a warning not a suspension but a warning and then when they got suspended, it was the two strikes, you're out language. Now, what's interesting, we had one of those from almost a year ago that we would not give up on because it really bothered it and we just got them reinstated and I don't know why. So, excited about that. But in January, there are Three clients I've been working on since February, all three were suspended in January and they had no warnings and they're done. Let me tell you how done they are. They are so done that after Amazon sent them responses to their appeals, they had actually hired someone prior to us to work on their appeals and didn't work and then they hired us. They got a response from Amazon's outside counsel law firm to the initial appeals that were sent by their first appeal writer, Davis Wright Tremaine, sent them like, we're done with you, never contact us again. And they were written like legal briefs, like legal memos, citing policy and laws. I have never seen this before. You know, we work on thousands of appeals, and I'm not saying that we've seen everything, but this was new to me to have Davis Wright Tremaine send a letter on a policy violation. The outside law firms are only involved if you're actually counterfeiting stuff, if you actually have stolen goods or if you have sanctions. So like you're selling stuff from Iran or something that you're not supposed to. Otherwise, letters from legal counsel on standard appeals that you didn't go to legal, really weird. And then all three of these sellers are having their funds permanently held. And in each case, it's $500,000. Thank you for joining us. And here's the real scary part. I'm sorry I'm going on and on, but this is like really interesting to me. And if it's not, do you be like, shut up, but- No, it is, please. Speaker 3: That's what I wanted you to go first, Leslie. I knew you'd have some shit. Speaker 1: So they made him do a verification call. So your verification calls are usually Amazon for some reason is concerned you're a good seller gone bad or something. You told your account, they make you show your ID and show your invoices and stuff. Now, a lot of times to get your funds, they make you do a verification call. They made these guys do verification calls, but at the end of the call, they asked them about their suspension, which is not a road I've ever heard anyone go down. Usually, they don't talk about that. They're just talking about verifying your inventory, your identity, all that stuff. And so now what freaks me out is they have them on video admitting what they did, because what they did was they talked to the plan of action, which, you know, you have to say what you did in the plan of action. You have to admit stuff. And it's on video. So like, are they doing this to set people up with the FTC? Are they gathering? And I don't think this verification call was like normal ones because normal ones are done by people overseas. It's very scripted. They never deviate from the script. There were some things about these calls. It was a U.S. person doing the call. Couldn't see them, but they sounded, if they do that black screen just to freak you out because they can see you and you can't see them, which is creepy, but it sounded like an American. And when they told me it sounded like an American, I was like, oh no. So this particular client, I'm telling them, you have to- This is now a bad sign. Speaker 3: If you're speaking to an American, you're actually in trouble. Speaker 1: But the only hope for their funds is arbitration. I don't really understand legally how Amazon has a basis to hold their funds because what they were doing was not fraudulent. They did deliver all the product. It was the product they said it was. The reasons for holding funds are not there. In the past, I've only known of holding funds permanently for dropshipping and for restricted products where you're selling stuff you're not allowed to sell on Amazon. And the reason they do it in those cases is if they don't hold funds, people just set up another account, do it again, set up another account, do it again, right? So if they hold your money, you might quit. But for these, I don't get how they have a basis to hold the money. But I wanted to mention it because Sellers out there who are trying to make a product go viral, really get their sales up on Amazon, just know that there is now precedent for them holding your funds permanently. That means all the money for everything you've sold. And I don't know if they're going to give them their inventory back either. So just be aware that they are really stepping up the penalties on this. And y'all, what these guys did was, was bad. Um, but I'm really clear eyed about what should get your stuff taken away and your money taken away and what shouldn't. And personally, I think that this is way out of bounds by Amazon. Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I think, no, look, Leslie, there's a reason I wanted you to go first and that was it right there. I mean, I think we have all experienced something from Amazon where what they've done is completely unacceptable and unfair. You know, back in 2020, back in 2020, before the great pause or during the great pause, Amazon suspended all four of our seller, no, three of our four seller central accounts with no notifications, no warnings, no performance issues, no nothing. And nobody could tell me why. And they held our inventory and our funds. And if I remember correctly, they charged us for excess inventory. During the time that they were holding it. Speaker 4: I'd insult the injury. Why not? Speaker 3: And we literally, like, we've done nothing wrong. We were selling a vitamin that we've been selling for eight years, seven years at that time. We haven't changed the listing either. We have always been very, very careful on what we say and what we claim in our listings when it comes to supplements. We basically don't say anything like, �This is a supplement. It is taken by you. Congratulations.� But enough of that. Review manipulation. Don't even bother doing it. That's step one, how sellers can avoid Amazon review manipulation. Step two, don't go to people that tell you they can get you reviews. They're out there. There are technically legitimate ways of doing this, and that is by going to a company like, a legitimate way would be AZRank, my friends that own AZRank. But they're not, they don't do reviews. It is a byproduct of the buying that happens, right? So you get an increase in buyers, educated buyers, you get an increase in reviews, whether they're positive or negative is completely neither here nor there. But if you go to a company requesting reviews, you're going to get caught. It's going to happen at some point and it doesn't matter if you did it two years ago. When you get caught, they will strip all of your reviews from the time that you were doing it to today's date at best. Now, this happened to somebody I know in the space. Amazon stripped out 12,000 reviews. Here's the silver lining is that his rating actually went up and his sales increased dramatically, but The alternative was, Amazon said, either we strip your reviews or we suspend your listing permanently, right? What are you going to do? Strip the reviews. I want to keep selling. So there's a couple of tips for you. If it seems dodgy, it's probably dodgy. If someone can make promises of something that That's going to get you a bunch of reviews. It's dodgy. And Amazon, they block millions, hundreds of millions of reviews, by the way. Leslie, do you remember that guy's name off the top of your head, the guy that heads up the LLM specifically for the review manipulation detection stuff? Um, I'm seeing him on TV ads now. So Amazon is actually pulling, pushing ads on TV about the fact that they have review manipulation software and team to buy this stuff. Um, gosh, I wish I remember that guy's name. Uh, but so Amazon is paying attention to this. They always have been. These companies that employ fraudulent activity or these people, you can find them on Reddit. Say, hey, I need someone to attack my competitor like, yeah, I can do it, 25 bucks a review plus the cost of the product. And it happens. I see it all the time. And there are accounts where you look at this account and you're like, oh yeah, that's clearly a fraudulent account. Every review on there is one star. They've only done 18 reviews. Well, you only see the last 4, 8, 12, 16, 16 to 20. 20 reviews and every one of them has been batched reviews of 4 and they're all on mascara and then nothing for 3 months and then batched 4, 5 reviews all on baby onesies and then nothing for 2, 3, 4 months. And so that's how these companies, they figured it out. They rotate. They actually buy the product. Now what I'm seeing is that they're leaving 1s, 3s and 4s and 5s. I'm seeing a lot less accounts where the title is don't buy, don't buy, don't buy, don't buy, don't buy. They're getting more and more sophisticated and it's gotten harder for me to get fraudulent reviews removed. Even though they're evident, it's gotten harder and harder for me to get it done with Amazon. Speaker 2: Why do you think it's getting harder for you to remove ones that are clear manipulation? Speaker 3: My easy answer to that is Amazon in their infinite wisdom, anytime something helps the seller in earnest, they put a stop to it. Speaker 2: They make it harder at least. Speaker 3: They make it harder, yeah. I mean, Amazon is kind of like the law. You have enough people that cause a problem that you have to put in a law, but it negatively impacts the 97.9% that don't even need that law there in the first place, right? And so the day that that stuff gets figured out is the day we live in a utopia. Forskit and Burak, he goes into quite a bit of detail on this on what can be done and it's all good data. What you need to know is that number one, you can avoid You should avoid any aspect of review manipulation for your brand. Always. Speaker 2: For sure. Speaker 3: Number two is if you are subjected to fraudulent reviews, then come to me. Go to Leslie. Leslie, do you do file reviews? Okay, good. So come to me or go to Leslie and get help. You will probably always try to get it done first yourself. You will, 99.9%, this is like a Clorox commercial, 99.9% of sellers don't know how to remove reviews, but Leslie and I do, and it's a pain in the ass for us. So. Yeah, that's that's the best I can say on that. It's there are so many reviews that are obscenely against Amazon's community guidelines, but Amazon still won't remove them because their first answer and second answer is almost always no. So, you know, it's the default. Yeah, that's the default. Speaker 2: Go away. Close the case. Hopefully you'll go away. Speaker 4: Yeah. And just to kind of put a bow on this one, I mean, The way I see it is if you're doing anything when it comes to reviews that makes you even somewhat uneasy, you probably shouldn't be doing it. Amazon just doesn't mess around when it comes to the stuff at the end of the day. Speaker 3: Not anymore. Speaker 2: And they'll figure it out. Like the friends and family reviews that people used to do. Speaker 3: They figured that out a long time ago. Speaker 2: Yeah. They connect you up one way or another. They'll figure out you're related somehow or connected somehow and those reviews will come down at best or potentially take your account down at worse. Speaker 3: If you didn't know, Amazon's friended you on Facebook. They're not actually your friend, but they're friended you. They know who all your friends are. They pull your social security records. They know who you're connected to. Speaker 2: That is a real thing. I know the FBI and the CIA legitimately does that. I'm sure Amazon does it as well. Speaker 1: Well, there's a coalition of the platform. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Amazon, other platforms that have sellers, they do share data and they share data specifically for this purpose. So that's why people thought they could do the chat box and for a while they could on Facebook or on Instagram and not get caught. And then they started getting caught. So don't think that just because, you know, like Danan said, don't do the thing. Don't think that just because you're doing stuff that's off Amazon, feeding into Amazon, they're not going to figure it out. If they're, if they may not figure it out today, but if they figure it out in two years, like Danan said, And you have a pattern that is continued until now. They will bust you for it. I had one client who did a lot of paying for reviews, frankly. Last summer and then they stopped in October and then they got suspended last month. And it's interesting because most enforcement at Amazon only goes back 180 days. They're right on the cusp of that, like a little past it. And I think because of pressure from the FTC and other, you know, governmental actions that Amazon is, they're just, they're going to really kill people for this. So don't think, also don't think because you're a cool brand. Viral brands that are super hot and doing millions and millions of dollars, Amazon's cutting them off. Speaker 2: Yep. Yep, for sure. It doesn't matter how big you are. Speaker 3: Amazon doesn't care. They're bigger. Speaker 2: Exactly. We've got a lot more lawyers. We got one comment. Corey, I'm not sure if you know what it is. Nylon says, are we okay to use SageMailer? Speaker 4: SageMailer. What is that? Speaker 2: It's a system to email buyers of products, I'm guessing. Speaker 4: Oh, so it says it can automate the Amazon request a review button for sending feedback and review requests to your buyer. Speaker 3: That's okay. Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's okay. I actually, for years, I've used seller boards. It's an auto-feedback request, whatever the feature's called, but it does the same thing, right? Where it automatically requests feedback from buyers, sends them an email, and they can one-click leave a star review, and they can leave a one-click review for us as a seller as well, and that's gotten us a ton of seller feedback over the years. Speaker 3: So a little bit of data on this is that over the years, many, many Amazon buyers have turned off the option for that to happen. So Amazon says they do automatically ask a buyer if they want to leave a review and that you don't have to use that button. So you can do it manually. If I remember correctly, it is eight clicks to send a single request and then go back to where your orders are. So you definitely, even if you have a 1% response rate, it is well worth having this. You can do it through Helium 10, Jungle Scout, SageMailer obviously, Sellerize and Managed by Stats, like all these tools do it. EcomEngine is another one. They're one of the originals actually. They all do it and you should be using it. But don't expect to get a tremendous upswing in your reviews as a result of it. That's not really going to happen. And if you're FBM, well, again, don't do review manipulation. The best results I've ever seen from anyone that's doing FBM is a written thank you card, like a postcard. And that's gotten tremendous results. But again, don't ask them for a five-star review. You have to use words in such a way that leads them to believe like, hey, I know that they would appreciate a review. It's expensive to do that and time-consuming. Speaker 2: You got to be careful. I remember even they were saying that if you had a postcard that you sent and you said something about, we appreciate your order. We're a small family business, blah, blah, blah. We would love it if you left a review for us. They considered that like leading them to a five-star because you're appealing to their emotions. They were a small family business. Speaker 4: That's crazy. Speaker 3: Yeah. And that statement is completely legitimate, but it doesn't matter. It's whether Amazon or the representative from Amazon wants to believe whatever they want to believe. I've said it a thousand times at this point, Amazon is a schizophrenic dictatorship. Speaker 2: Definitely. Speaker 1: Someone on LinkedIn today posted a couple of postcards that they got and they bought two different glassware products from this one brand. And one of them gave that line that we're a small family business and it's so important that you give us a review. But then the other one, y'all, it was crazy. It was like, We support orphans. And without your help, these orphans would have nowhere to live. I mean, it was so manipulative. And the person who posted it on LinkedIn was like, this is the worst I've ever seen. When I read it, it was the worst I'd ever seen too. And the guy who posted it, I wish I'd saved it. I had even gone so far as to like research to see if any of this was true. Like does the brand actually have some mission to help or no. I know, but y'all that is so bad. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crossing the line for sure. Speaker 3: I've got, I've got one for you here. I'm going to share my screen real quick. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 3: Here's an example of something not to do. Speaker 2: I got to get rid of mine. We'll add yours. There we go. Product delivered on time as promised. Thank you so much for the support. If you get a chance, we'd really appreciate a five-star product review to differentiate us on Amazon. Wishing you many more energizing days. Speaker 4: I'm trying to hide it. Speaker 3: No, well, look, so this is an example of... Speaker 2: Oh, so this is... Speaker 4: That's a replying to a seller feedback. Speaker 3: Seller response, yes. Speaker 2: Replying to seller feedback. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's going to get you in trouble real fast. Speaker 3: So this is a really big brand. That yes, this is one of those it's one of those tick tock brands It was actually Instagram, but they just had no idea. So they came across my plate and I actually referred them to a buddy of mine Who's who's now managing they're helping to manage our Amazon account because there were so many out points like this but that could have suspended their account and that would have been 50 million a year just gone done. Speaker 2: Yep, and. Speaker 1: And Amazon also considers that cherry picking because what they would tell you is, and this is a good rule for anything that you do, you can't ask for reviews from people who are more likely to give you reviews, even if they didn't say give me a five star. If they just said, ask me for a review, likely they only put that as the reply on reviews that were five-star reviews, right? And so even if they said, hey, we'd love a review, you can't do that unless you're also going to put that on the one-star review. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Be careful out there. Don't mess with reviews. And if people are messing with you with reviews, get ahold of Dana and or Leslie. Speaker 3: I'd probably say and. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 4: Might need both really. Speaker 2: If you're a big, big brand for sure. Yep. All right, well, we're over the top of the hour, so we'll go ahead and wrap it up there, but I appreciate everybody out there watching. We do this every Friday, 1 p.m. Eastern time zone, so look forward to seeing everybody next week, and Corey, Danan, Leslie, appreciate you coming on the show. Speaker 4: Yep, appreciate you guys having me back. Hopefully we'll see you soon. Speaker 1: Yeah, thank y'all. It was so much fun. Speaker 2: Have an awesome weekend, everybody. Bye. Memorial Day weekend. Speaker 3: That's right. Happy Memorial Day. Unknown Speaker: This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow Amazon seller. And always remember, success is yours if you take it. Speaker 2: Hey, if you made it this far in the show, I really hope you enjoyed it and I'd like to ask you a favor. Could you head on over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a review? It would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to grow the show and offer more episodes for you. Thank you. God bless and have an awesome day.