Ask me anything about eCommerce (Ongoing)

[Denim Chicken]

Just had a competitor upvote all my negative reviews (the handful that I had). How do i fix this? Or can I even?

How do you know it was a competitor?

Does the amazon backend show you if it was the same person?

 

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[samuraijack]

How do you know it was a competitor?

Does the amazon backend show you if it was the same person?

Within a single day all my 1-3 star reviews got 12+ upvotes, and my top positive reviews all got the same amount of downvotes.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Within a single day all my 1-3 star reviews got 12+ upvotes, and my top positive reviews all got the same amount of downvotes.

Hmm that's a bit suspicious. I have heard there are services that you can buy that do that. I imagine to combat it you would have to get dirty with them or just leave it be. That sucks though

 

[amp0193]

Just had a competitor upvote all my negative reviews (the handful that I had). How do i fix this? Or can I even?

You could try telling Amazon, but my guess is that you'll get nowhere. I've had friends get actual reviews removed that were left by competitors. The liking thing though, I would guess is harder to pinpoint. Especially if they used a service (I'm sure they did) and it can't be traced back to a single user.

This service does what it says it will, and if you feel like fighting fire with fire give it a shot: Social Marketeers | Buy Soundcloud Plays, Facebok Likes, Vimeo Views. I wouldn't use your actual name or email when you sign up of course. Or even the same credit card you use for Amazon. You never know when these things can come back to haunt you.

My guess is that your competitor wanted to take a cheap shot at you, and has no interest in going into an upvote bidding war. Take care of the problem, and it will probably go away.

Or do nothing, maintain 100% integrity, complain on Amazon's deaf ears, and watch your sales go down.


Whatever you feel comfortable with.


Amazon's really cleaned up reviews in the last year. However, upvotes and downvotes are still the wild west.

 

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[samuraijack]

You could try telling Amazon, but my guess is that you'll get nowhere. I've had friends get actual reviews removed that were left by competitors. The liking thing though, I would guess is harder to pinpoint. Especially if they used a service (I'm sure they did) and it can't be traced back to a single user.

This service does what it says it will, and if you feel like fighting fire with fire give it a shot: Social Marketeers | Buy Soundcloud Plays, Facebok Likes, Vimeo Views. I wouldn't use your actual name or email when you sign up of course. Or even the same credit card you use for Amazon. You never know when these things can come back to haunt you.

My guess is that your competitor wanted to take a cheap shot at you, and has no interest in going into an upvote bidding war. Take care of the problem, and it will probably go away.

Or do nothing, maintain 100% integrity, complain on Amazon's deaf ears, and watch your sales go down.


Whatever you feel comfortable with.


Amazon's really cleaned up reviews in the last year. However, upvotes and downvotes are still the wild west.

Thanks. I did visit that webpage last night and contemplated it. I thought of using it on my own listing just to undo the effects of this. But I thought i better to wait after the case I opened with Amazon closed...since Amazon would be taking a closer look at it.

 

[samuraijack]

I'm leaning towards using the service myself to undo the changes. I highly doubt Amazon can do anything about it. Since the negative reviews are showing up now, they are getting organic "real" upvotes and has a snowball effect. I don't think Amazon can detect which ones are fake or not. The top 3 negative reviews have jumped up to 60+ upvotes now. I'm pretty sure someone is still adding votes to my reviews

 

[AG356]

My guess is that your competitor wanted to take a cheap shot at you, and has no interest in going into an upvote bidding war. Take care of the problem, and it will probably go away.

Or do nothing, maintain 100% integrity, complain on Amazon's deaf ears, and watch your sales go down.


Whatever you feel comfortable with.


Amazon's really cleaned up reviews in the last year. However, upvotes and downvotes are still the wild west.

This is something I still struggle with. I know that there are plenty of sayings that "business is war" etc.
Regarding Amazon, I still believe that there's a Win-Win situation most of the time, assuming that you are ok with "not taking the whole pie". As experienced sellers, most of us know exactly how to look out for fake reviews, fake verified purchases via PayPal refund and selfmade fake profiles. (The Blackhat methods basically)

What do you guys do if you see a completely new competitor, or even well established seller that use those methods and deduct sales from your listing, which you build over a period of time with a lot of effort, money and smart marketing.

Do you report them to Amazon (given they will actually act), do you actually gather enough proof and deliver it to amazon or do you just go on accepting it and try your best to compete with their unethical methods?

 

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[amp0193]

This is something I still struggle with. I know that there are plenty of sayings that "business is war" etc.
Regarding Amazon, I still believe that there's a Win-Win situation most of the time, assuming that you are ok with "not taking the whole pie". As experienced sellers, most of us know exactly how to look out for fake reviews, fake verified purchases via PayPal refund and selfmade fake profiles. (The Blackhat methods basically)

What do you guys do if you see a completely new competitor, or even well established seller that use those methods and deduct sales from your listing, which you build over a period of time with a lot of effort, money and smart marketing.

Well first, I wouldn't want to sell in a competitive niche, period.

But assuming I did, (and I have in the past), I wouldn't take it up the a$$ lying down if there was something I could do about it.

Because every dollar taken from me is a dollar taken away from my family.

Assuming I was in this situation:
I'd put phone calls into seller central once an hour until someone took care of the problem. Someone is probably capable of dealing with it. Someone can probably see that 15 votes were place in a short time span, but it's not going to be your lower level customer service person. And if after 1-2 days of it not being fixed, and showing no signs of getting fixed, I'd take matters into my own hands as I alluded to in the post above.

Do you report them to Amazon (given they will actually act), do you actually gather enough proof and deliver it to amazon or do you just go on accepting it and try your best to compete with their unethical methods?

Taking care of this situation would not be unethical in my eyes. It's just righting a wrong, bringing in a balance. It is just against Amazon's terms of service. Unethical would be modifying honest reviews on my page left by my customers.


I'll let any competitor do whatever they want on their own turf. Shady claims, blackhat ranking strategies, whatever. I'm too busy to worry about what everyone else is doing. But when they come on my turf, it gets personal.

But really, my turf, is actually amazon's turf... so yeah, no control.

 

[Denim Chicken]

My first product was received and is now live on FBA.

I have 2 questions for anyone here:
1) Inventory shows 75 available, I only sent in 70. It is 70 units per case. Will they sort this out or should I inquire? I highly doubt I miscounted 5 units.

2) My product is not showing up in the amazon search results, not even on page 20 and not even on results with less than 50 results.
The first search key term on the first line (out of the 5 lines in Product section) is the key phrase for less than 50 results. I wanted to rank for the lower competition phrase before the higher competition.

The product is showing if I type in my brand name/product name directly.

I get it's not ranked since it's new but I would think it would still get indexed on search terms with very little competition.

Am I wrong in this?

FWIW, I didn't put any commas between the search key terms in seller central. I figured the algorithm will figure it out, so it looks something like this:
car parts cushion soft cushion seat cover leather seat covers with strong strap etc.
(not my product)

There's about 5 lines of this.

Can't find it in documentation Amaz is so vague about it. But do you guys include commas between phrases?

 

[Denim Chicken]

Found out thru KW Indexer, not all my keywords are indexed. Commas seem to not matter so I included them.

 

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[ecommerce_lovin]

Sorry to just jump in the thread, but have any of you guys sold on etsy? I have an ecommerce site making 10-12k revenue a month and I am looking for a second channel to sell on. My niche on amazon is highly saturated and prices are way to low for me to stand out. Does anyone know anything about etsy here?

Thanks in advance!

 

[becks22]

Sorry to just jump in the thread, but have any of you guys sold on etsy? I have an ecommerce site making 10-12k revenue a month and I am looking for a second channel to sell on. My niche on amazon is highly saturated and prices are way to low for me to stand out. Does anyone know anything about etsy here?

Thanks in advance!

It depends on your product and if it fits into the Etsy Niche. Etsy is for handmade items, vintage, and craft supplies. There are some exceptions but they are usually pretty strict about people re-selling on there. My mom has an Esty shop so I know lots about it.

Here's a starting point: Seller Policy - Our House Rules | Etsy

 

[ecommerce_lovin]

It depends on your product and if it fits into the Etsy Niche. Etsy is for handmade items, vintage, and craft supplies. There are some exceptions but they are usually pretty strict about people re-selling on there. My mom has an Esty shop so I know lots about it.

Here's a starting point: Seller Policy - Our House Rules | Etsy

Thanks for the reply. My item is right on the boarder, but sellers are selling a lot of same kind of items so I think I'll be fine there. Do you have any tips on ranking with Etsy?

 

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[becks22]

Shop Improvement and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Etsy Help

@ecommerce_lovin , this might help ^^

I control pretty much my mom's shop. She sews and that's about it. I do everything else since she isn't great with technology. I always have listings going up constantly. If we have 10 products to put up, I put them up every other day over a period of a week or two to get more interest. Honestly, I would like to do a lot more but Etsy doesn't let me control certain aspects that I would want with my shop. They are getting better but I have limited control right now. Luckily the sales we do get is enough to keep my mom happy during retirement

 

[Alex89]

Hi @biophase thanks for your help in this thread.

I tried some samples and got some sales, now I want to import 300 units, but I am having some challenges.

Do you know what would be the cheapest way to import these units? The weight is 165 KG (about 364 pounds, 25 cartons).

From what I read online I have to:

1) Pay the manufacturer to send the items to port ($200)

2) Pay a forwarder to clear the items in China and U.K. Port. (~$500)

3) Pay extra for duty and taxes

Is that correct?

I found a forwarder, but he seems to be charging me a lot (~$500) and not providing massive value (at least in my eyes but I might be wrong since I am new at this).

P.S. I want to import them in the U.K. but I guess the framework shouldn't change a lot between U.K. and US.

Thanks in advance!

 

[steelandchrome]

Hi @biophase thanks for your help in this thread.

I tried some samples and got some sales, now I want to import 300 units, but I am having some challenges.

Do you know what would be the cheapest way to import these units? The weight is 165 KG (about 364 pounds, 25 cartons).

From what I read online I have to:

1) Pay the manufacturer to send the items to port ($200)

2) Pay a forwarder to clear the items in China and U.K. Port. (~$500)

3) Pay extra for duty and taxes

Is that correct?

I found a forwarder, but he seems to be charging me a lot (~$500) and not providing massive value (at least in my eyes but I might be wrong since I am new at this).

P.S. I want to import them in the U.K. but I guess the framework shouldn't change a lot between U.K. and US.

Thanks in advance!

I'm in the exact same boat... I found a product and it's 160kg across 10 boxes and the cheapest shipping I have been quoted for door to door service is $800 through the manufacturer using their UPS account. I tried ups, FedEx, DHL, and they all show $4k and up. Shipping sucks but as long as it works with your margins looks like we just gotta eat it and move on. Mine sucks especially since my total purchase for the 300 test units are just $1248 so adds a significant amount of margin pressure but I still can make it work.

*On a side note I wasn't happy with the runaround of air vs sea shipping and what was all included and reached out to Walter Hayes and he suggested Flexport. I called them and they have a waitlist out to December before they are accepting new clients .

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

 

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[samuraijack]

Just had a competitor upvote all my negative reviews (the handful that I had). How do i fix this? Or can I even?

Just wanted to give an update to my situation here because anyone who has a good selling competitive product will most likely come across this. Not advocating using these vote services but here's what happened:

• Competitor upvoted all my negative reviews so my entire front page was covered with 1-3 stars. He/She also downvoted all my positive reviews.
• I contacted Amazon, till this day still no response. I decided to go forward and fix this with a vote service myself.
• Sales plumeted, I'm estimating I've lost $2000-$3000 in sales in a few days.

Here's what I learned. My vote service kicked in (all in all I've spent $1000 on this), however I made a mistake in the beginning. I was trying to upvote/downvote the reviews my competitor targeted. Big mistake. I was pretty much wasting my time and money on this because of how the voting system works. They kept pumping votes and I was playing a catchup game. I decided to start focusing on my lesser voted 5 star reviews and boost those up. This way the ratio of upvotes/downvotes was so much greater than the negative reviews that these rose to the front page quickly and everything else was pushed down automatically.

I don't feel bad about doing this since I have 5 star reviews coming in constantly anyways, so its not like I'm trying to make a bad product look good. Anyways, we'll see if I get a backlash for this from Amazon. My advice, don't even contact Amazon about this, just fix it yourself with vote services.

 

[Alex89]

I'm in the exact same boat... I found a product and it's 160kg across 10 boxes and the cheapest shipping I have been quoted for door to door service is $800 through the manufacturer using their UPS account. I tried ups, FedEx, DHL, and they all show $4k and up. Shipping sucks but as long as it works with your margins looks like we just gotta eat it and move on. Mine sucks especially since my total purchase for the 300 test units are just $1248 so adds a significant amount of margin pressure but I still can make it work.

*On a side note I wasn't happy with the runaround of air vs sea shipping and what was all included and reached out to Walter Hayes and he suggested Flexport. I called them and they have a waitlist out to December before they are accepting new clients .

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Yes exactly, our numbers are very similar. My manufacturer quoted me the same $800 door to door through his TNT and I will probably go this route since it's faster as well.

We might have to eat it up and it kinda sucks, I hope as we add products and volume this cost will be lower compared to the order value...

 

[Ryan Wolf]

Hey, @biophase ,

I am getting some samples made for me by a manufacturer I found on Alibaba. Is paying the Chinese company via PayPal a safe way to make the payment? This is my first Alibaba order so I want to make sure I'm not a sucker for using PayPal if it's not the best way to go.

 

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[Greg R]

Hey, @biophase ,

I am getting some samples made for me by a manufacturer I found on Alibaba. Is paying the Chinese company via PayPal a safe way to make the payment? This is my first Alibaba order so I want to make sure I'm not a sucker for using PayPal if it's not the best way to go.

Earlier in this thread he mentions that PayPal is the best way to go, but he also said that you have to be willing to lose the money when you send it... Cost of business.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Hey, @biophase ,

I am getting some samples made for me by a manufacturer I found on Alibaba. Is paying the Chinese company via PayPal a safe way to make the payment? This is my first Alibaba order so I want to make sure I'm not a sucker for using PayPal if it's not the best way to go.

Paypal is good for samples and small orders. I used Trade Assurance by alibaba for my actual order of a few thousand $ once I paid him for the samples and it went OK. Paypal has a ridiculous 5-6% fee with chinese suppliers so for larger orders its usually steep

 

[Ivan2BAlive]

Hello once again @biophase

I guess I can tell you what I'm fully doing. Ok, here it goes. . . . .I have a system that allows me to monitor, order, fulfill and even put tracking #'s automatically when it starts to ship. I don't know if you're familiar with this system, it's called Profit Scraper (profitscraper.com). I am now dealing with 25 eBay accounts along with 25 Paypal accounts consecutively. How it works is that you have sold an item, it compares with the lower prices on Amazon and then orders the exact-same item but at a cheaper price. I only make $2-5 per item, but I was thinking to increase my sales, say at least 30-50 sales a day. I would at least bring around $100 a day, but for some reason, due to eBay fees, Profit Scraper fees ($.40 per auto order) it seems like I'm barely just scraping by.

If you're familiar with this system, can you tell me some pointers how I can increase my profits? I'm making sales, but the profits are small (enough to by a cup of coffee daily). If you want to check out this system, by all means please check it out. I'll be waiting for your reply and no rush, I am a very patient man. Thanks ahead of time.

 

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[biophase]

Hello once again @biophase

I guess I can tell you what I'm fully doing. Ok, here it goes. . . . .I have a system that allows me to monitor, order, fulfill and even put tracking #'s automatically when it starts to ship. I don't know if you're familiar with this system, it's called Profit Scraper (profitscraper.com). I am now dealing with 25 eBay accounts along with 25 Paypal accounts consecutively. How it works is that you have sold an item, it compares with the lower prices on Amazon and then orders the exact-same item but at a cheaper price. I only make $2-5 per item, but I was thinking to increase my sales, say at least 30-50 sales a day. I would at least bring around $100 a day, but for some reason, due to eBay fees, Profit Scraper fees ($.40 per auto order) it seems like I'm barely just scraping by.

If you're familiar with this system, can you tell me some pointers how I can increase my profits? I'm making sales, but the profits are small (enough to by a cup of coffee daily). If you want to check out this system, by all means please check it out. I'll be waiting for your reply and no rush, I am a very patient man. Thanks ahead of time.

Honestly, you have exactly what you said, a system. You aren't really building the real business.

It sounds like the only reason you're making money at the current level you are is because you have 25 separate eBay accounts.

You should ask yourself two questions, if you get this to let's say $100 a day, will you feel secure? Do you feel that you can go out and buy a nice car, rent a nicer place, etc. or were you constantly be looking over your shoulder and hope your money machine doesn't crumble one day.

The other question is, is this a business that you want to be in for 1-5 years. Would you be proud of this business? Would you tell your friends what you do?

My answer to you is, you can implement all these things to get more traffic and more sales to your eBay accounts but all that work you put in can go to zero in one day. Do you really want to invest your time in that?

 

[Ivan2BAlive]

Honestly, you have exactly what you said, a system. You are really building the real business.

It sounds like the only reason you're making money at the current level you are is because you have 25 separate eBay accounts.

You should ask yourself two questions, if you get this to let's say $100 a day, will you feel secure? Do you feel that you can go out and buy a nice car, rent a nicer place, etc. or were you constantly be looking over your shoulder and hope your money machine doesn't crumble one day.

The other question is, is this a business that you want to be in for 1-5 years. Would you be proud of this business? Would you tell your friends what you do?

Greetings @biophase,

Thanks for your response.

My answer to you is, you can implement all these things to get more traffic and more sales to your eBay accounts but all that work you put in can go to zero in one day. Do you really want to invest your time in that?

I know, it sounds like I'm being the passenger and not the driver during the fast-lane journey, but I really wasn't going to rely on this business model for the long term. This is just a springboard I'm trying to use to get me into the real business me and my wife are trying to start which is an online payment and transportation solution for Craigslist users. This will temporarily help me get there and fund the real business I'm trying to get into and then the business will run itself to where I don't have to rely on this system anymore.

I can see your point. You're right, I don't just want to make $100 a day, more like I want to make at least 4 to 5 figures a month. Right now, me and my wife are just sharing 1 car of a family of 4 and it's driving (no pun intended) me crazy.

I am open to other business models as a temporary springboard if you have any recommendations. Thanks again for the reply.

 

[biophase]

Greetings @biophase,

Thanks for your response.

I know, it sounds like I'm being the passenger and not the driver during the fast-lane journey, but I really wasn't going to rely on this business model for the long term. This is just a springboard I'm trying to use to get me into the real business me and my wife are trying to start which is an online payment and transportation solution for Craigslist users. This will temporarily help me get there and fund the real business I'm trying to get into and then the business will run itself to where I don't have to rely on this system anymore.

I can see your point. You're right, I don't just want to make $100 a day, more like I want to make at least 4 to 5 figures a month. Right now, me and my wife are just sharing 1 car of a family of 4 and it's driving (no pun intended) me crazy.

I am open to other business models as a temporary springboard if you have any recommendations. Thanks again for the reply.

So if you aren't going to rely on this business model long term, why start it? Why don't you start the real business that you want right now? I don't quite understand what an online payment and transportation solution for Craigslist users is. But why can't you start that today?

It doesn't sound right. Imagine a chef saying, I'm going to open up a restaurant in 3 years, but first I'm going to learn how to sell stuff on ebay to fund my restaurant. Wouldn't it be better for him to get a job at a restaurant? So how does learning how to arbitrage on ebay get you closer to starting your other business?

 

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[Ivan2BAlive]

So if you aren't going to rely on this business model long term, why start it? Why don't you start the real business that you want right now? I don't quite understand what an online payment and transportation solution for Craigslist users is. But why can't you start that today?

It doesn't sound right. Imagine a chef saying, I'm going to open up a restaurant in 3 years, but first I'm going to learn how to sell stuff on ebay to fund my restaurant. Wouldn't it be better for him to get a job at a restaurant? So how does learning how to arbitrage on ebay get you closer to starting your other business?

Answer(s) to the first question: My wife has discovered to do arbitrage and she's a stay-at-home mom. I came in to help her (us) with the business. Also, it keeps me from working 2 jobs in the meantime and gives me the freedom to come home and spend time with my kids at least in the meantime and provide the means to have extra time in the evenings to do business. I also like doing eCommerce as well coming from a street-learned IT background.

Answer to the 2nd question: About the Craigslist business, my wife has also started that about 5 years ago and we haven't been able to get the business off the ground yet. It'll take a minute to explain the idea we have. But in order to franchise this business to other states (franchising), we kinda need a cash-flow system that'll provide support. Can't find any other way of cash-flowing this and we're not going to go back to loans and credit cards. Filed bankruptcy, twice because of it along with foreclosure, short sale and repo of my car. So in the meantime, we're putting our first business (Classified Convenience: www.clacov.com, still need some revisions, work etc.) on the back burner for now. "If interested in checking our website out, feel free to do so. It'll explain more in detail about our online business model"

Hope this explains what we're trying to do, if not, I'll wait for your comment.

 

[Ninjamin]

Finally finished reading (plus note taking) this thread in 2 days.

First of all, I want to thank @biophase for not only starting this thread but also your commitment to imparting your knowledge and experience to us all. Thanks also to everyone else that provided valuable insights. While I've only just started out, I look forward to making contributions to this thread and forum where I can.

 

[qaerst]

Opinion on Shopify Dropshipping?

 

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[biophase]

Opinion on Shopify Dropshipping?

Yes, Don't do it.

 

[Arevico]

What are some of the biggest technical issues you've had creating an e-commerce website?