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Is it the end for Amazon Hacks?


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Anthony Lee joins to discuss Amazon hacks, what is legitimate and what isn’t and their use.

  • The Public ask “What is working now” is the regular demand question that people ask.
  • When there’s nothing ‘new’ they lose interest
  • Event organisers are always looking for short-cuts or loopholes
  • Educate people that Marketing Fundamentals haven’t changed much
  • You CAN always discover new things that Amazon rolls out and how to utilise that individual new feature
  • BUT everyone is looking for the silver bullet that makes everything work
  • When Anthony gives feedback that is exact same thing since his 2014 advice

The Amazon Marketing Fundamentals

  • Optimizing your listing, turning on sponsored product ads and then running promotions on specific keywords to improve keyword ranking – THAT IS HOW PEOPLE DO IT! Simple as!
  • This hasn’t changed since Anthony’s 2014 advice
  • Anthony does work with a company that does Amazon ranking so could be biased- but Danny points out that you don’t need to do ONLY Amazon promotion
  • You don’t need to do all three of those at all
  • Plenty of big brands prove that you don’t need optimized listings
  • Plenty of people out there that don’t do sponsored product ads or PPC of any kind
  • Not a requirement to DO promotions
  • But those are the three fundamental things that successful sellers do
  • While some of the rules are tweaked a bit, these fundamentals have not changed
  • The big players are not doing any NEW things that have turned these rules on their head

Turning on PPC is not a hack

  • Turning on PPC is a marketing Fundamental and it’s not a hack

Lightning Deals

  • Turning on the Lightning Deal is not an Amazon hack
  • Opening multiple Browser windows and firing off to setup multiple Lightning Deals is a Hack (Liran’s show in Seller Session 017 talks of this)
  • You can turn on as many as you want IF YOU HAVE VARIATIONS if you don’t then this isn’t true

Key Information for Sellers

  • Once you’ve covered:
    • Listing optimization
    • Copywriting
    • PPC
    • AMS
  • Then it’s changes to protocols and updates that Amazon does to cover
  • A lot of Internet Marketers wheel out the same info but charge an arm and a leg for – even old info
  • Make sure they are an expert and trust them and beware of marketing speak if you’re paying for info
  • If someone tries to give you a magic bullet then don’t trust it – there isn’t one
  • We’ve had the same Sellers on the same show and they have given consistent information together
  • Anthony tries to stay away from people that talk about loopholes – they come and they go
  • Some people try and make their whole business about the loopholes – always be aware of the ToS as no loophole is worth losing your account for

Amazon ToS

  • Launch services that are against ToS but are still around years later
  • Amazon makes their ToS vague so they can do broad sweeping attacks when they make policy changes
  • Amazon made these ToS to be interpreted on purpose
  • People who work at Amazon don’t know what Amazon’s intention was in the ToS
  • Anthony can only share his interpretation of the ToS in operating their service
  • They correspond with Amazon support and escalate
  • Anthony was able to confirm through their own research that Amazon were looking to stop certain black hat attacks manipulating BSR through false sales
  • People were gaming the system by having upto 150 Buyer accounts and buy upto 4 units from Sellers to inflate Rank
  • Amazon made it pretty clear that this is what they were trying to squash
  • They didn’t want us to give out too many units to the same buyer
  • Essentially this is what it appeared they were looking at

Amazon are deliberately vague on ToS

  • Amazon are clear that they don’t want you manipulating rank but they don’t say Keyword Rank or anything about URL – because this is not a problem they are having
  • The algorithm can deal with URL and Keyword ranking – as we’ve seen with some URL ‘hacks’ not working anymore
  • A legitimate and good launch service facilitates legitimate sales from real buyers, with real accounts, with real money (not free giveaways) real sales with Amazon getting their fee, pick and packers paid, referrals made
  • Amazon freely allows this to affect Rank
  • They sent a clear message when they created the storefront URL and it powerfully affects ranking
  • They painted the picture that promotions are cool – it brings more customers to the website and spending money and customers are enjoying getting discounted products
  • And Amazon are getting paid
  • And customer experience is not being manipulated because if your product doesn’t’ get organic sales then it doesn’t rank and your listing doesn’t stick around
  • Amazon knows this and it’s a win/win for Sellers to make use of all the tools Amazon puts out to us

Amazon Hacks Fatigue is kicking in?

  • Floods of webinars on Amazon Hacks and people getting tired of it
  • Anthony wants to say fatigue is kicking in but is constantly surprised by how well substanceless webinars are being attended and are doing well

In Closing

  • There is no magic bullet – there are hacks/loopholes found through experienced sellers uncovering it or accidentally stumbled upon by non-experts
  • 9 times out of 10 these hacks will help you little by little, just like following the  good marketing fundamentals will help little by little
  • Never going to be a cliff-edge and a massive leap to make you rich – a lot of experts sell it that way but it’s right
  • Good marketing fundamentals, keep your ear to the  ground for the new things that come up so you can use them
  • Inch your way across the finish line and stop waiting for the finish line to come to you
  • 95% of what we need to do is locked in and are the protocols that we follow for success
  • 5% of new small things come up but they come and go and don’t last, like 5,000 chars in your backend don’t work anymore, or using the full phrase doesn’t work anymore
  • These are attached to fundamentals so how you take these actions it shifts a little bit – you have to experiment and A/B test to see what works for you

Contact Anthony

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