AS 63: Discounted Reviews No Longer Allowed on Amazon – Amazon Ban[Official Post]

Discounted Reviews are no longer allowed on Amazon. Announced on October 3rd by Amazon’s Chee Chew, the VP of Customer Experience for Amazon. WHAAAT?

This is perhaps the biggest change to the Amazon Platform since I started selling on Amazon and in this episode, we go into all the implications this will have.

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Today’s podcast, episode 63 on Discounted Reviews and how they’re no longer allowed.

Wholly cow. Whatttttt. The Amazon game has been changed, and I believe for the better, although I do say that with pain.

For the past 2-3 years, sellers would give review groups their products for at a major 99% discount, in exchange for an honest review. The reviews were great, we could test new inventions, test new product launches, and get our product to the masses.

If the entire world was white hat, this process would never have stopped. However, the system had it’s flaws. For one,  some sellers abused review giveaways, giving sometimes 1000s of units away to fluff their review count. Others used it to build velocity to affect their best seller rank.

Most sellers used It though  to get valuable feedback, get their product launched. In fact there are hundreds of courses, some that cost thousands of dollars to join in, that teach this very thing. They are probably peeing in their pants right now because their entire “game plan” they have been distributing for beginners has been demolished. Flipped on it’s butt. Knocked out of the park...

Can you blame them though…Discounted reviews WERE ONCE, a legit method of launching a product. Don’t get me wrong.

The Heavy Cost to New Sellers with Discounted Reviews No Longer Being Allowed

However, according to reddit,  I am reading dozens of comments of newbies right in the midst of the crossfire that has just happened. Dozens of them are about to launch 2-3 sku’s and have just purchased thousands of dollars worth of goods.

Now their launch is completely botched. Unlike some of the more savvier marketers, who have customer email lists built up of their brand, and customer data access via Facebook and beyond, these newbies don’t have that and are sitting in hot water. Literally.

Just to put it into real context, here are exact things

“That's a bummer, I'm a seller with my first private label product, and I was going to be doing this as every course out there teaches this method.”

“As someone with $15,000 spent on 2 new SKUs getting there next week:

As someone with an advantage over others in my space because I have a following, a marketing background and we're actually growing as a brand outside of Amazon, this could be a blessing in disguise for us.

It'll shake things up for sure, we all saw this coming.

This is also what I'm thinking. Nobody is ever going to gain any traction in even a minimally competitive niche any more. Good luck to anyone trying to sell a new supplement!

 Yep, say goodbye to half of the humble braggers on this subreddit and ASM pages.