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Remember that first time you received a negative review on your product? How did you feel:  Wronged? Angry even? Suffice to say: It sucks when you get a negative review.

These feelings are understandable. You’ve put in a lot of hard work: selecting a great product to sell, choosing the right supplier, listing your product on Amazon – And now here’s this ugly negative review, potentially hurting your future revenue!

It’s a 1-star gravity bomb on your brand credibility:
A 1-star review sitting on your listing for over 3 days can have a harmful impact on your sales and conversion.

However, negative reviews are part of the Amazon game – and just like everything else in this business – you simply need to learn how to play. If you take appropriate action, you can mitigate the damage of a negative review. But if you act out of impulse, you may make things worse for yourself.

Just keep in mind 92% of consumers now read online reviews (BrightLocal) and studies have shown it takes 12 positive reviews to make up for one negative.

Ideally, you should contact the customer directly to see if you can resolve the issue. However, this is often not possible. Amazon doesn’t give sellers access to customers’ email addresses. And a customer’s pen name often doesn’t match the name used when placing the order.
READ MORE…

Amazon expanding into the freight forwarding business

https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/25/amazon-adds-ocean-freight-to-the-pieces-of-the-shipping-puzzle-it-controls/

According to a Wall Street Journal report this week, Amazon is continuing its vertical expansion by moving into the freight forwarding industry, as they are now directly involved in transporting goods by ship from Chinese retailers directly to Amazon warehouses.

It’s still very early to piece together how this move will impact private label sellers. Will Amazon start offering cheaper and more efficient shipping solutions to Western sellers? Or by providing an easier path for Chinese merchants to sell on Amazon, will we see even more significant growth in competition, making it harder for smaller sellers to compete? Either way, this move suggests that big changes are ahead. READ MORE…

(This is the first post in our weekly series that will recap all the latest news in the Amazon world that’s most relevant to YOU as an Amazon seller, and break down what it all means for your business.)

2016 Hit an FBA-Record

http://mobilemarketingwatch.com/amazon-sellers-coming-off-of-record-year-says-online-and-mobile-retail-giant-70309/

It’s confirmed — FBA is going huge. Amazon announced last week that its FBA service delivered over 2 billion items worldwide in 2016. This includes an increase in 50% in FBA items shipped over the holiday season, as well as millions of items ordered by Prime members in the Seller Fulfilled Prime program.

Interestingly, the Amazon marketplace that saw the most explosive growth in 2016 was Amazon India, which reported a 160% yearly growth in sellers throughout the country.

An often overlooked aspect of this is the jobs created by FBA sellers. From the announcement:

…according to our economic studies, sellers have created over 600,000 new jobs outside of Amazon.

Whether Amazon is becoming overcrowded is a separate discussion, but there’s certainly some reassurance that comes with being part of a booming industry. READ MORE…

Have you tried increasing your keyword rank but STILL have problems ranking higher in Amazon?

Recently, we’ve noticed one of the most asked questions we have come across with many of our Seller’s since AMZ Tracker made some changes is, ‘What do I do with my Keyword data?’.

You’ve signed up with AMZ Tracker and you’re using all the features including the keyword ranking tool. But you have no idea what to do with all this data, sometimes the rank improves and other times it’s not such good news.

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In this article you will learn how to limit the Max Order Quantity of a listing to protect your inventory when running a promotion

When creating your codes, we have always recommended that you do choose the $OFF codes.
The $OFF codes ensure that customers can’t take advantage of your codes by getting a discount on their entire order if they choose to buy multiple quantities of your promotional product.

Recently, Amazon made another change to their promo codes. They removed this option and now only allow %OFF codes to be created via your Seller Central account. So, now that you only have the %OFF option, we have put together a guide to help you get around this, to ensure you were still able to limit you max order quantity.

Although you cannot limit the quantity of products to be purchased when using a percentage off code, you can limit the Max Order Quantity of a listing. This means, the shopper cannot purchase more than the quantity you set in the backend of a single order. READ MORE…

Recently, Amazon PPC prices saw a spike, due to increased competition for keywords, which has caused some CPC prices to increase more than 50% and even up to 100%.

Are you Making the Most out of the Promotions Tool? In this post, we explain how you can use the Promotions Tool correctly, in order to help increase your BSR without spending a fortune!

Now, you’re already aware that Amazon’s search algorithm works differently to someone like Google. Amazon wants to make money and therefore wants the consumer to buy as much as possible. This means your number one goal, is Sales!

Ok, so you know that shifting a ton of inventory through deal sites is a great way of increasing your sales velocity right? We even wrote a detailed post about it here along with the strategies you can use.

But How Do I Boost My Keyword and Sales Ranking? READ MORE…

Keyword research is a fundamental part of running an Amazon business. Whether you do it yourself or whether you have a team of virtual assistants, keyword research done well provides a massive competitive advantage.

For those who are just starting out and aren’t sure what I mean, let me explain:

Apart from everything else that makes up the parts of an Amazon business, keywords are what connects you to your customers on multiple levels.

It starts in the product research phase when you’re trying to understand what sort of product you want to go with. No Amazon seller wants to choose a product, buy $1000++ amount of stock and have it sit there in a FBA warehouse for months on end. Then face the miserable fact of having to sell it as a significantly lower price simply to get rid of it (or trash it!).

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As you all know, Amazon changed its TOS on Oct. 3. And as happens whenever things change with Amazon, some people flipped out.

We’re here to cut through the nonsense and noise with some reassurance:

You can continue selling like you were before and keep boosting your business knowing you are in full compliance with Amazon and AMZ Tracker, and on top of that you’ll get a leg up on your competitors who aren’t taking action or running promotions after the changes.

We can assure you that we’re 100% compliant with Amazon’s Terms of Service.

We’ve been working with a top level Amazon Management Team, and we made changes to our Promotions (formerly Review Club) tool under their guidance.

Sending out vouchers for your products on AMZ Tracker is totally safe — and, yes, will still boost your business, skyrocket your sales velocity and improve your rankings. READ MORE…

What is DCBKK? It’s the annual “Dynamite Circle” conference in Bangkok (BKK) held by the Tropical MBA podcast and presented by its hosts Dan and Ian. Each year they get a community of location independent entrepreneurs – all at the top of their game – to share their expertise and experience to take each other’s businesses to another level. Where you don’t just share an impersonal ballroom with the likes of Noah Kagan, Nathan Barry, Jaime Masters, and Dan Norris, but you share a weekend with them, taking part in masterminds and intimate workshops together, as peers.

This event is particularly special to us as a sponsor, because 2 years ago our founders came to this event to build up the company into what it has become. Our growth has been incredible. And so much of our success has come from listening to you, the FBA Seller. DCBKK gives us a weekend to brainstorm and test new ideas with some of the smartest and most successful FBA Sellers.

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What You Need To Know To Continue To Succeed

Hey there AMZtracker family,

So you may have heard the big news that Amazon has made some changes to their community guidelines and a press release.

The short version of the changes is that Amazon is no longer allowing sellers to request reviews for items given in exchange for a free or a discount. While this is not exactly the best news for sellers that we’ve heard this week, it’s not quite the end of the world either when you look at the specific TOS changes.

So worry not our loving AMZtracker family, the sky is not falling. The dedicated team here is hard at work around the clock (literally) to adapt and evolve along with the decisions of Amazon just like we have for years. We will be rolling out updates over the next 24 hours.  AMZtracker always has and will continue to strictly adhere to Amazon’s terms of service.

So let’s take a minute and walk you through what the changes mean, and how we are all moving forward.

READ MORE…