Amazon Reviews: Reply-All Podcast Features Amazon Reviews
Amazon Ranking: #11,008
Do you listen to Reply All?
Did you listen to today’s?
Weren’t you blogging about how amazon reviews are rigged?
Well, that’s today’s episode!
This was the series of texts I got from one of my friends who keeps up to date with my Amazon Review hobby. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Reply All podcast by Gimlet Media, a lot of their episodes involve debugging real-life tech problems or general internet culture and trends. The hosts explore different stories and problems – some that might sound familiar, and some which you hope will never come to you.
Reply All: Episode #124 The Magic Store
This particular episode starts with a brief overview of Amazon, and discussing how people have come to appreciate it for its convenience. It’s so easy that “it feels like you don’t have to research [on products] anymore” because of the reviews.
It follows up by delving into a recent trend of what seems like sketchy sellers selling products that aren’t totally authentic and references the fact that while Amazon once maintained and distributed all of their own inventory, they opened up the website the third party sellers which changed the whole game.
They go on to talk about how sellers, in an attempt to get their products ranked higher in search results, will hire marketing companies to reach out and engage in a variety of questionable practices (like paying for reviews) which helps their products sell faster and their business grow. One of the approaches they reference specifically is Facebook groups (something I talked about in a previous post).
Overall the podcast is really well done, as they all are, and is much more of an awareness episode than it is a problem-solving one. You can listen to the full podcast below or find it on the Reply All feed!
My Takeaway
Since I’ve been working in the Amazon Review space for a while, a lot of the information wasn’t particularly new to me. I avoid Facebook groups like the plague largely because I don’t like the idea of my name and personal profile being accessible to tons of marketers.
What was interesting and new to me was the idea that the influx of third-party sellers (who are in many cases selling identical products) is what’s caused the surge in the review black market. Since presumably each sale still somehow makes Amazon money, they probably won’t be nixing third-party sellers any time soon, which means the review black market will continue to thrive for the foreseeable future.
TL;DR
Great podcast about Amazon reviews and third-party seller. If you’re a podcast-person I would highly recommend both the individual episode and the podcast as a whole.
You can find this episode and others on the iTunes store here
Hello thank you sharing your advice about the facebook groups! Do you use any of the other websites like cash back base, amz reviewer, vipon, snagshout? Are there any you recommend? Thanks
Honestly I don’t! My main point of contact is via email or Instagram. I accidentally signed up for a an amz reviewer website once and found that it mostly resulted in lots of emails about discounted products I’m not interested in.
Personally, I like this strategy because it lets me develop relationships with the sellers which means I can also give them honest feedback – e.g. I reviewed some bath bombs and found they weren’t particularly fragrant (which I said in the review) which started a conversation with the seller over email about how they could package them better and the advantages/disadvantages of having fragrant bath products. I like being able to work with people 🙂