[Crew Review] New surcharge for Amazon sellers

Shortly after releasing its Q4 earnings report, Amazon is set to implement yet another surcharge on its third-party sellers. This time, it’s for storage utilization, and it can potentially drive 3PL costs even higher.

Here are the details.

Amazon Top Terms

Today, we’re looking back in time to find out which Amazon terms had a drastic increase in search history from January 29th to February 11th. Let’s jump right into it and take a look at this week’s top 10 biggest movers!

We’re just a few short weeks away from Presidents Day, one of the major shopping events of the year. This year, Presidents Day falls on Monday, February 20. In addition to the long weekend, retailers typically celebrate the holiday by offering deep promotions and coupon codes. 

That's why the keyword "mellanni queen sheet set" is among the top movers this week, taking our 6th spot. Products related to this term have already sold 3,908 units in the past two weeks.

Amazon Seller Sentenced for Bribery

Hadis Nuhanovic is facing 20 months of jail time after he was found guilty of bribing Amazon employees to get inside info.

Nuhanovic, who had been an Amazon seller since 2010, paid employees to reinstate banned products, make false complaints against competitors and remove bad reviews by harassing customers who post negative comments on his and his clients’ listings. He used this method to sell counterfeit DVDs, phone cases, and dietary supplements.

On top of this, Nuhanovic admitted to cheating on his taxes. The judge ordered the 32-year-old to forfeit $100,000 as proceeds of the conspiracy and to pay $160,453 to the Internal Revenue Service.

Affiliate Corner

Easy as 1, 2, 3 . . . 4!

Succeeding on a highly competitive platform such as Amazon can be challenging, but you don’t have to resort to questionable “techniques” to do so.

No matter the niche, there are four steps in scaling your Amazon business:

• Visibility boost. Find keywords with high volume and low competition to get your products to more potential customers.
• Listing optimization. Perform regular split tests and compare how your Amazon listing fares compared to your competitors.
• External channels. External traffic gets you more audience without limiting yourself to Amazon customers.
• Listing defense. Until Amazon finds a way to completely get rid of hijackers, they’ll always be a problem. Get hijacker and listing suppression alerts and keep track of pricing and buy box ownership changes so you don’t get blindsided.

eBay Invests in AI Fraud Detection

eBay recently acquired 3PM Shield LLC, a company that provides AI-based marketplace compliance solutions.

In essence, 3PM Shield makes it easier to detect suspicious sellers as well as illegal products sold on the platform.

Although eBay is set to lay off about 4% of its workforce, it’s willing to invest in similar technologies in the hopes of strengthening consumers’ trust.

Counterfeit items and errant sellers are present in any online marketplace, which makes this move necessary, especially since the INFORM Act has already been passed and will take effect this June.