[Crew Review] Former Amazon employee sentenced to federal prison

Firsts

“...This could be called modern day organized crime”, said US District Judge Richard A. Jones during the sentencing of the first of six Amazon consultants indicted in a bribery scheme.

Former Amazon employee Rohit Kadimisetty was meted out a penalty of 10 months in federal prison and a fine of $50,000.

Here’s why.

Amazon Top Terms

Our weekly Top Terms update gives you the latest data on what Amazon shoppers are looking for. Here are the top Amazon terms from January 30 to February 12:

Some of the most important trends hailing from Valentine's Day have made their way into our top 10 list of the week, such as “male masterbation toys” and “whiskey smoker infuser kit.”

These keywords have caused an increase in sales in related products, going from selling 62 units to 152 units per day for the former and 1,161 units per day to 3,733 units per day in the last few days.

Finding great products to sell is the key factor in building your multimillion-dollar ecommerce empire, but figuring out what to sell should not be rocket science. Check out our guide to succeeding with differentiated products here: How to Find a Product to Sell on Amazon [2022].

Project W

Our friends over at Helium 10 just launched Project W, a value-packed video series demonstrating how to succeed as a Walmart marketplace seller. This follows the company’s widely successful Project X, which is a case study of the entire Amazon selling process.

As of writing, Walmart is one of the biggest ecommerce marketplaces in the US, with over 100,000 sellers and 120 million visitors each month. If you’re thinking of launching a new product on Walmart or expanding your business from Amazon, Project W could be just what you’re looking for.

Potential Game Changer

Amazon recently announced that you can now send targeted emails to your Amazon followers. This is a first for third-party sellers—prior to this, emails were sent to customers post-purchase.

Like all Amazon features, the Customer Engagement Tool, which is currently in beta, is subject to a couple of caveats, but it’s nevertheless a welcome development for sellers, especially those who want to develop strong brands rather than just standalone products.

Another Nail in the Coffin

The effectiveness of Facebook marketing is about to take another hit, as Google announced plans to curtail cross-app tracking on Android phones.

For years, Google and Apple have allowed advertising companies *cough* Facebook *cough* to layer in their code into hundreds of thousands of mobile apps in order to track consumer behavior and target users with paid ads.

Google’s new privacy restrictions come more than a year after Apple started its own crackdown in the name of consumer privacy, which was reported to have scraped over $300 billion off Facebook’s (now Meta Platforms, Inc.) market value.

Hack Attack

Ecommerce security firm Sansec detected a mass breach of over 500 ecommerce websites running the Magento 1 ecommerce platform. These websites were compromised by a credit card skimmer used by hackers to steal information when customers attempt to make a purchase.

According to the firm on Twitter, the Natural Fresh skimmer shows a fake payment popup, defeating the security of a (PCI compliant) hosted payment form. This report adds to the growing list of hacking incidents involving Magecard, a term used to collectively refer to competing crime groups who use skimmers to hack thousands of ecommerce stores.

Shut Down

In a TikTok video posted last week, an Amazon reseller says his account has been deactivated by Amazon despite having $25,000 inside their FBA warehouses. In the TikTok video, which has over 300,000 hits as of writing, the seller accuses Amazon of crushing innocent sellers on a daily basis without any recourse.

Source: @tylerphillipsecom

While it comes as no surprise that Amazon constantly tries to shut down third-party marketplace sellers which it deems competition (after which it usually comes out with its own cheaper version of the competing products), this case comes as TikTok marketing is quickly gaining some ground as a viable marketing tool for ecommerce sellers.

Can We Let You In on a Secret?

Our content-first strategy has helped us take multiple ecommerce brands all the way to seven figures, and for the first time ever, we’ll be peeling back the curtain to show you exactly how we built our brands from scratch by looking at our newest business, knitting.com.

Starting this February, you can subscribe to the EcomCrew Secret Sauce series, which will grant you access to a new mini-class each month, covering topics from selecting the perfect niche all the way to using Traction and EOS to set your business up for success.

Get the Secret Sauce here.

Etc.

Masks off. Amazon will now allow vaccinated warehouse workers to now work unmasked.

Milestones. Marketplace Pulse reveals that 60,000 sellers hit the $1M mark in 2021.

Toss a coin. Entrepreneur lists down the ten biggest cryptocurrencies for ecommerce.