380: The Latest Crackdown And How Amazon’s Practices Are Killing Your Business With Mike Jackness And Dave Bryant

Podcast: Download (Duration: 59:10 — 68.0MB)

Amazon remains the best place for a new seller to start, because the learning curve is roughly a fifth of what running your own store requires and conversion rates can exceed 50% against 1.5% to 3% on Shopify. The tradeoff is real: black hat attacks, arbitrary suspensions, and private label competition using your own sales data against you.

In this episode I sat down with Mike Jackness and Dave Bryant of EcomCrew, recorded in Palm Springs at the Indian Wells tennis tournament, to assess where Amazon actually stands for sellers right now.

Below is the full discussion: the RebateKey and Elite Seller crackdown, whether rebates are safe, the review manipulation problem, Amazon’s private label conflict, and what a new seller should actually do.

Key takeaways

• Amazon revoked API access for RebateKey and Elite Seller, apparently over ranking manipulation rather than reviews.
• This is the first crackdown on ranking manipulation rather than review manipulation.
• Other rebate services were untouched, which suggests rebates themselves are not the target.
• Paid placements went from 10% to 30% of search results, so new sellers can buy visibility.
• Amazon conversion rates can exceed 50% against 1.5% to 3% on a typical Shopify store.
• Sending external traffic to Amazon boosts organic rank, which is why EcomCrew pushes site visitors to Amazon.
• A vendor central keyword injection attack took down Mike’s bestseller for weeks.
• Differentiation is now mandatory. Listing a stock Alibaba product alongside ten identical ones no longer works.

What happened with RebateKey and Elite Seller

Amazon revoked API access for both companies, which appears to be about ranking manipulation through URL tricks rather than review manipulation.

Both are run by the same team, and the reasoning was never officially explained. The working theory is that Elite Seller pushed too far with link structures designed to make traffic look like it came from Google when it actually came from email lists or RebateKey.

The significance is the category. Nearly every Amazon suspension of a seller or software provider has historically been about reviews, because fake reviews damage the customer experience directly.

This is the first action Dave is aware of aimed purely at tricking the ranking algorithm. If that holds, it opens a much larger front, since a large share of sellers attempt some form of algorithmic manipulation.

Neither company strictly needs the API. It speeds up order verification and data pulls, and RebateKey can operate without it.

Are Amazon rebate services still safe to use?

Rebates themselves appear safe, since every other rebate service was left untouched.

Amazon’s usual pattern is building a case against an entire category of sellers or providers and suspending them in one sweep. That did not happen here, which points at something specific to these two companies.

The legitimacy argument is straightforward. Brands have offered rebates since the beginning of retail, whether that is Black and Decker giving $10 for warranty registration or Nike discounting a second pair. RebateKey does not tell buyers they must leave a review.

Mike’s counterpoint is worth taking seriously. Traditional rebates are rarely 99% off, and legacy retailers priced them knowing most customers never complete the paperwork. Everyone using these services knows the actual purpose is boosting rank, and tools like Helium 10 and Jungle Scout will tell you exactly how many daily giveaways ranking requires.

My own position is that rebate services are outside what I am willing to do. I have used Facebook Messenger promotions, which leave less of a detectable footprint.

The prediction all three of us share: whatever gets shut down returns under a different name within six months.

Why one-star reviews have increased

Amazon’s split of reviews into separate ratings and reviews changed the mix, which makes negative reviews more visible even when nothing malicious is happening.

Nobody writes four paragraphs about a product that simply worked. Satisfied customers leave a five-star rating with no text. Dissatisfied customers write at length about why.

The visible result is a proliferation of five-star ratings without prose and one-star reviews with detailed complaints, which makes the review section look worse than the underlying sentiment.

Malicious reviews are also real, and the sophisticated version drips slowly. One one-star review per competitor per month looks natural, while a bombing run stands out as a statistical anomaly Amazon can detect.

The frustrating part is that a fake negative review is nearly impossible to disprove. With a simple product there are only so many genuine failure modes, and you cannot get Amazon to act on your certainty.

How to use negative reviews to improve products

Legitimate negative reviews are product development input, and Mike’s bestsellers are third iterations built from complaints.

Two concrete examples from his ice pack line. Customers were microwaving the packs too long, so the product became cold-pack only. Others complained about condensation soaking their couch or back, so a cover now ships in the box to absorb moisture.

That second product became one of the best sellers in its category, built entirely from reading complaints seriously.

Why sellers get attacked with black hat tactics

Money attracts people willing to operate at any margin and any ethical level, which Mike recognizes from the online poker world before Black Friday.

The pattern is predictable. Where large money exists, competitors appear who will accept lower margins, then competitors who will use black hat tactics, then competitors who will do essentially anything.

The attack that hit Mike hardest was a vendor central keyword injection. A competitor opened a vendor central account in another marketplace, added his product, and injected keywords that trigger automatic takedowns for dangerous goods or pesticide claims.

Because the contribution came through vendor central, the keywords were invisible in his backend and he had no control over his own listing.

The resolution process was absurd. Amazon support told him they could not help until brand registry declined to help him first, so he contacted brand registry, was refused, and only then could the case be escalated. It took weeks, cost his top-selling product, and destroyed inventory Amazon demanded be removed immediately.

Not everyone recovers. A mutual friend permanently lost a brand to a similar claim despite nothing illegal in his ingredient list.

Is Amazon’s private label business unfair to sellers?

The data access is the real problem rather than the private label products themselves.

Costco has Kirkland, Walgreens and CVS have house brands, and nobody objects. Those retailers built physical footprints and place house products on the same shelf under comparable conditions.

Dave’s framing of Amazon’s defense: preferential shelf placement has existed forever, and advertising placement is the digital equivalent. Amazon will argue it is no different from Walmart.

The distinction is scale of information. Walgreens sees sales data for a handful of allergy medicines. Amazon sees individual product data across roughly two million third-party sellers, and has now conceded employees look at it despite being told not to.

Mike’s specific objection is the ad placement. If he pays a dollar per click to bring someone to his ice pack listing, an Amazon house-brand ad directly under the buy box converts his own ad spend into a competitor’s sale.

The remedies would be splitting Amazon into separate entities to prevent information sharing, or giving sellers equal access to the same aggregate data. India, the UK, and the EU have already restricted this. The US has not.

Amazon has also emailed sellers suggesting it might have to choose between private label brands and third-party sellers. Both Mike and Dave read that as pressure tactics, since abandoning third-party sellers is implausible and abandoning private label is the far likelier outcome.

Can a new seller still succeed on Amazon?

Yes, with genuine differentiation and aggressive advertising, and no if the plan is listing a stock Alibaba product alongside ten identical ones.

Mike’s assessment of 2015 is that he could have sold a bag of poop without running ads. That era is over.

Paid placements moved from about 10% of a search results page a few years ago to roughly 30% by 2021, which is the new seller’s opening. Most customers do not distinguish paid from organic results, so you can buy your way to visibility.

The trap is dependence. Long term you need roughly 80% of sales coming from organic rather than PPC, and getting off aggressive advertising is the hard part.

Profitable Amazon PPC is achievable with strong creative, which mostly means a strong main gallery image and good headlines. Video ads remain underused and can perform well. Set-and-forget automatic campaigns no longer work.

How to build an actual brand on Amazon

Find a niche ripe for disruption, improve the product using existing reviews, and build a direct relationship with customers off Amazon.

Mike’s Coloret example: they did not invent coloring books, they reinvented them by reading reviews and adding hardback covers, spiral binding, art-grade paper, and perforations. Everything competitors were not doing.

The community work mattered as much as the product. Free weekly drawings, giveaways, a recurring live show, and how-to-color content produced customers who helped develop new products, became advocates, and defended the brand publicly against attacks.

My own version is one-on-one contact. DMs, Messenger, and SMS all convert people into long-term customers, and we phone every bulk order, which is how we discovered event planners were a major segment.

Should you send your website traffic to Amazon?

Amazon rewards external traffic with better organic ranking, which is why EcomCrew deliberately pushes site visitors to Amazon.

Dave’s setup: his site is about 10% of sales, he runs Google Shopping, Google Ads, Facebook ads, and SEO to bring people in, then places a strong call to action to buy on Amazon alongside the on-site purchase option. Pricing is identical.

The conversion math explains it. Mike’s best Shopify conversion rate is around 3% with 1.5% to 2% typical, while some Amazon products convert above 50%. That is roughly a twentyfold difference.

The Coloret proof is stronger. Owned traffic including an email list, Messenger list, Facebook pixel audience, and brand equity is what let them break into gel pens, reaching a top five bestseller in a category selling hundreds of units daily, and contributed to a seven-figure exit.

The exception is repeat-purchase products. A beard grooming kit bought monthly belongs on your own site, and a rooftop tent or an ice pack does not.

The best of both: capture the email before sending them to Amazon. Then a launch or promotion goes to your own list while the purchase happens where it converts and helps your ranking.

How much Amazon dependence is too much

Mike is around 85% Amazon and describes it as a game of musical chairs, while my own split keeps most traffic on my store.

His framing is that the money has been genuinely lucrative and the discomfort is that the music will eventually stop, leaving him holding inventory he cannot sell elsewhere.

Mine is different, and it is not really a financial calculation. I optimize for peace of mind, because an Amazon problem ruins my wife’s entire day, and that ruins mine. Leaving money on the table is an acceptable price.

Mike solves the same problem by delegating. He tells his team not to bring him Amazon issues at all, because dealing with the bureaucracy personally produces genuine physical stress.

Dave’s counterpoint is that employees lack the emotional stake to push hard. He has a product suspended over documentation that his team has not resolved in two weeks, and he believes he would fix it in days by escalating relentlessly.

Where Amazon is heading

Mike’s pessimistic case is that product quality on Amazon is declining as low-quality sellers monopolize top positions, and that consumer confidence could shift the way it did against Walmart.

The mechanism is churn. Sellers he knows have abandoned Amazon rather than deal with knockoffs and takedowns, and the sellers replacing them are lower quality on average.

Dave’s more optimistic case points at Google, whose algorithm improved enough that organic results are mostly good now. Amazon’s third-party marketplace is only about ten years old, so there is room to mature.

Neither expects it fixed within a year or two.

Frequently asked questions

Is it still worth selling on Amazon?

Yes for new sellers, because the learning curve is roughly a fifth of running your own store and conversion rates can exceed 50% against 1.5% to 3% on Shopify. Amazon handles traffic, payment, fulfillment, and returns. The cost is exposure to suspensions, black hat attacks, and private label competition.

Why did Amazon shut down RebateKey and Elite Seller?

Amazon revoked their API access, apparently over URL structures that made traffic appear to come from Google when it came from email lists or the rebate service. It is the first known action targeting ranking manipulation rather than review manipulation, and other rebate services were untouched.

Are rebate services against Amazon’s terms of service?

Rebates themselves are not prohibited, and brands have offered them for decades. Every other rebate service remained active during this crackdown. The distinction is that these services were also enabling link structures designed to disguise traffic sources.

Why are sellers getting more one-star reviews?

Amazon split ratings from written reviews, so satisfied customers now leave a star rating with no text while dissatisfied customers still write detailed complaints. That makes the review section look worse than sentiment warrants. Malicious drip-fed negative reviews also occur.

Is Amazon’s private label business unfair?

The house brands are comparable to Kirkland or a Walgreens brand. The genuine problem is data access, since Amazon sees individual product performance across roughly two million third-party sellers. India, the UK, and the EU have restricted this and the US has not.

Should you send traffic from your website to Amazon?

Often yes, since Amazon rewards external traffic with better organic ranking and converts far better than a typical Shopify store. Capture the email first. The exception is repeat-purchase consumables, where owning the customer relationship is worth more.

Can a new Amazon seller still compete?

Yes with real differentiation and aggressive advertising. Paid placements grew from about 10% to 30% of search results, so visibility can be purchased. Listing a stock Alibaba product identical to ten competitors no longer works, and long term you need roughly 80% of sales coming from organic.