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by Brendinooo16 hours ago |
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upvoteby dlandis15 hours ago|
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There's also the fact that Amazon really doesn't know the best-reviewed item anyway, at least in any meaningful sense, since most reviews (including verified) are fake/inorganic.
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upvoteby Brendinooo15 hours ago|
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Right. If the only metric was "best-reviewed" then more people would be faking reviews.

To be clear I'm not letting Amazon entirely off the hook here, but Seth's situation is somewhat unique in that "someone looking for a particular book" seems to me like a really different use case than "I want an air fryer".

And "Amazon’s theft makes products more expensive" falls a little flat when a main reason for shopping on Amazon is that their prices tend to be really good.

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upvoteby Centigonal14 hours ago|
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You pay Amazon $200 and give free product to Vine reviewers in exchange for a seed pool of "unbiased" reviews (see link below). If you're not worried about the risk of getting your seller account canceled, there are also other ways of manufacturing your initial sales and review volume.

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

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upvoteby boznz15 hours ago|
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> How would I break through, if not ads?

You wouldn't, your product would languish in obscurity and unless the searcher knew the exact actual product name forever be on page 200 of the search results (As a Sci-Fi book author I found this out the hard way). Influencers and having followers can also help your product break through, but that's about it. Self promotion of your product is usually actively discouraged or banned by many forums.

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upvoteby Brendinooo10 hours ago|
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Perhaps you could title your next book "Seth Godin The Knot".
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upvoteby topspin15 hours ago|
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> How would I break through, if not ads?

Make YouTube videos. Food porn is a thing, and some subset of that crowd will want to watch you fry stuff with your "pro" fryer.

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upvoteby treszkai4 hours ago|
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But you're in the air fryer production business, not in the food video production biz (which is really saturated). So you likely don't have the skills to launch a food porn channel organically, so you have to pay a youtuber, which is not the worst, but the yield would be unpredictable (and more costly to test). Sounds overall better than Amazon ads, though.
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upvoteby s1artibartfast15 hours ago|
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This is up there with talk to your neighbors and put flyers on windshields.

It is a bandaid for a dysfunctional market with high transaction costs of trust(reputation) and triangulation(discovery).

Amazon only excells at low transfer cost - no negotiation and cheap delivery

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upvoteby latexr3 hours ago|
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So, your alternative to ads is… Ads? If you’re making a YouTube channel to promote your product, that’s still an ad. It’s just taking you longer (and probably more money) to get it out.
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upvoteby jay_kyburz12 hours ago|
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I'm surprised there isn't a market for an amazon like competitor that is a mix of Amazon and Consumer Reports.

They do the reviews themselves, watch for returns and quality issues, and can actually provide consumers with the best products.

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upvoteby Brendinooo38 minutes ago|
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Maybe it really is impossible to run a business that way, and that's why Consumer Reports is stuck a stickler about putting up walls around its reputation for independence.
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upvoteby superxpro1215 hours ago|
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The point of this article is that, if Amazon doesnt want you do, then you wont.
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