🍭 Treacle Thursdays from Seller Candy (21/10/21 issue) 🍬

This week we have some updates, funny stories and the obligatory podcast episode. Before we get in to that, though, another haiku for your entertainment.

Jeff clings to your cash,
Reluctant to part with it,
Take it back at your peril

This one has a disturbing amount of truth to it given the recent ban hammer dropped on a few of the software companies out there.

Let's do some news!

“If more profit - in dollars, in power, in fame - is to be gained from misinformation, why not go for it? And when dollars, power and fame are combined, the incentive is all the stronger. Misinformation predominates."

- David J Helfand

Hamrick fingered for fraud

With the world the way it is, everyone is on the lookout for a nice little side-hustle to top up the income. Sadly for Hudson Hamrick, the one he chose was quite illegal.

For the last 5 years, this wily customer has been buying high-ticket items from Amazon and returning somewhat similar (but much lower value) items for a full refund. His dastardly scheme netted him a pretty penny, racking up $290,000 over 300 separate fraudulent transactions in the 5-year period.

Despite Amazon saying they have "systems in place to detect suspicious behaviour", it took them 5 years to notice what was happening. Now that they have eventually caught on, the unfortunate Mr Hamrick is looking at a possible $250,000 fine and 20 years in jail.   

 And the award goes to... 

Hopefully us. Exciting news for the Seller Candy team; we've been shortlisted for the Seller Poll 'Favourite Service Provider' award for 2021!

The award is pretty prestigious, with previous winners including big hitters like Helium 10 and JungleScout. Voting is open to anyone, so if you have 5 minutes we'd really appreciate it if you could jump on over to the Seller Poll site and give us your support.

It's our first opportunity to win one of these awards, so it would be amazing if we could take it home with the first bite of the cherry. Even if you're not a Seller Candy client you're still welcome to vote of course - this newsletter could be considered a service and I've already prepared a special haiku in the event that we win. You wouldn't want to miss that, would you?

Health product seller? There's a buzz about this story

Are you selling wand massagers or kegel/ben wa balls? Sad news if so - they're soon going to be moved in to the adult category. After previously touted policy updates on 30th September, the date for changes has been updated to 31st November.

Amazon have given their reasons for this. They suggest that their "multi-purpose usage" means that it may be strange to have them pop up on unsuspecting browsers shopping for toy wands and stress balls. In future, they'll only be visible to people specifically searching for them.

Behind the Stone

As promised, here's the podcast! We recently had a chat with our pals over at Sunken Stone on their awesome 'Behind the Stone' series. But, here's the big surprise, the episode I'm suggesting here isn't the one we were in.

In this episode, some gents from SV Marketing are offering some awesome tips on how to get the most out of Facebook marketing to leverage extra traffic to your Amazon listings, as well as how to overcome objections through marketing before the consumer even reaches your product.

I've never spoken to these guys - it just seems like an awesome resource, especially for this time of year. Give it a watch if you want to drive some extra traffic.

That's it for this week. You may be thinking 'where was the Tuesday edition?'. That would be an excellent question, but I didn't mention which Tuesday it would be. Look out for it on a future Tuesday.

Have a great end to the week and may you be blessed with many sales and few complaints!

Rich

Partnership Manager and pensive newsletter writer at Seller Candy