🍭 Treacle Thursdays from Seller Candy (25/11/21 issue) 🍬

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American readers! Hope you're all having a great time with your families. Obviously, as a Brit, I don't personally celebrate the holiday but the turkey pardoning ceremony is one of my favorite annual events so well done for that.

Black Friday is upon us again and seeing the videos posted online of sales in supermarkets and shops around the world can make us all heartened that we sell things on Amazon. We get to avoid the gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair and waving of various weapons over who gets to take home the last espresso maker on the shelf. We can be grateful for that.

If you happen to have a brick and mortar location too then make sure your cameras are running at all times - you never know when the next viral fight could break out.

Let's get in to it.

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

- Niels Bohr

More strikes than a busy bowling alley

With Black Friday arriving tomorrow, Amazon are of course set to make record profits. Why wouldn't they? It makes total sense for consumers to buy while there are discounts. My own mother for example. She buys about 90% of her Christmas and birthday gifts for the year over the next 3 days and it takes a full truck and two strong men to make the actual delivery.

This year, however, that delivery may come much later than expected. While Amazon may be looking down the barrel of record profits, the same can't be said for their staff. Thus was born the Make Amazon Pay coalition.

While it may sound like the kind of group who sits around a table in a darkened room plotting against some collection of superheroes, their goals appear benevolent. They've created a list of demands for Amazon and they're using these sales days as some pretty big leverage. With nearly 50 organizations signed up, we're expecting to see strikes from Amazon employees in 20 countries, including the US and UK.

Whether it will actually happen or not remains to be seen but you can read the full story and list of demands here - it's interesting stuff.

A new tool for compliance - but does it actually work?

This week Amazon released a new tool for monitoring where the words and phrases on your listing might trigger whatever protections they're running in the background to check for compliance. This is a great idea. Pop words from your copy in to the checker and it should tell you whether it's going to flag an issue.

Should is the important word here. From the feedback online this first iteration seems to mostly not work. It does some other stuff too, though. They say:

"This new tool offers:

- Pre-listing, self-service tools to help you navigate product compliance, import and export trade compliance, and dangerous goods compliance.
- Searchability by keyword to help you find compliance requirements that are relevant to your product.
- Access to a list of service providers in your area who can help you meet compliance requirements."

It could be great with some improvements. Check out the tool and the help guide on the forums (link below).

Making the most out of Black Friday

Our pals over at Sunken Stone produce some great content and this week is no exception. It can be pretty tricky, not to mention costly, to stand out against the competition during events like Black Friday. 

They've walked through how to avoid some of the bad advice that Amazon gives you as well as how to personalize ads for maximum returns. Check out the video if you get a chance - maybe there's a gem in there that'll take you all the way to the top.

Achieving global tax compliance doesn't have to be hard

Picture this: You’re an Amazon Seller, selling out of multiple Amazon centres across the world. Scaling is massive for your business, but comes with a few challenges – one of them is trying to manage multiple VAT/GST registrations.

You will probably be looking for someone to do that for you, someone who is easily available for help and assistance, someone who doesn’t refer you to their help page, or a bot to assist. That someone is Vatglobal.

Supported by worldwide tax experts, you know that these guys will have your back when it comes to all the taxing (get it?) issues that can lead to massive headaches and equally massive fines. Check them out in the link below!

That's it for this week. Wishing you all the best with your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales (and any other sales days which have been added without me noticing).

If you have any problems pop up, don't forget that Seller Candy has an Emergency Response unit. It's like A&E but for your Amazon account. Click here if anything comes up.

Happy Holidays!

Rich

Partnership Manager and budget newsletter writer at Seller Candy