Product Reviews - What NOT to do

If you have been selling your private label products on Amazon for at least few years, you probably remember Big Review Wars of 2015-2016. Launching new products was easy - make a listing, sign up with one of many review clubs and start giving away your product in exchange for reviews.Hundreds of sellers would launch identical products and the one with most cash will win.

Every "Amazon Guru" would teach you how to create a superURL and run giveaway campaigns. That' all they taught you. That's all you really needed. Review clubs were plenty and power reviewers were writing dozens reviews every day for products they got for free.

Then Amazon woke up. First, they took away the superURL. Then they took away the Verified Review badge for products purchased at steep discount. Then they prohibited usage of "this product was received in exchange for my honest review" language and sued couple of websites facilitating fake reviews. Problem solved? Not really.

Infamous review clubs evolved. Today they flourish on social media platforms, such as Facebook. 

So how does it work? Sellers post images of their product and terms. Usually, full refund is offered after purchase, sometimes with additional incentive in form of commission for positive reviews. 

Most of these "sellers" are based in China and Eastern Europe. There are even services facilitating such review schemes for a fee. Want 100 reviews for your garlic press? No problem, it will cost you $5 per review plus full refund for your product. Using these services seemed like perfect way around the system. Untill this week. 

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) achieved its first settlement in proceedings that challenged a merchant’s use of fake, paid-for reviews. Cure Encapsulations, Inc. and its owner, Naftula Jacobowitz, paid a third-party website to write and post fake reviews on Amazon.com. Now they have to pay $12.8 million. Cure Encapsulations must now inform Amazon that it paid for reviews, itself a violation of Amazon’s rules around promotional content, and must also notify all customers who purchased the weight-loss supplement.

Don't be like Cure Encapsulations. Don't pay for reviews.