throwaway2786

The smart sellers realize this as well. Often the most "useful" review is also fake. Let's just create a 2 or 3 star review and list out the pros and (fake) cons and get people to upvote it.

Source: I'm an Amazon seller.

So here's some perspective from an Amazon seller doing 7 figures+ annually.

- On average, only 1-3% of customers review products.

- Each review is worth a lot of money, often times multiples of the product itself, and especially if you're just starting out.

- Each category in Amazon has it's own Average rating, for example, electronics typically have lower ratings because more things can go wrong and there are more usability issues vs something like kitchenware, where less things fail outright.

- If you play in a category with a certain failure rate, it is absolutely essential that you do everything you can to mitigate bad reviews as enough of them will sink your business, even if you have a great product.

- It takes 8+ 5 star reviews to counteract a 1 star review if you want to maintain a 4.5 star average which is the bar for a good product. This is extremely hard to do without manipulation.

- People who complain about fake reviews are only seeing half the problem, the other half is that legit businesses who do it the fair way can't compete. How do you launch a great product on Amazon with 0 reviews? Hope that 500 people buy it to maybe get 5 reviews? Alternatively you spend thousands on product ads hoping that enough people buy... or just succumb to the dark side and pay for reviews which is WAY cheaper.

- If you hate Amazon reviews, do your part and start reviewing the good products on Amazon. It is worth more to the seller than you think!

I'm an FBA seller doing mid 7 figures, it's certainly possible to be successful here and I have a lot of peers that are also pulling in multi 7 figures. The problem I see most beginners entering the business is that they're reading too many forums and watching too many Youtube videos thinking that there's a get rich quick scheme here. Let me tell you that there isn't.

Here's the secret, treat FBA like you would any other business - that means focusing on competitive advantages, barriers to entry, customer acquisition strategy, and other general business model type stuff.

For example, one of our best selling products took 2 years to develop, over $150k in R&D expenses, multiple patents and thousands in marketing to build the brand. It's currently making millions, but the road to get there certainly wasn't easy and it certainly wasn't "Off the shelf". No one talks about that stuff though because it's not sexy, it's just like any other business, you really have to put in the effort and think about what you're doing to get anywhere - or else like multiple comments have already said, the Chinese sellers will just totally crowd you out. And why shouldn't they? You have nothing special going on.