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Help with Variations on Amazon
 

Hi,

I have been selling on Amazon for quite some time now. There appears to be a new generation of sellers on Amazon who are manipulating Variation listings in a way which all other offers disappear except their own. We were selling a standard Jack to Jack cable (low risk) and there were 30 other sellers on the listing, which is fine. Another user managed to somehow create a new variation linked to the listing and it just removed all other offers. When I emailed the seller, there offer almost immediately disappeared. But looking at their other items they are doing the same. They are doing it to all the no#1 best sellers and putting the price right up. So the Jack to Jack cable we were selling for £1.99. They have got this new offer at £3.99 (fair plays to them) and they have the buy box and there is no other offers.

I mainly just want to know how they are doing it. Its very strange.

Any help much appreciated

Cheers,

Steve

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

Did you ever find an answer to your question? Am having the same situation going on now.

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

Yes I am looking for answer of this question. Variations done by most of the Chinese companies

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

I have added variations to existing listings but this does not remove offers from other sellers

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

Haven't checked this out at all

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

This is what some of our competitors seem to be doing after further investigation.

1. Listing a top selling product with great customer reviews.

2. Create variation(s) for said product. Example: Color Variations.

3. For each variation page, a completely new product detail page is created instead. Giving customers an option to buy several different products from the original (best selling) product page.

So if the listing had 500 five star reveiws, the new product pages created will start with 500 five star reveiws as well.

Its genius really...

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

I've noticed this too, the seller then has the buy box for all the other variations, and owns/controls those ASINS too.

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

Any idea, anyone. Big boys/Girls !!!!!!!!

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

did your product go 'currently unavailable' eg. out of stock, for a time to allow the variation to change?

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

nop, some Chinese seller simply add variations in top rated products.

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

Hi

I have kind of worked out how it's done. Gonna write a guide on how to do it as well as remove these variations from your listing if someone has done it. I wouldn't solely blame the Chinese sellers. There are several other UK based sellers I see do it on top rated products.

It's genius really how it's done. But it is simply a fault with the Amazon system which allows you to override another ASIN. So it's just a loophole which I imagine Amazon might one day sort out.

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

Great! Let us know when your done with the guide.

Ive been trying to figure this out, but its had me stumped.

I think its done in excell or xml feed, ive attempted to duplicate the process with a few test listings i created, but with no luck. Let us know what info you come up with.

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

Its actually quite easy to do this, if anyone's still interested PM me and i can explain in more detail how to do this technically...alternatively call amazon and ask to speak to feeds team about creating variations.

Took about 20 calls with the amazon feeds dept. to get my head around it, but once you work it out its fairly straight forward.

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

its easy. find the EAN of the product. create a new product using the same EAN but create a variation for it. add another product using new EAN for a new variation. and you will get it.

i dont do it because i think it increases the risk of getting reported if the top rated product sellers dont like it and it may look suspicious. it raises reports and complaints and i dont think we like that do we?

The actual issue wasn't actually adding a new variation to an existing listing, this is actually quite easy as you said. The issue was (and still is) that there is a fault in the Amazon system. Where you can override another ASIN with pretty much whatever you want. I discovered this only because another seller was doing it to a listing I was selling against. So I was selling a jack cable for £1.99 and quite happily selling lots of these. One day my sales just stopped, when I checked the listing it appeared that my offer had disappeared (as well as about another 30 sellers). This new seller was now the only seller selling the item and had increased the price to £2.99. The product wasn't originally a variation listing, but now was but with only 1 variation. various subtle thing had changed with the listing like the title and bullet points but was still exactly the same product. The product also had a new ASIN number!

I worked out how they done it and it's not that easy. Of course if anyone does do it, it's really high risk. But if your a chancer does mean you can be the sole seller on any top rated product you want (until someone reports you). Iv played around with lots of listings and it can be done on virtually anything.

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

Iv only tried this on Amazon UK, so don't know if it works on any other Amazon platform.

If you want to know how it's done just PM me. I have written a Black Hat Amazon guide for this hack and a a few others. But unsure if I should release it.

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

If you have a good product and you know you have a good mark up, you should consider paying for advertising on Amazon. The pay per click option. You can choose 10 cents etc per click. If you know you have the best price, its a good option Especially during Christmas season

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

Ho Wooha. Iv seen your private message but cannot reply to it. Something about 20posts before contacting market place sellers. Just send me another PM with an ASIN number and I'll see if it's the same issue as the UK site.

Cheers

Steve

Re: Help with Variations on Amazon
 

How can it be done?