🪄 Blackhat Sellers gaming Amazon using Multiple Brands

Hey,

The Spells Master is back!

Welcome to the 94th issue.

Today's topics:

1. Blackhat Sellers gaming Amazon using Multiple Brands

2. A tool to Search Patents and Trademarks in United States of America (USA)

3. One recommended video on Becoming a Growth Operator for IPGA

Blackhat Sellers gaming Amazon using Multiple Brands

Amazon Sellers use Shady Blackhat Tactics to make millions on Amazon.

Since most purchases are impulse buys under <$100, the sellers get away with it doing review manipulation at scale.

For example, consider the Amazon Brand TETHYS which sells iPhone Screen Protectors.

If you perform a Trademark Search for the brand name TETHYS on USPTO, you will find it is by a man named LIU, Lijun.

You can ignore the first result as its a Mineral Water Making Machine.

Go ahead and search for LIU, Lijun to find out how many brands this guy owns.

You will find a brand named WONDERSLEEP which sells pillows.

Now this is cool but if you take a look at their reviews section and search for gift card, you will realize what's going on.

They ask for 5-star reviews in exchange for a $20 gift card. This is against Amazon's Terms Of Service.

The blackhat stuff is that most of these reviews are cross-coordinated to rate their own products brands with 5-star ratings while rating their competitors with 1 or 2-stars.

Bdw, an individual seller account has a different trademark registered against it. This is great for risk mitigation because if Amazon flags one account, then the seller quickly abandons that account and continues using their other accounts.

Owning multiple brands isn't uncommon as it allows you to sell your inventory even if one brand doesn't work out.

But it is a massive scam on a global scale unless it is reported by individual sellers because Amazon isn't going to mitigate it as it makes them money.

What gets rewarded, gets repeated.

Hat Tip to Neil Asher for covering the whole Amazon scam. This works incredibly for impulse purchases because most people don't care for $100.

A tool to Search Patents and Trademarks in United States of America (USA)

USPTO lets you search for Patents and Trademarks in USA.

You can use Patent Search or Trademark Search to search for Patents and Trademarks respectively.

This is useful to reverse-engineer a patent or to find how many brands a single person owns.

The wealthy ones hide their info by using a middle-man which costs a lot of money but it keeps them safe from the loonies.

But many wealthy ones don't know about it so all the information is away at your fingertips.

One recommended video on Becoming a Growth Operator for IPGA

This video coins a new term IPGA (Info Product Growth Agency) and gives a 5-hour masterclass on a massive playbook that can help you make 100s of millions of dollars without being an influencer. Found yet another hidden gem.

The premise of IPGA is simple: Most influencers suck at builing products or building businesses because frankly business is hard. And building a product that people actually want is hard and influencers or celebs suck at it.

Think of the top off your head how many celeb brands you use and you'll have the answer.

This playbook lets you make millions by leveraging the influencers with millions of followers who don't know to monetize well.

If you haven't had your first big win ($5m-$10m exit), partner up with an influencer. One guy partnered up with an influencer to make $35 million in 12 months.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Most influencers know only one thing: how to go viral. Build a product with them and handle all the fulfillment to make millions of dollars. You only need influencer-product fit.

2/

Just like a single Amazon seller uses multiple brands, you can do the same thing with multiple influencers.

Use different wrappers to sell essentially the same thing with a different influencer in that niche.

Did you know that "Red Velvet" is just a chocolate cake with Red Colored flavor? Yeah, I didn't either.

You can sell more stuff by changing how the offer is perceived rather than changing the offer itself.

Rabbit Holes

1. Doing old things better vs doing brand new things - Building brand new things is good for your brain, your team, and its easy marketing because people love to try new things. The risk is in if the new thing will work or not. That's a risk you don't have by making old thing better.

2. How to find UGC Creators? - Super short post on finding UGC Creators to promote your app. Soon enough, AI x UGC shall overtake UGC Creators.

3. Linktree: the $33M ARR About.me for Gen Z - I never expected Linktree to do so well but it did. Linktree goes against conventional advice of having 1 CTA but it is a SFW wrapper for NSFW things. The whole product works on psychology rather than actual functionality. Its like a real world massage parlor (iykyk.)

Until next time,

Your Spells Master!

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Read all the old case studies here.

More Startup Spells 🪄

1. TikTok's Viral Secrets (LINK)

2. Power of Good Domains (LINK)

3. Monster Hammering Links (LINK)