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I sell a niche music accessory on FBA. I didn't have many reviews, and it was hard to gain traction as a result. I found a very relevant subreddit and offered
by flavor8 10y ago
I sell a niche music accessory on FBA. I didn't have many reviews, and it was hard to gain traction as a result.
I found a very relevant subreddit and offered to send a sample to anybody who was willing to leave an honest review, up to 10 total. I got very enthusiastic responses, and sent out the samples.
Every review that I received from this group was five stars. I at no time asked for five stars, and was very explicit about asking them to be honest. Maybe my product is just that good, but I suspect there's at least a little bias there.
More to the point, every organic review I've received since has been five stars, which leads me to think there's a crowd effect going on.
I think what I did was a good deal less scummy that what ReviewKick et al do, since they explicitly find "good" reviewers for you, and the reviewers aren't necessarily knowledgeable about the product or niche. That said, even my targeted approach yielded a lot of bias.
For what it's worth, this exercise doubled my sales. I now effectively earn the equivalent of a full time minimum wage job through one tiny niche product, and an hour's work every couple of months.
- Alupis 10y ago> Every review that I received from this group was five stars There is a certain bias effect to consider. When you purchase something, your criteria for it to meet your expectations is a bit higher (subconsciously) than if it was given to you for free.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoOut of curiosity, what do you sell that takes you half an hour per month to manufacture but sells for enough to make a living?
- flavor8 10y agoHonestly it's easy enough to duplicate that I don't want to describe the product itself on HN of all places. :) But I will say that FBA is very easy to get into. If you ever find yourself thinking "I wish that exists" about a relatively simple product, and can't find it already on Amazon, jump on to Alibaba and source a factory that makes something similar and ask them if they'll make what you want.
- shostack 10y agoAnd there's the bit that makes me never want to get into FBA. Half the sellers won't even mention what they sell because their business is so indefensible that if someone found out and competed it would no longer be profitable. Doesn't strike me as particularly sustainable. Especially if you have all your eggs in Amazon's basket given their willingness to take over entire product lines with their own brand.
- r2dnb 10y agoThis used to be my feeling too, but I changed my mind when I worked with a company doing just what you describe. They grew it to a 50-people company within 5 years. Initially I felt smarter than them and wondered how on earth they could have put all their eggs in the same basket in such a way. Then I realized that with the money they had, they had been able to hire me to do this work, so perhaps I wasn't the smartest guy in the room after all... The thing to understand is that capitalism is about identifying opportunities to accumulate the largest amount of capital in the shortest amount of time. The truth is if you focus only on "logical", sustainable, defensible, infinitely scalable business models, you'll be missing out a good 60% of the opportunities. If you could let's say accumulate $600,000 in 5 months with a non viable business, you'd have all the time in the world to work on the viable businesses you mention. In capitalism, you rarely know for sure which game the other person is playing. It's not because she is moving cards around that she is playing cards. So the bottom line of my comment is don't be too smart . Being able to make dumb money is as important - if not more important - than being able to make smart money. And I can even say : making dumb money at the right time is more valuable than making smart money at the wrong time.