If you’ve ever been there, having your Amazon product listings hijacked can be a very frustrating and worrisome experience. Coming across rogue sellers using your listings for their own nefarious purposes is something RepricerExpress can help you with — here’s how.
The Dangers of Having Amazon Product Listings Hijacked
There are a few different ways your listings can be hijacked:
- Counterfeiting: Merchants who sell or manufacture similar items you’re selling might take your listings (and prices) and use them on their own products. Buyers think they’re getting a good quality product, but they’re not. Your listings and prices only make it seem like they are.
- Lying: Sometimes merchants have a pretty similar, but not exact, type of product you’re selling. They see your listing and think, ‘Close enough’ and use it, even though the buyer isn’t getting the exact item listed.
- Laziness: Lastly, some merchants are selling the exact same product you are, but can’t be bothered to put in the effort of making up their own listings. They see you already have one that’s well-written and SEO-optimised and hijack it instead of creating their own. Usually, these merchants also lower the price to increase their chances of getting the sale (and Buy Box).
The Impact of Hijacked Product Listings
There can be many negative things that occur if your product listing has been hijacked.
Here are some of the most common side effects:
- Some other buyer profits off your hard work and earns more sales than you do.
- Your chances of a Buy Box decrease because someone else has used your listing — but lowered the price.
- Your reputation might take a hit if that other merchant is selling inferior or inaccurate items and buyers think you’re doing the same.
- Buyers may leave a negative review on your site if they get you and the other seller mixed up.
- Your metrics might go down and it could put your account in jeopardy.
How to Protect Yourself from Product Listing Hijackers
Luckily, all is not lost! There are several important steps you can take to help decrease the chance of getting hit by a hijacker.
1. Constant Vigilance
The more on top of your listings you are, the sooner you can take action if need be. But if you don’t pay attention to your listings for weeks on end, that can leave you vulnerable to attack. Check in daily, but also take the time to search for your product and compare it to other sellers.
2. Amazon Brand Registry
You’ll have to get Amazon approval for this but registering each ASIN with its own model number and manufacturing number really helps cut down on the amount of hijacking. Plus, being on Amazon Brand Registry means only you can make changes to the listing.
3. Better Branding
The more you splash your brand around, the harder it is for hijackers to take over your listing. Not only do you want to use the brand in the listing and description, but you also want to include it on the packaging and the item itself. Kind of like the brand version of a watermark.
4. Website
Another step you can take is to create your own website. You don’t have to be good at coding — sites like Wix and Squarespace do all the hard work for you. But creating your own website (with your brand name in the URL) helps increase your web presence and legitimises your enterprise.
5. Proof
If the occasion comes when you need to confront the seller or file a complaint with Amazon, things like taking screenshots of your side of things (e.g. the page when you’re filling in your product description) can really help. This shows Amazon you were the original creator and the person using your listings is stealing your copyrighted material.
Try Automated Repricing Free for 15 Days
One of the downsides of Amazon’s popularity is a lot of people want a piece of the pie. Unfortunately, not all of them are willing to do the work it takes to profit from it honestly. The good news is you can still keep using RepricerExpress while going through the whole thing. And if you’re not using it, this is your chance to sign up now and enjoy the first 15 days absolutely free.
