The short answer is no. In fact, it goes against Amazon’s “Community Guidelines (guidelines for Amazon.com community participation)”. For well over a year, Amazon’s Community Guidelines have stated that offering refunds in exchange for reviews (in Amazon’s terms “Community content”) is grounds to “suspend or terminate your [Amazon] account.” More on that below. What is… Read more »
Are you a Product Reviewer or Product Tester? If so, please take the survey below! Like most surveys, the first third is typical demographics questions. The rest is a first-look at how Reviewers and Product Testers view the business, their opinions and what they experience. All of this has been something many of us guess… Read more »
By now, many of you have heard that the Amazon reviewer guidelines have changed (early October 2016) “to prohibit incentivized reviews unless they are facilitated through the Amazon Vine program.” This has impacted how Amazon Sellers, the review-in-exchange programs and review clubs can operate. Below you will find a summary of the change, how it… Read more »
What is review washing? Review washing is the practice of deleting reviews you have written and reposting them to clear the helpful/unhelpful votes. Mainly in reference to Amazon reviews, but can be done anywhere users vote on reviews. Some reviewers use software to inform them which reviews they wrote have unhelpful votes. The reviewer then… Read more »
I receive about 5-10 emails a day from Sellers on Amazon asking me to review their products. I have archived almost all of them (for various reasons), and they now number in the hundreds. The vast majority of the emails I have received are badly written. I often have a problem understanding what it is… Read more »
I often get asked: Do I have to write long, detailed reviews for free (and deeply discounted) products? How short reviews can work against you And by short, I mean less than 5 sentences. When you start reviewing products, you’ll see a TON of reviews that are one word (“Great!”), or one sentence (“It worked… Read more »
I get this question a lot: If a company sends you a product for free in exchange for a review, can you sell it? Can you sell it on Amazon? At a consignment shop? Or elsewhere? Good question. The answer is not as black-and-white as one would think. What does Tristan do? I give most… Read more »
I have been helping out other Amazon reviewers over the past few years, and have heard (and read) the grumblings of the downvoting game being played, possibly by other high ranking reviewers. As of the past few months, it has seemed to have gone into overdrive. Are top reviewers downvoting others’ reviews? I have a… Read more »
Ever wanted to be sent books or products for free? Sure, who doesn’t? Getting free products to review happens quite often on Amazon, and most authors/companies/sellers simply ask that you write ‘an honest review’ in exchange for that book/product. For over 5 years, I have been approached by authors, publishers, product manufactures and distributors to… Read more »
