
Amazon’s Power Reviewers - flippyhead
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/style/amazon-reviews-vine.html
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zebrafish
This is not a new program. It has been around for vendors (not sellers) for a
long time. It’s a good way to get reviews on a product which has none. Reviews
are necessary for an item to perform well in Amazon’s search algorithm. Yes
you pay to play because Amazon functions like every other retailer. Some
related also non-news: you have to pay for end cap space in the supermarket
and placement in the weekly circular.

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barbecue_sauce
Fun fact: Slotting fees for end-caps are largely waived at EDLP retailers (a
business model much of the industry is moving towards, compared to the more
traditional "Hi-Lo" pricing strategy) in favor of better pricing from
suppliers. End cap placement is largely driven by the agenda of category
managers, which depends on the metric du jour of the directors of grocery
merchandising/VP. If promoting a product in the circular or putting it on an
end-cap will increase units or gross for the category overall, that decision
will be made whether or not there is some sort of supplier concession.

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grkvlt
I recognise a lot of the words and letters used in this comment, but have no
idea what it actually means?! Care to clarify...

\- slotting fees, end-caps, EDLP, Hi-Lo, category manager, circular

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quickthrower2
Try Google. There is a slotting fees arricle in Wikipedia for instance.

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quadrangle
Quite tangential but for working toward freeing reviewing from Amazon or
similar: [https://lib.reviews/](https://lib.reviews/)

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onetimemanytime
Apparently is costs merchants $2500-$7500 per review
[https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b&q=vine+voice+...](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b&q=vine+voice+cost)
The low hanging fruit is gone, now Amazon is going for the ones on top.

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gruez
>Apparently is costs merchants $2500-$7500 per review

No, according to your own link, it's $2500-$7500 to get into the program, not
for each review.

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aboutruby
The price of an Amazon review seems to be around $3 on the black market

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StevePerkins
That seems... surprisingly lucrative. For the effort required, anyway. I'd be
happy to supplement my income by $300/day, by quickly firing off 100 typical
Amazon reviews on my lunch break:

* " _Great product!_ "

* " _I bought this for my husband and he seems to love it!_ "

* " _I bought this for my grandson and I don 't know what it is but he's happy!_"

Six-figures a year would be more than feasible.

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kokokokoko
$3 is closer to the price for one off reviews. The overhead of getting the
assignment, collecting payment and requirements would make it so you wouldn't
have time to do that many.

For people who pump out 25-100 reviews at a time you are generally going to
get less than a dollar. For example $10-$15 for 25 reviews is a pretty common
if you can write American English without errors that might make it look like
english is not your first language. Also, the reviews tend to need to be
longer and specific to the product.

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miluge
For English reviews the price is around 2$ or 3$, but for another language the
price can go up, not by much but the price would be around 5$.

I used to do it to make beer money as a student a few years ago and I still
hang in those "black market" forums and the price went lower few years a
decent review in English was 5$.

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petra
So are Vine reviews trustworthy ?

And do you use them when shopping at Amazon ?

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grogenaut
one common problem I see with vine reviews is they often review things they
don't have expertise in. For example sewing machines. I've got decent
experience (maybe 50 hours) sewing. The vine reviews I saw were like "seemed
to work pretty well" on both a $80 singer and a $3000 bernina. Same on a
welder or soldering iron. Things that take hundreds of hours of practice to
get passable at.

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slvrspoon
i am almost scared to use the word blockchain here right now but... well...
why aren't consumer reviews and programs such as this (which AMZN should NOT
be running, period) aren't something that would be ideal for a blockchain
implementation.?

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creato
Why would that make any difference on this problem?

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scarejunba
Because if you apply deep learning neural networks to blockchain AI technology
you could get zero trust product reviews.

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kevindong
Reviews on Amazon are already linked to a user. Once you find the user's
profile, you can see all of their reviews. Blockchain brings nothing to the
table in regards to detecting bad reviews. Amazon at least affirmatively
indicates whether or not a user has purchased a certain product.

Furthermore, there are already (non-blockchain) tools to adjust a product's
reviews to account for bad actors:
[https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/)

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creato
I'm pretty sure he was joking...

