[ BDSN ] đŸ•”đŸ» Amazon the Spy: Inside a Covert Operation

☎ PARADISE is CALLING YOU
  • 🏆 This week’s Dream 100 inductee

  • đŸ•”đŸ» Amazon the spy: inside a covert operation

  • đŸŽâ€â˜ ïž Seller manipulating reviews - report ‘em!

  • đŸ—Łïž AI secrets top e-commerce sellers are using

  • đŸŒș The most beautiful island in the world

They’re all spilling nuggets in Hawaii

STUMP BEZOS

Mobile devices account for 74% of traffic to e-commerce websites. What percent of online purchases are made on mobile devices?

[ Answer at bottom of email ]

Welcome Joe Valley to the Billion Dollar Dream 100

Twice a month I announce a new member of the Billion Dollar Dream 100. These are the people you should follow and get to know. They’re announced in no particular order.

Joe Valley is today’s inductee into the Billion Dollar Dream 100.

I first met Joe in May 2017 when he paid $10,000 to come to Cancun to an event Helium 10 was doing for what was then called the “Illuminati Mastermind” - now called “Helium 10 Elite.”

The man oozes nothing but respect and a massive passion for helping entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur himself, he bought and sold many businesses personally before becoming one of the top brokers and advisors in the e-commerce space.

After he sold one of his businesses to Quiet Light, he decided it was time to give back to others and help people achieve one of the biggest paydays they will ever see in their life. So he became a partner at Quiet Light.

He always says he’s happy to take a look at any business and give advice, even if you decide to not use his or Quiet Light’s services.

He wrote THE book on exiting your business, called The EXITPreneur's Playbook, which helps you shift your mindset from entrepreneur to EXITpreneur and lays out a roadmap.

He also had a hand in creating one of the best free resources for those looking to sell, including everything from negotiating tips. how to transfer an Amazon seller account step-by-step, 7 steps every business exit strategy should include, and more.

đŸ•”đŸ» AMAZON the SPY: INSIDE a COVERT OPERATION

Big River Services International, a covert operation nestled in Seattle's Denny Triangle and orchestrated by Amazon under the guise of a bustling e-commerce business, has been engaging in stealthy corporate strategies since its inception in 2015 under code name "Project Curiosity."

This secret Amazon subsidiary was designed to infiltrate e-commerce platforms by creating and selling products under fictitious brands, enabling Amazon to gather critical intelligence on competitors.

Initially, Big River scooped up products from local Seattle retailers undergoing liquidation sales—items like Saucony sneakers and Tommy Bahama beach chairs—to sell under its proprietary brands across multiple marketplaces, including those run by direct competitors like Walmart.

One of Big River's more ambitious goals was penetrating Walmart’s marketplace, a task requiring a significant sales volume history. By pumping its products through Amazon.com, Big River artificially boosted its sales figures to meet Walmart’s thresholds, eventually gaining entry and listing products under the guise of another brand, Atlantic Lot.

This brand, crafted by Big River, was used to sell and ship products using Walmart’s logistics services, all while gathering data on Walmart’s shipping times and processes without Walmart’s knowledge of Big River’s true ownership.

In Japan, the operation extended to creating a streetwear brand called Not So Ape, inspired by Tokyo's urban fashion but entirely fabricated by Big River. This brand, along with others, allowed Amazon to gain a foothold in the Japanese market, selling on platforms like Zozotown while collecting data on local e-commerce operations.

The depth of Big River's espionage extended into logistics, particularly with FedEx. Big River, under its disguised identity, became a customer of FedEx's fulfillment program, designed to compete with Amazon’s own logistics offerings.

This partnership allowed Big River to obtain early insights into FedEx’s pricing and operational terms, which were then discreetly relayed back to Amazon, informing its competitive strategies.

Not just content with external operations, Big River's employees operated in a cloak-and-dagger manner, often working "off the grid" with non-Amazon email addresses and meeting in private areas of Amazon's offices to ensure their activities remained confidential.

Big River also made its presence felt at eBay’s seller conference in Las Vegas. Representatives attended under their Big River identities, gathering exclusive information intended for eBay sellers, which was then funneled back to Amazon to enhance its understanding of eBay’s seller policies.

Throughout its operations, Big River launched multiple brands, continually evolving its strategy to maintain cover and gather extensive data across no fewer than 13 different e-commerce platforms globally.

Like BDSN? Forward this email to a friend!

If you’re that smart friend, subscribe now: 

It’s quick and easy to subscribe yourself, plus
it’s FREE → new issues every Mon and Thur.

What does Amazon PPC look like on a $1m / month account?

This is what Chris Rawlings and his team at Sophie Society will be laying out step-by-step during his upcoming Profitable PPC Challenge April 22nd through 26th.

There are four basic phases your PPC campaign structure passes through as you scale your brand:

  • PPC Phase 1: $0 - $50k/mo

  • PPC Phase 2: $50k/mo - $200k/mo

  • PPC Phase 3: $200k/mo - $500k/mo

  • PPC Phase 4: $500k/mo - $1m/mo

At each of these stages of an Amazon brand’s growth, the PPC structure looks different.

During the profitable PPC challenge you’ll master the exact step-by-step campaign setup to implement to take you from your current stage of growth to the next stage up.

You will learn things such as:

  • Which campaigns should you create and in what order?

  • How do you make Amazon remarketing work?

  • What bid strategy should you use?

  • Where do you find new targets?

  • How do you set and allocate budgets?

  • What is the best way to run dayparting?

Gain complete clarity over the right answer to these questions for your brand at its current stage of growth.

Join the Profitable PPC Challenge now by clicking here

đŸŽâ€â˜ ïž SELLER MANIPULATING REVIEWS - REPORT ‘EM

Sometimes I order a product from Amazon from my competitors to check their quality and to reverse engineer their post sale process.

Often times I discover they are up to no-good and attempting to manipulate reviews with their inserts.

Some people scream “that’s not fair” on social media. Others, like me, simply report them and 9 times out of 10 the problem child disappears.

Here’s where you can officially report them that actually gets look at.

LAST TWO BDSN NEWSLETTERS 

April 15 → 🔎 Blatantly violating Amazon TOS
April 11 → 💰 Crush Amazon product launches

đŸ—Łïž  AI SECRETS TOP E-COMMERCE SELLERS are USING

If you are an e-commerce seller, you cannot afford to miss this FREE webinar.

It’s called the AI E-commerce Success Summit and it's hosted by Marketing Misfits Norm Farrar & Kevin King.

If you don’t master AI Marketing now, you are at a major risk of being left behind.



18 cutting-edge AI experts have been carefully curated by Norm & Kevin to share tactical and actionable strategies, each in six minutes or less, that can have a profound impact on your e-commerce business.

A few of the topics being shown:

  • Maximize Amazon Storefront Impact - Quickly boost sales.

  • Profitable AI Ads in Minutes - Create ads that convert with AI.

  • Build Your AI Bot Fast - 10x your content creation speed.

  • AI-Powered Social Posts - Engage more customers, stand out online.

  • Effective AI Facebook Ads - Tailor and perfect your ad copy.

  • Craft Winning Customer Hooks - Trigger action with AI-crafted hooks.

  • Predictable Facebook Engagement - Achieve 25%+ response rates.

  • AI Automation Tools - Build your own with AI and low-code.

  • Seize Your AI Opportunity - Fill the gap in AI expertise demand.

Don’t miss your chance to gain a massive unfair advantage over your competitors and take your e-commerce business to the next level using the latest AI techniques.

🧳 TO TRAVEL IS TO LIVE 
→ here’s looking at you kid

My “why” has led me to visit 94 countries and all 7 continents. I create my business around my life. Not my life around my business.

I hope to inspire you in your journey of business and life with photos, a short video I filmed, and a brief description of my time there.

The most beautiful island in the world

At some point in our lives, we’ve all encountered a place that we immediately knew was special, even if we couldn’t quite identify the reason.

I have been to Kauai more than a dozen times. And it is still one of my most favorite places in the world.

It’s truly stunningly beautiful at every turn, as the participants in the Kauai Scramble Road Rally will see during the second day of BDSS 10 in May.

Only about 73,000 permanent residents live on the island (Meta’s Zuckerberg is one of them), and there are no freeways. It’s laid back, and nobody is in a hurry. The speed limit tops out at 35 mph on the island’s two-lane roads.

Kauai has a miniature Grand Canyon, deserts, 10,000 waterfalls, stunning bays, powdery beaches and a breathtaking Napoli coastline.

There's also something about Kauai that I can’t quite explain. Every time I’m there I dream vividly. Perhaps it’s because Kauai has seven main sacred sites, corresponding to the seven energy vortexes or chakras in the body.

Some believe that energy vortexes tend to occur at critical intersections of ley lines, which are straight lines that connect sacred sites around the world and align with the earth’s electromagnetic energy.

Here are 10 mysterious energy vortexes around the world (the bold ones I have been to):

  1. Stonehenge, England

  2. Sedona, Arizona

  3. Machu Picchu, Peru

  4. Table Mountain, South Africa

  5. Great Pyramid of Giza. Egypt

  6. Mount Shasta, California

  7. Es Vedra, Ibiza

  8. Haleokola Volcano, Hawaii

  9. Uluru, Australia

  10. Lake Rotopounamu, New Zealand

❝

Those coming to BDSS 10 in Kaua’i are in for a truly magical treat to earth’s beauty

đŸ”„ MORE HOT PICKS đŸ”„

đŸ„ƒ PARTING SHOT

“If you don’t work to build your dream life, someone will hire you to build theirs.”

See you again Monday.

The answer to today’s STUMP BEZOS is
63%