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What’s up with Amazon? Why Bigger Isn’t Always Better…

April 21, 2008

Great comment on my last post about Alexa from PhilB of Phishbait where he reports:

“The rumor here in Austin is that Alexa is on the market. So perhaps this is just getting fresh lipstick on the pig.”

It made me chuckle… the thought of the “mighty” Amazon being depicted as a pig sporting lipstick.

My love for Amazon is evidenced by my previous post An Important Lesson from Amazon on How NOT to Treat Your Customers, so you can see why such a comment would make me smile.

So know that:

a) rumor has it that Amazon is trying to sell Alexa

b) Amazon is resorting to bullying tactics to try to prop up another Amazon property, BookSurge.

It’s Monday and I’m not spending too much time focusing my thoughts on the two points above. Instead, I’m working to clear my inbox of the pile up from the weekend.

Later on in the day, I checked my email and found an interesting email from Amazon. I get these emails because I’m a customer. In the email, they tell me that I’m getting this email because as a customer who has purchased baby related items in the past….

SCREECH!!! HOLD THE PHONE, I’VE GOTTA DRIVE!!!!

I am CERTAIN that I have NEVER purchased baby related items from Amazon. I can be REALLy certain because it’s been more than a decade since I’ve purchased baby related items PERIOD!!! Back in 1994, which was the last time I was in the “baby supply” market, Amazon was just a recently registered domain name and was barely a glimmer Jeff Bezo’s eye!!!

With the exception of the occasional baby shower I’ve attended over the past 13 years, I’ve moved WELL beyond the “baby related items” phase of my life. When invited to said showers, I usually show up in person, thereby negating any benefit from shopping online.

In other words, I usually make such a purchase whilst on my way TO said shower. I rarely plan in advance for such purchases and FREQUENTLY purchase the gift, the card and the gift bag at a store which is directly in my path to said shower. More times than I want to admit have I been in the situation of LUNGING at said gift recipient as she removes my gift from the bag as I remember that I forgot to take the price tag off of the gift as I stuffed it into the gift bag in the car.

Today’s email informs me that Amazon thinks I need to pre-order the Bugaboo Stroller, a stroller that retails for $899!!!

Unless one of my oldest daughter announces that she is expecting to give birth to an NBA or NFL star player’s offspring, I most definitely WILL NOT be in the market for a $900 stroller any time in the near future. (If my 20 year old daughter who is completing her sophomore year in college with the hopes of entering Pharmacy school next year announces she is expecting a baby from anyone LESS than an NBA or NFL star, then I’ll be expecting to spend my money on support and not wasting it on a super deluxe fleece lined stroller!)

So what’s up with Amazon?

First Amazon put on the bully hat and try to strong arm POD publishers into using Booksurge… then they begin putting lipstick on a pig in an effort to make Alexa a “better” traffic tool … and as such, one that’s more “marketable”. Now, they issue a customer alert that is so off target that I seriously have to consider hitting the “Mark as Spam and Report”.

What’s wild is my observations are in DIRECT conflict with “official” reports on Amazon. From the AWs Blog

In a new Business Week cover story, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos discusses his approach to innovation, thinking for the long term, our focus on the needs of customers, and our company culture.

Um… Jeff…. this is your FORMER customer speaking….. I’m sensing that you not only don’t know who I am, you don’t even know I’ve left the building. That’s the problem when you become the 900 lb gorilla as Amazon has grown to be in the online retailing world.

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Alexa’s New Ranking System Hurts Some and Helps Some

April 17, 2008

Alexa is a “traffic spying tool” used almost exclusively by web savvy tech professionals to see how much traffic a particular site is receiving.  Until recently, Alexa gathered their data exclusively from an optional toolbar which at first could only be installed in Microsoft’s Browser, Internet Explorer.

So, when a web savvy tech professional would visit a web site, the firs thing they would do is look in their Alexa toolbar to see how the web site was doing.  The problem with this is that the toolbar would only measure traffic to the site with toolbar installed.     So, if your audience wasn’t tech savvy and didn’t have the toolbar installed, your Alexa ranking suffered… sometimes greatly.

So this morning, Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger announced the change in the way Alexa computes  its rankings. You can read the Alexa Press Release here.

Amit Bhawani did some research to find out how the change has affected some of the big blogs on the internet and found many blogs rankings dropped dramatically.  According to ShaMoneyMaker, the impact will be felt most by those who do paid reviews.

For those of us who write for a non-technical audience, we have seen a drop (which is good) in our Alexa rankings.   For those whose focus is on the technical web audience, there is no joy in this anouncement.

I have to wonder what the REAL reason is behind the switch at Alexa.  Could it be that Compete.com is putting pressure on Alexa?  Then again, Alexa is an Amazon creation… and things have been pretty messed up over at Amazon.

Maybe this is evidence that things aren’t going well inside the hallowed halls at Amazon….

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An Important Lesson from Amazon on How NOT to Treat Your Customers.

March 30, 2008

GRR!!!!! I hate it when people get so FOCUSED upon the bottom line that they lose sight of the long term consequences of their actions!!!!

Angela Hoy is the publisher of the Writer’s Weekly which she uses to promote her POD publishing business, Booklocker.com. On Friday, Angela launched a firestorm when she reported that Amazon is putting the squeeze on POD publishers.

So here’s the deal… Amazon executives are doing their best “Tony Soprano” impression by threatening to remove the “buy” buttons from POD (print on demand) titles listed on the site that ARE NOT printed by Amazon’s own Book Surge POD. “Do this and nobody gets hurt,” is the implication. The problem is, someone is going to get hurt and my guess is it will be Amazon.

Amazon was the first hog to the internet book selling trough. In the early days, when you signed up as an Amazon affiliate, you could choose to be paid in “books” instead of dollars. I know that is how I still choose to be paid for my Amazon affiliate commissions. The thing is, authors are readers by nature. Angela confesses to spending over $1500 last year on Amazon.  That may be a bit above “average” but maybe not.  I just realized the figure I gave my CPA was only for the books I bought, not the ones I “bought” using my affiliate earnings!

So, authors are big book buyers… and Amazon was a pioneer in the whole internet affiliate marketing model. By removing the “buy” button for POD works on the site, Amazon is not only going to lose their author /customers.  These authors may not be buying copies of their own book from the retail giant, but I’m sure they are buying other author’s works through the site.  However, in addition to peeving off their biggest spending customers…. Amazon is  also going to lose a portion of their affiliate sales network as well.  My guess would be that those affiliates are probably part of the productive 20% of the old 80/20 rule which applies to affiliates and their sales in SPADES.

My mother used to refer to such actions as “cutting off your nose to spite your face”.

There’s a HUGE firestorm brewing over Angela’s revelation. So far over 60 blogs have weighed in to comment and I’m sure that Monday morning… more will join the cause. The very NATURE of Web 2.0 is for this type of story to go “viral”. (I hope Booklocker’s web hosting company is ready for this onslaught!)

POD authors who link to Amazon to sell their books will be changing those links and they probably won’t wait until the buy button is removed. Once they go to the time and effort to “switch” the links promoting their book from Amazon to Barnes and Noble… THEY WILL NOT take the time to switch them back to Amazon if Amazon backs down from this stand.

Now, Slashdot has picked up the story… suddenly this fight will extend BEYOND authors and into regular book readers who will be outraged at the “Big Bully” tactics being employed by Amazon. Nobody likes a bully… and until now, Amazon didn’t look like a bully.

Amazon loses all around. They lose the sales… they lose the links… they lose the relationship with thousands of authors… A.K.A. their customers!!!!

It’s obvious that the long term consequences of this action have yet to dawn on the executives at Amazon. Perhaps they thought no one would speak up. Looks like Amazon needs a lesson in Web 2.0.  You know the old saying… “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”?  I think this may be just such a case.

Here is a list of other bloggers (from Angela’s article page) taking up the fight. If you want to add your post to the “cause”… the post a comment to this post. If you’ve got your own blog, copy this list and post it on your blog as well. The more links to these posts… the more “traction” this cause will get.

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