Is Amazon Taking Advantage of Small Businesses?

Posted: Mar 03, 2013
Author: WordJack Media

If you’ve considered opening a storefront on the SEO goldmine Amazon.com to improve web marketing and boost online sales for your small business, you should consider this:

Teri Noboa, owner of Childhood Way Boutique, is trying to get the word out about how she believes Amazon continues to steal her potential online business, even though her Amazon storefront closed long ago. She discovered the hard way that after using Amazon as part of the web marketing plan for her small shop for a short time, her products remain listed on Amazon to this day—two years later—but they cannot be deleted, and Amazon has prevented her from re-opening the shop. The only difference is the products are now listed as “unavailable.”

Why does this matter? If someone Googles the name of her shop or one of her products, Amazon, because of its SEO power, will most likely show up at the top of the results list—even above her own website. If someone clicks on the Amazon link first (which is highly likely, given its prominence and familiarity with consumers), they will see the product is “unavailable,” but instead of hitting the “back” button and discovering that it is definitely available on the Childhood Way Boutique website, they will likely stay on Amazon and find something else to purchase. Teri’s theory is: "They use your name to lure people into buying from them." Amazon has declined to comment on the issue.

You can read Teri’s full story on Mashable.

Do you agree with Teri? Have you had problems with selling your products on Amazon?