White-Hat Review Removal & Amazon Survival Tactics with eCom Triage's Danan Coleman | EP. 207

Danan Coleman 0:00
Anna, for every one negative review that I remove, it's like acquiring seven to twelve 5-star reviews.

Narrator 00:12
Welcome to The E-Comm Show podcast. I am your host, Andrew Maff, owner and founder of BlueTuskr. From groundbreaking industry updates to success stories and strategies, get to know the ins and outs of the e-commerce industry from top leaders in the space. Let's get into it.

Andrew Maff 0:12
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. As usual, I'm your host, Andrew Maff. Today I'm joined by the amazing Danan Coleman. Danan, you are the founder over at eCom Triage. You're also the host of The eCom Growth Show, which I was lucky enough to be a guest on—so thank you, sir. I always like starting these off—it’s a little stereotypical, and that's okay, such is life. Tell us a little bit about your background: how you got started with Ecom Triage, where you're at, where you've been. I'll give you the floor. Go for it, all—

Danan Coleman 0:57
Alright. So my name is Danan Coleman. I like long walks down short piers, and I started selling on Amazon in 2010—heyday, yeah, heyday for sure back then. There was no FBA; it was invite-only, and ads didn't exist yet—they were in beta. And if you had an image—an image—you just made sales. Those days are long gone. Things have developed into a much greater thing. I did come from the silver-bullet days, but I'm still an active seller today. We still sell supplements.

Andrew Maff 1:35
Wow—yep, and that's a crowded space

Danan Coleman 1:38
Yeah. We have brand recognition, so—I'm not suggesting this to people—but we don't even run ads. We haven't run ads on our product in seven years. Our highest repeat customer has spent $8,900 on Amazon. And we only do Amazon.So that's kind of my selling history. I got into software in 2018 with Managed By Stats, and then actually started a podcast over there and did all of the video and audio stuff, which was just an amazing time. I loved it, but I hated the editing—editing. Then, end of last year—but really the beginning of this year—I started eCom Triage, and I remove negative product reviews for Amazon sellers. I am also a consultant, but I'm not the kind of consultant who’s like, “Hey, how do I get this product from this much sales to that much sales?” I'm more along the lines of: where are the gaps and the fires in your company? Cool—I know somebody that can help you with that, or I can make suggestions based on my own experience of being a corporate fireman, you know what I mean? And now I've also got Catalog Defender, which is forthcoming software that detects critical issues on ASINs. Then, as you said, my show—and I’ve got a newsletter that's only about events, ecom events. If you've ever seen the parties list for Prosper Show or Accelerate—that big one? I'm the one that puts that together, anyhow.

Andrew Maff 3:33
Wow. How do you do that? That's got to be so complicated. As of this recording we're early/mid-August—we’ll be going to Innovate in New York in a few weeks—and I feel like every three or four days I get an invite to something new that someone decided they're going to throw together. How do you facilitate all that?

Danan Coleman 4:01
I just get onto the lines of those people. Obviously MDS is going to be there, so I just ask MDS what's going on. I've been doing strategic partnerships in this space for almost five years, so I know a lot of the people and companies. I'm starting to get known as “Danan the party guy”—not to be mistaken with “party Danan,” but Danan the party guy—and they'll say, “Hey, where's the list? This is what we're doing,” and I'll put it on the list. Once it's about two to three weeks before the event, I push it out to friends to help me promote the list. This is purely to help companies in the space drive traffic to their parties—nobody wants to do a party and have only ten people show up and they’re all service providers.

Andrew Maff 5:01
I could see this getting interesting—I did not know you were the ecom party guy. I’ll try not to make this the entire episode, but now I'm intrigued. Who puts on great events? Who puts on bad events? What's the craziest thing you've seen at an event?

Danan Coleman 5:28
Oh man—anything good? Yeah. Actually the craziest thing was a dance-off—I should have won it. When I was doing the worm, a fellow contestant decided to jump on top of me and pretend I was a horse—and that won her the competition. I should have won it, but anyhow—that was a long time ago.Truth be told, the parties aren't actually that crazy, and the best parties are definitely at Prosper.

Andrew Maff 6:17
Well, it's Vegas.

Danan Coleman 6:18
It's Vegas—and my favorite city to dislike. Nobody really puts on a “bad” party; it's just about what you're looking for. Personally, I'd rather go have some scotch and a cigar with ten people than go to an open bar with 100–400 people. I co-hosted a dinner at Accelerate with Trellis and a couple of other companies. We had 170 registrations, and could only let in about 120—that was a really crowded room. I'll be honest: at the party I paid to be a part of, I just went and sat down with my friends.

Andrew Maff 7:12
We did something at Prosper and ShopTalk this year with Amazon, at one of the ice bars. We did invite-only and limited it to like 50 or 60 people—and even then it felt like too many. I'm exhausted; I want to just have a nice drink and enjoy myself. There are always so many—people show up for 20 minutes and then head to the next one. It's a revolving door.

Danan Coleman 7:50
Totally—you get the party-hoppers. What was the name of your party?

Andrew Maff 8:06
Oh man, what did we call it… It was in a speakeasy, so I think we ran with that. It was more with ShopTalk than Prosper because it was in the hotel at ShopTalk, but we were actually at both

Danan Coleman 8:25
I had the ShopTalk beach party on my list. I didn’t really go—don't have a lot of people in the Shopify network. I’ll hook you up—I'll promote your parties.

Andrew Maff 8:43
I’ve got to figure out another one—that one was a zoo. Anyway, I won’t hijack this whole thing to talk about partying. Tell me: what made you start eCom Triage? What gap did you see

Danan Coleman 9:02
Basically, I’ve been doing strategic partnerships in the space for a long time. I honestly should have started my own company many years ago. Truth is, I really enjoy working with a team. In my own company, it's me—occasionally my wife—and one incredible VA, but he’s not here with me. I like having a group to say, “Let's do this project,” then rely on people to research, organize, and execute. I'm more of a dreamer than a doer—I'm capable of doing, for sure, but I like to put the right people in place and manage the execution. What led me to start Ecom Triage: there’s a gap in the market for negative review removal—sellers not being able to get them removed. I had some experience at another company I helped build; we parted ways, and I thought, I'll do this myself. There were a few ways I preferred to do business, so I implemented those. All of my customers speak to the founder—me. They have access to me, and I try to help them in other ways. I'm branded as “always there to help.” If you abuse it, I’ll let you know—but that’s only happened a couple times where people were trying to get me to work for free. I’m like, “Hey, I don’t work for free—I'm expensive,” as I should be. I try to help whoever’s right in front of me—usually via introductions.

Narrator 11:28
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Andrew Maff 12:01
So your main focus is obviously the Amazon space. As we’re having this conversation, we’re on day two of October Prime Day. Any initial thoughts on how yesterday went for anyone you're working with? Yeah, me either—I’ve got to look into it. So much preparation that it’s nothing. What are your thoughts on October’s Prime Day? In my opinion, last year it was like, alright, I can see some lift, but it wasn’t July’s Prime Day.

Danan Coleman 12:38
We don't do Prime Day deals. We don't do coupons, discounts—none of that.

Andrew Maff 12:46
That being said, you mean your own brand, right?

Danan Coleman 12:50
Correct. And I don't manage anyone's brand, either. I do negative review removal, Catalog Defender, my podcast, newsletter, etc. We see an organic lift in our sales every “holiday” on Amazon—we see an organic lift as well—but we don't have to pay for it. What's strange is we're consumable—people come back every 30 days—yet we still see a lift. Again, I’m not suggesting anyone do this, but I want the most revenue with the most profit and the least work. If I don't have to run deals to see an organic lift—okay. Is it less? Yes. But my wife doesn't have to put three children in a room and say, “I'm locking this door; I’ll let you out in an hour once I build this coupon and deploy it.” Just be with family. That doesn't work for everyone. Our Amazon is really quite passive for us now—but it's 15 years old, so not everyone has that opportunity.

Andrew Maff 14:23
As you've said, you wouldn't necessarily suggest not running ads. Getting in during the heyday was a game-changer, because you can do exactly what you're doing now. Starting off now, I'd say it’s impossible to do well on Amazon without some type of advertising—ideally on the platform, but also off-platform.

Danan Coleman 15:00
Or significant brand recognition.

Andrew Maff 15:04
Yeah—unless you're leaning heavy into social and influencers—then you're just paying someone else instead of the ads.

Danan Coleman 15:12
Like, if I launched a Logitech keyboard, I might make sales without doing ads

Andrew Maff 15:21
Yes—but you're piggybacking on their brand awareness and leaning on Logitech keywords.

Danan Coleman 15:30
Yeah—well, that's how I built my Amazon business: leaning on someone else’s brand awareness. To be clear, this is not a private-label product. I have exclusivity to this product. We get the product on consignment, so we don't pay for inventory, and then we pay once a month for whatever sold the previous month.

Andrew Maff 15:51
Oh, that sounds nice.

Danan Coleman 15:55
It is nice—sit back and enjoy it, pretty much. I mean, there is some work involved. Amazon is still Amazon. We've been suspended for no reason. Once we had a product suspended because there was an ingredient spelled somewhat similar to a banned ingredient. We were like, this is a different ingredient. For a year we couldn't get that product back on Amazon. A year later we saw someone else selling it. We asked Amazon what's up—they're like, “Oh yeah, it's totally fine.” Cool—totally fine. We got back on the listing. That was that.

Andrew Maff 16:59
Gotta love it—so many horror stories on Amazon. This is why I preach omnichannel. If that one product was your sole business, you'd be screwed.

Danan Coleman 17:15
We've almost gone bankrupt twice because of stuff like that. The last time was during COVID. Our sales went gangbusters in 2020–2021. We had four Seller Central accounts—two in the US and two in the UK—and Amazon shut down three of them with no communication, no warnings, no email, nothing. We called—Seller Support said, “We don't know; contact Seller Performance.” Seller Performance: “Looks fine here.” I'm like, it ain't fine. I can't log in. “You have an excellent rating.” Yes, for 13 years. Why can't I sell? “We don’t know.”It took me four months to get my accounts back. It literally killed us—and we paid long-term storage fees during that time with no inventory going anywhere. Eventually I leveraged a friend inside Amazon—not in that department—and begged him. I'd tried everything—50 different case numbers. This was also when cases were being auto-resolved with no response. We'd submit case after case—resolved, resolved, resolved. One day my account was just back. Anyhow, I know the pain—and I fully agree about being omnichannel, even though I don't actually do it.

Andrew Maff 19:23
In your scenario, I get it. You’re piggybacking off another brand’s awareness—makes sense. My story: in 2015 I was in-house at a low eight-figure brand running marketing. My wife and I had just put a mortgage on a house. I started in August; by the first two weeks of December—peak Q4—we changed out a credit card because we were hitting spend caps, and Amazon thought it was fraud. They shut down the entire account for two weeks. I’m freaking out—70–75% of the business was Amazon. I'm thinking I'm out of a job. We got back up in a couple weeks, but it flipped a switch: we have to diversify. What's the negative-review side—what's your specialty and approach to making sure those are taken care of correctly?

Danan Coleman 20:50
We use an entirely white-hat method—I only do white-hat stuff. We download all the negative reviews, run them through an AI that's trained on Amazon’s Terms of Service, community guidelines, and about ten other policies covering what reviews are/aren’t and should/shouldn’t be. Then we get a list of negative reviews that violate those policies in some way, and we categorize them by likelihood of removal. We individually file cases on every single one—over time. What matters to any seller: I can remove roughly 5–10% of negative reviews. For every one negative review I remove, it's like acquiring seven to twelve 5-star reviews. If you have no strategy for acquiring 5-star reviews, the average is 1–2% of your sales will leave a review. So if you want to acquire ten 5-star reviews, you need ~1,000 sales—whereas if I remove a single negative review, that has roughly the same weight. The review system isn’t purely mathematical, but you get the idea. We keep track of every review and get after them. Amazon removes the review—we're not dealing with customers or paying people off. It’s all through Amazon.

Andrew Maff 22:45
Once you decipher which reviews to target, is it through support tickets? How do you actually get them taken down?

Danan Coleman 22:53
We have about ten different methods—maybe more—at our disposal. All sellers know about Seller Support, and Seller Support will often ignore you and tell you to go to Community Help. So now they know about Community Help and the Report button. I have seven-plus additional methods and forms I use, on a designated escalation path depending on the type of review. We also go after fraud—looking for associations across your ASINs: whether you've been hit by the same reviewer on multiple ASINs, or the same reviewer leaving multiple negatives across your catalog. With a holistic view, we see what's going on, and then we file a fraud case with Amazon.

Andrew Maff 23:52
Interesting. Makes sense. Danan, this was awesome. I appreciate your time. Tell everyone where they can find you—eCom Triage—what party should they be going to? Now’s your chance

Danan Coleman 24:10
We don't have the party lists yet. We'll be at Innovate—MDS is going to do something.

Andrew Maff 24:15
Are you doing anything?

Danan Coleman 24:19
I'll be with MDS, so I'll see you there. CapEx will have a party—it’ll be on the list. To find me: I'm on LinkedIn. I'm atrocious at hitting “confirm,” but you can email danan@ecomtriage.com or danan@danaenterprises.com. Go to the website—or find me at the party.

Andrew Maff 24:54
That sounds like a great way to find you. Danan, thank you so much, buddy. Everyone who tuned in—thank you as well. Please rate, review, subscribe—whichever podcast platform you prefer—or head over to theecommshow.com to check out previous episodes. As usual, thanks for joining us. See you next time—bye, everybody.

Narrator 25:16
Thank you for tuning in to The E-Comm Show. Head over to theecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E-Comm Show is brought to you by BlueTuskr, a full-service digital marketing company specifically for e-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to bluetuskr.com now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of The E-Comm Show.