In the counterfeit brand industry, there are two factions. One is the Instagram chat model faction represented by people from Guangzhou, China, and the other is the independent station model faction represented by people from Fujian, China. In the following text, we will refer to them as the “Guangzhou faction” and the “Putian faction” respectively.
The products of “Guangzhou Factions are mainly fast-moving consumer goods in the fashion industry, especially luxury goods, such as LV, Gucci, Chanel, Dior, etc., covering almost all categories of products of all brands, such as luxury watches, bags, boots, apparel, scarves, perfumes, sunglasses, etc.
The products of “Putian Factions” are mainly in the sports shoes industry, such as NIKE, Adidas, etc.
If we type in the keywords of brand watches or bags on Instagram, we will see a lot of Guangzhou accounts selling products on them.
The transaction channel on Instagram mainly relies on the WhatsApp chat tool, which includes style confirmation, price confirmation (quotation, bargaining), payment confirmation and other links. It can be said that each link is extremely cumbersome and inefficient.
WhatsApp can place a call link on Instagram’s Profile page:
api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=number. Through this link, the chat window will be automatically opened to communicate with the merchant.
In the style confirmation stage, the seller may look for pictures everywhere and desperately send them to the buyer for confirmation. After sending a lot of pictures, the buyer will not like any of them. Sellers with some experience will upload many styles to the photo album and provide the album link for the buyer to choose the style.
The biggest problem is payment collection. Because of replica brands, PAYPAL has blocked many merchants’ accounts. Therefore, even if you transfer money through PayPal offline, you will still suffer from account blocking and frozen funds. Many merchants can only use Western Union, MoneyGram, WISE and other payment methods, but there is no guarantee for the buyer, so the transaction rate is extremely low. In general, there are several major problems in selling high imitation products on Instagram:
①. Extremely low transaction rate: Due to the issue of trust in payment collection, according to our statistics, it is basically only about 1/20 of the online direct payment transaction. That is to say, assuming the same traffic, a person in Guangzhou, China, can sell one order on Instagram, while a person in Putian,China,can sell 20 orders on the independent website;
② Extremely low efficiency: From payment submission to successful payment collection, every step and every link requires merchants and customers (especially new customers) to communicate and confirm a lot, and discuss order details, which is cumbersome and inefficient;
③. Heavy workload: Due to the time difference between China and overseas, many merchants who are doing business are still looking for pictures and making quotations for a potential “potential customer” at 3 or 4 in the morning;
④. High account blocking rate: When the number of followers of an Instagram account reaches a certain level, the account will inevitably be destroyed. Therefore, merchants who do business in chat can only continuously cultivate accounts and gain a living space by rotating accounts.
Even so, there are many people who are particularly good at the Instagram chat model. One client in Guangzhou made a profit of more than one million US dollars a month. His success can be summarized in a few words: multiple accounts, human wave tactics, and script technology.
①. Multiple accounts: Use “matrix account” and “simulator technology” to add accounts in large quantities, and pay special attention to the account’s growth environment and mobile traffic preference;
② Human-mass tactics: The team operating the account has a large number of people and clear division of labor, which makes up for the low efficiency of the chat mode;
③. Script technology: The core of Instagram traffic lies in “#tags”, “interactions” (likes, private messages, and following to obtain reverse traffic), etc. These behaviors of natural persons can be achieved with the help of script technology to maximize efficiency, but this method has a certain threshold. The script needs to keep up with the changes in Instagram rules in real time, and pay attention to controlling the frequency of simulation, otherwise it is easy to cause large-scale account blocking problems.
After talking about the chat mode, let’s talk about the independent station mode.
When it comes to independent websites, people from Fujian, China, are definitely number one in the country, especially in cross-border e-commerce independent websites. If the order-chatting mode is the speed of a bicycle, then the independent website is the speed of an airplane!
Fujian people, especially those from Putian, have their own way of attracting traffic to counterfeit brand independent websites, mainly through the following methods:
①. Advertising traffic: For example, Facebook advertising traffic, with the help of cloak, quickly acquire customers;
② Community traffic: For example, pin posts, with the help of the distribution model, form a commission system to quickly turn channel traffic into orders;
③. Fast traffic: such as short videos, live broadcasts, internet celebrities, etc.
In general, negotiating orders is a bit like “trading life for money”, and transforming to an independent website under certain conditions is the long-term solution.
