Pulling back the curtain on ammo sales

Posted on July 11, 2011 by alan

Linoge has an interesting post about online ammo seller(s).

If he’s right then, while legal, it’s certainly sleazy.

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9 Responses to Pulling back the curtain on ammo sales

  1. mike w. says:
    July 11, 2011 at 10:03

    I’ve thought for a while now that those sites were pulling inventory all from the same place. Glad to see I’m not the only one.

  2. Jason says:
    July 11, 2011 at 10:35

    He’s right. Look at the source code. It’s all the same template, with different “skins” applied to make them look different. I posted details over there, but I’m not sure if he’s moderating comments.

  3. Jeffrey H says:
    July 11, 2011 at 16:47

    I always see LuckyGunner as a sponsor of many major gun blogs, but I always find it surprising that they would get much business. Their prices are pretty high compared to other online ammo sites. I think if people dig around a bit you can get much much cheaper prices than them (at least when you buy by the case like I do).

  4. Old NFO says:
    July 11, 2011 at 19:00

    Interesting… VERY interesting…

  5. Kristopher says:
    July 12, 2011 at 11:18

    This is just google hacking.

    They aren’t trying to defraud people, they are just jockeying for position on google. Google’s algorithm forces this behavior onto online merchants.

  6. Pingback: online ammunition retailers – a hypothesis | walls of the city

  7. Kevin Baker says:
    July 14, 2011 at 11:13

    How is it “sleazy”? They’re manipulating Google, yes, but what of it?

  8. Westczek says:
    July 16, 2011 at 12:08

    Hi all,

    I posted this comment over on Walls of the City. Aside from spam and the use of bloggers for marketing, this is really an issue about how people use the internet to shop.

    If I’m a guy trying to buy some ammo, and I want to shop around, I do a search for ammo and check the quoted prices of the sellers that pop up. Or maybe I click-through on ads from my favorite bloggers. If I see all these different sellers and believe they are all offering independent quotes, I may buy without looking looking any further. If I knew they were one seller using different names, I would look for other sellers and more price quotes.

    Ammo is fairly near to being a commodity. It is bought based on prices and transparency in the market for any commodity is important for buyers to make good choices.

    At the moment the first google search page for “cheap ammo” or “bulk ammo” is not filled with Luckygunner sites yet, so we’re not to the point where it is a problem. However, the links through the blogs could be an issue, with the legitimacy that the bloggers lend to the advertisers.

    Westczek

  9. Davidwhitewolf says:
    July 18, 2011 at 15:36

    I’ve gotta echo Kristopher and Kevin. This sort of thing pales in comparison to some of the SEO optimization tactics we’ve had pitched to us. It actually makes me feel confident in LuckyGunner that they’ve listed the DBAs in a state filing. I’m going to guess they’re part of the tiny fraction of online businesses that actually comply with the law and do that.

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