DEV Community: Auke de Haan

4 Tools That Actually Help With Amazon A+ Content in 2026

Auke de Haan — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 12:17:45 +0000

Building A+ Content that converts takes more than picking a template. Here are four tools sellers actually use at different stages of the process.

1. Canva handles the design side: lifestyle image layouts, comparison chart graphics, and icon sets for multi-column modules. The free tier covers most standard A+ module sizes.

2. Helium 10 is the keyword research layer that should happen before A+ Content, not during it. Backend search terms and titles get the click; A+ Content is what keeps the buyer once they're on the page.

3. Amazon Listing Audit breaks down the difference between Basic and Premium A+ eligibility, the five module types, and a newer question sellers are asking in 2026: whether A+ Content actually feeds Amazon's Rufus AI assistant when it answers buyer questions. Short answer: only if the modules use complete sentences instead of text-in-image graphics.

4. Amazon's own Manage Your Experiments is easy to skip but worth using once you have two A+ Content versions worth testing. Running an actual A/B test beats guessing which layout converts better.

None of these replace fixing the basics first. A+ Content lifts conversion on a listing that already has a compliant title, working bullet points, and compliant main image. Skip that step and the nicest A+ Content in the world won't save the listing.

4 Tools Indie Authors Use to Launch a Book on Amazon in 2026

Auke de Haan — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 05:01:19 +0000

Launching a self-published book takes more than a good manuscript. Here are four tools indie authors actually pay for around launch day, and what each one is for.

1. Publisher Rocket handles keyword and category research before you upload, so your book shows up under the search terms readers actually type into Amazon.

2. Vellum formats your manuscript into a clean, professional ebook and print file without fighting Word's page breaks. Mac only, but worth it if you publish more than once a year.

3. Canva or a freelance cover designer for the cover itself. Amazon shoppers judge a book by its thumbnail in under two seconds, so this isn't the place to cut corners.

4. iWrity for the review problem every new listing has: zero reviews means Amazon's algorithm has nothing to rank you on. iWrity is a review exchange built specifically for Amazon KDP, readers post directly on your Amazon book page instead of Goodreads or a blog, which is the actual review pool that moves rankings. If you've compared ARC platforms like NetGalley or BookSirens and found the reviews land everywhere except Amazon, this breakdown walks through why that happens and what to use instead when Amazon reviews are the actual goal.

None of these four replace a good book. But skipping all of them on launch day is the most common mistake I see indie authors make.

9 Books to Read If You Loved The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess

Auke de Haan — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 03:43:03 +0000

The isekai villainess subgenre has a specific pull: an adult woman wakes up as the doomed antagonist of a story she already knows the ending to, and has to out-think a plot everyone else thinks is fixed. The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess is one of the sharper entries in that space, and if you burned through it, here are nine reads that hit the same note in different ways.

Start here if you want the genre-defining version

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! by Satoru Yamaguchi is the book that popularized the whole setup. Catarina Claes realizes she is the villainess in an otome game and spends the story dodging every death and exile flag instead of falling for anyone. It is lighter and funnier than most of the subgenre, and a good place to start if you have not read one of these before.

If you want comedy over stakes

I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss by Sarasa Nagase goes for pure absurdity: the heroine decides the safest move is to befriend the demon lord everyone else is trying to defeat. It leans harder into comedy than most villainess isekai.

If you want political intrigue

Who Made Me a Princess by Plutus and The Remarried Empress by Alphatart both trade some of the comedy for court politics and power struggles. These read closer to palace drama than parody.

If you want a time-loop twist

7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy! by Touko Amekawa adds a repeating-death mechanic on top of the reincarnation premise, which changes the pacing considerably from a straight villainess story.

The full list

I put together the complete rundown, with what makes each one distinct and where the story diverges from the reincarnated-villainess template, in this guide to books similar to The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess. It covers nine titles total, including Tearmoon Empire, Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion, Villains Are Destined to Die, and I'll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History.

If isekai villainess stories are your thing, the self-insert-into-a-known-plot mechanic is what separates the good ones from the forgettable ones. The best entries make you forget you already know how it ends.

5 SEO Tools Worth Checking Before You Pay for Moz

Auke de Haan — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 02:14:12 +0000

Moz Standard runs $99/month, and most small businesses only touch a fraction of what it includes. Here are five tools people actually compare it against, with the honest trade-off for each.

SE Ranking ($44-$95/month) is the closest like-for-like swap: rank tracking, site audits, and competitor research at a lower price than Moz Pro.

Mangools (from $29/month) is a lighter suite for solo marketers, covering keyword research, SERP analysis, and basic backlink tracking without Moz's full link index.

Ubersuggest has a free tier for occasional keyword lookups, which makes it a reasonable starting point before committing to a paid plan.

BrightLocal (from $39/month) fits better than Moz Local specifically if your business lives or dies on the local map pack and Google Business Profile management.

GMCSuspension's SEO Monitor ($29/month) skips the dashboard entirely and sends a weekly email with rankings, Core Web Vitals, and a prioritized action plan instead, a fit for anyone who never opened their Moz dashboard past week two. A full breakdown compares all five against Moz's actual feature list.

None of these replace Moz's link research suite if you genuinely need it. But most small businesses do not, and $99/month for unused features is a real cost.

5 Things to Check Before You Sell on Amazon as a Third-Party Seller

Auke de Haan — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 05:21:22 +0000

Selling on Amazon looks simple until your first policy notice shows up. A few tools and habits catch most of the common problems before they turn into a suspended ASIN or a frozen payout.

1. Keyword research before you write a listing
Helium 10 and Jungle Scout both pull real Amazon search volume so your title and bullets target terms buyers actually type, not guesses.

2. A pre-launch listing check
Amazon Listing Audit scans a listing for suppression risks, missing attributes, and policy violations before you spend on ads driving traffic to a page that could get pulled.

3. Inventory and repricing software
SellerApp and RestockPro help you avoid stockouts and long-term storage fees, two of the quieter ways new sellers lose margin.

4. A plan for intellectual property and counterfeit notices
If a listing gets flagged, the fix depends entirely on which notice you got. A trademark or copyright complaint is often resolved by retraction. A counterfeit complaint needs supply chain invoices and proof the specific units are genuine, a different appeal entirely. Knowing which one you are dealing with before you write the appeal saves a wasted attempt.

5. Read Account Health weekly, not after a suspension
Most account-level suspensions are preceded by warning signals on Account Health for weeks. Checking it on a schedule, rather than only when something breaks, catches problems while they are still a single ASIN issue instead of the whole account.

None of these replace understanding Amazon's policies directly, but together they catch the mistakes that take down otherwise healthy listings.

Launch Monitor or Full Golf Simulator? 4 Ways to Decide What You Actually Need

Auke de Haan — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 03:19:31 +0000

Setting up indoor golf practice at home usually starts with one confusing question: do you need a launch monitor, or a full simulator? They get talked about like they're the same purchase, and they're not. Here's how the main options actually split.

1. A standalone launch monitor (Garmin Approach R10, Rapsodo MLM2PRO)

These measure ball speed, launch angle, and spin, and show the numbers on a phone app. No screen, no course software, no room build required. Good for swing feedback in a garage or backyard, starting around $500-700.

2. A camera-based launch monitor (SkyTrak+, Bushnell Launch Pro)

Step up in price ($2,000-4,000) for optical spin measurement, which is noticeably more consistent than radar-only units indoors. Still works standalone, but this is also the tier most people pair with a screen once they're ready to go further.

3. A full simulator build (launch monitor + screen + GSPro or E6 Connect)

This is the setup people picture when they say "golf simulator": an impact screen, a projector, simulation software, and a dedicated room (roughly 10 ft wide, 12-15 ft deep, 9 ft ceiling). It's the only option that lets you actually play a rendered course indoors, and it's a bigger investment, usually $3,000-15,000 depending on finish level.

4. Sequencing it right

The cheapest way to avoid buyer's remorse: buy the launch monitor first, use it standalone for a season, then add the screen and room build once you know the habit sticks. The launch monitor carries over to the full build later, so nothing is wasted.

I wrote a longer breakdown with a full cost table and space requirements at Golf Simulator Hub if you want the side-by-side comparison before buying either one.

5 Legal Thrillers That Actually Get the Courtroom Right

Auke de Haan — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 22:28:18 +0000

Most thrillers put a lawyer on the cover and call it a legal thriller. The genre only really works when the courtroom itself feels like the source of tension, not the backdrop. Here are five that earn the label.

The Firm by John Grisham. Still the best entry point into the genre. Mitch McDeere takes the highest-paying job in the country and spends 400 pages finding out why nobody warned him. The horror is slow and it works because Grisham never makes the firm threaten him. It flatters him instead.

Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow. Turow was a federal prosecutor and it shows in every page. A prosecutor investigates the murder of a colleague he was having an affair with, then becomes the prime suspect. The ending is still argued about.

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly. Mickey Haller runs his practice from the back seat of a car and takes a case that turns out to be far worse than the fee suggested. Connelly covered the courts as a journalist before he wrote fiction, and the procedural detail holds up.

A Time to Kill by John Grisham. His first novel and his angriest. No publisher wanted it until The Firm sold. Race, vigilante justice, and a jury that has already decided before the trial starts.

Defending Jacob by William Landay. A district attorney's own son is accused of murder. The father investigates from inside the system that is prosecuting his family.

If you want the full breakdown, including what separates a good legal thriller from a great one and where to start depending on what you're after, Skriuwer has a longer guide.

5 AI Image Generators That Actually Work Without Sign-Up (2026 Test)

Auke de Haan — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 07:38:48 +0000

Most "free AI image generator" lists quietly assume you'll create an account. I wanted to know which tools genuinely work with zero sign-up in 2026, so I tested five of them with the same prompts and compared resolution, watermarks, speed, and commercial-use terms.

Why no-login tools matter

Sometimes you need one image, right now, for a slide or a social post. Creating an account for a single image is friction nobody wants. The catch: no-login tools trade off resolution, consistency, and history for that convenience.

The five tools

Perchance — the most generous of the five. No daily cap by the operator's own claim, no watermark, runs directly in the browser. Speed drops during peak hours since there's no paid tier funding extra capacity.

Craiyon — the most established free browser generator. Sharpness trails paid models like Midjourney, but it's the fastest path from prompt to result if you just need a rough visual idea.

DeepAI — supports multiple style filters (photorealistic, anime, fantasy, painting) in one tool without an account, useful for testing the same prompt across styles quickly.

KI-Bild-erstellen.de — German-language interface, explicitly permits commercial use in its terms. Resolution sits below premium tools but covers blog headers and social graphics fine.

imgcreatorai.io — runs on Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model by its own claim, noticeably stronger at photorealistic output than the others, at the cost of slower generation during traffic spikes.

What you give up without an account

Three things consistently: resolution (most cap around 512-1024px vs 2K/4K on paid tools), fine control (no seed values, no reference images, no style transfer), and history (close the tab and the image is gone unless you download it immediately).

Prompt tips that actually move the needle

Across all five tools, three additions consistently improved results: a style descriptor (watercolor, photorealistic, flat vector), a lighting cue (golden hour, studio light), and a composition note (centered, rule of thirds). A one-word prompt like "forest" produces a generic, forgettable image every time; "watercolor illustration of a lighthouse at sunset, warm light, top-down view" does not.

When to switch to a free account instead

Once you need higher resolution, generation history, or reference-image consistency across multiple images, free-tier accounts (Krea, Ideogram) go noticeably further than anonymous tools, still without a credit card.

I wrote up the full comparison with a pricing/limits table and legal notes for German users here: KI-Bildgenerator kostenlos ohne Registrierung: 5 Tools im Test 2026

Which no-login tool do you reach for first?

Kaffeevollautomat entkalken: Essigessenz oder lieber eine Alternative?

Auke de Haan — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:20:52 +0000

Kaffeevollautomat entkalken: Essigessenz oder lieber eine Alternative?

Wer einen Kaffeevollautomaten besitzt, kennt die Frage frueher oder spaeter: reicht Essigessenz aus der Kueche zum Entkalken, oder zerstoert das die Dichtungen?

Kurz gesagt: Essigessenz wirkt gegen Kalk, aber die hohe Saeurekonzentration greift Gummidichtungen und Schlaeuche staerker an als ein Entkalker, der genau fuer diese Materialien gepuffert ist. Bei gelegentlichem Einsatz und sofortigem Nachspuelen bleibt das Risiko klein, bei regelmaessiger Nutzung steigt der Verschleiss messbar.

Wer trotzdem sparen will, muss nicht zum teuren Markenentkalker greifen. Guenstige Citrat-Entkalker aus der Drogerie (dm, Rossmann, Aldi) sind gepuffert und damit deutlich schonender als reine Essigessenz oder reine Zitronensaeure, bei einem Bruchteil des Markenpreises.

Wir haben die komplette Uebersicht mit Vergleichstabelle (Essigessenz, Essig, Zitronensaeure, gepufferte Citrat-Entkalker, Milchsaeure-Entkalker und Markenentkalker im direkten Vergleich) und 7 haeufige Fragen dazu hier aufgeschrieben:

https://www.kaffeebewertung.de/ratgeber/kaffeevollautomat-reinigen-hausmittel

Worauf achtet ihr beim Entkalken eures Vollautomaten? Hausmittel oder immer der Markenentkalker?

5 Ways to Catch an Amazon Piggyback Seller Before They Cost You the Buy Box

Auke de Haan — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 11:20:31 +0000

Piggybacking happens when a second seller joins your Amazon ASIN instead of creating a new listing. Sometimes that's a legitimate reseller. Sometimes it's a hijacker selling counterfeits under your brand. Here are five ways sellers actually catch it before it costs them the Buy Box.

1. Check the Offers link on your own listing weekly. The seller count next to your Buy Box ("3 new from $19.99") is the fastest way to see who else is attached to your ASIN. Most sellers only look when sales already dropped, by then a piggybacker may have weeks of history.

2. Watch Buy Box win rate in Seller Central's Business Reports. A sudden drop is one of the earliest signals, often before you'd notice a new seller by browsing the page yourself.

3. Use a listing-change alert tool. Jungle Scout and Helium 10 both have alert features that flag when a new seller joins your ASIN, useful if you manage more SKUs than you can check by hand.

4. Run a free listing health check. Amazon Listing Audit scans your live listing for suppression risk and gaps (like a missing trademark on file) that make a listing an easier piggyback target in the first place.

5. Enroll in Brand Registry before you need it. It's the single biggest lever: the Report a Violation tool, Transparency codes, and Project Zero all require it, and enrollment takes time, so it's not something to start the week you spot a hijacker.

Full breakdown of piggybacking vs hijacking and the exact reporting steps: Amazon Piggyback Listing: What It Means and How to Stop It

Amazon Account Suspended for Failure to Provide Information? Here's What Actually Fixes It

Auke de Haan — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 19:46:19 +0000

If Amazon suspended your seller account and the notice mentions "failure to provide information," it almost always means the INFORM Consumers Act identity verification step was not completed, or a submitted document did not match your account details. This one is different from most Amazon suspensions because a written appeal will not lift it. Completing verification does.

The resources that actually help

Seller Central's Account Health dashboard is the first stop. It shows exactly which verification documents are still outstanding (government ID, bank statement, tax ID) and whether a submitted document was rejected.

Helium 10 and Jungle Scout are the two big all-in-one Amazon seller toolkits. Neither handles suspension appeals directly, but both include account health monitoring add-ons that flag a compliance gap before it turns into a suspension.

Amazon Listing Audit's reinstatement service is built specifically for the appeal side: it classifies the violation type from your notice, generates a coverage-validated Plan of Action for the suspension types that do need one, and walks through Amazon's follow-up questions. For INFORM Act suspensions specifically, this guide breaks down what triggers the suspension, what the notice looks like, and the two mistakes (appealing before finishing verification, and mismatched documents) that add the most delay.

The short version: check Account Health first, finish verification exactly as requested, and only reach for an appeal template if Amazon asks follow-up questions after that.

5 Things to Check First When a Dropshipping Store's Google Merchant Center Gets Suspended

Auke de Haan — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:12:44 +0000

Dropshipping stores get flagged more often than stores holding their own stock, because Google's 2026 AI verification treats shared supplier photos and thin identity signals as risk markers. If your Merchant Center account just went dark, here is where to look before you touch the appeal button.

Google's own Merchant Center Help Center. Start with Google's official policy pages for misrepresentation and prohibited content. They define exactly which claims trigger a suspension, straight from the source.
Your platform's policy page requirements. Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce each publish their own guidance on what a compliant shipping, return, and privacy policy page needs to contain. Merchant Center checks that these match what you declared in the account.
Supplier image fingerprints. If your product photos are the same files hundreds of other dropshippers use, that duplication is itself a signal. Swap in original photos where you can.
Business identity match. Name, address, phone number, and bank details need to match exactly across your site, your Merchant Center account, and any verification documents you upload.
A dedicated diagnostic pass. GMCSuspension.com runs a free audit that sorts a suspension into its actual category (misrepresentation, policy violation, or circumventing systems) and lists the specific fixes for dropshipping accounts before you spend an appeal on the wrong explanation.

Fix every flagged item first. An appeal submitted while the original trigger is still live almost always comes back denied.