Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools

I commonly spend several hours per day on Amazon (ahem, cough, cough!). The site is constantly changing, and there is always something new to discover. But I have acquired a decent familiarity with Amazon through all of my countless (and they shall remain that way) hours of clicking around the site. From this standpoint, I would say that the first 3 chapters of "Amazon Hacks" dont provide any understanding of the Search, Community features, or Account information that someone who has been around a while would not already have. In fact, the books information on Amazon Community features isnt comprehensive. On the other hand, there are hacks for getting additional utility out of Amazon such as: configuring Internet Explorer to search Amazon from its address bar or any web page, adding an Amazon sidebar to Mozilla, prioritizing your wish list using a third-party service, sorting recommendations and items by average rating, finding a purchase circle by zip code, tracking the sales ranks of items over time, and how to perform a lot of tasks remotely.

I am not a programmer or an Amazon Associate, so I am not in the best position to judge the helpfulness of Chapters 4-6. But it looks to me like Amazon Associates who want to integrate more information from Amazons database into their site could benefit immensely from Chapter 5. You will find how to: allow customers to purchase items or add them to Amazon wish lists through your site, do that using pop-up windows, create Amazon banner ads that include product recommendations, show Amazon search results on your site, add an Amazon Box to your site, measure and publish your Associates sales statistics, and more hacks along these lines. Chapter 6, "Amazons Web Services", basically provides hacks that web developers can use to acquire any information from Amazons database in machine-readable format. Amazon released their Web Services API in 2002, so they are inviting developers to build applications using the Amazon platform. You will need a developers token, which you get by opening an Associates account, then screen-scrape to your hearts content!

Amazon lives up to its name as it has grown to Amazonian proportions with the addition of apparel, toys, sporting goods, wish lists, reviews, listmania, and marketplace. That barely scratches the surface and its easy to overlook many of its features.

The first part of the book provides hacks for customers as chapters 1 through 3 address browsing, personalization, and community. Each products page is flowing with plenty of details. The first few pages of the book explain the features that typically appear on a product page. Products have a unique name and its not just the product name, but rather an ID in the form of an ASIN. Knowing the ASIN unlocks many shortcuts.

Many of us, me included, have probably made it a habit to just enter the products name in the search box and go. A couple of hacks demonstrate how to search more effectively to get the results you want and fast.

One of the powerful features of Amazon is the ability to adapt to your preferences so it can make recommendations. Fine tune those recommendations and check out the movie show time listings. Be on time with birthday and event reminders.

"What do you want for your birthday?" Its not always comfortable to answer that question, so Wish Lists come in handy. You can do much more than just add items to the wish list. Get hacks on prioritizing it, adding multiple items, and managing it.

If youve posted reviews or created lists, then youre already part of the Amazon community. Since youre reading this review, you must value such reviews in helping you decide whether or not to make the buy (I hope this helps!) Chapter 3 covers the community features of reviews, Listmania!, guides, friends, product advice, and sharing the love. Those familiar with these features might be in for a surprise on additional things they can do.

Amazon isnt the only one that sells products as anyone can be a seller or an associate as explained in chapters 4 and 5. Explore behind the scenes of selling with details on billing, inventory, and marketing. Get the lesser known secrets for developing a store and sharpening recommendations for improving linking and referrals.

Just one chapter covers Web Services, so customers and sellers not interested in it wont feel slighted when they buy the book and have no use for the last chapter. However, the introduction will help anyone better understand Web Services and what Amazon can do with it.

Though the book does its job in acting as a help manual for understanding Amazons features, it does more by sharing tips and tricks you might not have considered until reading the book. My knowledge of using Amazon has grown over the years and the book pleasantly surprises me with things I didnt know. Amazon Hacks has done justice to the OReilly Hacks series.