Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools

Amazon Hacks is a collection of tips and tools for getting the most out of Amazon.com, whether you're an avid Amazon shopper, Amazon Associate developing your online storefront and honing your recommendations for better linking and more referral fees, seller listing your own products for sale on Amazon.com, or a programmer building your own application on the foundation provided by the rich Amazon Web Services API.

Shoppers will learn how to make the most of Amazon.com's deep functionality and become part of the Amazon community, maintain wishlists, tune recommendations, "share the love" with friends and family, etc. Amazon Associates will find tips for how best to list their titles, how to promote their offerings by fine tuning search criteria and related titles information, and even how to make their store fronts more attractive. And the real power users will use the Amazon API to build Amazon-enabled applications, create store fronts and populate them with items to be picked, packed and shipped by Amazon. And just about anyone can become a seller on Amazon.com, listing items, deciding on pricing, and fulfilling orders for products new and used.

Table of Contents

Credits   

Foreword   

Preface   

Chapter 1. Browsing and Searching  

       1. Find a Product's ASIN   

       2. Find a CD's ASIN with the UPC   

       3. Jump to a Product Using Its ASIN   

       4. Create Shorter URLs   

       5. Link Directly to Product Images   

       6. Switch to a Text-Only Amazon   

       7. Take Amazon Anywhere   

       8. Browse and Search Categories with Browse Nodes   

       9. Power-Search for Books   

       10. Search Amazon from the IE Address Bar   

       11. Search Amazon from Any Web Page in IE   

       12. Add an Amazon Sidebar Search to Mozilla   

Chapter 2. Controlling Your Information  

       13. Understand Identity at Amazon   

       14. Fine-Tune Your Recommendations   

       15. Enable 1-Click Buying   

       16. Set Up a Group Account   

       17. Create an "About You" Area   

       18. Create a Wish List   

       19. Add Items to a Wish List Remotely   

       20. Add Multiple Items to a Wish List at Once   

       21. Organize Your Wish List by Priority   

       22. Set Email and Messages Preferences   

       23. Get Movie Showtimes   

       24. Create an Amazon Event Reminder   

       25. Create Several Birthday Reminders at Once   

       26. Best Practices for Your Amazon Account   

Chapter 3. Participating in the Amazon Community  

       27. Write a Review   

       28. Link Directly to Reviews of a Product   

       29. Post a Review from a Remote Site   

       30. Add Pop-up Amazon Reviews to Your Web Site   

       31. Send an Email Alert if a Review Is Added to a Product   

       32. Sort Books by Average Customer Rating   

       33. Sort Your Recommendations by Average Customer Rating   

       34. Scrape Product Reviews   

       35. Publish Your Amazon Reviews on Your Site   

       36. Share the Love (and Savings!) with Your Friends  

       37. Create a Guide   

       38. Post a Guide Remotely   

       39. Add Product Advice Remotely   

       40. Scrape Customer Advice   

       41. Create a Listmania! List   

       42. Gather Your Friends on Amazon   

       43. Gather Your Friends' Amazon IDs   

       44. Get Purchase Circle Products with Screen Scraping   

       45. Find Purchase Circles by Zip Code   

       46. Track the Ranks of Books Over Time   

       47. Group Conversations About Books   

       48. Add a "Currently Reading" List to Your Web Site  

Chapter 4. Selling Through Amazon  

       49. Sell a Book with Amazon Marketplace   

       50. Speed Up the Listing Process   

       51. List Several Items for Sale at Once   

       52. Sell What People Want   

       53. Scope Out the Marketplace Competition   

       54. List Your Items for Sale on Your Web Site   

       55. Put an Item Up for Bid at Amazon Auctions   

       56. Get (and Keep!) a Good Seller Rating   

       57. Collect Donations from Your Web Site with the Honor System   

       58. Show the Progress of Your Honor System Fund on Your Site   

Chapter 5. Associates Program  

       59. Build Associate Links   

       60. Sell Items from Your Site   

       61. Sell Items with Pop-up Windows   

       62. Create Banner Ads for Your Site   

       63. Rotate Through Several Keyword Banners on Your Site   

       64. Add an Amazon Search Box to Your Site   

       65. Show Amazon Search Results on Your Site   

       66. Create an Online Store   

       67. Donate to Charities Through Associate Links   

       68. Format a Review for Your Site   

       69. Create Amazon Associate Links on Your Movable Type Weblog   

       70. Simplify Amazon Associate Links in Your Blosxom Weblog   

       71. Add an Amazon Box to Your Site   

       72. Deep Linking to Amazon's Mobile Device Pages   

       73. Measure Your Associate Sales   

       74. Publish Your Associate Sales Statistics on Your Site   

       75. Associates Program Best Practices   

Chapter 6. Amazon Web Services  

       76. View XML Responses in a Browser   

       77. Embed Product Details into a Web Page with PHP   

       78. Program AWS with PHP   

       79. Program AWS with Python   

       80. Program AWS with Perl   

       81. Loop Around the 10-Result Limit   

       82. Program XML/HTTP with VBScript   

       83. Transform AWS Results to HTML with XSLT   

       84. Work Around Products Without Images   

       85. Syndicate a List of Books with RSS   

       86. Import Data Directly into Excel   

       87. Program AWS with SOAP and VB.NET   

       88. Program AWS with SOAP::Lite and Perl   

       89. Program AWS with NuSOAP and PHP   

       90. Create a Wireless Wish List   

       91. Make Product Titles Shorter   

       92. Encode Text for URLs   

       93. Cache Amazon Images Locally   

       94. Cache AWS Responses Locally   

       95. Create an Amazon AIM Bot   

       96. Compare International Sales   

       97. Program AWS with Mozilla   

       98. Search or Browse Amazon with Watson   

       99. Add Cover Art to Your Digital Music Collection   

       100. Using All Consuming's SOAP and REST Interfaces   
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