Amazon Hacks

Hack 27 Write a Review

Everyone has an opinion. You can give other Amazon customers your insights about a product by posting a review.

Anyone with a customer account at Amazon.com can post a public review of products sold on the web site. You can post under your own name, under a handle (nickname), or anonymously as just "a reader from Poughkeepsie."

You can get started reviewing books and other products on Amazon.com by finding the product detail page for the product you want to review. You'll find a link under either Spotlight Reviews or All Customer Reviews that says "Write an Online Review." Click the link and you'll find yourself at the review editor.

Before you write your review, it's a good idea to click the link to "Guidelines for Reviewing." Reviews that don't meet the guidelines are removed from the site. Some rules to keep in mind:

• Keep your review under the maximum length of 1,000 words, though the recommended length is 75-300 words.

• Make the review about the content of the book or product and how you feel about it.

• Don't give away the plot! Even if you think the book is terrible, you want others to have the chance to enjoy it.

• Don't include URLs, phone numbers, addresses, or profanity.

• Don't reference other reviewers. The reviews section wasn't meant for conversations. Though it's tempting to speak directly to someone else's review, each review should be able to stand on its own.

Once you understand the rules for posting, you can move to writing your review.

When you preview, you can see your review as it will look when posted on Amazon.com. Don't like what you see? Click the white "Edit" button to go back to editing mode. From there you can fix the problems and preview again. You can repeat this process as many times as you need to until the review is ready to post. Once you are satisfied, click the yellow "Save" button.

It takes about a week to ten days to see your published review. If you don't see your review after two weeks, contact Community Help (community-help@amazon.com) to find out if there is a problem with your review.

If you'd like to save a copy of the review for yourself, highlight the review after editing and copy and paste it into a word processor. Use the title of the book you're reviewing in the filename and save it to a special reviews folder. This way you'll have easy access to a local copy of all your work.

In addition to saving a local copy of each review, you can link directly to a page on Amazon in the About You area [Hack #17] that shows all of the reviews you've written [Hack #35].

Reviewers who post a lot of reviews and whose reviews are voted "helpful" by other Amazon customers get a privileged status at Amazon called Top Reviewer. Top Reviewers get a "badge" displayed alongside their reviews. There is a badge for reviewers in the Top 1000, Top 500, Top 100, Top 50, Top 10, and #1. The ranking is based on the number of reviews posted and the number of "helpful" votes received from other Amazon customers.

If you want to know more about reviews, you can visit the Review Discussion Board (http://forums.prosperotechnologies.com/am-custreview) and talk directly with other reviewers.

—Joanna Daneman