Amazon Hacks

Create a Guide

Share your expert knowledge with the world by creating a tutorial that shows up on product detail pages.

Have you ever wanted to know how to “Make-Out to the Right Music,” or “Be Serious About Your Photographs”? Both of these are titles of guides available on Amazon.com that were written by other Amazon visitors. Anyone can write a guide about any topic.

To get a sense of how guides work, start looking for them on Amazon pages. Amazon links to guides toward the bottom of product detail pages with the heading “So you’d like to . . . " with the guide titles as you see in Figure 3-4.

Figure 3-4. Links to guides from a product detail page

A product detail page will link to a guide when that product (or a related product) appears in the guide. Amazon links to only three related guides; if more related guides are available, they’re rotated with each page view. You can also find guides with related items on search results pages. The guides themselves are free-form, essay-like writing, like you see in Figure 3-5. The guides contain headlines for different sections and links to products. Each guide must have at least three product references.

Figure 3-5. An Amazon Guide

Once you’re ready to tackle a guide, visit your Friends & Favorites page (http://www.amazon.com/friends) and click ...