Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools

Amazonのエディトリアルレビューより

Book Description

 『Amazon Hacks』はAmazon.com の力を最大限引き出すためのツールやコツを集めたものである。Amazonで買い物を熱心にする人や、Amazonアソシエイトを通じて自サイトで商品を紹介し、良いリンクを作成して多くの紹介料を得ようとする人、Amazon.comで自社製品を販売する小売業者、豊富な機能を提供するAmazonウェブサービスAPIを利用してアプリケーションを記述するプログラマといったすべての人に役立つだろう。

   買い物をする人は、Amazon.comが提供する奥深い機能を最大限利用し、Amazon.comのコミュニティーの一員としてウィッシュリストをまとめたり、より良いおすすめ結果を得られるようにしたり、友人や家族に「share the love」サービスによる特典を提供したりすることができる。Amazonアソシエイトプログラムを通じた魅力ある商品リストの作成、検索分類の工夫や関連商品情報を加えることでプロモーションを成功させる方法、そして自店舗サイトをより魅力的に見せるためのコツについても述べている。

   真のパワーユーザーなら、Amazon APIを通じてAmazonの機能を利用するアプリケーションを開発して店舗サイトを開き、人気の出る商品をそろえ、Amazonから梱包、出荷させることができる。だれもがAmazon.comで新品・中古品の売り手になれるように、商品リストを作成したり、価格を決めたり、注文を処理する方法を示している。

Product Description

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.

Amazon.com Review

At its core, Amazon.com is a great big database concerned with lots of stuff--books, of course, but also tools, clothing, films on DVD, kitchen equipment, and lots and lots (and lots) of Harry Potter paraphernalia. Want to wear an Anna Kournikova exercise brassiere while juicing celery (presumably with considerable vigor)? Amazon can help. Need a cricket bat, radar gun, dietary fiber supplement, or vibrasonic molechaser? Amazon has what you need. Which is all great, but the real value of Amazon.com isn't that these things are in the database. The real value of this site lies in the information about all that stuff--reviews, sales rankings, recommendations, and the like--and the large number of ways to access it. Amazon Hacks explains how to get the most out of Amazon.com as an ordinary customer with a Web browser and as a software developer interested in the site's considerable collection of Web Services.

In Amazon Hacks, Paul Bausch documents most of the avenues Amazon.com has opened up for exploration of the database. A lot of his coverage borders on the obvious: Sections on how to "Power-Search for Books" and "Put an Item Up for Bid at Amazon Auctions" aren't too different from Amazon's own explanatory articles. Coverage of how to add an Amazon search box to your own site, and add Amazon Associates item links to various kinds of Weblogs (including Blosxom and Moveable Type) are much handier. Bausch really shines when explaining Amazon.com's Web Services (AWS), the remotely accessible software interfaces that enables programs to search the database. He includes AWS-enabled programs in PHP, Python, and Perl. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to use Amazon.com as a Web surfer, Web site publisher, and software developer. Detailed coverage goes to advanced product search techniques, managing the characteristics associated with your Amazon login, selling through Amazon Auctions and zShops, and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API for Perl, PHP, and Python.