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Attract Perfect Customers Using Amazon

Amazon.com is one of the most popular sites in the world with millions of visitors. Wouldn’t it be great to let a few of these people know a little about you and your services? Well you can. You cannot overtly promote a business and you cannot use phone numbers or website addresses. But you can use your real name and email address so people know who you are. You can also describe what you do in your Amazon profile area. In your reviews you can mention how the book helped you in your business and to become better at what you do. It’s a great way to make new internet friends and meet new clients.

How to do it
Become a Member
First you have to be a member. If you have ever bought anything from Amazon, then you are probably already a member. If not, just click on the “Start here” link at the top of the site for new customers. You will want to use an email address that you don’t mind giving out to the public. I use lplummer@seasideinteractive.com for public use, but have another one I use with friends.
Create Your Profile

1. After you sign on, you will want to create your profile. To do this, click on the Friends & Favorites link at the top navigation of the site. If you don’t see it at the top navigation, it may be on the left navigation under “Special Features”.

2. From the Friends & Favorites page you will see a link to “Create your About You area”. Click on this link.

3. Put in your name and the nick-name you want to use. If you are doing this to for self promotion purposes, then you will want to create a “Real Name” and you might want to use a nickname that is related to your company or what you do. I chose seaside-interactive as my nickname. To create a Real Name you must enter your credit card information so they can verify your real address. I used a company credit card I have so my company name is now part of my “Real Name”.

4. Regarding Identity, you will also want to make your name public and your email address viewable to everyone. This is why it is important to use your “public” email address.

5. You have up to 4000 characters to describe your self. You might want to glance at the guidelines, but the main rules are that you cannot use phone numbers or web addresses or just use the space to sell something. Since we are all Lighthouses and not searchlights, this does not present a problem. You will just want to use this to describe your lighthouse and let the laws of attraction do the rest.

6. You might also want to add a photo. It needs to be 70 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall and can be a JPG or GIF image.

7. Your profile should now be created and you are ready to start leaving your imprint on Amazon.

Start Reviewing
I like to write my reviews in a word processor, so I can run spell checker and take my time.  This way I can work on several reviews and when I have them ready, I can just clip and paste them into the form on Amazon. But you can also write them online if you like.  

To create a book review follow these steps:

1. Find the book you want to review on Amazon and find the “Product Details” section. This is where it tells how many pages the book has, who the publisher is and the average customer review.

2. Click on the “Write a review” link located right next to the “Average Customer Review” information.

3. Rate the book by giving it 1 to 5 starts

4. Enter a Title for your review

5. Enter your review. It is recommended that your review be between 75 and 300 words. If you write it up in Word first, you can use the Properties tab to find out how many words you have written.

6. Check that you are over 13 if you are, and then click on the “Preview your review” link.

7. If everything looks great, just hit the Submit button and you are done!

More Free Exposure – “So You’d Like to… Guides”
Amazon provides another great way to promote yourself on their website by writing and publishing guides. These guides must be educational and cannot be purely for self promotion. You cannot mention your website or your phone number. But if you have created a Real Name as I suggest, they will have access to your email address and who you are. So if they like what you say, they will know how to get in touch with you. 

The guides are geared to help Amazon sell more books, so you will need to have at least 3 books to recommend that are related in some way to the guide. So if your guide is about Feng Shui, you need three books about Feng Shui that you your recommend the user read.

Creating a Guide
1. Before you start, you will need to get the ASIN/ISBN numbers for the 3 books you will be recommending with your guide. You can get this from the Details section on Amazon for each book you will include.

2. Also, if you are like me, you will want to create a document on your computer so you can write your guide in a word processor such as Microsoft Word first and then cut and paste it into the Amazon site.

3. Log in to Amazon.com and go to the Friends & Favorites page

4. On the left under “Your Content” you will see the link for “So You’d Like to… Guides:”. Click on this link.

5. Click on the Create a Guide link.

6. Enter the Title for the Guide, such as “Feng Shui for Love” or “Self Esteem for the Single Mom”. The Title must be between 8 and 60 characters long.

7. Enter your qualifications for writing the guide, such as certified Fend Shui consultant or personal self esteem coach. Qualifications must be between 10 and 60 characters.

8. Start your guide by entering the ISBN/ASIN numbers for the books. You have to use the following special format for this: <ASIN: 123456789> where 123456789 is the ASIN/ISBN number of your recommendation.

9. After you have your three (or more) book recommendations, then you can start with your guide. Be sure to use break it up with paragraphs and headlines for easy reading. You might want to tell the reader a little about yourself and your business in the opening paragraph so they can make a connection with you. You guide must be at least 100 words long and cannot be more than 1500 words. Again, I use Word’s document properties feature to let me know how many words I have.

10. After you have entered your guide information, just click on the Save and Continue button.

11. You will then see what your guide will look like on the site. Click on the Edit button if you need to make changes. When it looks like you want it to, just click on the Publish button and you are done!

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