Craig Newmark mentioned a new book his blog that sounded interesting to me (Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.-How the Working Poor Became Big Business) so I clicked over to Amazon to pick it up. It’s available for the Kindle, so I figured that would be the way to go since I can sync [...]
I’m a huge fan of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service where Amazon has created a platform that allows for simple contracting of web based work on a task by task basis. For those on you not familiar with the service, it allows people to upload work they’d like done that’s better done by humans than computers [...]
Amazon has offered a “Subscribe and Save” features for quite a while now where customers receive a discount if they’ll agree to automatically purchase a given product on regular intervals. This feature seems to be most common among grocery and household items that people tend to repurchase regularly. I’ve been meaning to try this for [...]
One of my biggest complaints in the past about Amazon’s Prime shipping membership was that it was too difficult to filter Amazon’s inventory for products that were eligible for free shipping. What good is a free shipping program if you can’t figure out which products quality and which are shipping from 3rd parties? This doesn’t [...]
I think one of the most misunderstood thing by businesses analyzing Amazon’s business model is the balance between quantity of inventory and the quality of their merchandising. Yes, Amazon sells a ton of stuff. In fact, the site has over 53 million pages indexed in Google, and it’s safe to assume that a large number [...]
As I reviewed the specs of the Kindle (Amazon’s new ebook reader), I’ve come away wondering who the heck this product would be valuable for. Frankly, I can’t figure out who the target market for it is, which leads me to believe that the Kindle will fail. I’ve tried to narrow down why I think [...]
I recently sold something on Ebay for $100 that could be purchased for $106.99 on Amazon. I was surprised by how much it went for. The product I sold was new in the box, so there was nothing wrong with it, but I expected it to close for considerably less than $7 less than what [...]
If you’re shopping on Amazon.com and find a product you’re interested in buying that’s sold through a 3rd party, you have two choices: 1. Buy the product directly from Amazon. 2. Head over to the 3rd party’s own ecommerce site to buy the product directly from them. Which choice is the right choice? As far [...]
Why does Amazon make it so hard to figure out which products in your shopping cart are running up your shipping costs? Is it just me? Let me explain: Last night, I added a few things to my shopping cart on Amazon. I knew that one of the items shipping directly from Amazon and qualified [...]
A look at how Amazon.com’s Digital Locker system makes life easier for customers and potentially will become a new revenue source for the retail giant.
