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Amazon Reviews You Can Use: Bizarro Comics

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 | Comic Books, E-commerce | Permalink | No Comments |

By Bob S. (New York, United States)
This am bad book. It am full of stories about Bizarro World, home of Bizarro, the handsome duplicate of Superman. Every story start with Bizarro Code: “Us do opposite of all earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!” Me cry every time me read this book. Me hate it so much, me give it to all my friends. Since book is so bad, you should buy lots of copies.

By Heath Hanlin (North Syracuse, NY USA)
This book am so awful. Sometime me read and feel very mad at universe. Me read to me 4 year old son. Most comics am not violent enough for he. This am ’cause made long time ago when comics having more blood. Now we talk bizarro all over house. Make us sad sad sad.

Previously - Amazon Reviews You Can Use: Fresh Whole Rabbit

Tags: amazon, reviews you can use

Amazon Reviews You Can Use: Fresh Whole Rabbit

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Amazon - Fresh Whole Rabbit:

By P. Breakfield IV “Tom” (Greenville, SC United States)
I’ll keep this short and sweet. We ordered one of these rabbits for our children this Easter and boy what a surprise. It is NOT a living rabbit. Someone has killed this rabbit and skinned it, I suppose for eating. Anyway, our children were traumatized and Easter is not the same holiday that it used to be for us. On the upside, we don’t have to fill their Easter baskets anymore as we told them the Easter bunny was killed by Amazon.

P.S. The rabbit tasted very good.

By Brad Ramirez (Denver, CO)
This goes great with the pelt, whiskers, and bunny eyeballs that I purchased on eBay. Now I have a whole rabbit! Thanks!

By V. Zhirinovsky “Vlad the Mad” (Virginia, USA)
I am Director of Unholy Sacrifices for a prominent pagan bloodcult. Since our traditional sacrifical practices have been banned in 189 countries and the moon, we are now allowed only to use animal carcasses purchased on the internet. Let me warn you, Baal-Hammon will NOT be appeased by this offering. The Dark One will only accept sacrifices of mammals larger than a badger.

By Bill “Bill” (Maryville, TN USA)
While I’m sure the rabbit tastes fine, I have to wonder… why does the part where Amazon shows what people who bought this item also bought display four enema devices and one teeny tiny thong? I’m kind of horrified.

By Elvis_Nixon (Oil Trough, Arkansas)
How many weekends have I spent, in the loincloth, knife clenched in my teeth, running through the fields trying to find a rabbit? (A bunch, trust me on this, a bunch.) All so I can have something to sacrifice on the altar once I get to the cave.

Now, with this, home, fix a cocktail, go through the day’s mail, finish my drink and drive over to the cave, yank this carcass out of the box and offer this at the feet of my dark lord and master, boom, done. I’m happy, my dark lord and master is happy, everybody wins.

Bonus! Zubaz Pants

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Tags: amazon, reviews you can use

NC may tax “digital click-throughs”

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | No Comments |

Amazon warns N.C. affiliates about tax issue. Amazon claims that if the legislation becomes law they’ll have to cancel contracts with affiliates in North Carolina. Presumably other affiliate programs and Google Adsense would be affected by the tax.

Tags: amazon, google adsense

Nikon 35mm/F1.8 AF-S lenses arriving at Amazon

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 | Photos | Permalink | 1 Comment |

I’ve had one of these on back order since May and today I got an order update:

We now have delivery date(s) for the order you placed on May 21 2009 (Order# XXXXXXXXXXX):

“Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras”
[Electronics]
Estimated arrival date: June 22 2009 - June 23 2009

I ordered the lens with Amazon Prime 2 day shipping. Based on the estimated arrival date I’d guess Amazon is expecting a shipment of lenses at their warehouse in the next day or two. Reviews are good and for $199 it seems hard to go wrong.

UPDATE: Amazon emailed me on Friday, June 19th saying it had shipped.

Tags: amazon, nikon

Amazon reviews you can use

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | No Comments |

Collegehumor.come piece prompts hundreds of tongue-in-cheek Amazon reviews of cheesy t-shirt. Via Ace of Spades:”Anyway, this has become a craze, and the t-shirt is now selling 100 per hour, with the small t-shirt company attempting to crank out 30,000 a day. (Note: I have no idea how 100 per hour becomes 30,000 per day, either. But that’s what the ABC article says. Take it up with the wolves.)”

FWIW, I don’t think the reviews are all that funny on this one, but the t-shirt company has to be thrilled with the orders.

Previously - Amazon reviews you can use

Tags: amazon, reviews you can use

Amazon reviews you can use

Thursday, May 21st, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz

“Has anyone else tried pouring this stuff over dry cereal? A-W-E-S-O-M-E!”

“Horrible service, I bought my milk and went with the 7-9 day super saver shipping method and it arrived warm and curdled. What the hell?”

“I was considering buying used milk from a trusted Amazon reseller but decided against it. So you’ll notice the condition of MY milk was “New.” I deserve this luxury.”

“Why go to my local store and pay $2.99 for a galon of milk when I can have it overnight delivered for 10 times that price? I think I’ll get three gallons next time. As a current Pentagon employee, this makes perfect sense to me.”

“Don’t get fooled by the easy-to-use look of this product.”

“This product copiously leaks out of my nose whenever I read these reviews.”

Customer images.

Tags: amazon, reviews you can use

Amazon Payment Subscriptions

Monday, May 4th, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | No Comments |

Want to charge for access to your Web site, but don’t know how to set up the payment and access system? Enter Amazon Payments Subscriptions. Amazon handles the code and processes the payment, even re-using account information for existing Amazon customers so they don’t have to re-key their data. Supposedly all you have to do is to copy and paste the code Amazon provides and you’ve got your own subscription wall.

If they could add the ability to issue license keys for software subscriptions I know of a publicly-traded company that would sign up tomorrow.

Hat tip to Rex Hammock.

Tags: amazon

Companies bribing customers for glowing Amazon reviews

Monday, April 27th, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | No Comments |

Consumerist: “After buying an anti-snoring mouthpiece from a third-party seller on Amazon, reader Bob received an email from the company offering him a free mouthpiece in exchange for a five-star review. He noted this attempted bribe in his Amazon review, and Amazon deleted it. Twice.”

That’s bad behavior, of the manufacturer and of Amazon. Consumerist has more examples of this sort of thing at the link.

Reviews and ratings are one of my favorite Amazon features, but like everyone else I’ve learned to look on them with a wrinkled brow. If a product on Amazon has dozens or hundreds of reviews I trust the ratings. When there are just one or two reviews I figure I’m getting played about half of the time.

Tags: amazon

Because, like, who doesn’t totally love My Little Pony?

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | 6 Comments |

Last month I joined the Amazon affiliates program and posted an Amazon ad on all of the blog pages. These are Amazon’s smart ads. I don’t pick the items that appear; Amazon picks the items algorithmically based on my site content and which ads get clicked.

I’ve noticed that some of the items that show up in the ads are from my Amazon wish list. Others are products I’ve linked to from the blog or mentioned on the blog.

Now I want to see if I can steer the ads in a certain direction. You’ll be seeing some My Little Ponies content for the next week or so. Why My Little Ponies? Because it’s so totally different than the guns and flashlights type content on the site that I’ll know for sure when I see the effects.

Keep an eye on the Google ads, too. Google is amazing at contextual advertising: supplying ads that match the content of the page they’re on. I’ll bet Google starts showing My Little Ponies ads before Amazon.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a rollerskate party to attend.

P.S. I use Joost de Valk’s Amazon Auto Affiliate Linker plug-in for WordPress. It automatically adds my Amazon affiliate ID to any Amazon items I link. Obviously you can add that affiliate information manually for new posts. What’s great about the plug-in is that it adds the affiliate information to any Amazon links I’ve posted on the blog over the past six years. Valk has other great WordPress plug-ins and information.

UPDATE: Less than two hours after I published this Amazon started showing My Little Pony on this post’s archive page. They even beat Google Adwords to the punch. Amazon for the win.