Getting Ready for the Holidays by Building an Amazon.com Wish List
Dave Aiello wrote, "The continued expansion of Amazon.com has made it even more enticing to establish a Wish List for yourself this holiday season. In order to help readers of CTDATA.com identify some best practices in setting up a Wish List, I added some new items to mine over the past few days:"
(Note: Please consult Dave Aiello's Wish List while reading this article. If you find this article helpful, you now know how to show your appreciation.)
- Include items other than books, music, and recorded video.
Amazon.com achieved early fame through its book, music, and DVD/VHS stores. But, did you know that Amazon has now established a Sporting Goods store with products from partners like Road Runner Sports? This is one of my favorite mail order retailers, where I buy most of my running shoes and exercise clothing.
- Include items at a number of price points.
When building a Wish List, it's a really good idea to include items that are inexpensive in addition to things that would be considered more significant gifts. After all, you want to encourage people to visit your Wish List for any number of gift giving opportunities.
I added things like a pound of my favorite candy and
a moderately priced digital camera to a list that had previously been dominated by books and videos priced between $10 and $50.
- Add things you need to replace because you've overused them.
Have you ever used a product until it broke? I've been doing that more and more recently. Over the summer, I broke the lens on my 35mm SLR film camera. I have had my Nikon N50 single lens reflex camera for many years. It's perfect for my film photography needs. But, until I get a new lens, the zoom feature of my original lens is stuck at around 40mm. This is clearly an opportunity for one of the members of my family to get me a gift that they know I'll use regularly.
- Link your Wish List to your web site.
Once you're done adding things to your Wish List, you can publicize it in a number of ways. One of the more effective ways to publicize it is to add a link to it from your web site.The book Amazon Hacks from O'Reilly mentions a really simple URL shortcut to any Wish List:
http://www.amazon.com/o/wishlist/email address of Wish List owner
This is an example of the kind of time and effort saving hints that are found in the Amazon Hacks book. I recommend it highly.
These are the ideas that came to mind while I was updating my Wish List earlier this week. I hope they help you get the kind of gifts that you want during the upcoming holiday season.