What Shoppers Don't Realize About Amazon Reviews
My thoughts: Not all Amazon customer reviewers care about rank. Rank does nothing for you really. There is no payment and there are no perks.
The only thing that a decent rank has done for me is open me up to receive offers for free books to review from self-published authors or small presses whose authors hired a public relations agent. These started rolling in once I put that I was open to those on my Amazon profile. I quickly began to realize that those books were either poorly written or I was being offered topics I never would read so it was not a good use of my time.
Additionally, writing a negative review when the author has your contact information is not a good idea. Amateur writers who are out of touch with the real publishing industry have different perceptions and expectations than professional writers.
Once I removed my email and that statement from my Amazon profile the offers stopped rolling in.
Oddly some Amazon customer reviewers who really do care about rank are obsessed with trying to increase their ranking numbers by tearing down others on the rank list near them (there is a list that anyone can view by rank order). They also try to tear down others who reviewed the same products to try to bump their review up higher on the list so it will have a better chance of being read, since not all customers scroll down to the bottom to read every single review. A funny thing about some of these obsessed rank strivers is that they are poor review writers or have nothing unique to say. Therefore the real issue about why they are not achieving a lot of helpful votes is that no one is being helped by their review or it just doesn't standout enough or help a person enough to warrant them clicking that button.
(Have you ever asked Amazon shoppers how often they click the helpful button? I only have found two loyal Amazon shoppers who ever use that button and it is only sometimes.)
My favorite thing about this article is that it is on a website which the writers get paid to publish an article. The odds of being read are increased when the article is controversial and it may spawn links such as me blogging this and linking to it, which drives money directly into the pocket of the article author. Amazon.com has a huge discussion board for customers and when it gets discussed and linked to there, more money goes into the pocket of the article writer. So, enjoy the money, Laura Hazard Owen, even if it is profiting off of what I insist are still misconceptions about at least some Amazon customer reviewers.
I wrote my first Amazon customer review in 1998. I have been in the Top 500 since they started ranking, I believe.