Pan For Gold at Amazon

If you’re trying to position yourself as an expert, hop on over to Amazon.com and start panning for gold.

The popular website where you can buy everything from books to wireless telephone service is one of the best places on the Internet to promote your expertise, get in front of a targeted audience of buyers, and really flaunt your stuff–even if you aren’t selling anything. That’s because Amazon gives you 17 ways to show what you know.

Just ask Don Mitchell. The management consultant ranked as the Number One non-fiction book reviewer on Amazon. He’s so well-known by business authors that he’s flooded with galleys and new books from eager publishers who literally beg him to offer his comments.

“I feel a little bit like the fellow at Sutter’s Fort in California in the 1840s when he happened to bend down and spot this big gold nugget,” Don said.

He started writing short book reviews on Amazon about 10 years ago, when his first book was published, and he was having such great response from Amazon customers that he kept writing reviews.

“Gradually, funny things started to happen. I started getting contacts from people who would ask me serious business questions. After a few emails back and forth, I would start to get clients this way. Who would have thought that a management consulting firm would attract CEOs of large companies through writing book reviews on Amazon? It was the first tip-off to me that there was something really going on there.”

Indeed.

He even reviewed his competitors’ books. And not all the reviews were positive. But that’s what helps build the buzz online, and draw traffic to the review.

Because Amazon lets you create a profile for yourself and link back to your website, that translates into controversy and buzz that draws more traffic. And more big-contract consulting assignments for people like Don.

Amazon also lets you post articles. So you can recycle all those how-to articles that you’ve been writing for online article directories and your own website, and post them on relevant book pages on Amazon that tie into the same topic.

Is that cool or what?

– Joan