Amazon Reviews
Reviews are a huge part of the Amazon experience. We trust the masses to inform us whether a given product is good or bad, and a huge portion of our purchase decisions are driven by reviews. Plus, they’re sometimes quite entertaining.
But, what most of us don’t know is that there is an entire subculture behind Amazon reviews. People who dedicate weeks, months, years, and virtually their entire lives to just reviewing products on Amazon. There are even people who make a living off of writing reviews. So, let’s spend some time exploring this strange world of Amazon reviewers.
The Reviewer Leaderboards
In case you didn’t know, Amazon has leaderboards for its reviewers, highlighting those reviewers with the most reviews and which have achieved top ranked positions. You see, Amazon has an algorithm it uses to determine your reviewer rank. It is likely some combination of the number reviews you write, plus the topics you review, plus how people rate your review, plus many other mysterious things we don’t know. But, what we do know is that being on top of the Amazon ranking leaderboards is very, very valuable.
Consider Mandy Payne, a consultant from LA who at one point was the #10 reviewer on Amazon. Each day, she would come home to between 15 and 30 new packages on her front doorstep, sent for free by companies begging her to review her products. She once even received a treadmill.
However, with great power comes great responsibility, and such visibility comes with some downsides. The reviewer leaderboards are very competitive. Other reviewers trying to climb the ladder will specifically target other reviewers, down voting all of their reviews so that they can steal their spot. All top reviewers have to be on the lookout for such malicious upstarts, reporting them to Amazon to avoid potentially lose their coveted position.
Joanna Daneman, the most decorated reviewer in history, notes just how competitive the environment is among reviewers:
“There is definitely targeting. It’s well known. You just have to keep calm and keep reviewing.”
Beyond targeting though, reviewers take other shortcuts to try to reach the top spot. For instance, a study of Amazon reviewers found that nearly 35% of top reviewers said that they had been plagiarized by other reviewers. And then beyond the competitiveness between the reviewers, reviewers also have to deal with the flack they get from users:
“It’s a weird, creepy subculture,” said Mandy Payne, “I get hate mail. I’ve had death threats. But then I also have fans who seem to follow everything I do. It’s bizarre.”
But, despite all this, maybe the treadmills are worth it.
The Stats Behind the Top Reviewers
Now that you know a little bit about the Amazon review culture, let’s dive a little into the amazing volume of reviews cranked out by some of these reviewers.
Consider Ali Julia, who has 4,833 reviews. She wrote only 10 reviews before 2010, and thus has written 4,823 reviews between 2010 and today, which averages out to about just about 2 new reviews a day. And it’s not like she’s just outputting shitty reviews —she averages almost 11 “helpful” votes per review.
However, while Ali Julia’s work is impressive, a number of her reviews cover simple products like lipstick. If you want to really be impressed, let me introduce you to Harriet Klausner.
Harriet was a former librarian with a masters degree in library science who loved reading, and who loved sharing that reading with the world. A self-proclaimed master speed reader, Harriet reviewed a total of 31,014 books on Amazon from the late 90s to her death in 2015. This averages out to a stunning 4.5 books reviewed on Amazon per day.
Harriet noted that her goal was to bring attention to “lesser-known” authors who didn’t have any major publicity behind them.
Harriet is memorable not only for her volume of reviews, though, but rather also for a number of peculiarities concerning her reviews. For instance, she rated every single book she ever read either 4 or 5 stars. According to some critics, “Her unrelenting positivity made her reviews utterly uninformative”.
Most of her reviews would start with a quick 2–3 sentence summary, and then dive into a handful of run-on sentences filled with words like “fabulous”, “superb”, “enjoyable”, and “fist-pumping”. For instance:
Readers will feel an adrenaline surge throughout Dr. John Benedict’s twisting and at times shocking hospital suspense; while also looking forward to the sequel
SILKEN THREADS is an exciting Medieval romantic intrigue that will fire the secret yearnings of the audience. The readers will enjoy the feel of authenticity wrapped inside a romantic mystery. The lead characters are extremely exciting. Especially interesting is Graeham. Playing the Jimmy Stewart part, Graeham’s dual nature of heavenly passion and wild thunder turns the book into one of the sub-genre’s best of the year. Patricia Ryan relocates “Rear Window” to twelfth century London in such a way that Hitchcock would have been proud.
Literally, every single one of her reviews is exactly like this. She was so prolific that some people even started a blog just about her, which while titled “Appreciation Society” was mostly people debating if reviewing that many books was even possible.
However, when informed about her haters, Harriet was unfazed. Like a true badass, she told them in a New York Times interview in 2012 “Get a life. Read a book”.
The Amazon Review Algorithm
If you’re interested in getting onto the top reviewer charts, you’ll probably want to spend some time on Amazon’s very own reviewer forums. Interestingly, these forums are mostly an opportunity for reviewers to debate about how Amazon’s reviewer ranking algorithm works. Do reviews of newer products mean more? Are certain categories of products preferred for reviews? Etc.
There has actually been intense drama over the years when Amazon has changed its algorithm. For instance, in 2008, Amazon started ranking reviewers higher if people rated their reviews as helpful. This shot Harriet from #1 on the review charts (a spot she had held for years) to much, much lower (at the time of her death she was #2,447).
But, at the end of the day, despite the competition, the drama, and the work, maybe it’s all worth the 15–30 packages a day, and the chance to leave reviews like this for the world to see.
