Site Review: AmazonBitcoins (2 updates)

Do you buy at Amazon? Would you like to buy their stuff using Bitcoins? Now it's possible, thanks to a new Bitcoin service which launched yesterday: AmazonBitcoins!

http://amazonbitcoins.com/

My Experience With AmazonBitcoins


One of the administrators from AmazonBitcoins contacted me one week ago to see if I could review their new website. I accepted, as long as they sent me the necessary Bitcoins to test their service. I'm glad they trusted a crazy guy like me who calls himself "The Bitcoin Master" and sent some coins (Update 2, 25/02/2013) 0.9฿ my way! I'll tell you my experience using their service.

The first thing you'll see when you visit AmazonBitcoins is that the website is really clean and uncluttered; there's only the necessary amount of text needed to know what the site does and how it does it. It almost looks like an iPhone app inside your browser with that big "Get Started" blue button. If you press said button it will show you a dialog to register a new account:

Simple and infomative

When you introduce your data in the text fields and press the "Register" blue button you'll be given a personal AmazonBitcoins Bitcoin address to send the coins you'd like to exchange for Amazon gift cards. You may send as little as $1 (converted to bitcoins) to try out the service:

The "Copy to Clipboard" option is a nice detail

I sent them the 0.888฿ needed to buy a $25 Amazon gift card. Every time you visit the site this exchange prize is recalculated taking as a reference the one at Mt.Gox:

Transaction sent!

And in seconds I received this very professionally written email:

0.888฿ = $25.15? I guess the bitcoin exchange versus the dollar went

up while I was using this service!

After that, I only had to wait 13 minutes to receive my Amazon code on my inbox:

Excellent!

The service is really fast! Once you send them Bitcoins a new link will appear at the top of the AmazonBitcoins page with your order history. It will show you the status of your orders and the gift codes once they are processed:

This is my order history...

... And this is a sample order history where you can see two orders:

one pending and another complete

They also had a Live Chat where I had the chance to chat with Brian, one of the creators of the site! This is a great addition in case you have questions about the service. Brian is very helpful and nice as well:

Update 1, 25/02/2013: The Amazon gift code I received was redeemed by the AmazonBitcoins administrators, not by me.


Site Review:

• Service quality: 5/5. The website is clean and zen-like, the registration process is hassle-free and the information they give covers everything you need to know about the service. They've also got a FAQ.
• Convenience: 5/5. This is a great service for those who'd like to buy stuff from the Old World (where Bitcoin has not yet been widely adopted by every business). And especially for those who don't want to go through the process of registering on a market exchange (or can't [I'm looking at you Residence Certificate!]) to transform their Bitcoins into other currency. 
• Service speed: 4/5. The service is fast. It's not automatic, since they have to wait for some confirmations of your transaction to avoid the bad people who double spend their bitcoins. They are planning to let customers with a good payment history skip this waiting time and receive their gift codes as fast as possible.
• Risk: 0/5 1/5. None. The administrators are good, trustful people. Their service works very well and if you have questions you can contact them via Live Chat or email. Update 2, 25/02/2013: Read the comments.
• Final Score: 10/10. AmazonBitcoins works like a charm. You can now buy stuff at Amazon with your bitcoins faster than if you go through a market exchange to transform them into dollars or other Old World Currency. It's a service I'd recommend to anyone!

Site Review: CoinUploads

Today I'll review a great web that allows you to earn Bitcoins with your digital files! It's really easy to use, anonymous and works very well. And its name is CoinUploads:

http://www.coinuploads.com/

My Experience With CoinUploads


A couple of weeks ago I put a notice on my Blogger profile inviting my awesome readers to suggest websites that I should review. Soon I received an email from one of the administrators of CoinUploads, a site that lets you host and monetize your digital files. Let's review it then!

The first thing you'll notcie when you visit the site is that it's really clean and minimalist. There's just some text succinctly explaining the service and a button to upload your file. There's no need to create an account, so the service is really fast. I created a text file with a list of my favourite webs to get free bitcoins and uploaded it. This information appeared on screen:

Select your price

Here I could choose the price I wanted to sell my file for and also was informed of the amount I'd end up earning after their cut was applied. You keep 70% of the price paid for your file, as in so many Internet services of today. Since this was just an experiment, I chose the minimum: $0,001. I introduced a new bitcoin address I created to receive payments from CoinUploads and pressed on "Save this file". I saw a new page:

Upload successful!

It said my file had been uploaded and gave me a link to share my file and earn money on every download. I decided to put the link on my blog, at the top of the right column. You can still see it if you look to your right.

I left it there for a couple of days but I didn't see any activity on the bitcoin address I created to test this service. I guess nobody wants to pay for a list they can get at the end of each one of my posts on this blog! I decided then to test the service... Buying my own file myself.

When you click on the "Download Here" link you are sent to this page:

(Since the price of Bitcoin is continually increasing it must be cheaper now)

You are told the price of the file in bitcoins and are given two options to buy it:

Download by Voucher or with Bitcoins

I clicked on the option to buy with bitcoins. My screen showed this micropayment page:

It generates an address for you to pay for the file

This page reloads every certain amount of time waiting for your payment to arrive. I must say I really like the minimalism and simplicity of the whole process. There's no clutter; they have only written what is essential for the service to work and nothing else.

Under the previous screen section, there was this:

A referral link!

Since I was going to buy my own file, I guessed I could use that referral link and not lose as many microbitcoins. Then I'd also be able to test the referral system! I created a new bitcoin address to receive the commision and introduced the referral link on my browser's address bar. Another screen with a new bitcoin address to send my payment to appeared. I payed:

I payed a ton more in transaction fees than for the actual file...

And in less than a minute they received the payment!:

A wild download link appeared!

As you can expect, when I clicked on the download link I downloaded my own file, which was nicely saved on my hard drive:

I feel weird for doing this...

Now I had my own file successfully downloaded, but I had yet to receive my earnings. I waited a few hours and this transactions appeared on my digital wallet:

Earnings and commisions!

Everything went incredibly well. The commision was 13,08µ฿, 35,001% of the basic price of the file (exactly as they claim). It's a bit odd that I received 38,86µ฿ when I had payed 37,37µ฿. Still, it's great to see that a service based on Bitcoin works so well! I recommend it to everyone that needs a place to host files which they want to sell!


Site Review:

• Expected profit: ?/5. This depends on how interesting your digital content is and how good your marketing skills are!
• Convenience: 5/5. Everything works as it should, the design is clean and uncluttered and there's nothing I could think of to improve this service!
• Payment speed: 4/5. They send their transactions in batch after six confirmations. You only have to wait a few hours to receive your bitcoins.
• Risk: 0/5. None. You won't have to pay anything upfront for uploading files, so you can nothing lose by using this service even if you then don't manage to sell them!
• Final Score: 10/10. CoinUploads is the service that anybody who needs a place to store their commercial digital content and wants to be paid in bitcoins should use. It's simple to use, effective, fast... I really can't think of anything that could make it better, so go and try it!