Equally, you don't need to set up too many categories containing only a few products. Unless you intend to expand such categories, I recommend setting up lists or guides as they are more prominent on Amazon and you can include comments.

To get ideas for themes to use, you may first wish to look at Amazon's own categories. Go to the Welcome page and see the "Browse" box in the left margin. This lists the broad categories (stores) - Books, Music, Toys & Games, DVD and so on. Click on one of these and you will see another "Browse" window with a list of categories within that store. Most if not all of those categories are further sub-divided. We cannot build a hierarchy of categories as Amazon has created but this has advantages. We can include books, DVD's and music in the same category if we wish.

Note that for every product, you can see how Amazon categorizes it by looking just above the blue suggestion box near the bottom of the page, where you should see a section head "Browse for ".

Although you can use some of Amazon's categories, you don't have to. Here are mine.

Christmas 'Christmas With Julie Andrews (Exp)'

books 'Pop Memories 1890-1954 : The History of American Popular Music'

Dolly 'Mission Chapel Memories 1971-1975'

Petula 'Ses Plus Belles Chansons: Best of Petula Clark'

various artists 'Tennessee Mountain Home: 23 Bluegrass Gems'

jazz 'The Sound of Silence/Portrait of Carmen'

folk 'Definitive New Christy Minstrels'

bluegrass 'Moonlighter'

country men 'Horse Legends'

country women 'Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments For Lost Buckaroos'

country groups 'Carryin' On With Johnny Cash & June Carter'

r and b 'Ultimate Collection'

Pop, rock and easy listening music will be categorized together for now as follows :-

vintage 'The Golden Age of the Andrews Sisters'

1950s 'Hysteria-Singles Collection'

1960s men 'A Golden Classics Edition'

1960s women 'Bobby's Girl: Complete Seville Recording'

1970s men 'Very Best of George McCrae'

1970s women 'Legend'

1980s 'Immaculate Collection'

modern 'Ultimate Kylie'

Other categories that I could create such as France, children and classical are adequately catered for via lists and guides though this may change.

Setting up tags

Go to any product page and enter a tag name in the space provided above the image then click "Add". You can tag each product as many times as you like if you want that product to appear in more than one category. It's as simple as that. Of course, if you have hundreds (or, worse still, thousands) of reviews, it is time-consuming. If you feel the task is somewhat daunting, you may choose to just classify some of them, at least to begin with. Note that you can't paste into the tag name box, but if you type a few letters of the tag name then pause, a drop-down window appears showing tag names already used (not just by you). Thus, you don't have to type in the whole name.

Navigating tags

When you click on a tag name, you can choose to follow all the tags that anybody has given that name to – however, you can also choose to follow the tags by one customer only. Thus, if you set up a category "Christmas" I can follow your Christmas tags (if you have any) just as you can follow mine. Alternatively, either of us can follow everybody's Christmas tags, which is less useful. That option may have some use for specialist categories.

Updating tags

Once you have some tags, you will find a section on your home page (below Most Recent Purchases but above Reminders) devoted to tags. See the link "Manage your tags". I'll have more to say about this later when the system settles down.

You can also remove tags from the product pages to which they are attached. After the box associated with "Add tag" you'll find an Edit link. Use this to remove the tag you no longer want.

Your personal website

Set up an index on your website if you have one. I am setting up a website primarily for this purpose. I'll have more to say when it's ready but it will need a separate guide due to Amazon's guide size limitations.