12 Amazon features you probably didn't know existed

You can use Mechanical Turk to crowd-source "human intelligence tasks" — like identifying photos — to people all over the world.

Mechanical Turk basically gives users access to an on-demand workforce, and it gives people who want to make a little extra money a way to find quick-and-easy online labor. Here's some examples from the site: you can get paid $0.04 per picture to find images of specified real estate agents or $0.02 to copy text from a picture of a business card.

Here's a link to Mechanical Turk.

If you live in New York, Seattle, parts of California. or London, you can use Amazon Locker to get your packages dropped off at secure location while you're at work.

For people who work all day and don't want to get personal packages delivered to the office yet can never make it to the post office before it closes, Locker is a godsend.

Lockers are often in 24-hour facilities — like 7-Elevens — and when you go to pick up your package you just have to enter a code that was texted or emailed to you to get it.

Check out Amazon Locker.

If you shop with Amazon Smile, the company will donate a percentage of your total order to a charity of your choice at no extra cost to you.

Tens of millions of items are available for purchase through Amazon Smile. The site donates 0.5% of purchases to the charity that you choose.

Learn more about Amazon Smile.

Amazon Flow lets you take a picture of a product on your smartphone to automatically add it to an Amazon shopping list.

With recent initiatives like Amazon Dash and #AmazonCart, the company is trying to get buyers to spend more by making shopping as easy and seamless as possible. Flow — which is available as a standalone app and integrated with Amazon's iPhone app — lets you find items you want on Amazon without having to type anything or scan a bar code.

Check out Flow here.

You can read through thousands of questions (and answers) about anything and everything on Amazon's Askville site. Amazon no longer keeps the site active, though, so you can't ask or answer new questions.

Although Amazon disabled the ability to ask and answer questions in 2013, Askville is still a huge repository of (often amusing) information.

It's similar to Yahoo! Answers in that some questions are serious, while others ("Is this the Loch Ness monster?") are clearly just for fun.

Here's a link to Askville.

You can get a book published in Amazon's Kindle store less than 24 hours after submitting it through Kindle Direct Publishing.

If you're an author who has written a book but doesn't know anything about publishing, you can get your book out there for free with Kindle Direct Publishing. You can set any price that you want for your book but Amazon will keep 30% of all royalties.

Learn more about Kindle Direct Publishing here.

You can share your Amazon Prime account with up to five people.

Amazon Prime accounts cost $99, but you won't have to buy your own if you have a friend who feels like sharing. From Amazon.com, navigate to Your Account > Manage your Prime account, where you can then invite up to five people who will be able to share the shipping benefits (though not the access to Instant Video). Those invited will have to enter the Prime account holder's birthday to confirm that they know them.

You can also share your e-books and apps with one other person.

You can share your Amazon content using what the company calls Kindle Family Library. Using the free service, you can share your books, apps, and movies with one other adult and up to three "child" accounts (those accounts can access your content, but they can't have any content of their own).

It's really easy to set-up: Find out how to do it here.

If you spot an Amazon link on Twitter, you can add the product to your shopping cart by replying with the hashtag "#AmazonCart."

Amazon and Twitter teamed up last May to make it easier for people to instantly save products so they'd remember to order them. If you look at the hashtag now, though, it's mostly being used by people and brands trying to convince others to buy their products.

Find out how to set it up here.

Buy something all the time? You can subscribe to get it on a regular basis.

Amazon lets you subscribe to certain items you'll need to buy over and over, like toothpaste, toilet paper, or dog food. In exchange for agreeing to buy an item on a continuous schedule, you'll get a little discount.

If an item is available for subscription, you'll see the option when you go to check out. You personalize how often you'd like the item delivered, but Amazon will email you before shipping the item so you can delay it if you're using a product slower than expected.

If you don't care about buying something new, you can also search specifically for refurbished goods.

The Warehouse Deals category on Amazon offers deep discounts on open-box, refurbished, and used products that are in good condition, but not technically "new." For example, you might get a returned laptop for 15% off.

Browse the selection here.

BONUS: You used to be able to use a feature called Diamond Search to buy individual stones on the site based on their carat, shape and color.

Back in the mid-2000s, Amazon really amped up its jewelry business. For several years, Amazon let customers design their own rings on the website, and would then make them in its Kentucky fulfillment center. Diamond Search was an aspect of that.

The company also had a contract with celebrity Paris Hilton that had her selling her jewelry designs exclusively on Amazon.

12 Amazon features you probably didn't know existed

If you get invited to become an Amazon Vine reviewer, you'll get free stuff from companies to review.