Alkon grew up in Farmington Hills, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Although currently a weak atheist, Alkon was born to a Jewish family. Alkon recalls being shunned due to prevailing anti-Semitic attitudes, even physically attacked in seventh grade by her classmates. Alkon credits her isolation as the catalyst that cultivated her early fondness for reading.

At some point, Alkon moved to New York City, where she dispensed advice on a street corner in SoHo as one of three women who called themselves "The Advice Ladies." This was not an occupation, merely a hobby, and their setup was minimal, using only folding chairs and a handmade sign advertising "Free Advice from a Panel of Experts". She co-authored a book, Free Advice - The Advice Ladies on Love, Dating, Sex, and Relationships with her fellow "Advice Ladies," Caroline Johnson and Marlowe Minnick. Her next book, a solo project entitled I See Rude People: One Woman’s Battle to Beat Some Manners Into Impolite Society, was released in November, 2009, and was published by McGraw Hill.

Before billing herself as the "advice goddess," Alkon wrote Ask Amy Alkon, an advice column published solely in the New York Daily News.

In 2004, the Biography Channel featured Alkon in a series of one-minute shorts called "The Advice Minute With Amy Alkon." There were 11 in total and during these segments, which ran between the Biography Channel's regular programs, Alkon dispensed advice on the streets of New York, just as she had done with her cohorts years earlier.

In her daily life, and in her blog, Alkon has a number of campaigns. In her article, "Hello, Psycho" (entitled after the opening salutation of one of her respondents), she describes her anti-SUV campaign, which consists of placing small cards on the windshields of SUVs. The cards (which are her own composition) refer to the driver as a "Road-Hogging, Gas-Guzzling, Air-Fouling Vulgarian" and pointedly suggest that the driver is compensating for "an extremely small penis" by driving "such a monstrosity."

Other issues she has written/spoken of are unruly children, which she attributes to bad parenting, inconsiderate cellphone users, and copyright violators. She always carries four days' supply of salami with her, in case someone serves her some pasta, which she does not eat.