#amazon vine

[cupchecks]

I went a little over budget in March, but was under for 2025 rollover, Jan, and Feb, and so far April is shaping up to be under, too.

I guess all of the $0 ETV stuff is showing up in RFY, now.

Someone got a slushie maker today and I really want one, but it WOULD be a pain to have to move it come June. Maybe one will pop up after the move.

I bet my gaggle of nieces and nephews would love one.

[cupchecks]

This much more stuff has happened since that last spreadsheet post.

I did go and color code some things. Because I can.

I also set up a template tab for the colors and categories and started one for next year.

Amazon added some features to Vine recently like a quality rating for your reviews that will affect your account rating eventually and I'm resisting adding that to my spreadsheet. I don't NEED to, but we all know me with compiling and sorting data.

I did cross $2k, of course, and there's still time to add quite a bit more to my total before the end of the year. I will try to not.

I've been thinking about how every time I start doing something it goes to shit.

Vine, for instance, everyone is saying there's not nearly as much stuff and way more participants so now it's a mad scramble to get anything at all. They keep adding metrics to your account rating, presumably to filter out lower-performing participants (it won't negatively affect me, likely, but it might if they set one like "X number of poor reviews EVER and you get the boot"), and a lot of things that had been $0 ETV, so truly free, no longer are.

In addition to that, the IRS deciding Vine items are now considered taxable income is relatively recent. If I'd been invited a decade ago I'd have gotten SO much stuff over the years and not had to worry about pushing myself into another tax bracket and deleting all of my piddly gas station income by owing it in taxes on product that was never money to begin with and couldn't be used to pay the bills. Now, I have to be more careful and because of that I do miss out on a lot of stuff. Which. Is actually ok. I have a ton of stuff already.

There are other things, of course, like how as soon as I decided I was ready to try to strike out on my own and escape a bad relationship and home situation the cost of apartments skyrocketed and so did the cost of used cars way outside my ability to earn in addition to the AI reading resumes issue that filters out a lot of good candidates for jobs in error.

It just stinks.

I'm still having fun with Vine, still MOSTLY not requesting random junk, and well on track to make it to "gold". I'll have to be even more careful then, though, because having 8 picks a day instead of 3 and with values over $99 possible, it would be very, very easy to screw myself income-tax-wise.

Being in Vine has let me experience things I otherwise wouldn't have been able to.

[cupchecks]

A lot of people complain about their RFY being nonsense....

...

Yeah.

[cupchecks]

Am I having too much fun with this? Yes.

I will likely go and color-code the emoji column, too. Because I can.

This is everything I've ordered via Vine so far.

I see people complaining about, like "I ordered and reviewed 400 pieces of JUNK to get to GOLD and gold isn't as magical as I expected!" and it's like, you literally don't need to do that. You need to order and review 80 items over a 6-month period, and they don't have to be the random junk.

I, or someone in my house, are actively using all of the thumbs ups and most of the neutrals.

I also saw someone say they've been in Vine about as long as I have and have wracked up $12k in ETV which is........ Something. That much would push me into another tax bracket. They had to have requested so much stuff...

It's cut off in the pictures but I've not gone above $2k ETV, yet.

It's weird to me how some people approach the program.

[forestshipping]

Amazon Vine Green Badge: A Seller’s Ultimate Guide

Many Amazon sellers struggle to gather product reviews, with the review rate from actual orders as low as 1%-5%. Previously common methods like direct reviews, using service providers for reviews, or finding customers through social media now run a high risk of violating Amazon’s policies.  

Currently, Amazon Vine offers a legitimate and effective shortcut for sellers to quickly obtain high-quality reviews for new products.  

What Is Amazon Vine?  

Amazon Vine is the only officially sanctioned way for sellers to provide products for free in exchange for reviews. Through this program, sellers offer products to select reviewers, known as "Vine Voices," who are chosen by Amazon for their insightful feedback on past purchases.  

Benefits of Amazon Vine Reviews  

- Each review includes the label "Vine Customer Review of Free Product," ensuring credibility.  

- Vine reviews carry significant weight and are not removed by Amazon.  

- Helps improve conversion rates, especially during a product's launch period.  

Eligibility Requirements for Joining Amazon Vine  

To participate, sellers must meet the following criteria:  

- Be a registered brand owner with Amazon Brand Registry.  

- Product listing has fewer than 30 reviews.  

- Product is in a "new" condition.  

- Use FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) for product shipping and maintain available inventory.  

- Non-adult products only.  

- Listing must include images and a detailed product description.  

- Product listing must already be live.  

How to Register for Amazon Vine  

1. Go to the Amazon Seller Central dashboard.  

2. Navigate to Advertising > Vine from the left-hand menu.  

3. Enter the product’s ASIN and begin registration.  

Amazon Vine Fees  

Amazon Vine offers three pricing tiers. Sellers can choose a level based on their needs, but note that each product can only participate in Vine once.

Four Strategies for Leveraging Amazon Vine  

1. Register Vine Immediately After Launch  

For newly launched products with high initial inventory, sellers can:  

- Register for Vine while simultaneously running ad campaigns.  

- Test product quality and gain both natural and Vine reviews quickly.  

Pros: Rapid accumulation of reviews; product and ads tested simultaneously.  

Cons: Low conversion rates without existing reviews may impact ad performance.  

2. Register Vine Before Starting Ads  

Some sellers prefer to wait until a product has gathered a few Vine reviews before launching ads.  

Pros: Easier promotion and higher ad efficiency.  

Cons: Slow review collection may delay promotional efforts, potentially missing the traffic peak for new products.  

3. Split Inventory Between Air and Sea Shipping  

Ship a small batch by air for Vine registration while sending the majority by sea. Once the sea shipment arrives, merge the listings and begin broader promotions.  

Key Points:  

- Create separate listings for air and sea shipments to prevent automatic system merges.  

- Differentiate titles and descriptions for air and sea listings.  

Advantages: Utilizes Vine effectively during the product’s peak launch phase.  

4. Use Vine for Product Testing  

Sellers can send small, diverse batches of products to FBA warehouses for Vine registration to evaluate demand and customer feedback.  

Process:  

- Identify products with high uptake and positive reviews.  

- Focus bulk inventory and promotional efforts on those products.  

Pros: Minimizes risk of promoting poorly received products.  

Cons: High registration costs make this method suitable for sellers with ample budgets.  

Is Amazon Vine Right for You?  

While Vine is a powerful tool, it’s not always the best fit. Products that are easy to distribute and receive good reviews may not always perform well in the market, and vice versa. Finding the right strategy, even for higher-priced items, can make all the difference in successful promotion.  

If you’re looking to complement your Amazon strategy with seamless and reliable logistics, Forest Shipping can help. As a leading freight forwarder specializing in Amazon FBA shipping, we ensure your products reach their destination on time and in perfect condition. Whether it’s air freight, sea freight, or customs clearance, Forest Shipping simplifies the process so you can focus on growing your business. Contact us today for tailored logistics solutions!

[herunswithscissors]

Amazon Vine reviewers should unionize.

We are being thrown housewares for our work. We are not getting milk frothers for free. We are creators writing content. Writing advertisements for Amazon itself.

Our critical reviews are used to lie about Amazons integrity. Our positive reviews get shit sold. Even our semi critical reviews being sales because they create stars and give a new product traction.

And we have to really create those reviews on our own because we sell half our shit on the Facebook Black Marketplace and write reviews that are based on what we see in the pictures.

Amazon knows we sell them. They have some nefarious reason making us pay taxes on our "free" stuff that they probably making us pay taxes on it so they can write it off as a fucking business expense.

As if the money mattered to Bezos. A few hundred bucks in taxes on our little home business means so much to us. Far more than to Bezos or the IRS. And the IRS could fucking leave us alone if Bezos would just start paying his fucking taxes on his infinite wealth. What is he going to lose when he has a trillion Freedom Tokens? But he makes us pay exorbitant taxes on trinkets we deliver all over town like drug dealers just to get some fucking pocket money.

Fuck that noise. Our ad content brings in billions for Amazon.

Mostly because they help these predatory sellers foist the same 3 shitty makes in 40 alphabet soup companies using the exact same fucking photos colluding the shit out of America. They know we're faking it, you know we're faking it. Even half the customers suspect we're faking it. But enough believe it. And these fuckers get a few dozen reviews under the newest branding of the same fucking shit from China Bezos floods is with.

You know Amazon taxes them all for using it's site and I'm sure they have some policy that makes more money somehow by charging new companies higher taxes or some shit. And the Chinese just calculate that as a minor cost of business expense.

They are raping the shit out of us for dollars and giving us our own recycled plastic shit in return.

It's hilarious. I applaud it. Well played Xi. I bow to you sir.

Now here's two middle fingers and a spit in you eye for the Weigers.

I wish.

This little scenario would doubtlessly cost me my life. I'm sure Mr Xi would make my death s priority of the Chinese Intelligence Agencies.

And I'm sure all our Bluetooth shit is infected with Chinese viruses to spy and affect our computers. I'm a dead man. All my shit is networked and GPS.

And I'm also sure the manufacturers are slapping in their own malware with the spyware contract software on everything to make extra money on our processing per and data. And a whole fucking lot of profiteering by draining all our processing for supercomputer networks dedicated to fucking crypto Global Warming accelerator bullshit for more stupid Freedom Bucks to live in Capitalism. But the Jerry rigged network of devices and computers is kinda a genius way of making at least this particular super computers doing crypto is not making CC2 directly. I mean they are still profiting from it... But anyway if someone needed a supercomputer for something more noble like scientific research...

If original, this is a Nobel kind of idea and I want a cut. A volunteer network of people putting more reputable malware on their computers. People can volunteer their processing power for science. It would never run while you were active, but when you laptop or phone goes to sleep it uses your computers processing power and spare ram to support say Stanford research. It would fire up research. It would be a cool thing to do this for your alma mater and your favorite basketball team.

Back to business. Unionizing and getting paid.

Our creative reviews get people to buy this shit. We deserve a cut

We write the reviews that get the people to buy your shit. And make you a fuckton more of these fucking US Dollars chaining us to Capitalism. We can't even live without money like a peasant. We need Freedom Bucks. And you don't. And we believe that however much that money is worth to Bezos, we deserve our wages. We deserve a cut in this dirty work.

You sell shit. We all know this. You could demand some level of quality on Amazon like the old stores. They had several standard brands. But only the brands they trusted the quality of or if the people demanded Jordans or whatever Capitalist shit we liked at the time.

We help you shovel this nameless shit at people for gross amounts of profit. Give me my pay.

I create the ads that people read. And here's the crazy thing. They find out our assessments were all over as individuals, but they're still relatively trustworthy as a whole group.

Figuring out how shitty or not this shitty product is going to work is a fucking skill. We are pretty fucking good at it.

On the rare occasion that we do we get something that is truly good, we make sure the reader knows it because we want people to get good shit.

And really, we're pretty likely to just say 5 stars and make shit up out of our butt in the review because hey, it probably works as well as one can expect for 50 bucks.

Our reviews are ads they get customers. First to check out shit with reviews to see how shitty it is and whether or not to take a chance. They look at reviews first to see what other people thought after they bought it. They see Vines. They might ignore them it they might use them as an advisor and take a chance anyway on a good bet according to johhnyfiveisalive7. And it turns outjohhnyfiveisalive7 is pretty reliable in their little analysis and obvious personal experiences. And who doesn't like a story and silly pics. So they trust johhnyfiveisalive7's suggestions and buy more of the shit you shoveled at them to try. You get a community of respected experts. People buy the shit you let us keep for our work. Even if it is shitty, just because it got enough meh reviews they take a chance on it. (And get stuck with more cheap shit usually.)

Amazon doesn't sell inexpensive decent quantity shit. It sells cheap shitty shit that is occasionally not so expensive.

Anyways Bezos is making boku bank of our creative work and expert, respected analysis. We should unionize and demand our cut.

Bezos will threaten to cut your vine access. Oh noes.

Your house is already furnished with shitty Amazon shit. Selling this shit is a shit show for spending cash unless you get real dedicated. The new toys and gifts to give are nice. But really, what do you get for your creative work beyond telling a few jokes in public.

What will they do without decent writers all of a sudden?

We They might bring in scabs. But they won't be good at their job and since the products are always new they need a new source of trusted reviewers.

So they might try to phase out dissidents here and there or in waves at leadership remove them from the community and to prevent union action. Be strong. Union strong.

But anyway we should ask for wages in proportion to the money we are bringing in and to the work we are really doing. We should get hundreds of thousands. We have better odds asking for ad creation level wages.

Without us they couldn't push all this alphabet shit on Americans and bug all our shit for China and slow down all our shit for crypto.

They can't keep selling their shit because nobody trusts their shit because it's all the same shitty shit with me shitty names that don't make sense. They killed all the real brands. They just flooded the market with cheap shit that is all nameless and unknown. Who's going to buy the latest shitty model everybody copies of nobody will review it.

Who's going to take a chance on a weird new name with 0 reviews? You need traction. You need Vine now. There's no history on all these new models. We can't see last year's buyers or 5 years ago buyers. Usually we can't even see last month's reviews, they are so new.

Nobody is going to buy your flea market shit without us. Vine wants a cut.

================

By the by:

You know sneaker companies and Michael Jordan in particular need to face up to their destruction of Black neighborhoods with their shitty Capitalism shows. I say Jordon because he really launched the sneaker collector craze. With his flashy shoes and slick ads and likable personality plus court dominance.

Jordan really needsto face up and and pay up.

He has to face up to the fact he profited off some terrible shit as he sold his shitty shoes made by fucking prison slave labor. He fucked up Black community, destroyed lives and whole inner city neighborhoods. As people fight fight and died and desperately sold it bought it robbed it to wear or sell for it's inflated price based on our adoration and admiration of Jordan. People regularly resorted to prostitution and violence in order to have and/or steal. How many people died over a back alley hold up gone wrong. How many ended up in the Justice System, in hell.

Jordan needs to pay up. Reinvest in Black America. That could be his new thing while he still quietly profits off of shoe sales.

[obscurefrost]

I recently got invited to the Amazon Vine program. If you don't know what that is, it's the program that sellers on Amazon use in order to exchange products for reviews. (When you see a review with the bright green label, or with the capitulation 'this product was received for free in exchange for an honest review' this is the program they are using). Curious, I said, of course sign me the hell up.

Below is just my rambling thoughts about it.

So my first curiosity was: what's the catch? If you aren't familiar with taxes or 1099 forms, the catch would be getting hit by unexpected taxes once you are sent over $600 worth of taxable products. Lucky for me, I have no idea what a 1099 is, but my mom is an accountant and loves giving long, painfully detailed explanations about income tax. I emerged mostly unscathed, though the printed spreadsheet that I've been studiously ignoring about my retirement account did end up in my purse, which I count as a loss.

I digress.

In the beginning tier, you can order 3 products a day, each product can be up to $100. $300 dollars worth of items a day you say? Surely one could re-sell for crazy profit! Well there are a couple problems with that, one being that you need to hold onto items for 60 days per the contract and also there really aren't that many big ticket items up for grabs. (Also, I do not have a grind mentality. I have a full-time job. That's plenty, thanks.) Also the big ticket items tend to be incredibly niche and not really...resellable.

Okay, now my personal experience.

It feels like cheating. Like. Yes I am going work for these items. But I write for *fun* as a *hobby* a couple paragraphs, hell a single paragraph, in exchange for a pair of 60 dollar shoes feels like cheating. Who am I cheating? I don't know but it feels weird. Weird but fun.

I have also discovered that my fashion sense, when unrestrained by budget, is laughable. I am drawn to the reflective pleather booty shorts, the colorblock windbreaker, the calf high heeled cowboy boots, and the painfully 90's fake leather jacket. I'll have you know I resisted everything except the cowboy boots, and I deeply regret it.

Also I got a set of really nice bowls.

I try to be really objective in my reviews, but I find myself defaulting to giving a higher rating than I would had I paid for the item myself. It's something I try to check myself on, like would I *really* give this five stars if I had paid full price? The answer is usually no. But certainly something to consider when looking at paid reviews yourself.

[meaninginmakeup]

This product was gifted to me in exchange for an honest review. I was really impressed with how strong the magnet is on this palette! You can literally hold it upside down, and none of the pans (even the big ones) budged. They all stayed in place super well. And I love the fact that the lid doubles as a mirror, and that the top layer of the palette has a little place for you to place the mirror and use it while applying the makeup from the palette.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. You can find the product here:

Coosei 2 Layered Z Palette