Amazon VIne Program
I've been fortunate enough to be invited to this program to review products on Amazon. Why or how I got invited, I honestly don't know. I have reviewed some products and there was one that seem to get a handful of helpful votes so that could be it? This program is invite only and it seems they invited quite a few people, but they could also kick you without a clear explanation.
Free??
If you're interested in this program or are new to it, its a program where you can "order" items and you review them.
Do you get paid for doing this? No.
Are the items free? Sort of.
To elaborate, most of the items have ETV (estimated tax value) which is usually the price of them item. This gets tallied for the tax year you ordered it on, and will be filed to the IRS. You will get a 1099 if you have $600+ in ETV so you will end up having to pay taxes. So in a way, the items are discounted!
Good news is that there are items with 0ETV which are usually stuff like food and certain beauty items, etc. But these go FAST since they're 0ETV.
Tiers!
At the moment there are 2 tiers: Silver and Gold.
The difference is the # of picks you get per day and the product cost. Silver gets 3 items a day and items $99 and under. Gold gets 8 items a day and see all products above and below $99.
To get to Gold, you must order and review 100 items within your evaluation period which is 6 months. So yes, you do need to order 200 items a year to stay Gold. It is a lot of items. Its definitely something you will need to talk to about with your spouse or whoever is living with you about this. It can get addicting and it may cause problems!
Queues
There are multiple queues to look for products. Items get added at random times during the day. One queue is "tailored" to you and you can only see it. In truth they're not really "tailored to you" as you may get items for pets or babies when you don't have even have them! Also these items are also shown in other peoples' recommended so it could disappear from your queue if others have taken them up. These items are usually shown in these queues first before before they offer it for the rest. Most of them items are from third party sellers than from Amazon. So most are small business or resellers. You will mostly see stuff you don't like since its stuff thousands of others aren't ordering. So yes, this will feel like a job if you want to get something useful to you!
Community
There are several places you can find other Amazon Viners! These are usually Viner members only so do not join if you're not part of the program. People in these communities can help you with questions you may have. There's reddit, Facebook groups, and Discords!
Keep in Mind
Do not treat this program like a store. It may be part of Amazon, but they will not make it easier for you if you do not like getting certain items showing up and you want to filter items.
Use the Contact Us link on the top right if you have an issue and need customer service. Regular Amazon customer service may not be able to help with your vine orders!
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