stop influencing for amazon
shop earth day favs in amazon storefront #linkinbio
Lately I can’t open my phone without seeing cutesy “Get Ready With Me” videos and “Shop my Look” prompts all linking back to Amazon Storefronts. Beautiful videos of girls in floral dresses twirling in the woods, links to your favorite hiking pants for just $40 on Amazon with next day delivery, and hey, this creator makes a small kick back for anything you purchase using their link!
But if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. If it seems like too good of a deal for you, the consumer, it’s because someone else, somewhere, is eating the cost. The cost of one click and next day delivery, the services offered by Amazon, is steep.
The girl twirling in the forest in her Amazon floral dress is a content creator. She’s a self described “outdoorsy girl”, and by all accounts, probably a perfectly nice person. It isn’t her fault if the supplier of those cute $40 hiking pants she likes sold by Amazon are from a supplier located in China or India linked to inhumane working conditions. It isn’t her fault if the plastic packaging from the company she is promoting could wrap itself around the globe 800 times in the year 2020 alone. And it isn’t her fault if the delivery drivers bringing those pants to buyers overnight have been forced to work through tornados, pee in bottles, and are injured at a rate of 80% higher than industry standard.
Still, there’s something that doesn’t sit quit right for me about making the outdoors and the environment an integral part of your online persona, and then turning around and linking people to buy from a Amazon, a company know for both it’s massive environmental footprint and numerous labor rights issues.
A scroll through the Wikipedia page Criticisms of Amazon is met with the glaring notification at the top: this article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably.
Amazon is committed to sustainability, so long as it gets you to click that sweet yellow button
Amazon is committed to sustainability! At the very least, committed to sustainability as a marketing tactic.
According to a 2018 article in Forbes, 87% of consumers have a more positive image of a company that supports social or environmental issues, and 87% of consumers said they would buy a product with social or environmental benefit if given the opportunity.
Culturally, we want to buy things that make us feel like good consumers, and so through statistics like this environmentalism and sustainability itself quickly becomes a marketing tactic.
It is incredibly easy for a company to verbally commit to clean energy years out, or take a few small steps to appear more “green” on the surface, and directly profit from those statements while taking little to no tangible action to address environmental impact.
According to a 2019 article in the Associated Press, the company (Amazon’s) emissions are similar to that of the country of Denmark or Switzerland, emitting 44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. While Amazon has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2040, Amazon’s climate emissions grew 19% in 2020.
In addition, according to a report by Oceana, an international organization committed to protecting the world’s oceans and science-based policy campaigns, Amazon was responsible for 465 million pounds of plastic packing waste in 2019. The packaging waste from air pillows alone lined up could circle the Earth more than 500 times, according to the same report.
Of that plastic, it’s estimated that as many as 22.44 million pounds of plastic packing waste from Amazon in 2019 alone are now polluting freshwater and marine ecosystems. It’s important to note that despite Amazon’s alleged commitment to recycling and a carbon neutral future, the plastic film packing most often used by Amazon is not effectively recyclable.
While Amazon claims it has made strides towards sustainability in the past years, this past December Oceana estimated that that in 2021, Amazon was responsible for 709 million pounds of plastic packaging waste, an 18% increase from the 2020 report. (Enough air pillows to circle the Earth 800 times in that year, 300 times around the Earth more than 2019, if anyone is curious).
The same report by Oceana suggests that Amazon cherry-picked plastic footprint data by not including impact from third party sellers.
Amazon has a beautiful workplace culture, as long as you don’t say the word “union” or “diversity” or “compensation” in the work chat
According to a report by the Strategic Organizing Center, Amazon warehouse employees are injured at a rate of 80% higher than industry standard, with injuries more frequent and more severe. For specific reference, Amazon warehouse overall injury rates were twice that of Walmart’s. The companies obsession with speedy customer service and one day delivery (and our cultural fixation on instant gratification) comes at the direct cost of those providing those services.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg:
According to the New York Times, hundreds of employees on medical and parental leave had been shortchanged on their pay checks, denied unpaid leave, been mistakenly fired on medical leave as a no-show, and Amazon deliberately did not fix errors in payments systems resulting in this underpayment.
A leaked 2021 memo reported that Amazon delivery drivers had been forced to urinate in bottles out of fear of losing their jobs due to undelivered packages.
Opposition to trade unions: According to the Guardian, Amazon proposed a ban on the words “union”, “fire”, “slave labor”, “diversity”, “compensation”, “plantation” and “injustice” from their staff chat app.
In St. Louis 2018, six Amazon employees were killed after a warehouse collapsed; those employees had been encouraged to work through a tornado according to a 2021 article in the Guardian.
In 2020, Amazon fired two employees after they circulated a petition about health risks for warehouse workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to The Guardian, the reason for termination was “repeatedly violating internal policies”. Those policies? “Employees are prohibited from commentary publicly on its business without cooperate justification and approval from executives. As a result of the firings, Amazon top engineer and vice president resigned, calling the firings “chickenshit”, and "designed to create a climate of fear”, according to a follow up article in the Guardian.
That’s just capitalism, babe
Actually, it’s not. Amazon consistently flirts with monopolistic behavior both because of it’s size and ubiquitousness and because of the Amazon one-click patent of 1999 preventing any other company from using a “buy in one click” button. Monopolies are inconsistent with a competitive capitalist environment (read: The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition, or this excerpt from the book).
Other monopolistic behaviors exhibited by Amazon include banning Apple TV and Google Chromecast sales to “prevent customer confusion” as these devices do not support Amazon Prime Video. Meanwhile, Amazon began to offer Fire TV. Amazon has created rules that prevent sellers from competing with Amazon Basics, and Amazon has profited from the data of smaller shops, using their success as an indicator of what Amazon itself should sell and what those products should be priced at. In addition, Amazon has steadily increased fees associated with using their platform for business, further disadvantaging smaller sellers on their platform. According to a 2021 Reuters special report, there is evidence Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own products.
Breaking down Amazon’s Influencer Program
Like many tech-savvy companies, Amazon has delved into influencing as a marketing technique. Amazon influencing includes an affiliate program in which an influencer or content creator sets up an Amazon Storefront. For every purchase made with their unique link, the influencer or content creator makes a small cut. By promoting their link and therefore Amazon products, they can make a commission on anything they sell through Amazon.
That commission? Roughly 2-9% depending on the product. According to Later, a popular social media management platform, typically affiliates earn 10-25% of the sale price of an item, making Amazon’s compensation rates below industry standard.
Earlier this week I asked other content creators via Instagram question box their thoughts on Amazon influencing. Here were some of the responses:
(Note that Instagram question box is obviously not a particularly statistically sound way of collecting survey data and subject to response bias. Some responses edited for clarity; I’ve tried to choose responses that are representative of the whole range of responses I received.)
Easiest and accessible way for small creators to earn ( a tiny ) bit of money, but sucks because it’s Amazon. — @travelovermiway
There are so many better options than making Bezos even richer. I love learning about new gear from influencers I trust, because they actually use it, but I’d like to shop at a better marketplace, something like garage gear for ultralight backpacking. — @vaweber
I have too many for this little box. — @beach_in_a_van
I don’t want my username included, but do want to share my experience using Amazon links. Last month I had over 1,000 link clicks and made nine dollars. It’s basically free marketing [for Amazon].
Affiliate programs can be especially insidious in the creator industry because they tend to prey most effectively on creators with smaller followings and less resources, for whom any payment feels better than none. Rather than be paid for the content and work of creating itself, affiliates are paid by the sale only.
The general premise of influencing for Amazon is that you can simply make money selling things you already use, because if you recall, Amazon has everything. Amazon influencers can make a storefront with links to all of their favorite products and then make commission every time something sells via their link. Amazon makes a profit, and the creator makes a small cut, but likely nothing that comes remotely close to the time and effort that went into creating that content to begin with.
But when you’re a smaller outdoor creating, any payment feels better than no payment, and Amazon is set up to make things so, enticingly easy.
And I totally get it. My guidebook is available exclusively in print through Amazon, because when I was setting it up Amazon made it much, much easier to publish than its competitors, and I had limited time and resources.
Since then I’ve offered all of my guidebooks as eBook downloads with a paying subscription of this newsletter as a way to offer an alternate to supporting Amazon, and I’ve done independently printed and distributed runs of the book in the past, but ultimately having the book available on Amazon has made it easiest for me and given me something to backlink to. As of now, I have no plans to remove it from Amazon, but do encourage readers download through Substack instead, and may offer more limited edition independently printed runs in the future.
(ALL of my eBooks are also available here, as a download with a Substack subscription. It’s both cheaper for you through Substack, and I make more money through Substack, and I vocally encourage you go the Substack route if possible. Subscriptions are five dollars a month, and you can download all of the eBooks and cancel at anytime. Plus, it helps me pay for eggs. They are expensive now.)
Alternatives to Influencing for Amazon for Smaller Creators
There aren’t many good alternatives to influencing for Amazon in an affiliate marketing sense, because a lot of affiliate marketing deals available to smaller creators are designed to take advantage of them. Affiliate marketing for outdoors stores like Backcountry or REI are a good swap if you have a blog that sees good traffic and want to use affiliate marketing as passive income in that way, but affiliate marketing is just not that profitable for smaller creators relying on social media alone.
It’s totally up to you, the creator, if you’re okay with a commission-style arrangement with a brand, but usually these arrangements do not even begin cover the time spent creating photos or videos.
Personally, I’ve found that the best use of time as a smaller creator in the outdoors is focusing in on projects I’m interested in and creating meaningful art and a community, rather than trying to create paid content at rates I’m not happy with, whether through affiliate marketing or sponsored posts. Well-paid projects for brands you’re more than happy to work with will come, and will come faster if you focus first on yourself and your art or content.
“influencing” for yourself:
What I have found to be the most profitable and long-term sustainable is “influencing” for myself. If you’re a smaller creator, you have dedicated group of people who follow you who do want to support you and your art or content.
Do you take beautiful photos? Sell postcards or stationary with your work on them. Stationary and cards sell better than fine art prints generally speaking, because you can price them at a super accessible price point, and make a decent amount per pack still. They’re much more personal than people purchasing your Amazon leggings, and if people are following you, they’re likely doing it because they like your art. Plus, postcards aren’t like calendars— you can use more than one set a year.
Start writing blog posts about the places you photograph, especially as a landscape or outdoors photographer. This will set you up in the coming years to pop up in search engines as a local photographer, and you’ll start to see photo licensing inquires. Nearly all of the photos I’ve licensed have come through my traditional hiking blog publishing content like “Best things to do in X small town”, a blog that then conveniently doubles as a portfolio.
Start a Newsletter. Substack, the platform I’m publishing essay on right now, is completely changing the game when it comes to social media and crowd-funded content. Publish your photos, your camping tips, the stuff you would write in your Instagram caption in your Newsletter instead. Keep it totally free for a little while, then go paid and and ask for people who like your content to become subscribers. Some of them will! The more you write, the more people will want to support your work.
Starting a newsletter through Substack is extremely intuitive and user-friendly and I recommend it for anyone creating on the internet looking for a more reliable income than waiting for brand deals.
Guest write for me. Oh hey, guess what! Hello Stranger, the Substack you’re reading right now, accepts paid guest writers! Currently, we pay $50 for 750-1200 word essay, and hope to compensate more competitively in the future. Read submission guidelines here.
Offer digital products. Do you have a wealth of knowledge on hiking and travel your local area? Write an eBook. Are you a skilled photo editor in Lightroom? Create your own presets. Do you have a background in editing and publishing? Offer copy and developmental editing services for travel writers. Are you great at social media? Put together a creator kit download to help other people get started. Offer online yoga classes. Offer beginner backpacking video guides. There is knowledge or a skill you have that has value, that no one else can do quite like you.
Brand sponsership. If you’re in a position where you find a brand that creates a product you really love who is willing to pay you to promote it, awesome! I’ve been lucky to have found a few brand partnerships that have worked really well for me. Currently I’m off the sauce— most of the pitches I’ve received recently are for things I would not use, and a lot of it feels spammy (ie, a company that just slaps their name on a generic product or is clearly drop shipping).
Most of the paid content deals I’ve gotten have come through email, so make sure to display your email clearly on your social media page. All of these partnerships started with an email that was offering free product, and I negotiated instead into a partnership. I’ve had the most success with this when I was already familiar with the products, and pitched a story along with the partnership. For example, I’m a kayak guide. When a kayak company pitched me about a free boat, I pitched them back and said “hey, I’m going on this trip to these places, I’m an experienced sea kayaker, and would love to take some pictures in a boat made by you guys. Are you interested in being involved in this story?”
you, the billboard
I think my issue with influencing in general is that it takes your social media page, one that you’ve created art for, or content for, a piece of digital performance art, and reduces it to adspace. Everything on your feed becomes a potential advertisement, because you have positioned yourself and life as desirable, whether it is or isn’t (mine isn’t), and because we have all bought into the idea that if you just buy this thing you will come a little closer to attaining the perfect happiness that every "influencer” surely experiences.
I’ve been getting prompts to join Amazon Influencers on the weekly now, and every time I see it I grind my teeth. I can’t tell if my rage is with Amazon itself, or with the idea that I could be marketing their products for them. Or is it just jealousy— sometimes I wonder if maybe the content creator with dress in the woods and her hiking tights Amazon hack has it right— a few extra dollars is a few extra dollars. One person choosing not to influence for Amazon hardly makes a difference, right?
It doesn’t really matter. I feel disgusted with the whole thing, and decide I’m surely a better person for choosing not profit from Amazon, whether or not it’s true.
(it’s not. i think we can all recognize that things aren’t that simple. that if you’re feeling self-righteous, feeling terribly superior, probably you’re in the wrong in some way. still, i won’t influence for Amazon. still, i have the sour taste in my mouth.
i’m left to wonder if maybe the sour taste came from me, from the knee-jerk reaction i have toward the flower dress influencer. the thought like an instinct that I am better, more moral, because i was able to chose to do things differently. i know better than to sling blame and narratives at people i do not know but here i am, doing it anyway. maybe that’s the sour taste.)
Meanwhile, the threshold for who can become an influencer, who can influence and apply for affiliate programs creeps lower and lower, and one has to wonder at which point the line between who is the marketer and who is the consumer collapses— is every single one of us a walking billboard, all day, every day? Should we all be walking around, hawking affiliate codes hoping to make an extra few dollars off of the things we already wear? We are already so defined by the things we chose to purchase and consume.
My hope is no.
My hope is that we make a shift away from buying things for what they say about us and toward buying things that we need. I hope that with that shift we stop seeing art as a potential ad, a t-shirt as a potential billboard, and instead of buying the extra pair of cheaply produced hiking tights, buy more used gear and learn to repair what we have. I hope that with that cultural shift away from spending money on material things, we spend money on low-impact art instead. I hope that Amazon follows through on their commitments to the environment, and those plastic pollutant numbers really do drop.
It’s a hope, but it’s also a choice each of us can make to not purchase things we do not need, to buy used whenever possible, to patch things instead of throw them away. It’s a hope, but it’s not out of reach and it starts with the choices we make today.
Like maybe we order less from Amazon, and maybe, whenever possible, we don’t influence for them.
Thanks for reading! Here’s what else is new on Hello Stranger:
Love reading about thru-hiking? Check out Before Long— A Look Back at the Superior Hiking Trail by Duluth-based guest writer Gavin Weiers.
New to Hello Stranger? Interested in how I started writing? Check out Time Since Then, an essay about my sudden evacuation from the US Peace Corps in 2020, and how the past three years have lead me to where I am today.
Sometimes I think the people we look up to become so fully to us the role that they fill that it becomes hard to see the person— in Caregivers in Our Lives I talk about my grandma, Patricia Marquardt, an incredible person who I’ve learned more about in the past few weeks than I had the chance to in her time on Earth.