Amazon Offers Influencers $25 Per Video, Sparking Chorus of LOLs (bloomberg.com) 43
Amazon, looking to amp up its TikTok-like shopping feed, has called on influencers to make hundreds of videos apiece. But its offer of $25 a pop -- about a tenth of the going rate -- was widely mocked on social media. From a report: Amazon sent an email to select influencers, asking them to submit videos showing two or more products. The e-commerce giant said it would pay up to $12,500 per creator in exchange for a maximum of 500 videos that meet the company's criteria, according to screenshots of the message posted to social media. Amazon plans to cap the initiative at 35,000 videos, or the equivalent of $875,000 worth.
Last December, Amazon launched Inspire, a TikTok-like feed of photos and videos customized to users' interests and featuring products that can be purchased on Amazon's web store. The goal is to help consumers browse and discover products serendipitously, as they do on social media platforms, rather simply searching for specific items. Amazon for years relied mostly on free customer reviews to entice shoppers. It's been adding more advertising to the site, mostly in the form of paid placement in search results similar to Google.
Last December, Amazon launched Inspire, a TikTok-like feed of photos and videos customized to users' interests and featuring products that can be purchased on Amazon's web store. The goal is to help consumers browse and discover products serendipitously, as they do on social media platforms, rather simply searching for specific items. Amazon for years relied mostly on free customer reviews to entice shoppers. It's been adding more advertising to the site, mostly in the form of paid placement in search results similar to Google.
Even at the going rate (Score:5, Insightful)
They would be nothing but fake reviews. Nothing you can do Amazon will get me to trust any reviewing system you put in place.
Reviews from creators you follow (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing you can do Amazon will get me to trust any reviewing system you put in place.
What if they were reviews from creators you follow? If jerryrigeverything [youtube.com] recut some of his reviews down to Amazon's preferred format, I'd trust it.
Re: (Score:2)
If jerryrigeverything [youtube.com] recut some of his reviews down to Amazon's preferred format, I'd trust it.
I'd never heard of the guy, and two minutes later I'm watching him casually torture a $2,000 phone. :-)
Re: (Score:3)
Probably not. A paid review is tainted in my opinion.
Re: Even at the going rate (Score:2)
I'm eagerly watching to see the coming levels of depravity masquerading as business-as-usual.
Paid shills should be forced to register with shills.com so 'their opinion' can be filtered-out.
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Of course it's fake reviews. We're talking about influenzas here.
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They would be nothing but fake reviews
I have bad news for you: most "influencers"' reviews are fake. Almost all of them got the product to review for free and / or have been paid to shill it.
The only times I trust a Youtube review is when:
1/ The Youtuber discloses that they paid for the product with they own money and isn't usually a shill - meaning I can sort of believe they when they says that.
2/ The Youtuber has so few subscribers and the channel is so amateur / homemade that there's no way any manufacturer will spend the money sending them
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They would be nothing but fake reviews. Nothing you can do Amazon will get me to trust any reviewing system you put in place.
You're not the target market. The millions upon millions of people who actually pay attention to "influencers" are.
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly you are correct. It's pathetic what the Internet, and especially "social" media, has done to the world at large.
How the hell do you get reviewing back? (Score:5, Interesting)
For literally no reason (and no, this wasn't shitposting reviews), I got the "due to weird activity on your account, your reviews were pulled, contact this email address". And the email address doesn't even work.)
Guess Amazon wants people to create sock puppet accounts to do reviews.
Re:How the hell do you get reviewing back? (Score:5, Informative)
The same thing happened to me about 7 years ago. I typically posted reviews to let others know what I thought of a product. I did this for years with hundreds of reviews. Then one day I get notified by Amazon that my reviews have been pulled and I can no longer review. The reason, they believed I was getting paid for reviews or taking some sort of kick-back for doing them?? There was no way for me to contest this, none at all. I never got any sort of favor for reviewing, none. That's around the same time Amazon went to shit any way and I severely limited my purchases. Today, maybe once or twice a year, but only if I can't find the item I need elsewhere. Shopping on Amazon is like treading through a sewer pipe now. No thanks.
Re:How the hell do you get reviewing back? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is amazing how the mindless automation and the "fuck you" support systems in place on sites like Amazon, Youtube and Reddit will shutdown legit people who are actually actively involved and contributing a lot but leave the hoards of garbage reviews, trolls, spickle flecked ranters, etc up.
Re:How the hell do you get reviewing back? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not amazing at all. It's just a feature of big tech in capitalism - customer support doesn't scale well, at least at the profit margins that investors like to see when comparing your company to startups with hyper-accelerated growth and short-term exit to IPO.
AI (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll take it! (Score:2)
I'd do it for that. I've never seen tik tok, but I believe they are one minute videos? I should be able to knock out quite a few.
Where do I sign up?
Re: I'll take it! (Score:3)
I can get paid more collecting bounty for rat tails like a medieval exterminator. A 1 minute video is like 60 minutes of my time, with no guarantee that I get paid according to Amazons criteria.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
> no, a 1 minute video is 1 minute of your time. duh?
Found the the guy who thinks he's smart because he's never done anything. Specifically, never made a video review. SMH
Re: (Score:1)
Have you seen videos on TikTok?
If one minute of video takes more time than a minute, they're doing it wrong. Seriously, the production values are so shit, I'm willing to assume that doing a 1 minute video can't take them more than 45 seconds.
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Ehh - it doesn't have to be a hight tech fancy review. The stuff I have seen on tikotk (my kids show me) cannot take an hour to make
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Write one script and use it for every review, brilliant:
"The object appears to be made of matter. It is a solid and ... has no discernible odor."
Now we've recorded it in one take. And edited it and uploaded it. So 10 minutes have gone by. Hopefully Amazon pays me for the 50 I upload today, because that's the limit. Solid 8 hour day and my brain is like jelly of course.
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will they pay when you say the item is crap & (Score:3)
will they pay when you say the item is crap & unsafe?
Influencers? (Score:2)
Nothing makes me not interested in your product more than using an "influencer". The closest I'll come is to watch reviews of products I'm already researching. Now they want to push little crappy tik-tok like videos that will be me barely any real info? Reminds me of Facebook pushing Reels videos. Everyone is on the short attention span video train now.
Don't get me started on garbage sites like Yelp.
Re: (Score:2)
We really should start calling them influenzas.
They're exactly that. A disease.
Fuck TikTok (Score:3)
"It looks effortless, it must be easy to make, so why are we paying you anything?"
This should be good (Score:2)
Let's not focus on how bad a deal this is. Let's focus on how entertaining the videos will be when produced by the people who will do it for that price. The company behind hilariously bad Five Minute Crafts videos is probably operating on a low enough budget to do this.
Re: (Score:2)
You certainly can't make even a decent 5-minute video in an hour, and people who can make a decent video aren't working for $25/hr.
So essentially they're looking for crap from wanna-bes who haven't yet figured out 'exposure' isn't enough to make them rich.
I may not respect 'influencers', but there is a lot more to what they do than looking at a camera lens and clicking a button.
Re: This should be good (Score:1)
Yep, organising your fake life is not a quick task
Re: (Score:2)
I may not respect 'influencers', but there is a lot more to what they do than looking at a camera lens and clicking a button.
They must be veritable geniuses, because they make it look like there really isn't more to it.
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Arguably yes. They're very good at being popular, and that is a skill set. Lots of people try doing what they do for easy money... And fail.
Looks, luck, persona, and reading the zeitgeist then playing to it.
A lot of them seem to be complete morons at everything else, though.
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An oxymoron, even.
Which is to say, they're so obviously airheads.
Not Surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Not Surprising (Score:2)
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Well, let's face it (Score:1)
The more money Amazon pays out to content creators, the less money Bezos has for super-yachts and boob jobs for his girlfriends.
Hold on now, hold on (Score:2)
Can I declare myself an "influencer" and send dozens of shorts of me mooning the camera each day? Might be worth it.
What? (Score:1)
$25!? (Score:2)
For $25, I told them I can endorse their fart spray. And no, I am not Jack Vale.