This is really about cost-cutting. If Amazon felt it were about being spread too thin, the obvious solution is to make a short list of charities. Or increase the amount donated.
Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
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Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#32Big effective altruism vibes here. Bummer for the little guys.
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#33I'm sad, but unsurprised to see Amazon Smile go. Retail isn't exactly high margin to begin with, and Amazon has made a specialty of squeezing what margin remained. As Jeff Bezos said, "Your margin is my opportunity." So, when Amazon announced Smile, I was very surprised that they weren't adding a surcharge for the donation, but rather where making the donation out of whatever margin they earned on the product. I gues…
From what I've read, an Amazon smile link will superceded any affiliate link you clicked on. That means Amazon goes from paying out multiple percent to 0.5%.
I'm guessing the administrative burden of so many organizations is a big driver behind the shutdown.
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#34Very nice corporate speak for “our financials look bad for 2023, so we’re canceling program that’s eating our margins”.
It might be worse than that. I’m cookied into some affiliate or other for Amazon essentially all the time. I always assumed Smile was mostly a way for Amazon to get me to direct that to a charity instead of a stale affiliate link.
Smile and affiliate commissions are separate. So in your example both the charity and the stale affiliate link would receive a cut that is independent of the other. Source: I run an affiliate site and my links always direct to Smile, and I keep getting commissions.
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#35Sad although I am not worried much. I am turning our Smile program materials to Amazon Associates alongside a browser addon, and we'll make more!
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#36> All US charities have received $400,026,236.70 as of December 2022. $400 million in donations to charities and Amazon has the gall to say "the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped."
One million eligible recipients around the world, according to Amazon, so $400 per recipient over the decade the program has existed.
Have a look at this pdf someone else posted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34435574
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#37One more month for charity-shopping:
> ... wind down AmazonSmile by February 20, 2023
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#38[dead]
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#39The fun part of Amazon Smile was that it let customers decide how they wanted to change the world…but now they’ve decided they - Amazon - know better, thank you very much. This is surprisingly honest for corporatespeak and I think reflects the god-complex which tends to follow people who spend a lot of time taking in billions of dollars. The reality is there were a lot of charities - maybe even most of them - who wer…
Yeah it's a bummer, we used it to donate to our local charter school.
Re: Amazon Closing AmazonSmile
#40Very nice corporate speak for “our financials look bad for 2023, so we’re canceling program that’s eating our margins”.
It might be worse than that. I’m cookied into some affiliate or other for Amazon essentially all the time. I always assumed Smile was mostly a way for Amazon to get me to direct that to a charity instead of a stale affiliate link.
I've been donating to charities through affiliate links and Smile for a while. Whenever I plan to make a purchase I go to the smile.amazon.com URL while also appending a charity's affiliate link (e.g. "/?tag=AFFILIATE-ID") to the URL.
I think charities will still get a significant amount from my purchases, since AmazonSmile was only 0.5%, while affiliate links for many categories are 4% or higher.