Can you imagine writing a thousand online reviews in one year? Well, I couldn’t have imagined it a year ago, but I’m well on my way to that number for 2023, thanks to the Amazon Vine program.

 

What’s this Vine program about?

The official explanation of the invite-only Vine program is here on Amazon’s site, and pictured above; in short, Amazon invites prolific writers of useful reviews to join the program. I believe it’s over 15 years old, based on some Reddit traffic. I was invited to join in August 2022, eleven months ago as of this writing. 

In return for writing honest, detailed, and insightful reviews, you get your choice of an enormous assortment of products at no upfront cost. You do receive a 1099-NEC at tax time for the fair market value of your items at the time they were ordered, so it’s not entirely “free” but depending on your tax situation they can be considered dramatically discounted. 

I’ve received almost 800 items, and so far I have over 600 reviewed, a month and a half into my second qualification/review period. My first review in the program was a Kamrui Celeron-based mini-PC that has been running a Windows-based Chia farmer for most of the past year. My last order was a holder for Aeropress paper filters. Along the way I’ve picked up a lot of cables, household items, clothing products, supplements and snacks and cat treats, phone accessories, holiday decorations, and lots more. 

Some of the most significant items were a GE Profile Opal icemaker that gets used every day (and almost went into the office at my last job), two reasonably beefy miniPCs (an ACEMAGICIAN Ryzen 5 model and an GEEKOM Intel 8th gen i5 model),  and a Victoria’s Secret bra that was more interesting to my partner than the pile of Thunderbolt cables. 

For what it’s worth, nothing above is confidential, proprietary, or non-public information as far as I know. 

How did you set up your reviews?

First, I tried my best not to look at other reviews from the items I was reviewing. Most of the time I was aiming for a natural, original perspective with no outside influences. I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to the product page and see if I had missed, or misremembered, a feature or limitation, and more often than not, there was a fortuitous surprise.

But in one case, a device advertised as USB 3.0/Gigabit Ethernet was in fact USB 2.0/Fast Ethernet, and others had discovered this as well, despite the product page clearly showing and describing a product that was not what I received.

I also found (when I let my guard down on the above, or when I looked after submitting a review) that there are a wide range of depths in reviewers’ efforts. From “it’s a nice cup i can drink from it okay” to an in-depth analysis of the power delivery properties, chip details, and other facets of a $20 charging cable or adapter, you will see a variety of levels of detail and interest. 

I also saw that, despite the program’s suggestion to include photos and/or videos in your review, most reviewers do not do this. 

I’ll admit I didn’t post photos on a lot of my reviews. Things like phone cases and screen protectors are hard to catch, and sometimes there’s no perspective I could add beyond what’s in the product photos already. On some I posted photos, sometimes almost a dozen, and for some of the charging cables I posted video of the wattage growing when charging a high power device. 

How could you do an average of three reviews a day, all year? 

I’d love to say that everything I received, I tested and reviewed as soon as possible. That’s the goal, but I got behind with some life changes. 

The best thing to do for a lot of items is start by taking photos of the item. For items with quantifiable testing, I’d test them and photograph / screen-cap the results (i.e. drive/enclosure performance, power supply metrics). Then I’d go back and put together a pile of reviews based on the research results I’d recorded. 

Other things that were more subjective might involve photos in use (coffee mugs/pitchers/brewers) or at rest (pillows, bedding clothing) and a review soon after opening them. 

While I tried to keep up, I did have quite a few late nights of catching up a dozen or more reviews, based on the results as described above, and a couple of weekends of in-depth testing (like a CZUR book/document scanner, a wireless extender, and the like). 

If you take notes (online, or in a Rocketbook or other offline notebook) and photos, you can aggregate them in a few minutes each during a dedicated session and keep up on the weekends. That’s my plan going forward, as I don’t want to get behind again. 

What did you learn about reviewing? 

Something a friend convinced me of after I was panicking to catch up this past spring (job change distracted me from reviews, but not from orders, for about a month or two) was simple:

Write what you feel

Don’t feel you have to provide a deep diagnosis of every product, or PR photo level documentation of what a USB-C cable looks like. 

If something is just table stakes, say that. Some things are pretty much “does what it says on the tin,” so you don’t really have to say that the $10 cable could cause you to find the love of your life or cure cancer or avert an incoming alien invasion from space. 

On the other hand, if something is really impressive or, honestly, really expensive, I considered it worth a bit more effort. And a few things slipped through the cracks so far because I didn’t have time to give them the effort they were worth. I have every intention of catching up, even on some things that are on the previous evaluation period. 

My friend tends to give everything five stars unless it’s bad. For me, four stars is my baseline. I probably gave half a dozen five star reviews for items that were well beyond my expectations. 

Try not to get too far behind

This is especially true if you’re in their higher tier of reviewers. I was in the higher tier, but I ran a few reviews short of the threshold near the end despite finishing a huge pile of reviews in the last month of the evaluation period. So until December I’m in the lower, more limited tier. 

Whatever you write, make it useful

I saw a lot of one line reviews from Vine Voices, and they didn’t really show any sign of having used or evaluated the product. You can get away with this, but it probably won’t result in helpful votes and probably won’t help you stay in the program. 

Make sure you have room for your stuff

This one has caused some domestic discord, and I’m working on sorting and “evacuating” some of my less used purchases to offsite storage. 

Take a break

This one was hard, as it’s always exciting to get new things from the Amazon truck. But keep up with your reviews and don’t get bogged down by FOMO. 

So where do we go from here?

I have a few reviews to catch up on… and some other content to post in the coming months. And I still buy stuff from Amazon, so I have some other things to work on and write blogs and/or reviews about. 

Are you a Vine Voice? Have you had any interesting discoveries about reviewing online? Do you need a GE Profile Opal icemaker to improve your beverage life? Let me know in the comments.