Amazon is taking its low-wage labor model to influencers 

Outside of its corporate staff, Amazon has never been known for its high pay. Now it’s extending its low-wage labor to influencers. Last week the company told influencers who make content for its TikTok-like social content platform Inspire that it would pay between $25 and $50 per video that features two-plus Amazon products, according to screenshots viewed by Fortune. 

This has been met with backlash from creators, first reported by Bloomberg. “Lol Amazon can go find someone else to play that game,” wrote one creator on X. This is because most user-generated content creators (people who make social videos about Amazon products and beyond) have a base rate of $150 per video, Kyndhal Stewart, who is both a UGC influencer and coach, tells Fortune.

“Whenever you’re trying to convince someone to accept something that’s hundreds of percent lower than their normal rate, it’s very jarring,” says Stewart. “With Amazon, they’re like, ‘The payout is small upfront, but the video lives on Amazon. So you have a greater potential to make money in the long run.’ I definitely think that they should be paying creators more, being a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. And I really hope that we’re able to get a better influencer payout structure in the future.”

While established creators like Stewart balk at the rate, setting market bottom rates for labor is, in part, how Amazon has established itself as a $1.3 trillion company. In New York City, Amazon pay starts just above the city’s $15 minimum wage, at $16 per hour for warehouse work, per ZipRecruiter. Just a few years earlier, according to a 2015 report, Amazon’s wages were 15% lower than the prevailing wage for comparable work in 11 metropolitan areas. By making these jobs easy to obtain and easy to abandon, Amazon undercut competition—causing other stores with higher-priced products and labor to close, ultimately forcing low-skilled workers to accept Amazon jobs. (This is basically the plot of Nomadland if you’re looking for a good read on the topic.) 

Is the 1.6 million-person company now doing the same in the creator economy? The company is accepting 35,000 videos by Sept. 22 for payouts at $25 or $50 per video at a maximum of 250 videos per creator. Stewart reports that the company capped the previous iteration of this program at 5,000 videos overall so it’s fair to assume that Amazon aims to increase its foothold in the creator economy. 

While creators publicly shake their fists at payouts that can’t even equate to funding two Sweetgreen salads, given the variability of payments from rival platforms, Amazon’s offer may be compelling for smaller-scale influencers. In July, Meta cut promised creator payments on Reels by thousands of dollars without warning. TikTok has replaced the Creator Fund with a seemingly more lucrative Creativity Beta Program on longer-form content while YouTube is doubling down on Shorts payouts. Still, these programs all pay on views—so a program like Amazon’s, where creators earn regardless of their view counts, may be appealing. 

Plus, on top of the $25 to $50 payments from Amazon, creators earn about a 3% commission on sales from their Amazon Inspire videos. Commissions for top creators can really add up. Inspire influencer Brooke JuLyn told Fortune she generates between $5,000 to $50,000 per month from this income stream. The option to make passive commission-based income makes the $25 per video payments more palatable for creators like Stewart. 

“With Amazon, you can do a lot more simple formats,” says Stewart. “Because people who are going on Amazon are already going there with a purpose of shopping, you don’t really have to sell them too much.”

Here’s what else is going on in tech today.

Alexandra Sternlicht

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NEWSWORTHY

Threads comes to desktop. Meta’s text-based app may be coming to your desktop computer this week, the Wall Street Journalreports. After the app's initial success in converting Instagram users big and small to Threads, usage of the app has significantly declined. Many fans of the app say a desktop version would make them power users. Now, perhaps this week, we’ll see if that promise is realized. 

GLP-1s inject the Danish economy. Novo Nordisk, which makes “miracle” weight loss GLP-1 drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, has made over $7 billion in profit in the first six months of 2023. This eye-popping amount of money has pushed up the value of the Danish Krone, causing the country’s central bank to keep interest rates below the rest of Europe. 

Adobe cofounder dies. John Warnock, who cofounded Adobe and helped invent the portable document format (PDF), died at age 82 on Saturday. He started the software innovator in 1982, helping to spark the desktop publishing revolution and later playing a key role in shaping web publishing. A decorated academic from Utah who was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2009, Warnock served as Adobe’s CEO until 2000 and as a board member until his death. The cause of death was not disclosed. 

ON OUR FEED

"The sad truth is that there are no great 'social networks' right now. We may fail, as so many have predicted, but we will try our best to make there be at least one."

—Elon Musk, the owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in a post on Saturday discussing the company's future and what he described as the current lack of any truly "great social networks"

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

San Francisco’s real estate market has been crippled by a cyberattack on the main property listings database, and there’s ‘no clear timeline’ on a fix, by Rachyl Jones

Step aside, LinkedIn: Grindr CEO says he has hired workers through the dating app, as the company pitches itself as the new networking platform in town, by Orianna Rosa Royle

Mark Zuckerberg’s new ‘in-person time policy’ will crack down on Meta’s remote work rebels, by Chloe Taylor

The publishing industry is lining up to dunk on crypto, Jeff John Roberts

I just got $25 from Elon Musk for some reason, by Kylie Robison

BEFORE YOU GO

The two sides of Dara. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says he becomes “Evil Dara” if he misses a daily workout, which consists of running and Peloton classes. His real-self care is a phone-free dinner with his family. (Makes sense as Uber is known for its excess push notifications.) 

He is also, apparently, trying to master his New York steak recipe, according to a Q&A with the Wall Street Journal.