It is official, as of today, Nov 30: The Hidden Dominion is no longer an Amazon affiliate.
I went through a ridiculous number of past articles and removed all of the affiliate links. I have also removed all applicable disclaimers and edited the privacy/disclosure policies to reflect that we no longer participate in any affiliate program.
It sucked and took forever, but I’m glad it is done.
If you notice an Amazon link anywhere on this website, please contact me about it so I can remove it.
The reason for this change is simple: I began to feel very hypocritical in light of all the madness of 2020. Earning off of Amazon affiliates very rapidly became a source of hesitation for me.
After watching the COVID hysteria take off and small businesses be annihilated, I hated that I was adding revenue to one of the monopolies that were profiting off of this derangement. I would have much rather supported sending revenue into the hands of small business. Or at least away from the hands of the monopolist giants.
Then came the George Floyd riots which even further solidified my motive to move away from Amazon. They fully supported the rioting, looting, and violence from BLM. Hell, they pandered to them directly.
In the past I could mentally justify to myself that Bezos was a POS but at least Amazon as a whole wasn’t evil. Not any longer. Bezos is evil and Amazon is as well. And I was supporting them.
Now that they have practically teamed up with leftism and evil, I knew it was time to say goodbye for good.
It’s hard. Not just to abandon Amazon but to abandon all of these SCMs that dominate our lives. Nearly every avenue to do anything, earn anything, and say anything is controlled by the ruling class.
We have to break it off one piece at a time. For me, today, that piece is Amazon.
What we do now and how we spend our money will create the world we get. People gave to Amazon and kept giving to them instead of morally conservative businesses. Now all we have left is Amazon. Which is turning more evil everyday. With no real competitors to stop it besides other evil monopolists.
So, in summary:
- Amazon is decimating small business which is what the country is built on.
- Amazon supports the BLM riots and profited off of the COVID hysteria.
- Amazon uses its profits to promote leftism and centralization by elites.
- Amazon fuels the oligarchical spread.
- Amazon is an unaccountable SCM
- Bezos is (probably) a lizard
I was definitely hypocritical with my use of them in the past. But, I do wish to rectify that mistake.
They were an easy way to pay for the expenses of this website. Slap on an affiliate article here and there and bam, no expenses to pay for self-hosting or anything else. It paid for itself in only a few months.
Yet, as with any easy money it is rarely satisfying. Nor do I need it now with my current employment. Years ago, sure. I was struggling pretty bad. But now I can afford to keep this website up by myself. So, I no longer have that excuse.
So, I will pay for that cost by myself. I believe it is the morally-imperative option given my beliefs.
With my leaving of Amazon in mind, I do still stand by all of my prior recommendations on Amazon. Because I have used those specific products personally. Yet, I do not recommend any of the newer items they are releasing. It seems like in the past year, the more things I buy from Amazon, the more I realize they are just as “bottom-of-the-barrel” Chinese garbage as the likes of Walmart et al.
Which just gave further evidence: I knew the day was coming when I had to drop them. It just takes time to go through and do it all.
As of today, it is finally done. I am no longer an Amazon affiliate. I will no longer support them.
I ask my readers to find any product I recommended previously on Amazon on an external site instead. Many of my recommended products have their own brand websites. Go there instead. Abandon Amazon. Diversify your purchases. Save your soul in the process.
I may lose out on some thousands over the years, but I can’t take money to the grave anyway, so of what use is it?
Now, the only income I’d make off of this website is through personal donation. But even that I don’t really need any. I’d rather if my readers use their own money to help their families and communities anyway. I’ll just take a tea here or there from a committed reader.
In the coming weeks I ecstatically look forward to deleting my personal Amazon account as well. I have one long outstanding order I have to resolve, but after that, it’s bye-bye even to the personal Amazon account.
I am still in the decision stage to decide if I will post my future book on Amazon or not. Even if I did, it’ll be on here and 10 other self-published websites anyway so they would definitely not be a priority. We shall see what makes sense when that stage arrives.
But as for the affiliates and my personal money: Gone.
Either way, it feels nice to finally be fully free.
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