Why I Left Amazon — And How You Can Help Starve The Beast

227 Comments

1. What about those not in USA or Canada?

   1. Bravo. I canceled my prime a couple weeks ago after 10 years. I spent between $300 and $800 a month in Amazon and I’m done. There are alternatives albeit a little less convenient.

      You’ll find that Amazon over charges. Find the vendor of an item you want and go to them directly. It’s hard at first.

      Also I had no idea I was being charged ove $100 a year for prime. It used to be about $30 bucks.

   2. Good move Jim. Now the rest of us need to follow your example.

      1. Amen! I cancelled my Amazon account about 2 weeks ago. I am thrilled to hear that I am not alone. I cancelled/shutdown facebook, linkedin, instagram, youtube, and gmail. I either but local or buy direct from company of something is not available locally. I am done, and pray that millions follow to hit these globalist billionaires in their bank account

      2. I cancelled Amazon a couple of years ago. I absolutely scrutinize where every dollar I spend goes, and do not spend any with companies with even the slightest hint of leftist ideology. Of course, even though I read the news and research companies I buy from, I may not be aware of all of their sneaky skullduggery and may inadvertently buy from a bad company occasionally. But that is why my research never stops. As I have stated before, I do not buy from Smithfield foods (Chinese), Kraft/Heinz foods, Dairy Queen/Burger King*/Popeye’s* (Warren Buffet is a major donor to Planned Parenthood), Target, and many other companies that I disagree with. Actually, I generally avoid chain stores/restaurants and go to local businesses.
         BTW, my income is very low and I do not subscribe. Thank you to those of you who are able to do so. There are MANY things that I would like to do, but finances prevent me from doing. I am not complaining but just stating a fact.
         *Warren Buffet/Berkshire Hathaway owns approx. 3% of Popeye’s and Burger King.

         1. P.S.- I forgot to mention that Berkshire Hathaway/Warren Buffet also owns Geico Insurance and 9.3% of Coca-cola. Also Pilot/Flying J truck stops, Duracell batteries, Fruit of the Loom, BNSF railroad, and many other businesses. Warren Buffet has bragged that he and his family have given over one billion dollars to ‘Planned Parenthood’. I will not go to Burger King for a Whopper, or Popeye’s for a chicken sandwich, or Dairy Queen for a sundae until Big Warren Buffet kicks the bucket. I can’t wait !

      3. Indeed. Glad he did it.
         Its true we need to starve the beast – don’t support anything that is AGAINST YOU and AGAINST AMERICA!
         I believe where I spend my money sends a huge message and its one I control – no one else.
         Happy shopping with those who support America!
         And I try awfully hard not to buy anything made in (communist) Red China. I always call it by its true name – either communist or Red, makes no difference. Words matter. 🙂

   3. JWR, The Bride and I cancelled both our accounts yesterday. Thanks for the guidance and we agree, starve the beast.

   4. Since you’re starving the beast the least I can do is pay my part if the 10 cent challenge. I hope others can chip in $36.50 as well.

   5. Amazon is not a news outlet and it is not the government, it is a private business. A private business may refuse your business, and because you still have other options for publishing or speaking, you have been not been censored. Censorship applies only when it is the government doing the censoring. For those reasons, “freedom of the press” and “censorship” do not apply. The reason private-sector corporations are refusing their platforms to sites like Parler is that the majority of the population detests those of you who use it and if they did not refuse, they would lose the business of millions of others. Private corporations care only about profits, so when the majority of the country thinks people on sites like Perl are lunatic traitors, well, they aren’t going to choose the loons as their customers over the majority.

2. Bravo! Its more than past time for all God loving brothers and sisters to step up and love and support each other as a family and sacrifice when necessary. As it becomes more difficult to find particular items I look forwards to recommendations and links from everyone for small conservative organizations. You can count on me for the 10 cent challenge sir and I beseech everyone as you are able, to also support this bastion of freedom. -Scott

   1. Scott-“Bravo! Its more than past time for all God loving brothers and sisters to step up and love and support each other as a family and sacrifice when necessary.”

      Well said, sir. The sacrifices we make are small compared to those our parents experienced. They had only local sources. Very limited selection. True for food, too.

      Carry on

3. Mr rawles thank you for posting , I closed my Amazon account about 3 weeks ago I did not use there prime but I did close and lost my books in my kindle but that’s ok.i love your blog and is my first read when I awake in the morning.thanks ….John

   1. John, do you mean to say that if I close my Amazon account, all the books on my Kindle will vanish? I don’t have Prime, so maybe that will make a difference. My sister likes her Barnes and Noble Nook Glow.

      1. When you go to close your Amazon account they will list the things you’re lose prime,kindle books etc. kindle is owned by Amazon I don’t think it affects barnes and noble .for me I only had ten books no big deal in the process of this I come to find out you don’t even own your books on kindle it’s a liscense agreement not ownership at anytime Amazon if down the road they don’t like a book they can remove from your kindle amazing I did not know until the process and research upon canceling my Amazon account.best of luck to you.

   2. You can install Kindle for PC and download all your Kindle content. From there you can install Calibre Reader and it will pull all your Kindle for PC content in, downloaded to your machine.

      1. I tried this, but Calibre wouldn’t open the books due to “digital rights management”. Any other ideas?

   3. Same.

      For Kindle on my telephone, I acquired several digital books through Prime on a free trial.
      At the end of the free trial, my books vanished.

      They said my books were a ‘rental’.
      I say ‘vanishing books is censorship’.

      And I see a parallel to digital votes in digital elections.

4. Challenge accepted!

5. I cut my ties years ago, and I was wondering when you would follow. It’s liberating!
   We have a wonderful bookstore locally owned nearby with great young people who cheerfully order anything I want in books or dvds. Many of them attend a local college and are quite knowledgeable about what’s good and what isn’t. I shop locally for items I want, and if I cannot find them, I do without. It’s amazing what talented advice I get from local pharmacists and handymen on where to get stuff I need.
   I have never had a facebook or twitter account and I seem to do quite well without them. And yes, we all need to cut ties with as much social media as possible. Verizon was my latest noose.

   1. PS. How do I send a snail mail donation?

      1. It is at the bottom of the page.

   2. Marie, ” I shop locally for items I want, and if I cannot find them, I do without.”

      I resonate with the “I do without” part. Due to lack of money and Excessive frugality, I have often done without. And, my house is paid off as I live debt-free.

      Carry on

6. I’m just a regular Amazon customer but I send Amazon about 100 orders a month. Recently I had a problem with Prime issue and they told me I’d have to manually do the resolution. Amazon told me if I cancel Amazon I would be banned for life from rejoining. Bye bye morons.

   1. That speaks volumes right there- if you cancel you are “banned for life from rejoining”.

      1. That is not true, you can rejoin whenever and you can go monthly if you want.

7. How do I send a donation to you over the website?

   1. It is at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately it uses PayPal, which isn’t exactly pure.

      1. Although I used Paypal (and agree that it is impure but so is the Federal Reserve), you can do a direct credit/debit card payment to his Elk Creek Company business further down on the page at https://survivalblog.com/tencent/ if you want to keep Paypal out of the loop.

   2. James Wesley, Rawles
      c/o P.O. Box 303
      Moyie Springs, Idaho 83845

      Cash is king…

8. I agree with you. I have stopped ordering from Amazon. Never had an account of my own but my wife does. I am working to eventually convince her to cancel that account. I will use it for seeing reviews of products but then order from the companies actual website. I did this for some syrup my wife uses and it was actually cheaper than Amazon. I also support the 10 cent challenge. I visit this site first thing every morning and am happy to support it.

   Additionally I am trying to get away from everything google related. Have set up proton mail and calendar. The only legal remedy we have is to starve the beast.

   1. I need to look into Proton mail and slowly transition my Gmail to it. It’s a little daunting after having a Gmail account for so long, hopefully there will be some type of forwarding I can use. There is no choice though. We must all be diligent and disciplined in starving the beast. -Scott

      1. Proton mail is great; been using it for quite a while. Just got Proton VPN so can’t report on it yet. I’ve pretty much gotten completely off google on all platforms but, the problem with trying to dump google is it is embedded on all android phones.

      2. You can set up mail forwarding from gmail to send all your messages to protonmail.

         1. Thank you, then this is a no brainer.

9. Thank you so much for doing this. You will now have a Ten-Cent Subscriber.

   It’s easy to give lip-service to these kinds of strategies but it’s another to walk the walk which you are doing.

   Even just trying to buy most everything made in the USA is difficult and often expensive. I would have much more savings over the last decade or so if I had just bought based on price but I still feel pretty good about it.

   As the last election showed us, we vote with money, not with votes. While it’s nice to think maybe someday we can get a transparent, honest voting process, the reality is that we vote with our money and our feet.

   1. By the way I wish I could pay more (I have, at least, bought most of your books with the exception of the Counter-Caliphate Chronicles) but as a tech worker with no current income (the H-1B abuse is really squeezing me), not to mention being on the “this guy is a conservative libertarian and voted for Trump” blacklists.

      That reminds me, what happened to Parler is a stark reminder that we really have to create our own infrastructure vertically such as our own payment systems and Internet infrastructure for cloud and conventional hosting and even our own IP space if possible.

      1. It would be good to have someone who is a “techie” create alternative sites, or research them and make suggestions on using them. It sounds like one of our wealthier and tech savvy brethren should develop a server farm that could keep conservative thought up and available. Question for the those who lost their Kindle books: If you have down loaded the books to your Kindle are they lost too?

         I am currently working on what the expanded American Redoubt looks like. Many of us live outside Idaho and Montana, but we do have ways to develop the Redoubt to cover a large part of the country.

         I do not participate in any social media organizations beyond e-mail. I use my telephone only for telephoning, I don’t text since it is important to hear what people are saying and how they say it. So I guess that makes me a dinosaur, but so be it, it allows me more time to look to God for the answers.

         If you are tech oriented though use your talent to develop alternatives to these dictatorial behemoths, and then share that information with those of us who are tech ignorant.

   2. S H, truly, voting with our money is reliable and everyday. Voting for politicians happens only every few years.

      I like the sense of control I have voting with money. My choices are broader, too.

      Carry on

10. Bold move as Amazon is part of your income and it’s a lifeline for those of us who live in the country.

    To be honest, so many people depend on the ease of Amazon, it’s like an addiction to receive products quickly and efficiently.

    Kindle, Prime Video, Prime ordering, Subscriptions, Music…it’s woven through the fabric of our lives.

    1. Elizabeth, you are correct – Amazon IS an addiction, and from all that has happened that Mr. Rawles so aptly described, it is beginning to kill the host it feeds upon. Time to bail. best, redclay7

       1. This is the same for us. I’ve read this article and I’m literally sitting here today trying to figure out how we would get by without Amazon. We have not worn a mask during this entire ordeal and don’t plan on starting but any place that we go to locally requires mask to go inside. So we cant even shop local for needed items.

    2. I also live way out in the country and for me to find a specific tool, herb, or other specialized item(s), it would take me days just to find a store that even carried the item(s) and a 4 to 6 hour drive to obtain the item(s). Most of the stuff I get from amazon are from associates who do a good job and get me what I want/need within a few days. But … I am weening myself off amazon and going directly to the associates, even though it is more expensive.

       1. Same here. 5-6 hour drive round trip to get supplies and sometimes impossible during the winter. I have tons of kindle books so I’ll investigate downloading them and reading them with another reader. I used to have walls and walls of shelving and “real” books, but I gave most of them away to people I loved after moving them from state to state to state. Sigh. I knew there would be a risk to going digital.

          However, “starve the beast” is my motto and I should have just *deleted* my account immediately, then I thought, okay, my Prime membership expires in May, I just won’t renew… whatever my excuses are… anyway, I have delayed while trying to figure out where I can get certain supplies. I have some medical supplies that are 5x the price elsewhere, so I ordered a year’s worth to buy myself some time until I can find another supplier.

          JWR – I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!!!! I know this will be a big financial hit to you. And for that 1 reason, I shall delete my Amazon account. I think I just needed extra inspiration.

          1. My library has an app and book downloads. I fund it with my taxes so why not use it. I was an audible guy but have cancelled that and use my local library.

             1. T. Lowe,
                It’s good to live frugally, but be careful with public Libraries. It is important to remember that public libraries are government entities – funded with tax dollars, and therefore subject to the whims of Government, without regard to certain rights, like privacy.

                Our county Library has stated that they have the ability to track the books/DVD’s etc., that are loaned/viewed and keep an actual history of activity. Also, I noticed our newly renovated branch of the county library two years ago had installed cameras all over the facility, and when I was there to vote, asked the Librarian what was up with all of the cameras. She made a face and said “we have a lot of kids here, so we need those for the child predators”. Truly a sad world we are living in.

                Anyway, be careful what you check out of libraries. Anything sensitive should be acquired elsewhere with an eye toward op sec.

                As always, hoping we all…
                Seymour Liberty

             2. Seymour – we actually drive out of our way to go to a library that is not funded by tax dollars. They are a non-501(c)(3) privately owned library! Guess what – no mask needed to enter 🙂

       2. @Animal House- Use amazon to find the items you want, then use the internet (Startpage/DuckDuckGo) to find where else the item can be purchased from.

11. this was my first year to be a .10 a day user donor. That post got my attention and so i determined i get more information here than i do from my local newspaper, conservative and printed once weekly. I dropped Gannet years ago as most others did. Thank you and i pray we all survive the coming changes to America.

12. Amen! Thank you JWR!

13. I believe you would get way more subscribers if you offend an online payment option.

    1. I’m not sure what you mean here but if you want to use a credit or debit card check at https://survivalblog.com/tencent/ for https://elkcreekcompany.net/product/add-a-ten-cent-challenge-survivalblog-subscription-3-00/

       There’s even a bitcoin payment option.

    2. By what he is doing, I’m sure he is offending All of amazon’s online payment options!

       1. I think he may have mistyped and instead of saying “offend” he meant to say “offered.”

14. Thank you JWR. We divorced that beast recently also. We take voting with our dollars very seriously. Your stand is much appreciated. We also have divorced Walmart, Target, Costco, and most large corporations. Just yesterday God told me, “the Almighty Dollar is NOT almighty”.
    We are doubling our annual gift to you.

15. Payment options are listed here, including PaytPal (may want to be careful with them) and at Elk Creek Company. https://survivalblog.com/tencent/

16. Funny, I was totaling up my purchases for the accountant. Dropped Prime and using Wally World unless I can it cheaper locally, and a lot of times the “mom and pop”stores will cheaper.

17. We hung it up about 2 weeks ago. We USED to spend between our home and work, about $3,000 a month with Amazon. Now we still shop online as we’re pretty rural, but it is direct from the manufacturer or other retailers. We absolutely pay more and it takes longer to get stuff but will get used to it and can afford to pay more.

    We also stopped shopping at Costco back in July of 2020.

    We hate to say it but we still do the Amazon Prime as we can’t find an alternative to that, but $3000 a month down to what,,,, $100 bucks or something a year is pretty big.

    We just subscribed to the membership here.
    Thanks James.

    1. I stopped shopping at Costco as well, as even with a medical exemption for no mask they still won’t let me in. Should probably sue for disability discrimination, that might teach them a lesson for supporting the Scamdemic.

18. Hello,
    Consider EBay for some of your lid sales. So far I have not heard of any socialist communist actions there.
    Love your lids and rings. Love what you stand for. I appreciate you.

    1. There are plenty, they are just not quite as blatant about it…….yet.

19. I’m in, but will not use paypal. Please show me another way.

    1. credit/debit card: https://elkcreekcompany.net/product/add-a-ten-cent-challenge-survivalblog-subscription-3-00/

       or send cash, check, Constitutional silver etc. to snail mail listed in https://survivalblog.com/tencent/

    2. We also refuse to use the PayPal service. NO THANKS!

       1. I personally have always refused to use PayPal. It’s only for the business. Sometime soon, we’ll probably be dropped by them for our stance. I have stayed away from Facebook and Twitter and any other of those social thingies. I only once for one exchange had a Facebook account that I deleted immediately after the photo arrived and refused to ever go back.. I lost contact with many friends because of it. Often friends have told us what our sons were up to… before they told us on the phone! Shrug! Oh well! It’s the price we paid to stay out of that system as much as possible!

          God is good and will provide for our every need and your, our reader’s needs in the future.

          1. Avalanche Lily, I completely understand! Your feelings on PayPal, Facebook and Twitter are the same as mine. I have never used Instagram, either.

             I, too, have a friend who occasionally will fill me in on adorable photos of my grandkids on fcbk.

             My family understands I l-o-v-e privacy. It is wonderful to know you and others here think like me. smile. It makes me feel good to know I am not alone.

             Asking the Lord to provide for you in abundance, Krissy

             I can’t

             1. I forgot to say:

                “I can’t wait to hear how the Lord provides over the coming years!”

             2. 😉

                Hi Krissy,

                I missed this post of yours last week, and just saw it as I was going down through them. No worries about supporting us. We totally understand, some cannot and we’re okay with that. We just want to be a help and a blessing to all who read SurvivalBlog. We thank you for your prayers for us. That is your wonderful support for us, one that we need more than anything else. 😉

                May you have a blessed evening!

                Hugs,

                Lily

    3. Unfortunately, I’m in the same boat. PayPal is vehemently anti-gun. In Canada, a few years ago, many people used PayPal at the gun shows for convenient transactions. When PayPal found that it was used at a gun show, they seized the accounts, and the money in them, claiming that the vendors had “violated” their rules. For many small vendors this represented thousands of dollars, and most wound up having to spend more out of their pockets in legal fees to try and get the money back.

       1. I had the same thing happen using PayPal (which is/was owned by eBay, btw) years back! They said my website sold a vitamin & that was “medical Rx sales” not allowed, so they immediately locked the account down & confiscated ALL our PayPal account $$! I pushed back hard & they eventually gave the $$ back, but sheesh!! Most would not do the “what (that) I did,” I’m sure. Lesson: Rackateers they truly are! Never again deal with snakes like Pay(not your)Pal, after that, too. Nothing like a good burning to learn ya!

          We’ve not yet nixed “Amazing,” but due their evil politics, we are aiming that way very soon, likewise. Truth is, Conservatives are going to have to learn to stick together in all ways, next…because the Left is ugly & merciless…just a fact! Cooperation with them in most any way, now, is like dealing with the Borg.
          Fu-tile!

          Time to see it – learn it – do it – live it (and smile)!
          The mainstream media / national “news” is next! Poof!

20. Good on ya. 🙂 Reading this made my day!

21. Please post a reminder for everyone – who is the publisher of your books, and where can they be purchased directly and not on the beast? Thanks!

22. Bravo Mr. Rawles for washing your hands of Amazon,so did our family. I laughed when I heard his opposition to mail in voting when his Miss. warehouse employees wanted to unionize. What a magnificent Hypocrite and phoney . The mattoid is taking advantage of our capitalist system, but is a Marxist at heart. You know the tree by its fruit. I never trusted that guy anyway ,he looks like he could play a villain in a James Bond movie.

    1. This is the truth. Bezos takes advantage of the capitalist system, all while promoting Marxism. It’s sick really. …but he’s not the only one. There are many Americans who live this double-life. Speaking with your dollars can make a very powerful statement, especially when many people join together in such an effort. This can be done not just with Amazon, but on every level of our economy.

23. I have been planning to cut and have been adapting to life without Amazon; DVD’s are plenteous in 2nd hand stores, garage sales, libraries, archive.org.

    My Vanguard funds are invested in Amazon, Google (Alphabet), Microsoft, Apple; so I am transferring to accounts not so afflicted.

    I no longer use Firefox or Safari – only Brave, which is much faster. Do not use Google search, I use yippy.com. If you stop using Firefox, YouTube, Apple also delete your account. Do not use cloud storage from any of them.

24. Never had a twitter account, have left Facebook, cancelled Amazon Prime, will never walk into a Walmart or Sams. As soon as my Apple products ‘expire’ I will look for other devices. I will keep searching for ways to disconnect.

    I had a friend question why bother. He felt it would not make much difference to these entities whether I patronized them or not. Maybe…maybe not.
    My firm belief Is that support for the locally owned business or the ‘small’ operation is a more important positive than a lack of support for the behemoths is a negative factor. They will simply appreciate and benefit more from my patronage.

    No doubt it might be more costly and require some effort. If we don’t make a stand we will some day wake up to not having a choice or options.

    1. One little pebble can start an avalanche.

       1. Thank you. Especially if we all have faith and believe this. We all just need to do the right thing and let God handle it. Please get the word out to others who may not patron SB.

       2. BWL… So well said.

          From your post: “One little pebble can start an avalanche.”

          I thought this morning about the champions rising among the American population. The SB team is (and has been for many years) among those champions. The news covers others who are newer to the scene.

          Just as we celebrate the SB departure from Amazon, we should celebrate the others too. We must be victorious in the battle against the evils of Marxism, and should not be disheartened, but instead energized in every good effort.

          Here are a couple of examples of others from today’s headlines…

          James O’Keefe and Project Veritas has sued the NYT.

          https://www.projectveritas.com/news/new-york-times-begs-court-to-dismiss-project-veritas-defamation-lawsuit/

          Mellissa Carone is running for public office on an election integrity platform. She was steadfast in the hearings, courageous and steadfast.

          https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/dominion-whistleblower-mellissa-carone-announces-run-mi-state-repwill-focus-election-integrity/

          Ken Paxton wins a suit against a policy put forth by Biden in just 6 days of the Biden administration.

          https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/texas-wins-first-lawsuit-administration-within-6-days-biden-inauguration-halts-illegal-deportation-freeze/

          The Gateway Pundit reports that Virginia should be added to the list of states where true forensic audits should be conducted. Take note that this list is expanding.

          https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/add-virginia-list-states-forensic-audit-2020-election-results-absolutely-necessary/

          We can and should celebrate victories together, learn from them, and continue to proceed forward. With all our dedicated efforts — good, right, honorable, and cheerful — we will be victorious.

25. I agree with so many others, I will not use Pay Pal. I am way off the beaten path as far as Social Media goes, although, much of it is from my techno ignorance.

26. JWR & AL, Just sent a $50 donation. This is the first website I visit every morning gleaning new insight from your articles and comments from the SBlog family. Probably like a lot of others I have bought your books and used links to help support SBlog but that’s where it stopped. I hope that each person that reads your article about starving the Amazon beast will become a regular subscriber. I applaud your Faith and Courage!

27. If you’re looking for a good alternative to Amazon for outdoor/firearm/survival-related gear I highly recommend Optics Planet. I’ve used them for years and their prices are frequently better than Amazon.

    1. Thanks for something beyond another rant. Practical information is what’s needed now.

       I’d like to invite all SB folks to get a list together of their favorite beast alternatives, with links, addresses, phone numbers, etc., and get them to JWR. Then, Mr. ,W, collate them and feature the list in an article.

       1. That’s a really good idea. Maybe the blog can devote a page to “alternative suppliers”. I need to go through my Amazon purchases for the last year anyway and print receipts for medical and business purposes. So, I’ll try to put together a list of the various suppliers websites/contact info so I can go directly to them, if U.S. or Canadian based. For instance, I rely on medicinal teas and there are 2 Amazon suppliers I use: Starwest Botannicals, and Frontier Coop. I can go directly to them instead of going through Amazon. We should all start making supply lists as we disengage (go Galt), and if JWR is agreeable, forward those lists.

          1. A plan is being worked on, at this very moment, but it may be a week or so before being posted.

             Yes, please forward any of your lists of alternative suppliers that you all use and recommend.

             1. Thanks so much, Lily.

                I should have known you guys would have had something in the works.

                Everybody, get your links, catalogs and ordering addresses together, even for odd stuff like your tractor parts and supplies or craftsman-made blacksmith items.

                Is the idea of old fashioned newsletters beyond practical these days? Could we consider a mailing list conglomeration of some sort that would be an EMP / shadow banning / cancel culture-proof supplement to SB online?

             2. FAX MACHINES! Dig ‘em out of the back of your closets!

             3. Azure Standard is a family owned Company that we buy a lot of our food from. We go once a month to a local pick up spot and pick up our delivery.

       2. Hey Gene, that’s a great idea. What would be nice is a tab on SB we could just click on when we need to buy something, to see what the alternatives are, listed by subject (books, auto parts, herbs, etc.) with a link provided. I wonder if there’s a way to get some of those business to pay some sort of an “associate’s” reward like Amazon does? Even a fraction of a percent would be better than nothing. Maybe we could start a movement since I’m sure a lot of other businesses and suppliers would like to see Amazon tamed back as well. A teenie little associate’s reward would be a good way to help them accomplish that. It could even be as simple as typing a SB code into a box at checkout.

28. My wife and I decided to leave Amazon a couple years back, I remember it being a fight just to delete our basic accounts. We find what we need in person or from eBay. People don’t realize nowadays you rarely bid for items on eBay, they have set prices and best offer options. There are many warehouse sellers that use eBay (almost all based in California) that we try to avoid and buy from smaller sellers. I’d say our eBay experience has been 99% positive.

29. JWR and Avalanche Lily! CONGRATULATIONS. You lead by example in so many ways, and this decision is timely. In fact, just the other day I was wondering about this very question, and then I saw your article this morning at the blog!

    We have also parted ways with Amazon. When we place orders, we find alternative suppliers. It takes additional work, and it’s worth it. A corporate political monster has been created, and we are — as an American society, culture, and beacon of light for the world — paying a heavy price for that.

    Dan Bongino has been talking about the creation of a separate and parallel economy, and I believe he is onto an idea that must be developed. The step you’re taking is an important part of that movement — fledgling, but growing.

    THANK YOU, JWR and Avalanche Lily, for leading by good example!

    1. Amazon is a Monopoly! I’m glad we’re finally ditching it!

       It is the Beast system.

       It is addicting! It’s so easy to use!

       I was always very uneasy about using it, but did it anyways, with some reluctance and with the attitude of, “Might as well get what we need, while we can get it, because someday soon, we won’t be able to buy or sell anyway.”

       Now we will cut this off and buy and sell in the other arenas until they go cashless/digital. Then we will barter, grow, reuse, refit, invent, etc., and do without.

30. Hey JWR, I’m going to pst two comments so they get read individually.

    I have a suggestion. What if you had the $5 challenge? People wishing to donate could set it up with their bank’s monthly bill payment service. I do that even with a friend I split phone service with. If donators set SB up as a monthly bill, donate $5, the bank would take care of it and we’d never have to think about it again, or remember to get an envelope and stamp out each moth which is so easy to procrastinate and never get done. What’s $5 a month? For those who would find $5 a struggle, it can even be set up for $3 a month, or any amount.

    With my friend, it’s an electronic transfer but I believe there’s a paper check option as well. If there isn’t, perhaps you could set up a separate account just for donations, set up a 57 character password, and just post the bank account routing number. Again, I don’t know exactly how all that works but perhaps there’s a better way to set up transfer things on your end if posting a routing number isn’t feasible.

    I’m willing to bet a $5 challenge that could be automated on the donator’s end would greatly increase annual donations.

31. How do I cancel my amazon account? I rarely use it, preferring to buy local. I began leaving the mega business” over a year ago. They are killing small town America. It has been a little more expensive but is well worth it, to support our local tax base.

32. This site is Patriotic news you can trust – sent my check today.

33. It is about time we put our money where our mouth is…I will be putting a check in snail mail today to help support the blog…I decided several weeks ago to forego shopping at amazon…As far as gun related items go…Midway USA…Midsouth…Optics Planet..Natchezss..etc are much better places to support.

    1. I don’t use amazon anymore… I usually just search the interwebs for what I need… ditto; Midway, Optics planet, Palmetto State, Brownells, Center Fire Systems, Classic Firearms, Bear creek Arsenal, Apex Gun Parts, Sarco, GunMagWarehouse… way too many to mention… just buy direct…

       Most of the stuff on Amazon is chinese made crap anyway… if you buy flipflops, sketchy electronics, jewelry, cheap tools, etc., you are not only making Doctor Evil rich, you are helping to buy a square foot of deck on a chinese aircraft carrier…

34. We quit shopping Amazon the moment they dropped Parler – might shop their site then find alternatives for purchase, like directly from the manufacturer when possible. Here are some of the other changes we have made:
    1. Brinks Prepaid Card in lieu of Paypal. If someone only accepts Paypal, there’s nothing we can do.
    2. Linux in lieu of Windows or Mac (for seven years now… Linux Mint is SO much better than either Windows or MacOS, and this saves us thousands a year on software). And no, it’s not any more difficult than Windows or Mac.. it’s actually easier. My 80+ year old grandmother uses it, as does every member of our family. For those programs that MUST use Windows, I run a Virtual Machine inside Linux that runs a free version of Windows 10 since it does not need to be registered in order to continue to use it, unlike previous versions.
    3. Gab, Mewe, Minds.com * Telegram in lieu of FB & TW. Completely disabled our FB business page two nights ago, and TW weeks ago.
    4. Brave in lieu of Firefox.
    5. MEGA.NZ in lieu of Dropbox.
    6. The phone is not so easy. Dropped the iPhone, and bought a ruggedized Ulefone. This is a very nice phone, pretty cheap, and heavy. Never, EVER have logged into Google on it… alternatives for Google Play are to download the APK files and install manually… can find instructions on DuckDuckGo, although looking for a good alternative search engine.
    7. Protonmail in lieu of Gmail.
    8. Mailfence in lieu of Gmail calendar.
    9. Openphone in lieu of Google Voice.
    10. Going to switch our business website from Godaddy to Epik in May.
    11. Webstaurantstore.com in lieu of Costco for many items.
    12. Wire.com in lieu of Whatsapp or GV.

    There’s plenty more that I’m not thinking of right now.

    Really need a good substitute for Kindle… I guess encouraging favorite authors to go with an alternative is about the only option, as can’t find some of my favorites on Nook… this is for the SciFi & thriller books that I chew through at a rate of two per week. Other books (printed) we buy elsewhere, including Abebooks.com which is a great resource. Friends of the Library resellers are also a great resource for affordable books, magazines, etc.

    1. Thanks for this list!

    2. Careful on the GoDaddy thing, as they appear to have joined “The Suppressors” as well.

    3. Sorry but abebooks.com is owned by amazon.

       1. Oh just darn it… Redirecting the search for a good book supplier!

          1. Try Biblio for online book shopping instead. As far as I know, they are not tangled up in big-tech’s web yet. I too, was in search of an alternate online book vendor and was very displeased to learn Abebooks fell under the Amazon umbrella a couple of years ago.

             1. Thanks so much for this suggestion, Phil J! Much appreciated!

    4. Thanks for making this list! I’ll add:

       #3: Signal is a solid messaging app (end to end encryption by default, established by people with an ideological commitment to privacy and who refused to take a public stance during last year’s BLM/antifa madness).

       #4: Firefox with the right extensions (HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger, No Script, etc) can be reasonably private. Brave is better than Chrome, but I prefer the open source nature of Firefox to the closed nature of Brave (IE it’s hard for outsiders to determine if Brave is actually delivering what they promise).

       If I may–#13: Get a VPN! There’s a world of VPN providers out there, and virtually all of them are better than not using a VPN. (I personally prefer ProtonVPN.)

    5. Kindle Substitute: https://calibre-ebook.com/about

35. Since I’m ever the contrarian, (!) I’m sorry to see SB break ties with Amazon. I loved picturing Jeff Bozo sitting down at his desk every month writing out a check to SurvivalBlog.

    For those of us with no income, and those of us who live in Toejam Nowhere, buying locally is often not an option. I just bought a part for my truck that was $13 on Amazon with free shipping, $36 locally plus $3.50 in taxes. Amazon also gives me the option of buying used books from independent sellers, which I always use to save big bucks. There’s not a used book store within 2 hours drive and the odds of them having the exact book I’m looking for, like Term Limits this month, are slim.

    Amazon is a bazillion dollar company and all of us together won’t even begin to starve the beast so it would really be just a conscience thing. If it’s a conscience thing, then how about stop buying store-bought meat? There are really only 3 or 5, I forget, mega corporations who produce 95% of the meat here. Meat production factories in this country are totally cruel operations and they’ve put most of the small guys (farmers and butchers) out of business. When you understand just what is involved to get a bovine to eat corn, which they’re not designed by nature to do, it’s unconscionable. When you see stockyards where cows are up to their armpits in mud and cow sh!t, it’s unconscionable. When you see chicken houses full of chickens with Dolly Parton breasts so many can’t even stand up, it’s unconscionable. When they advertise “Free range chickens” and you realize that only means they have to have a small door open so they can go out into the tiny little yard, which door isn’t even opened until week 6 when they are already accustomed to the coop and won’t even go outdoors, it’s unconscionable. Yet we all still buy factory meat. When we buy factory meat because we don’t want to raise and kill our own critters and prefer to leave it to the “professionals,” that’s unconscionable to me personally. If I don’t have the cajones to kill it, I’m not going to leave it up to others and look the other way. I gave meat up five years ago and I only rarely miss it. I do buy chorizo, which is 100% waste product made from saliva glands and other gross stuff.

    Nobody wants to hear it but most of us continue to support the military industrial complex in this country, which is a total mystery to me how followers of the Prince of Peace can justify that other than they’ve been propagandized into it. Many of the founders like Patrick Henry and George Mason were 100% against adopting the constitution and one of the reasons was that it would allow the government to set up a standing army which would be used mostly to create an empire according to Patrick Henry’s words, which we have done bigger and better than any empire in the history of the world. Yet we ignorantly continue to support it. Patrick Henry realized even in his day that we are so far removed from other countries, who the hell is going to try to land an army here?

    The most decorated soldier in America’s history, Smedley Butler told us the truth about the military. It’s sole purpose in 2021 and in his day 100 years ago, is to benefit Big Corporations, not We the People. But we believe it’s for We the People because we’re ignorant and don’t bother to study history or dig into the details, gladly lapping up all the lies the Military Industrial Complex dishes out so they can get politicians in bed with them, screw us out of our money, and quit protesting about wars. Most of us are too afraid to challenge our beliefs. The military in not our friend, yet we continue to support it wholeheartedly. The US military policy of maintaining an empire for Big Business is totally unconscionable and if Americans would dig into the details, they’d see that.

    If you can’t believe America’s most decorated soldier in history, you won’t believe anyone. He received two Medals of Honor (only two men in history have done that), Marine Corps Brevet Medal, Navy Distinguished Service Medal, Army Distinguished Service Medal, the French Order of the Black Star, two decorations from the Haitian government, and ten campaign medals. Plus he was a general. But I guess most of us know more about the military’s purposes that he did.

    Here’s what he said:

    “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
    ― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier

    Our boys go off to get killed so Uncle Sam can expand the empire and make it safe for Big Business to steal resources from those countries, NEVER to make those countries “free” like we ignorantly believe, and everyone supports that, but people want me to give up Amazon for censorship and other “crimes?” We support killing, and often times of innocent civilians, without so much as a blink but Amazon is the worse offender so we have to boycott them?

    Whisky Tango Foxtrot!

    How about giving up meat and the military industrial complex while you’re at it as well. I could name other things to boycott, but I’ll sit down and shut up now.

    1. ” I loved picturing Jeff Bozo sitting down at his desk every month writing out a check to SurvivalBlog.”

       That is indeed a marvelous picture.

       Don’t ever sit down and shut up for too long. This world needs your perspective. I haven’t said as much to my family yet (my carnivore would rebel) but we are phasing out meat. Factory farms are ridiculously inhumane. (And since I was in elementary school, I have hated the fact that “humane” is so close to “human” because humans can be so awfully cruel.) Currently it’s used more as a flavoring than a main dish the majority of the time. I’ve asked family who wants to go in with me on a half a beef from a local rancher via a local butcher, when our freezer comes–and that much will last us a long time. In future, the carnivore can go back to hunting it if he wants it, and we can raise chickens that we will harvest ourselves if we’re going to eat them. I’m honestly not sure if I could do that. I like eggs more than chicken meat anyway…

       Thanks for recommending War is a Racket. I’ll put it on my list.

       1. Hey Bear,

          I really appreciate your comments. 🙂

          Here’s a free download of War is a Racket. Be sure to have a punching bag and barf bag handy. The actual book is on pages 1-52, then there is a lot of other material. Sometimes you have to scroll through a bunch of weird colored pages to get to the regular text on those other sections.

          http://kether.com/words/butler-smedley–war-is-a-racket-1.pdf

          I wish we would adopt his suggested amendment to the Constitution, basically no military personnel to leave our boundaries:

          “I PROPOSE an Amendment for Peace, to the Constitution of the United States:

          1. The removal of the members of the land armed forces from within the continental limits of the United States and the Panama Canal Zone for any cause whatsoever is prohibited.

          2. The vessels of the United States Navy, or of the other branches of the armed service, are hereby prohibited from steaming, for any reason whatsoever except on an errand of mercy, more than five hundred miles from our coast.

          3. Aircraft of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps is [sic] hereby prohibited from flying, for any reason whatsoever, more than seven hundred and fifty miles beyond the coast of the United States.

          Such an amendment would be an absolute guarantee to the women of America that their loved ones never would be sent overseas to be needlessly shot down in European or Asiatic or African wars that are of no concern to our people.”

          1. You know you are singing my song, brother. Here is where Montana Guy used to chime in. I miss that fella. Anybody have news about our friend?

             Carry on

             1. Once a Marine,

                I shot him an e-mail mentioning that you were asking for him. He may be in need of prayer. (?) I hope he chimes in again.

                Blessings,

                Lily

             2. Avalanche Lily and Once a Marine,

                I think you are correct in that he might be in need! The Lord had me pray by name fo Montana Guy just this morning, and now here you are mentioning him. I don’t believe in coincidences. Krissy

    2. We have family members who can’t eat CAFO (standard store-bought) meat anyway, but need meat for nutrients (some of us cannot live healthfully without meat due to inability to absorb those nutrients from vegetables and supplements). There ARE options. We buy grassfed/grassfinished beef and lamb online as well as pastured chicken and pork, and wild-caught fish (US Wellness Meats). Our eggs and grassfed dairy come from a semi-local farming family that delivers to a local “community” market. Yes, this is a tad more expensive, but quality food satisfies, so one eats less of it. Plus, we operate on the “pay the grocer, not the doctor” system. We only go to the local standard grocery stores for a couple of staples not available elsewhere, and to purchase for another household we are helping. In the future, God willing, we will be transitioning to a more self-sufficient lifestyle when our obligations here are no longer in force.

       1. Hi Mrs. Katy B, I applaud your efforts and thanks for pointing out these other sources which many other SB readers use. I wish more of us would utilize them.

       2. Mrs. Katy B,

          “pay the grocer, not the doctor” went onto my quotes list!

          True story: In the early 90’s, my folks started a ranch and raised organic, grass-fed beef for their grandkids. The first time I picked up the beef/cow from the butcher, I organized all the white wrapped packages in the upright freezer by name group. My favorites that I cooked with the most, were put up front for easy access, and least favorites stashed in the back.

          Did I mention I was young? As time went by, we used up nearly every package of beef, except these weird ones, I didn’t know what to do with.

          Finally, I called my mom and said, “What is Porterhouse?”

          Needless to say, through ignorance, I had saved the best for last.

          1. 🙂 Krissy! The first side of grassfed/finished beef we bought, I had a similar experience. I thought my 1977 Joy of Cooking would help. Turns out some cuts of beef have changed names since then! I ended up checking with a friend who ran a catering business and was a chef. I wish I had ended up with a Porterhouse…nope…beef shanks… 😀

          2. 😀 that is a wonderful story!

          3. Great story, Krissy. I know some folks who were vegetarian starting in the 70s. They raised only organic soybeans on their 120 acres, believing they were doing the meat-replacement correct thing.

             One day, they checked to see where their soybeans were going. Lo and behold, the midwestern soybeans were being shipped to Japan, sold to rich people as an “organic American special food”.

             After much family discussion, they turned all their land into pasture and now raise grass-fed beef and chickens using the regenerative agriculture model written about by Joel Salatin. The farmers are still mostly vegetarian and rest well in the knowledge that their meat is sold locally instead of halfway around the world.

             Carry on

             1. “organic American special food”

                Now that is funny.

       3. Yes! We have great local grass fed beef and chicken options. Recently a grass fed raw dairy opened up near us too! We do our own eggs but there are lots of egg producers around us!

          And we have a local farmer for any seasonal veggies we might want. He runs farmers markets all over our area. Farmers markets are, thank goodness, coming back!

    3. I’m with you on much of this but:

       “Amazon is a bazillion dollar company and all of us together won’t even begin to starve the beast”

       One thing about Amazon, if I’m not mistaken, is that they barely turn a profit (and were losing money for at least the first 10 years of their existence) such that a million people (that number could be much higher, too) suddenly not using any of their products and services will be very obvious to them.

       They also get lots of government money running the CIA cloud and if it wasn’t for Trump they would’ve gotten the Pentagon’s cloud too (ongoing fight, unresolved). There are probably ways we can put a dent in that, too.

       Death by a thousand cuts, I say.

       1. Hi S H, I was just thinking how not too many years ago, K-Mart ruled the world as far as brick and mortar stores go, and then some little upstart called Walmart started showing up on the scene, and the rest is history. There was a new internet company called Yahoo which was the cat’s meow during the first few years of the internet and then an upstart called Google came on to the scene and obliterated them.

          If someone with some savvy could come up with a way to harness all the Amazon hate (there are lots of different kinds of groups boycotting them for lots of various reasons), and get a lot of other businesses together for a one-stop shopping experience like Amazon has done, I think there’s some real potential there. I’d call the website Nozama (Amazon backwards, short and sweet, and the name is still available) and at least put up some real alternatives to fight Amazon instead of just everyone boycotting them. The one stop-shopping is one of their biggest pluses, so how to form a confederacy of other business getting together to offer one-stop shopping as a group?

          That would speed up your “death by a thousand cuts.”

          1. I’ve quit Amazon weeks ago. I will also TRY to not do business with Ebay unless I simply can’t find the item anywhere else. I would encourage everyone to also shed Paypal, they are a ripoff IMO. And Mr. Rawles I will be sending you $100 in a few days. I’ve been guilty of taking a free ride but now because of your moral stance that you have taken I will be more diligent in the future to help support SB. Thanks for being a good example to us all.

    4. St Funogas, I know not everyone can raise their own food so I’m not condemning anyone. When you live in the city working 12 hour days, you don’t have a lot of time to search out family businesses that sell from their farms. You just do the best you can. But with the globalists making every effort to control the world’s food supply, we have to make every effort to grow/raise at least some of our own food or be able to barter for it.

       Since moving to the country I can raise my own small livestock so I don’t buy beef, poultry, pork from grocery stores anymore. We raise what we eat and my son and I kill and butcher our own livestock. Except for beef, which I buy from a small private rancher. Our chickens have 3/4 fenced acre to range on and when they are no longer laying, I butcher them and preserve their meat and make broth. It’s not easy nor is it pretty but I know what they eat and how they are treated.

       We are waking up now and will do the best they can to get out of the matrix.

       1. Hey Animal House, I hear you. It’s pretty hard to raise all our own food and it’s nearly impossible to be 100% self-reliant without depending on Big Corporations for much of our food, fuel, non-perishables, etc. I wasn’t advocating that people give anything up, just look more closely at their beliefs and try to weed out some of the cognitive dissonance. My personal choice is to support censorship at Amazon over death and destruction from the Military Industrial Complex or what I consider cruelty and torture by Tyson and Monsanto. But I recognize those are just personal choices and not for everybody, but again, I just wanted to get folks to look at their cognitive dissonances when they make decisions like boycotting Amazon or supporting the Constitution.

          I also admire very much when people can put their money where their mouth is and truly boycott things they find disagreeable by paying more money somewhere else. JWR giving up tens of thousands of dollars in annual income says volumes about his character. I’ve had some friends and associates in the past who put money over honor in our dealings and that’s always been one of the most reprehensible acts a person can do IMO.

          I also hate all talk and no action, so boycotting Amazon at such a high personal cost that JWR and others are doing, is taking action and deserves a pat on the back IMO. Those are the kind of people you want watching your back when the SHTF.

       2. Just an fyi: Rabbit is a very healthy alternative meat. It is cheapest to raise, by the pound, doesn’t require a lot of care and reproduces quite quickly. I have raised them for years, and, if you are clever enough, you can use the pelts. I currently have a San Juan buck and a couple of broke New Zeland does. These are quite hardy and grow quickly, when separated at 3 to 4 weeks. We also raise goats but I have to admit, they are prone to parasites. I make cheeses and soap with the milk. Raising ducks and chickens is no problem either. You don’t need much space to raise meat chickens. They usually don’t stray far from their food and water. We range ours as soon as they are feathered out.

    5. Actually there are 19 who have been awarded 2 Medals of Honor. One is a far distant cousin of mine who died on his 21st birthday. France. WWI. USMC.

       I like Smedley Butler, but OTOH he stayed with the program and didn’t stop when he knew it was wrong.

    6. StF, regarding your comment: ” Many of the founders like Patrick Henry and George Mason were 100% against adopting the constitution and one of the reasons was that it would allow the government to set up a standing army which would be used mostly to create an empire according to Patrick Henry’s words, which we have done bigger and better than any empire in the history of the world. Yet we ignorantly continue to support it.”

       I was reading an interview with a very lefty fellow, Gore Vidal. As I often do, I am encouraging you to read this excerpt and see how much of his “leftist drivel” you can agree with. You know me, we gotta find common ground.

       Q: What did they have in mind?

       A: Well, I’ll tell you one thing they had in mind was that their handiwork was pretty makeshift. They did not worship their own creation. We worship the Constitution but do not observe it. Particularly the Bill of Rights. They knew it was kind of thrown together. And Thomas Jefferson went on record as saying that there should be a constitutional convention at least every generation . . . every 30 years . . . on the ground that you cannot expect a man to wear a boy’s jacket.

       Q: And the relevance of that today?

       A: Well, we’ve gone 200 years now without a constitutional convention. Our entire system now is dedicated to making sure that nothing is altered, that the status quo continues. And the dumb liberals start shrieking, “Oh, if you have a convention, they’ll take the Bill of Rights away.” To which my answer is: Well, they’re doing it anyway behind the closed doors of the Supreme Court.

       Q: Why are you so sanguine about the majority in this country turning out a good constitution. Are we more able than the founders’ generation?

       A: We are not only a less homogenous population than we were when we were3 million ex-colonists, but we’re less educated. On top of that, we have constant misinformation and manipulation by media. Between having no education on the one hand, and listening to all this nonsense on the other, you do not have Jefferson’s enlightened electorate. But I have a sense that there’s a basic common sense . . . . That’s called majority rule–write that down before you forget it. And that’s why you need a Bill of Rights–to protect the minority.

       There’s more for another day.

       Carry on

36. Kudos for leaving Amazon.

37. As a daily reader since the first month, I’m sorry to say that I have never been a 10-cent challenge reader. SHAME ON ME! That will change today with a 3 year back payment.
    I have however, just checking my amazon history last night (all the while thinking of an alternative site for mail ordering), made more than 320 purchases in the last year, and about 160 in 2019 and lesser amounts in previous years, ALL through the SurvivalBlog link(s). I too have been feeling the guilt of being a consumer of bezo and his china crap, and yes, it does seem like an addiction.
    Being a rural resident, it’s very hard to avoid mail order. Same for Mega-Lo-Mart being that that’s all we have in our town and for a hundred mile radius (there are a few small independents, but their prices are so high, generally, BECAUSE OF amazon or WM that we buy only our meat from the smaller stores where they have a real butcher shop and meat counter or we go directly to the farmer(s) and place a seasonal order (just split a half of beef with our daughter and her family last week). Produce that doesn’t come from our garden(s) comes from the local Farmers Market most of the time.

    As mentioned by a few people here, we all need to find alternative sources for our online media. I’ve had Yahoo for 20 years as my email. As much trouble it will be to do an address change with my contacts it will be quite a relief. I ‘noseybook’ maybe twice a year, that will be getting closed very soon also. I don’t tweet (except when I sleep…lol) so twitter can go dump itself down the outhouse hole where it belongs.

    These corporate groups, et al, have been behind the abolishment of the 2A for decades and now the control of the 1A if you don’t follow their group think. I for one, will no longer have any part of it.

38. Take the bankers out of the equation as well!
    .00114391 BTC is on the way.
    Thanks for all you do!

39. My wife just agreed to cancel Amazon. We never did have a facebook or twitter account.

    I plan to join the ten cent challenge or send numerous viable/sellable ammo magazines that can be turned into cash. Any preference?

40. As for the article links that may be cut, I appreciate the links to show me what the author is talking about as a visual aid and for the item descriptions. I have little problem finding the products elsewhere at a good or better price point. Buying American also gets me away from all of the problems of dealing with vendors in China. I too have reduced my Amazon purchases and use them mostly for product research.

41. Here’s another used book link that often sells cheaper than Amazon’s used books and they have free shipping as well without having to reach the $25 minimum like Amazon.

    Their stock isn’t the most complete but it’s still an option when looking for cheap used books.

    https://www.secondsale.com/

    For used books I generally start by using duckduckgo.com to enter the book title and they have at the top of the list photos of the book and the price and seller. You can use the arrow to scroll to the right to see all the options which are usually non-Amazon. When I bought The Terminal List this month, the cheapest option was actually a company in England (I don’t know how they ship that far so cheaply) but it was still the cheapest option I could find and it got here as quickly as Term Limits from Amazon’s used book source did.

42. Matt Braynard is the Executive Director of LOOK AHEAD AMERICA.

    They have a plan of action that is very closely related to starving the Marxist beast — economically and politically. They are also working in earnest on the very serious problem of censorship, and the critical need to protect free speech.

    https://www.lookaheadamerica.org/author/matt/

    Matt was interviewed on Steve Bannon’s program this morning. Steve talked about how his listeners are standing watch at the Watch Tower, and he’s right. We’re grinding through the work ahead of us to restore, protect and preserve our Republic.

    https://americasvoice.news/

    On another note. Be watchful. Democrats are looking to “chip away” toward their goals. Some of their “big moves” may become many “smaller moves”. This is one of the strategies they have used to make as much progress toward the tyrannical control they seek. Watch them carefully. Protest (civilly, legally, non-violently) even the smallest moves they make in the direction of the Socialist, Communist, Marxist agenda.

    …and one last thought for now. Know and recite often the words of your CONSTITUTION. We can begin with the FIRST AMENDMENT.

    https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution
    note: Links often include commentary or articles with opinions. These can vary with time and political leanings. I encourage you to read the language of the Constitution itself. Just as you go directly to the Bible, we should likewise go directly to the Constitution.

    Here you go…
    The FIRST AMENDMENT: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

43. Good move Jim. Now the rest of us need to follow your example.

44. I divorced myself from Target years ago, and it was a lengthy, sometimes painful process to find other suppliers. I am very rural, and had loved my Prime membership. I decided weeks ago to get away from Amazon, but my Prime membership had just renewed the month before. Several of my kids used my Prime account as well, so I set Amazon’s 3-day renewal reminder and then left it active. My daughter orders all kinds of stuff, and mostly small stuff (frequently) so it costs them more money to ship thus probably losing money. I will continue ordering things on my son’s behalf but only 1 item per order – they will lose money doing this. Be aware that each item must be ordered about 3 days after any previous order, or they will find a way to combine the orders for shipping. I am not going to let them keep my Prime money for a year, when I can likely make them lose money doing this. Keep your Prime account and order a nail clipper or something every few weeks. 😉

45. For those of you who want to use a credit card to make a donation or subscribe to the .10 cent challenge, you can do that through the Elk Creek Link A credit card works just fine there.

46. Even though you have supported amazon in the past, I would always looks at an item of interest, mostly books, check the price and then go over to abehbooks.com and find the same thing for less or eBay, another monster I would like to get cut from. I am also in the process of starving the beast with any monopoly type conglomerates. Example, the electric company, I really need them but I can do much to cut my usage. I have paid my annual dues and will continue from this day forward. I recommend that if there is a reader that is not able to pony up the 10 cent challenge, then pay what you can, it all adds up. Congratulations on your divorce, I support it 100%. Ironically my son works for them but he is getting this article anyway.

    1. Abebooks.com is owned by amazon.

       1. Thanks for that information. Goodbye abebooks.

          1. Also part of the Bezos empire: Whole Foods and the Washington Post.

47. We also won’t use PayPal. Just another bunch of Libtards. So we’re sending a check today.
    It is because of Survival Blog that our family was ready when an ice storm hit in November last year. We went without electricity, and internet, for twelve days. We had everything we needed, and all of us were quite comfortable. Our neighbors however either suffered through it, or had to travel outside of the affected area and stay with relatives, or in a hotel, etc…
    Quitting Amazon is going to be hard for us. We are Prime members and place orders four to five times a month. Using “Amazon Smile” a small percentage of money from our orders goes to our favorite charity.
    However, we have been using Amazon as an online showroom more and more lately, and always shop for the lowest price. Amazon is probably lowest 50 to 60 percent of the time. Those other times we buy locally if possible, or straight from the manufacturer, or elsewhere online. Note: John McDonald is right about Optics Planet. We have been using them for over a year now. They have great sales sometimes, along with free shipping, free returns, and good customer service.
    One final thing about Amazon… we also use, and have come to love, Amazon Firestick for a lot of our television entertainment. There are an amazing amount of TV shows, and movies, available through the apps on Firestick. Soooo? We know we’ll have to figure out something eventually though, and have already begun the search for a reasonable replacement. (Without much luck.)

48. try the app called “2ndvote”
    info @2ndvote.com
    rated companies red to blue leanings
    It is time to starve the beast.

49. Thank you for your site. I just became a subscriber and worth every penny.

50. Severing ties with “Big Brother” when possible is pleasing on so many levels. I was more than a little worried that you’d choose profit over liberty regarding that company. Your decision will be rewarded in ways not thought of yet.

51. Right there with ‘ya, James. We, too, have already canceled our Amazon Prime and closed our Amazon account. We have also closed our Facebook accounts and are actively looking for a non-big tech replacement for our iPhones.

    The election was our family’s rubicon. Our daughter has already moved to Tennessee, and our son and his family (and I) are headed down to Texas for a few days, later this week, to search for a possible locale to move to. We have lived in Clark County, WA, for 30 years, and we are completely done with it! Homeless encampments, trash everywhere, COVID paranoia, soaring crime, socialist state legislature, and a Marxist governor (both here and in Oregon) have destroyed this once-great place to live.

    And BTW, I’m one of those who send in $100 yearly. I will gladly keep that up!

    1. East Texas or NE Texas would be my choice. Austin, Houston, and the DFW area are getting large population increases from the left coast , the north east , Chicago , and Detroit. Already changing the politics in those cities.

       1. Thanks, Paul. We are first getting a hotel in Tyler, then expand our search from there. Kinda interested in Sulphur Springs, too.

          1. Tyler/Sulphur Springs is a good place to start. Then head east. Longview, Harleton, and Hallsville are more rural and also worth looking at. It would be great to get more like us close by.

             1. Noted. Thanks!

    2. I hear ya, John. I was born and raised in western WA, moving to a rural part of the same county I was born in 2.5 decades ago. The change from the late 1950s to present day in Seattle is absolutely astonishing!
       I looked at that 150 acre property JWR linked to in Tonasket, WA today. I love that area and it has all sorts of awesome possibilities however, at the end of the day, you would still be living under the Inslee regime. Uh, no Thanks!

52. Did the same a week ago, severed all ties to that communist outfit. Everyone ought to do the same and financially collapse it.

53. Dear JWR and others,

    I have lurked for a while. I have turned my back facebook years ago. I will not buy Apple. I am currently contemplating how I to switch my Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Audible, PayPal, YouTube, etc. services to “cleaner” alternatives. It is hard to live in the world knowing what we all know. Blue pill or Red pill? I am slowly transitioning…

    I appreciate you all – the articles and comments.

    I’d love to read more content on alternative sources for all of the conviences that I’ve come to unrighteously depend on. I have cut and pasted from some of the comments above and I will start to research on Duck Duck Go via Brave. I need to get it searching on a Linux laptop (tablet or 2-in-1?). If anyone can steer me to some addition articles or concentrated sources or hardware vendors I’d appreciate. I will look through this blog as well.

    $100 to JWR and survival blog for my past lurking.

    May God Bless you all.

    ~ Flip

    1. We recently switched to Qwant for our default search engine. It works very well, for Firefox browser users. Note: We previously used IXQuick (aka StartPage), but that actually utilized the Google search engine in the background.

       1. Yes Startpage and I think Duck Duck go use Google ias the actual search engine just the user is not Startpage or Duck Duck go. I have never used amazon. I always felt it was out to get the little guy. I don’t shop at walmart or target either. And I surely do not use fb instagram twitter or any others. I have an old email account. And never use Google etc either. I always try to use cash when I can as well. One place I do use is at times costco. I’m so glad I never used Amazon. I always had a bad feeling on it as well as all the social media and all the big stores that drive away small stores/companies.

54. Thanks for posting this, as a longtime reader and not subscriber I’m very happy to remedy that situation and support the cause. Very much appreciate all the info on this site!

55. I just paid for 3 yrs of the 10 cent challenge via the Elk Creek site–I should have done it before now.

56. Looks like another example of most of us thinking the same way once again.

    As I posted previously, I dumped Amazon a few weeks ago, and canceled about $2k at the time. Since then I’ve done more business locally and via Opticsplanet (for now) to compensate. Unfortunately I can’t use the PX/Exchange platform as they won’t deliver to me here in AK. So I am looking for other online options that are constitutionally sound. Gonna be an interesting next few years.

57. I’ve appreciated your steady hand and wise guidance for at least 15 years. Thank you and God bless you and yours. Count me in.

58. Cancelled my prime membership after watching challenge to do so by southerpreppe1 on YouTube video. I am weaning myself off of Amazon as well. I may consult them for reviews and product information but I will no longer be buying anything from them or paying for any of their services PERIOD. I subbed JWR to support your endeavor. Keep up the good work.

59. I would note that you can look products up on Amazon, look at the reviews , and then search for the seller’s separate web page and order from them directly without going through Amazon.

    Sellers could make that easy by putting in info to make finding their page easier, although Amazon would probably ban direct HTML links.

60. Just sent a year’s subscription. Thanks James for all you do and for divorcing Amazon.

61. Ten Cent Challenge donation sent via Elk Creek link.

62. I hope they feel the effect but I doubt it. I will gladly send you fund$. Thanks for all that you do.

63. Long-time reader here and first time contributing to the 10-cent challenge. So glad to hear you are dumping Amazon.

    A good source for used books is Thriftbooks.com I have gotten a lot of hardcovers in good condition for a few dollars each.

    Other Amazon-owned things to avoid-

    fabric.com (if you sew, try equilter or bugfabric) Or your local quilt shop (the one I usually go to is open by appointment only thanks to the draconian lockdown crap in Massachusetts, but they have an etsy shop to order from)

    Zappos I have ordered from shoes.com instead and had good luck with them

    Thanks for all the great information over the years!

64. SUBSCRIBED!

65. A practical suggestion. When your contributors mention a product which would have had an Amazon link in the past, could your contributors please try to include as much product information as possible? Things like the full product name, model number, manufacturer or a good distributor’s website. These could either be in the body of the article or in footnotes at the end.
    I know it can be a pain in the patootie to pull your latest reviewed cool tool out of the corner and into a position where you can lay on your back with a flashlight and try to read the model number upside down, but it will be appreciated.

66. Well, It may be too late for anyone to read this but… I quit paypal years ago but with your alternate method I will get in line to help. I always meant to write a check and mail it… blah blah. Sorry! And I don’t understand why UBlock origin blocks 59 (61%) of whatever on the SBlog site but it’s ok. I NEVER click on links/ads anyway or anywhere. I may go direct if I’m interested.

    I recently tried BRAVE but didn’t like it and feel more comfortable with the firefox add ons I have… plus I use CCleaner and Glary to erase all the junk off my computer… religiously, almost after every site – depends who it is. You can teach an old dog new tricks… I recently learned on Frank and Ferns site that my computer info is relayed to google so I got an add-on to change what info is reported. It currently says I’m running a linux machine… it helps to stop the fingerprinting. I almost didn’t buy their set of pamphlets publication because of the google reporting but wanted it bad enough I gave in and then scrubbed my computer. Thanks Frank and Fern for your honesty about the google reporting!

    I recently called AMAZON because I was tired of having to receive an email with a code to be able to login everytime and got instructions on how to cancel my account. Tech Support said the code was necessary because I don’t Login often enough. I rarely buy Amazon anyway but like y’all I check reviews. Actually, I used my daughters’ roomates’ Prime Acct a couple of times or bought as a guest. Not perfect but it works. Next, I have never used my name for email or any logon on the internet.

    I can’t log into my youtube or gmail acct any longer because I don’t have a cell phone. I have never had a cell phone, never will, and have not suffered in any way for it. I generally just refuse to watch youtube videos as well. Goes for Brighteon as well. My privacy is more important than whatever junk caught my eye. And I have never had any type of social media account – Nada! You got pictures – email me. Although I don’t do email hardly any more either. No autopay for bills and No Paperless billing. And I use a SBlog recommended VPN.

    My Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail logins were created 25-30 years ago with fake info. I keep all my logins in a phone book just for that purpose and answers to security questions, birthdate, etc. I do use Google maps, rarely, but not another thing Google – at all!– for decades. I AVOID them like the plague or covid.

    Speaking of which, infection rates are up – everyone is wearing a mask… What is wrong with this picture? No one is wearing Gloves!! And quit playing with your mask. And get a N95 mask for goodness sake!

    I faxed the government of my state when caller ID came out and my number has been blocked on every call for what- 35 years… *82 for family and friends works fine. Until the cable company messed up and made my phone number public after 35 years of keeping it unlisted we now get robocalls (home phone). I’m gonna hate having to call everyone with my new number after all this time. Folks still remember it and call me without having to using their address book.

    Well my methods aren’t perfect but they make a difference. I tried to hit all the important parts. I’m and old Phart and If any of my methods inspire you, then all for the better!

    JEFFD1855 (Am I talking over your head?)

    1. I am using brave and like it so far. Trying to get rid of everything google.

67. GREAT choice Jim! Starve the beast!!! I’ll gladly pay for my subscription. Just sent it off to Elk Creek. Thank you and your staff for all you do. Stay heathy and safe!
    God Bless, Jeff

68. Based on personal experience, as long as you keep trusting the Lord, He will provide what you need. Thank you for all you do.

69. I’ll second the recommendation to check out Ebay for purchases, Most are “buy it now.” Most things have multiple sellers to compare and get the best deal on exactly what you want. And it looks like lots of sellers are small businesses. It’s easy to check on each seller’s feedback to see how well they take care of their customers. I have been selling a bit on there and find it a great way to help make ends meet. I’m surprised more folks on here aren’t recommending it. Amazon always has been a beast. Didn’t want to deal with as a seller, their rules are a nightmare.

70. Hey JWR, here’s another idea from my perspective of someone who would like to sell self-reliance stuff on SB but can’t justify advertising on SB due to sales uncertainty and up-front ad costs. For example, I’d like to sell mason jar crates as easily-shipable kits so the buyers just have to nail them together but I don’t want to pay a monthly advertising fee in case it doesn’t pan out, or if my sales aren’t enough to justify it. But I’d totally be willing to pay a percentage fee.

    What if smaller sellers of self-reliance/prepping products could advertise on SB but instead of a large up-front fee, they paid a tiny fee or no fee and then paid you as a percentage of profits instead of a large fee? The ads would be no different than now, off to the side and not in-your-face, or even on a separate tab. To weed out having too many ads, limit it to self-reliance/prepping instead of everything from earrings to eggnog mixers.

    If sellers weren’t meeting a sales threshold in the form of profit percentages forwarded to SB, they could be dropped as advertisers to keep the ad section from getting overly cluttered and to drop dishonest sellers if payments to SB were based on an honor system. And some of us would only want to advertise seasonally which would also help keep the ad section from getting cluttered.

    The idea would have to be fleshed out but I think it has potential for some of the smaller producers and sellers, and even some of the ones producing commercial-quality items who may have their own website. I can think of one small producer who’d probably love to get more exposure for his website and his fees (and others like him) to SB could be calculated based on people typing SB into the code box at checkout.

    Just my 2¢.

    1. Thanks, but the accounting for that would be a huge time sink. It is already fairly difficult using two affiliate advertising companies — and THEY handle all of the accounting.

       1. Hey Lily, I don’t know the first thing about running a website or the legal accounting requirements involved, you got me there. But based on a honor system of you posting a link to Fred’s business and Fred mailing you a check or making a “donation” each month seems pretty easy. That’s the simplest version of what I had in mind.

       2. Hmmm… do you know if the affiliate companies you already use would be willing or able to set up something like this idea?

          1. They mainly do good-sized corporate entities.

       3. There may be a relatively simply solution to this using an online hub/store model that a group of fellow farmers used to set up an online market. I’d be more than happy to consider taking on a project like this – essentially all vendors would be housed in the “SB online market” and would manage their inventory/shipping etc. themselves… As administrator, I could simply handle vetting/training for set up and coordinate all flow of funds (ie the store would handle all payments from customers, and then disperse funds to the vendors on a weekly/bi-weekly basis (less a percentage to SB and to myself to cover time and processing fees) – to ensure integrity from my end, JWR or an appointee would have full access to the site’s reporting/back office functions to track sales figures etc. If this is of interest JWR, kindly reach out. Biggest challenge will be which service to use to send money to vendors given the backlash against PayPal in the comments here…I’m sure their are alternatives/solutions to this.

          1. We tried setting up a free “want ads” section at SurvivalBlog, back in 2005. It turned out to be a huge time sink. It also opened us up to liability. Worst of all, disgruntled buyers contacted US for resolution when a product wasn’t shipped, or if it was of low quality, et cetera. We CANNOT afford either the liability or the many hours required for such a project. Sorry!

71. Dear Jim and Lily:

    Thank you for taking your principled stand regarding Amazon. Someone once said: “The definition of integrity is doing what’s right … even when it hurts.” You have set an example for others to follow. I pray that the increased SB subscriptions will more than compensate your loss in Amazon revenue.

    As a child, I first read the verses in Revelation regarding the “Mark of the Beast.” I read that no one would be able to buy or sell unless they swore allegiance to the one-world leader (the Anti-Christ) by receiving a mark on their right hand or forehead. In those days, it seemed pretty scary — but it also seemed pretty far removed from the reality of my innocent childhood. Today, we are seeing the persecution of Christians here in the U.S. Right now, it is a soft form of totalitarianism, but things are likely to get much worse. Immigrants to the U.S. from communist countries are truly shocked by what they are now seeing. Even foreign leaders of the free world have recently expressed alarm over censorship by Big Tech.

    A few years ago, the Christian owners of a small bakery in Oregon were literally put out of business by LGBTQ activists and the State of Oregon Labor Department. “Gay marriage” was not even legal then in Oregon — it violated the State constitution. Nonetheless, the owners of the bakery were fined and forced out of business — just because they could not (in good conscience) decorate a wedding cake for a ceremony that violated their Biblical beliefs. Bakers, florists and wedding photographers in other States have faced similar legal action and persecution when they refused artistic business services that violated their conscience.

    The irony is that States have accused these small Christian businesses of discrimination. Yet at the same time, the “Titans of Tech” are allowed to freely discriminate against anyone with whom they disagree. As Mark Steyn noted this morning on the Rush Limbaugh show, the cartel of Big Tech billionaires now have more collective power that many nations of the world (including possibly the USA). While many small business owners have religious beliefs based on the Bible, “Big Tech” and “Big Business” seem to have their own pseudo-religion. The false religion of the these multi-national behemoths often works in concert with Legacy Media, Higher Education, and well funded Political Pawns. Here are some of the tenets of this corporate pseudo-religion:

    * Suppress Christian expression.
    (“Happy Holidays” is acceptable, “Merry Christmas” is not.)
    * Celebrate “diversity.”
    (but do not tolerate truly diverse opinions and free speech.)
    * Promote the radical LGBTQ+ agenda.
    * Promote the idea of “Man-made Climate Change.”
    (and suppress any evidence to the contrary).
    * Agitate racial division via Critical Race Theory.
    * Limit our 2nd-amendment rights.
    * Promote Globalism and the United Nations agendas.
    (and out-source manufacturing to the lowest overseas bidder.)
    * Promote “open borders.”
    (while opposing measures that ensure election integrity.)
    * Influence elections through personal and corporate donations.
    (FB / Mark Z. reportedly put $400M into the 2020 election.)

    As Mike Lindell (the “My Pillow” guy) found out, if you oppose even one of the above points, you risk the wrath of Big Tech, Big Media and Corporate America. They will “come down hard” on you with all the weapons in their arsenal. These include, but are not limited to:

    * De-platforming.
    * De-monetizing.
    * Refusing your advertising.
    * Cancelling your sales distribution channels.
    * Removing your means of doing on-line commerce and banking.
    * Publicly shaming you on Twitter (as Walmart did to Sen. Josh Hawley).
    * Cancelling your publishing contracts.

    While the above situation may seem quite discouraging, we must not give up! We must continue to engage in spiritual warfare: by our prayers, by our practical but peaceful deeds, and by our Christian witness. I continue to be encouraged by the many prayer meetings being held virtually in our country. There are also many believers in other countries who are praying for America. To use a Biblical metaphor, I’m believing that God is even now raising up an army of “Davids” who dare to take on the “Goliaths” that have defied the armies of the Living God. Like David’s slingshot, our spiritual weapons may seem small and inconsequential at times. Even so, they are mighty and powerful when directed by the Holy Spirit. I think we will see some amazing miracles in the days ahead.

    Thank you again, Jim and Lily, for providing the SB blog as a valuable and strategic resource — especially at this time. I’m hoping that you will see an amazing uptick in SB subscriptions over last year. (I’ll plan to chip in a little extra again this year.) May the Lord greatly bless you and encourage you as you continue to “fight the good fight of faith.”

    Wishing you many blessings!
    Cliff (in Oregon)

    P.S. It’s snowing now here in the northern Willamette Valley. Perhaps you will get some too! 🙂

    1. Hear hear!!

    2. CDM, Loved your encouragement, especially in next to last paragraph. Thank you!

72. I’m free! I just cancelled my prime account. It feels good to take a stand…

73. Please put easy way to chip in support/subscribe to the blog on the front page , on top?
    Thanks,DML

    1. Doing so, soon!

74. “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

    Six months of 10-cent challenge en route shortly.

    Thanks for all you do!

75. Instead of buying from Amazon, try shopmyexchange.com. If you are a veteran or a retiree, you can register online and use the Military Exchange instead. It’s has a good variety of merchandise.

76. Jefferson Davis as the Secretary of War founded the U.S. Camel Corp in 1855. The camels were offloaded in Indianola, Tx (where I grew up) and marched to San Antonio.
    Indianola was destroyed by a hurricane in 1886. Its’ destruction was instrumental in the seawall built in Galveston Tx.

    My “big grin” note got left off when the comment was posted… Apologies for any misconception…

77. I’ve quit Amazon weeks ago. I will also TRY to not do business with Ebay unless I simply can’t find the item anywhere else. I would encourage everyone to also shed Paypal, they are a ripoff IMO. And Mr. Rawles I will be sending you $100 in a few days. I’ve been guilty of taking a free ride but now because of your moral stance that you have taken I will be more diligent in the future to help support SB. Thanks for being a good example to us all.

78. Great article. I have a lot of music I bought on Amazon. Wondering if I’d lose that once I cancel. We stopped ordering when we heard they dumped Parler and are not for free speech. I also can no longer shop at Kohls because they refuse to sell My Pillow. They claim it’s not for his support of Trump, but is instead due to infrequent sales. I’m not sure I believe this. Bed Bath and Beyond will also dump My Pillow due to owner being Trump supporter. I stopped shopping at Target years ago after their bathroom decisions. Ordered 1/4 cow from local farmer. Thank you for encouraging us to dump the beast!

79. JWR, I heard you loud and clear. Truth be told, I’ve only used your site approximately 25 times in the past and I have several of your books, but I’m looking for new places to be in 2021, and your blog is one of them. I sent you $40 through PayPal and I’ll buy two of your USB sticks as an investment. Lets keep this blog up!

80. The envelope is stamped, sealed, and on the way. I’d hate to lose this resource.

81. To Sblog readers, JWR and Avalanche Lily,

    Yes, I will join you in canceling my Amazon account. I confess it will neither inconvenience me, or hurt them because I have r-a-r-e-l-y used them. It will cost me nothing. With that said, I may be on the, “canceling list,” with you but I am certainly not sacrificing like you.

    Out of no goodness of my own, but purely the Lord’s doing, last year He opened my eyes that I had been a long time reader and never a .10 cent supporter. Survival blog was instrumental in saving my kids and grandkids future lives, the people I love the most in the world and would give my life for, yet I had never showed thanks?
    How could that be? Not knowing when I started reading, the Lord had me give,
    “back pay,” as it were, since the beginning, plus extra.

    There is no shame or bragging on my part. I’m just being transparent. I believe the timing was of the Lord. He also provided the funds to give as well. I am not wealthy. Indeed, this coming June I will lose half of my income.

    All of that to say, if you have the means, consider how much your family has been practically blessed by your years of reading, and give as you can.

    With love and prayers for you all because you are, “my people.” Krissy

82. Wow! A lot of comments! Just got off work, and had time to check the blog. God Bless Jim for making this hard decision. We as many of our fellow readers, have been working toward this end ourselves. Especially after they de-platformed Parler. I learned that most of Amazon’s income comes from web storage and cloud storage not really from Amazon sales. This has definitely struck a nerve with many conservative, there are many blogs and articles on line about getting rid of Amazon, and the other beasts. I personally deleted my twitter account and FB acount, never used google or gmail. As mentioned above; google dominated Android phones and Apple of course is i-phone, so is there an alternative? I have tried to always participate in the ten cent challenge and buy the flash drive. I do appreciate the suggestions KLAUDE posted, the restaurant one we will use. Thank you. I would like a spot to post those alternative providers if possible. I also use Ebay more, finding books from a goodwill store, there are plenty that sell the book you are looking for, or dvd, in place of using amazon. There was a post about STARTPAGE, as an alternative, but may have been mentioned, they use google. I use duck duck go, and a VPN. I think it is important for all of us to take another look at how we are vulnerable on the internet, as all ISP addresses can be traced back. I appreciate all that have posted suggesting alternatives.

83. Inspiring to read that you cut ties with the fascists at Amazon even though it’s a significant financial hit. I closed my account a couple weeks ago as well.

84. Never had an Amazon account.
    Never ordered anything from them.
    No loss.

85. Mr. Rawles,

    I applaud your decision. Tough one to make. You have inspired me to do better. Somehow. Being shut out of the economy is, I believe, their goal for anyone not on board with their plans.

    P.S. I apologize for the things I have said to you of late.

    Tom

86. I’m in a similar position with GoDaddy. I have long held a GoDaddy e-mail account, as I reckoned it was a little more secure than the free giants, who scan your every word to build a dossier. Their customer service has always been poor (at best), but at least I had a unique address without the constant “googling” (pun intended).
    Since they censored AR15.com by totally taking it down from the platform that they maintained (I presume having been paid for such service), I immediately decided to lodge my complaint, seeking an explanation.
    Did I mention they had poor customer service? In trying to find how to contact their corporate headquarters, I could never make it past “Akash”, who was very skilled at heading off my every inquiry.
    Guess I’m just going to have to dump them without comment. Too bad I’m paid up for a couple of years. I’ve seen my friends here mention Protonmail. Will check it out.

87. Me either. Nor fb or any of it. I don’t even shop at walmart Target or even Kohls anymore.

88. King is in the snail.

89. The $200 Club is mine alone?

    Come on people.

    It’s lonely up here.

    God Bless,

90. I can think of plenty of reasons to dump amazon, and I’m all for supporting local businesses and restaurants vs chains, I’m all in on taking one’s spending to businesses that share one’s beliefs and boycotting those that don’t, I do it all the time, but I wanted to point out some background on the 1st amendment and what Amazon did. The 1st amendment does not protect all speech. See article link at end to see what it doesn’t always cover (I read a better article somewhere else so there is more out there). Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Parler, and even Survival Blog are all private entities. As such, each is free to set its own terms of service, each has editorial and authority to control of content of their website, products allowed on their website, even who they will provide services to, and what they will allow or not allow. If I walk into a newspaper and demand they print something they have the option not to print it, or even not accept it as an advertisement. Parler allowed content that didn’t meet Amazon’s terms of service. Parler was informed of this on multiple occasions and didn’t address the transgressions. Doing so would have hurt their business model. There is evidence that some of what Parler allowed doesn’t fall under 1st amendment protections and could be considered personal threats worthy of criminal investigation by some. At the same time Parler also restricts free speech as they delete users who post information that conservatives don’t like. Should parler be condemned for censoring and kicking users off? I have reasons to believe that Survivor blog also censors comments, a right I believe they have though its use means readers are less informed and less able to make informed judgements about preparing for and surviving the TEOWAWKI. It’s complicated. How many of you would be complaining if conservative websites censored liberals? I don’t have the answers. Big Tech, Big business, Monopolies/oligopolies/de facto monopolies and all the giant business are a problem that isn’t being dealt with. https://alj.artrepreneur.com/facebook-censorship/

    1. We do censor ideas that are harmful and contrary to our biblical and moral values, that a commentator is promoting, not just mentioning. We censor swear words. We censor pointed attacks from one person to another. We censor arguments that are becoming flame wars. We want a clean and pleasant reading experience for all readers.

       1. And it is good that you censor! Thankfully, you did not post one of my recent comments, which was off-color. The comment arose during a moment of disgust, thus a weak emotional moment. I am thankful that it was not posted. It still embarrasses me to think about it.

91. We built a good online business, doing more than $5 million dollars a year in sales. It put my kids through school. Helped my buy my house. Amazon really helped us build up our business and contributed to our profits.

    Until they didn’t.

    Just like they cut back on JWR’s associate payouts, they started slicing away at our profits. They raised the cost to market products. They offered free shipping, but the third party sellers like us ate that cost. Then they offered free returns, more costs we had to eat, and the number of returns tripled, making it difficult to make a profit. They also started targeting the brands we carried, encouraging them to sell direct. There were brands we sold $25,000 or $50,000 of product a month and they would email us and say we could no longer sell their products on Amazon.com because they were either selling directly to Amazon or selling on Amazon themselves. They also prohibited many of our top-selling firearm-related items f they could be consider an “assault weapon” part or accessory.

    Amazon would often claim products we sold were counterfeit, requiring us to submit invoices proving we bought the products legitimately, and also letting Amazon know where they could go to buy them and how much we paid. They would cancel products because one customer thought they were “unsafe” but they would sell the same item from a dozen other retailers. Meanwhile, Chinese counterfeiters would use our photos to sell inferior products and Amazon did little or nothing to stop it.

    It was a short downward spiral. We went from 12 employees to six in about 18 months. We almost folded in mid-2019 but held off through Christmas to liquidate things and then declared bankruptcy in early 2020, before COVID struck. Hopefully we stuck Amazon with a few unpaid bills, but I doubt they noticed.

    Obviously, I am not a fan. I’m thrilled to see JWR and so many people walk away from Amazon.com. I personally like Midway.com and you can support many small businesses on eBay.com, some of whom may accept alternatives to PayPal.

    I’ve done the 10-cent challenge before, but not for some time. Consider me back in!

92. Good you JWR. I followed suit with my Amazon account too. I can contribute to SB by helping you write your script if needed – let me know at the address I used to post this if interested.

93. Hello Everyone,
    I’ve been a planner as long as I can remember. I grew up and was blessed with a family, the desire to provide for them was, and is a prevailing thought. While watching history documentaries it struck me that these things, Stalin/Russia, Hitler/Germany, US/ dust bowl, can happen again. Then a friend handed me a JWR book and it opened my mind to the art of “planning.” Since, we have worked and talked about the best ways to take care of our family. We are a God fearing, church going family. We have 4 kids, 2 married, one of those with 2 grandchildren. We are so blessed. You all have been an inspiration and guidance to us. Sadly I just subscribed after reading since 2007 ish? I’ve preached to anyone that will listen, that we cannot “finance our extinction”
    We have to shop locally and with like minded businesses and not use big tech, they are not our friends. That’s obvious now.
    Thank you all!

94. The censoring of Parler was the last straw for me, as well. I was also p.o. that while all of the mom and pop stores were shuttered because of this plandemic, Bezos was raking in something like 14 BILLION dollars an hour! AN HOUR! Deleted the fb account. Never belonged to twitter. Poetic that they lost 52 Billion after they dumped the president (and he’s still the president as far as I’m concerned.) Money talks. Now…if we can just convince enough people of that….

95. Back in 2004 a friend showed me his new iphone and i believe it was called myspace not fcbk back then. I thought about a qoute i heard.

    ” if every one is doing it, its probably wrong”

    That right there has saved me alot of hassels in life.

    Amen, lets starve this beast, checks in the mail.

    1. Pat Riot,

       ”if every one is doing it, its probably wrong”

       Yes, I have lived my life according to this quote. The few times as a young child that I joined in with what everybody else was doing, I got “burned”, hurt or in big trouble. I quickly learned to stay away from the crowd. Of course, coming to know the Lord at around age 12 -13 certainly helped guide me, too, through my highschool years.

96. Thank you JWR.
    Keep fighting the good fight. STARVE THE BEAST!
    Now you just need to stop sending eyeballs to the tube of yew…

97. Well done! Working on this all myself.

98. Ready to buy the 2020 USB SB archive stick — is it posted for sale yet?

    Thank you JWR and AL for the insights and outlooks all these years. May God bless your ways.

    1. We had a technical glitch. Look for a pre-ordering announcement on February 5th. Thanks for your patience!

99. I noticed in your financial assessments of leaving the beast that you did not mention your book sales. How will this move affect that revenue stream? Hopefully not that badly. BTW I have a couple in paperback that I can’t find off hand and all your others are on a nook that I can not even recharge anymore (yes, it is that old) so I will most likely be in the market to replace that vapor with paper as they say. Good luck to us all in the coming days because we will all need it at least for the next 2 to 4 years. My wife informed me today that I am now classified by the elected idiot sticks in DC as a domestic terrorist…….due to the fact that I am a registered Libertarian and have an unwavering delight in wearing my Hawaiian shirts and a straw Panama hat!

100. recommendations for the week
     https://www.thrivelife.com/shop
     Best freeze dried food I have ever tried.

101. Well,good for you,realize will be financially painful a bit but your spirit will feel cleaner.

     I am a rare reader here,saw about this article thru a link @ the Captains Journal.

     I have a boatload of sites I regularly visit and thus will just drop in occasionally,that said,will drop a one time donation to keep the lights on/pizza/beer ect.!

102. Just purchased two 10cent challenges at Elk Creek (don’t like using PayPal).

     James, your books started me on the preparedness journey that I am on, even though it is late in my life. Thank you.

     I also will not be renewing my Prime subscription when it comes due. Have started using Amazon to find products I want and then buy direct from the manufacturer’s website.

     Thanks to whoever suggested the Calibre app for Kindle e-books. I have a few I’d like to save should Amazon pull the plug.

103. Amazon has a vulnerability that is unique and revolves around the return policy for Prime members. The vulnerability is when you return an item, under Prime, you are guaranteed a return. The cost to return can be significant. The heavier the item, the more they lose on any transaction. Soooo. before you resign from Prime, take a couple of weeks and order up some heavy stuff, dog food comes to mind……whatever, and the very next day………send it back……..do it a few times…….and get your friends to do it…….Now I do not have the band width to have come up with this myself, I was on a prepper site, not this one……..and this sweet bit of revenge was mentioned. I like the idea of a little pain on my way out. I won’t be censored by the likes of clown Bozo.

     1. We do not believe in nor condone revenge! That is not the way of our Lord Jesus!

104. I’m a long time Amazon Prime member but lately I am realizing more and more that Chinese products are promoted over other well known brands, at least that is what I’m seeing. I would think, ‘ok, they don’t offer that major brand’, but if I do an exact search, it suddenly shows up! In fact major brands are sometimes not even showing up in the sidebar as an option of brands listed available, but there if I do that exact search. This is extremely annoying and creates distrust in their company. I have been considering detaching myself, but it is difficult because it’s so handy and quick usually, but I’m getting there. I’d rather support brick and mortar mom and pop stores as well. I avoid any Amazon company with a weird obviously Chinese name. I realize they want to make money too, no problem with that, but it’s become almost impossible to avoid them and I distrust their quality. My other pet peeve is I have a Capital One credit card which I use for nearly all purchases. They track my Amazon purchases and everything else. I’m dismayed at the emails I get from them which say ‘Hey, we saw you made a recent purchase…’. Really? It’s like someone constantly looking over your shoulder spying on you! Oh yeah, they are… Going to stop doing that soon too, in spite of the points I accumulate.

105. https://bookshop.org/ is a good option for those who want to help support independent booksellers – you can choose one local to you, if you know a shop that participates, or another area. (I have mine set to support a friend’s bookshop in a state I used to live in.) They even have several of Mr. Rawles’ books listed!

     For audiobooks, https://libro.fm/ is a similar system. Again, choose a shop you like already or select from their options if you don’t know a specific business owner you want to help.

     I hope that helps someone. 🙂

106. BRAVO !!!

107. It would be informative to note that the top billionaires (
     Jeff Bezos – $192.3 billion. …
     Elon Musk – $182.9 billion. …
     Bernard Arnault & Family – $148.4 billion. …
     Bill Gates – $121.6 billion. …
     Mark Zuckerberg – $99.8 billion. …
     Zhong Shanshan – $89.2 billion. …
     Warren Buffet – $89.1 billion. …
     Larry Ellison – $86.5 billion. )
     do not care if we do not shop at the effortless shopping outlets currently used by billions of citizens. The plan, as I understand it, is to allow all the risky (read: mom and pop stores) go under and then buy up all the useful and well organized companies that are left standing. Facebook, Microsoft and Apple have been doing this for years- thousands of rivals now gone.

     Then bring them under just a few business names like Amazon or its sister entities. Saying NO to amazon is a strike against the beast but buying from them is not the same as taking The Mark. Buying what you can while you still can before the Mark is required may still be useful to those who have not yet obtained all those things that they do not yet own.

     I see a time, very soon, where I will not be allowed to buy at my local stores….at all- for more than just the inoculation reason. I am reasonably well equipped and have skills to fill in the gaps.

     Just as 6 or 7 mega companies own nearly every brand that fills all of our grocery and big box stores I see all brands being bought up by the big money and tossing it all under one or 6 large distributing brands to which you and I will only be allowed to buy from and delivered from. ie: amazon thru fedex.

     Shop direct if you can, the beast is looking around to see whom it can devour.

     I have managed to dump my social media and am about to cancel my smart phone and opt for NO phone. That adjustment will bring me a real peace as I have little use for them. That will be a real kick in the gut for most people.

     1. Scott – I SO want to get rid of my phone.. it’s frustrating that it dominates so much of my life..
        we don’t have good internet so it’s what I use to read articles like this
        I listen to Elisabeth Elliot on the BBN app
        I don’t know anybody’s phone numbers anymore
        GPS is a lifeline for my directly impaired self
        So many apps – my envelopes budgeting app..story hour for the kids, I track my cycle (maybe TMI for some but it’s super important for me!) , my glucose, my weight… all my notes (second brain)

        I just don’t know how to get rid of it!

108. Get an address book, some note books, some calendars, pens and pencils, and begin transferring all of that information onto paper. Once it’s all on paper, shut down your phone.

     You really don’t want someone else to be able to see all of that information about yourself…

     Sometimes we need to learn to do without.

     Blessings!

Comments are closed.