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Comment by billy99k | Hacker News Reader

I just read an article about a 19-year old making $10,000/month from the Alexa developer incentive program. It's sad that this will be ripped out from him and other developers in a few months.

I stopped trusting Amazon years ago when they banned my seller account and my business was shutdown overnight. After 15 years, I finally got my account back with no explanation. At this point, I no longer care and have moved on.

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Its unconscionable. The least Amazon could do for this poor kid is to at least write a check of $5.5M that would be roughly the amount they would make if they keep doing same thing till age of 65.

> 19-year old making $10,000/month from the Alexa developer incentive program. It's sad that this will be ripped out from him and other developers in a few months.

"Sad" feels a little strong here

Does it? I’d be inconsolable if I was that 19 year old or his girlfriend.

Based on the article the dude seems like he'd be less beat up about it than the comments here are on his behalf. He got 100k+ during his college years and it helped him land his first full time job.

Hell, let most's problems be that a developer incentive program didn't live up to be a lifetime career replacement and I doubt they'll consider it an upset at all.

It was never a sustainable business. Amazon was burning cash in the hopes of somehow making Alexa profitable, but they have now realized that won't happen and are turning the faucet off. People should be happy that they were able to get in and make some cash while they could. What would you have Amazon do instead? Make these charity payments forever?

it's subsidy, personally feel like that shouldn't be your model for sustaining that is barely amazon's fault here, they did their part but there doesnt seem to be market around it

The same exact thing happened to me. How did you find out you got it back? Did they send you an email or something?

> It's sad that this will be ripped out from him and other developers in a few months.

Diversify. Never rely on a single large monopolist for your only revenue stream.

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