Okay so awhile back I told you about Snagshout where you can buy products from Amazon at a discount in exchange for writing reviews. I have bought many a very inexpensive thing there and I still recommend it, especially if you have Prime because then your shipping is also free most of the time. Amazon has recently made a change to their terms of service, and no longer allows sellers to discount stuff in exchange for reviews. Which in practical terms means that all the sites that were doing that are still doing exactly the same thing, you’re just no longer required to write a review at all, or to include a disclaimer if you are doing a review. (I still do if I have anything vaguely useful to say; Amazon reviews are super useful and they’re helpful for the sellers offering the discounted stuff.)
I just happened upon another site like this that you all might be interested in, though. Very occasionally I’ll stumble across sex toys of various kinds on some of the discount sites (usually sold as a “massager” and with a very hilarious description about all the parts you can “massage” with it but never mentioning your genitals. They are definitely designed to be used with your genitals.) But usually I don’t see them at all. Which is why I’m excited about AMZ Review Trader/ART/Whatever they’re gonna call it next. They have a TON of sex toys available at a discount. A TON.
Especially if you’re new to sex toys, haven’t owned any before, or just want to experiment with different kinds, this is a great option to get some high quality toys without spending a ton of money. The most expensive deals currently available are around $50; the cheapest are around $1.50. And that’s not just for jelly junk, though there are certainly some lower quality items on here, but a huge proportion of these are silicone. And it’s not just vibes! They’ve got remote and phone controlled vibes! Cock rings! Vibrating cock rings! Cock ring and anal plug combos! Anal beads and plug sets! Kegel… things! For kegels! Those little bunny vibes! Strap-ons! Double penetration dildos! Bullets! Eggs! Lube! Wands! Enema kits! Condoms! Sex swings! Beginner bondage gear and sexy underwear things! Corset-type stuff! Masturbation sleeves shaped like mouths! Artificial butts you can fuck! Dildos of all sizes and with suction cups and one of them’s so veiny it looks like you’re fuckin a tree! One of them’s a vibrator with a camera in it! I don’t know why, but it exists! God, we live in amazing times!
Here are a few other things you should know about this:
It’s cheapest if you have Amazon Prime so the shipping is free. Some items have shipping free anyway though; if you don’t have Prime, you might want to look at shipping costs for items before you choose to buy.
All you need to sign up as a shopper is to register with an email and password. Since they no longer require reviews, you don’t even have to give them links to your Amazon reviewer profile or anything.
ART’s model doesn’t work on a “if you see it and request it in time you get the discount” model like Snagshout. You can REQUEST the discount, but the retailers usually have only a limited number of items they’re selling cheap, so you might not always get the stuff you requested. You can get up to 150 coupon deals here per month though, so there’s no harm in just requesting things like crazy. If you’re offered the coupon code, you can also choose to accept or decline it… like if you’ve requested $100 worth of stuff but you don’t actually have $100, you can still send the requests and accept items for like a $50 purchase, and reject any others you might have been approved for. So you won’t necessarily overspend by just requesting stuff. I’ve requested around 15 items on there since yesterday, and been accepted so far for 3; this is a holiday weekend in my country so I’ll probably have to wait until next week to know if I’ll even be able to order most of this. To me that’s not a huge deal but it’s kind of annoying. :D
Supposedly if the retailer accepts your request, you’ll get an email. I don’t know if mine are getting spam filtered or what, but I find it easier to just go to “Deal Requests” (it shows up in the page header when you’re logged in) and just look at the status of my requests that way, to see when I’ve been accepted for a deal so I can go ahead and buy it.
You can search specifically for products available in particular countries’ versions of Amazon. Not all deals are available in all countries, but most seem to have some options for adult products. Some only list lame shit like “sexy dice”. Some don’t list anything at all. I’m guessing it depends a lot on what Amazon is allowed to sell in certain countries and whatnot. IDEK. The point is, this is not just US-only so you can definitely take a look if you live outside the US.
Deals are available for only a certain time, so if you’re looking specifically say for condoms, there might only be one or two options available, and then when those options expire there might not be more for awhile. But there are generally a lot of products being added or renewed to these discount sites every day. They’re 100% worth checking every day, especially if you’re searching for a particular item.
Viewing adult products on this website is… kind of a pain in the ass. They hide these products from regular search and other results to keep from showing these products to everyone who uses the site. In order to see them, you have to specifically filter your results for “adult products”. (So for instance if you search for “silicone,” you may find a few “massagers” but won’t find most of the sex toys. You’d have to search for “silicone” AND set the category filter to “adult products”.)
Also, for some reason, I think because of whatever mechanism they’re using for hiding these from regular search results, you apparently can’t view a second page. When you get to the bottom page of your results and want to see more, you hit the “next page” button (there are several of them it’s super annoying), it takes you to “all products” results and erases your choices for filtering/sorting. As a result, I think the best way to find products is to use all the sorting options available. (You can sort by price in two different ways, offer expiry date in two different ways, and search for new products specifically.) Because each type of sorting offers you the products in a different order, it seems to be the best way to see all the products available. And even doing that I’m pretty sure there are products I’m just not seeing because I can’t go beyond the first page of results for anything. It’s SUPER ANNOYING, but kind of worth dealing with for these sweet deals. (I am planning to send their dev team an email about it probably, but it looks like they’re currently working on a new version of the site already, so I’ll wait until they’re done with that to see if they fix the issue.)
A good way to make sure you’re seeing all the products you want to see is to search for specific terms within the “adult products” category. So set your category to “adult products” and then also use a search term. For instance, you could look specifically for “rotating vibrator” and you’ll come up with basically every rotating vibe currently on offer. Hopefully. There aren’t enough to need to go to a second page, so you don’t have to deal with that “next page” issue. It’s also just generally helpful to narrow it down just to what you want, obviously… you can search just for anal toys, just for glass toys, just for silicone toys, whatever.
Along those same lines, apparently some retailers listing their items on here see the category and “adult products” and go “oh dude our product is for adults, we’ll put it there!” But it’s like… socks. :D There’s a bunch of stuff in the “adult products” section that are not actually sex toys. Ugh. Hopefully they’ll figure it out one day and the search functions and filtering will get better.
You can buy tons of different stuff from all of these sorts of websites too, so all the categories are definitely worth looking through, and again I highly recommend Snagshout for ease of use and variety of products and whatnot. I find it a lot simpler and better than AMZ/ART but it just doesn’t have the sex toys really, other than the occasional wand “massager.”
Sorry this is so freaking long but I thought I’d make this post as useful as I possibly could. I’ll update with more info under this cut if there’s anything else I figure out that you ought to know.
In all seriousness, by sharing this I’m probably creating more competition for myself for getting some of this sweet stuff for cheap. But I feel like it’s kind of super important for people who want to try some sex toys to be able to experiment with different kinds, and especially with body-safe materials like silicone, without breaking the bank. I hope this has been helpful, and if you have any questions or have any other tips like this, or you want to talk sex toys in general, feel free to drop me an ask. (And if you don’t want me to respond publicly, make sure you tell me so and you don’t ask anonymously!)