Checking my account right now: I generated $2.86, and my charity received $399.79. Yay for being average I guess!
I’m surprised they couldn’t squeeze more out of this program though. With credit cards, I think the points system definitely works to make you feel better about your purchase.
IMO they tried to strike a balance, the existence of Smile helps drive traffic to Amazon and improve their PR, but they make it harder than it should be (you have to use a speciic link, you have to enable push notifications on mobile etc.) so they don't end up having to pay too much. Logically they could have made Smile an option you set once and it's applied forever, but they didn't.
You think "I'm spending $500 for this dohicky, but I'm getting some magical points too". Intellectually you know those points are worth about $5, but there's an element of "mystery box" too. Maybe those points will be worth $50, or even more.
Like airline miles. You can convince yourself that X number of miles is "worth" $10k because they let you fly business class to Asia. In reality you don't value that flight at $10k because you wouldn't pay $10k to fly business class if you didn't have the points.
I’m surprised they couldn’t squeeze more out of this program though. With credit cards, I think the points system definitely works to make you feel better about your purchase.