What if you could make thousands of dollars selling products you love from Amazon? That’s exactly what you can do as an Amazon influencer.
But how much can you make, exactly? And how do you get started? Here’s what you need to know about Amazon’s influencer program.
How To Become an Amazon Influencer
Amazon influencers are content creators who provide product recommendations that inspire their audiences on social media. Every time someone makes a purchase using your affiliate links or through your storefront, you earn a commission. The amount you earn will depend on the products sold.
Amazon Influencer Requirements
Unlike the Amazon Associates Program – which is really easy to join – the Amazon Influencer Program has more stringent requirements.
Amazon will make its decision to approve or deny your application based on your social media profiles. As part of the review process, they’ll analyze your accounts to determine whether you’d be a good fit for the program.
Here are a few of the things they’ll be analyzing:
- Your top platform. Amazon will ask you to review the platform on which you have the most influence: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.
- Follower count. Amazon doesn’t have a specific follower count that they’re looking for, but they’ll certainly consider the size of your following. If you don’t have tens of thousands of followers, don’t panic. More followers can improve your chances of being approved, but they won’t be the deciding factor.
- Engagement. One of the most important things they’ll consider is engagement. An influencer with a smaller but highly engaged following is more valuable than an influencer with a huge following and virtually no engagement. Along with your engagement ratio, Amazon will consider how often you post, how many total posts you have and other engagement metrics.
How to Apply to be an Amazon Influencer
If you believe that you meet Amazon’s requirements for the program, you can apply here at the Amazon Influencer Program homepage. Just click “Sign up” to get started.
If you don’t have an Amazon or Amazon Associates account, you’ll need to create a new account.
Next, you’ll need to link one of your social media accounts to your application so that Amazon can review your online presence.
Here are a few important things to know:
- If you apply with Facebook or YouTube, you will get an immediate approval or denial from Amazon.
- If you apply with TikTok or Instagram, the approval process can take up to five days.
Remember, if you want to get approved, you need to choose the account that has the most engagement and followers.
The next step is to create your Amazon Storefront. At this stage, you’ll be entering your Storefront name, tagline and other basic information.
We’ll talk more about creating your Storefront shortly. First, let’s talk about getting approved.
Related: $11,409 in November 2023 – Blogging Income Report
How To Get Approved for Amazon Influencer Program
There’s no surefire way to get approved for the Amazon Influencer Program. They review most accounts individually and use metrics and other data to determine whether you’d be a good fit.
But there’s one thing we do know about the program: your odds of getting approved are much higher if you have a high engagement rate on your chosen platform.
Finding ways to boost engagement can go a long way in securing your approval.
Here are a few tips:
- Post consistently. If you’re applying with YouTube, make sure you’re posting new videos weekly or bi-weekly. For other platforms, make sure that you’re posting several times a week. Weekday mornings are best because this is when most audiences are active.
- Focus on your niche. Your followers started following you for a reason: they wanted to see more of the content you created on your chosen topic. Stick to it to keep them engaged.
- Interact with your audience. Reply to comments, showcase their comments or content, and speak to them directly when you create your content.
As a general rule of thumb, an engagement rate of 1%-5% is average on social media. Aim for at least 3.5% to make a good impression. The higher, the better.
I also recommend that you get familiar with Amazon’s Operating Agreement to learn more about the do’s and don’ts of the program. If you violate their rules, you can easily lose your account.
How To Create an Amazon Storefront as an Influencer
When you apply for the Influencer Program, you choose your Storefront name and tagline. But you won’t be able to build your store until your application is approved.
Once you’re accepted into the program, you can follow the steps below to create your Storefront:
- Log into your influencer account.
- Head over to Storefronts > Edit storefront
- If it’s not there already, add your store’s name.
- Add a profile picture and banner.
- Customize your URL if you want to make it more memorable.
- Start selecting products that you want to feature.
To organize your products and make it easier for visitors to find what they need, you should start creating idea lists.
To do this:
- Navigate to Your Account > Create content.
- Choose Idea Lists.
- Start adding items to your lists.
- Title your lists for each category.
I highly recommend that you brand your Storefront to make it easily recognizable.
As for content creation, start making visual content to give customers a real-life view of the products you’re recommending.
You can do this by creating videos or taking photos. The great thing about Amazon is that you can even create faceless videos for your reviews if you’re camera-shy.
How To Find My Amazon Influencer Storefront Link
You’ll login into the main platform that you normally do to reach your dashboard. Once you login, you’ll notice the menu up top and will want to go to Influencers > My Page. You’ll notice on the middle-right of this screen, there’s the “share icon.”
It’s the same icon that most social media sites have listed.
Click the icon and then go down to Copy Link.
Now, you can paste this very link any place that you want it to be shared. It’s that simple to begin sharing your Storefront Link. Of course, you can also copy your Link from the browser bar, but you’ll need to copy everything before the “?.”
How Much Money Can You Make as an Amazon Influencer?
Being an Amazon Influencer sounds almost too good to be true, right? I mean, how much can you possibly earn? A lot. You’ll find a wide range of earnings, but the more videos that you create, the higher your earning potential may be.
You’ll find people earning $100 to $200 per day.
But these people are outliers and won’t be what most people can replicate without a lot of dedication. You can expect to be paid $0.35 – $4.00 per 1,000 views. One Reddit user had a great breakdown of their earnings:
- 6 months in the program
- 300+ videos (half modified from YouTube videos they made)
- 50,000 views
What this Redditor claims is that they earn around $11 per month for each of their videos and that their videos will average about $100 each for the year. That’s over $30,000 for the year or $2,500 a month or more.
Quality and the products that you review will play a major role in earnings.
If you only post videos about low-cost items, you may sell more, but you’ll also earn less. A few tips for making more money on the platform are:
- Select the right products to review
- Focus on high-quality productions
- Choose the right video placement
- Create a lot during the holidays to earn even more income
Niche Pursuits also has a great case study on earnings, and you’ll learn so much from this video.
The video, which came out in February 2024, states that he didn’t even know about Amazon Influencers until last year.
No one else did either.
Over the course of the year, he created 1,000 videos and in December, when everyone was purchasing virtually everything, he made $6,000.
What would you do with an additional $6,000?
Spencer shares a lot of insights that you won’t find anywhere else:
- Each video he creates is 1 – 3 minutes long and he doesn’t do heavy editing
- He outsourced his videos at $4 for items worth $9 -$19, $20 for items worth $20 – $99 and $25 for anything worth over $100
- Creators that he hired all had the products in their homes already, so there was no overhead
Since he started on the platform in January, he made $36 in March, $178 in April and by July, he was earning over $1,000. After the 2023 holiday season, he’s still making $50 – $60 per day, or $1500 – $1800 a month.
If you listen to the entire video, you’ll also hear his breakdown of costs and earnings.
Amazon Influencers are making great money on the platform, and it’s something that you can certainly manage to earn more income, too. If you start small and create videos in your free time, you can earn a few dollars to a few thousand dollars each month.