Macro influencers, micro influencers, and even nano influencers are becoming Amazon influencers to diversify their income. Joining the influencer program can help you further provide value for your followers while also earning you additional money.
Our guide on how to become an Amazon influencer will discuss how social media influencers can qualify for the program, how the Amazon influencer program works, and step-by-step instructions for applying.
Who Qualifies for the Amazon Influencer Program?
To qualify for the Amazon Influencers Program, you need to currently be an influencer and have a business account on one of the following social media platforms:
- YouTube
- TikTok
Note that if you apply for the Amazon Influencer Program with your Instagram or Facebook account, it must be a business account.
Amazon will review your number of followers and engagement metrics to determine if your influencer status qualifies you for their program.
Amazon is vague about what constitutes an influencer on these programs. Many have speculated on the follower count and your social media presence. In the debate of content creator vs. influencer, it’s best to maintain an engaged following, a consistent social media presence and interact with your audience.
How to Become an Amazon Influencer in 3 Steps
Through the influencer program, Amazon influencers create content to promote Amazon’s wide range of products and services. Amazon also chooses several influencers to promote their unique content across the Amazon website.
The Amazon Influencer Program helps customers find products through influencers’ content. It is part of the Amazon Associates Program.
Amazon influencers earn affiliate commissions by having a storefront where their followers can easily shop their list of recommended products. Your personalized Amazon influencer page is also where you can host livestreams and publish shoppable pictures and videos.
And while this blog post highlights Amazon influencers, remember that the influencer landscape spans different tiers:
- Macro influencers with larger followings offer broader reach
- Micro-influencers boast higher engagement
- And nano influencers have niche expertise
1. Register with the Amazon Influencer Program
After determining if you qualify as an influencer, the next step is registering with the Amazon Influencer Program. If you already have an existing customer account on Amazon, consider aligning your existing account with your influencer journey. This adds authenticity to your recommendations.
You build trust with your audience by showcasing products you’ve used and benefited from. Sharing personal stories of how these products improved your life can resonate and foster deeper connections.
After clicking “Sign Up” on the Amazon Influencer Program homepage, you will need to use an existing customer account or create a new Amazon account.
Before filling out the rest of the information Amazon needs, you’ll want to choose which social media profile you will register with. You’ll probably want to use your social media account with the largest number of followers. This will increase your chances of being accepted into the Amazon Influencer Program.
The registration process requires you to provide the following information:
- Full legal name
- Email address
- Password
- Physical address
- Details about your social media account, including a link to your profile and follower count
- Both a profile image and a header image
- A short bio about who you are as an influencer
2. Apply to Become an Amazon Influencer
After you’ve completed the registration process, it’s time to apply to be an Amazon influencer.
This application process is where you will choose which social media account you want to link to your Amazon influencer profile. Depending on your social media platform, you must link your account or provide your handle, follower count, and the number of posts on your profile.
3. Create Your Amazon Storefront
After you’ve registered and applied for the Amazon Influencer Program, it’s time to create your own custom Amazon storefront.
Your Amazon storefront is where people can find all of the Amazon products you’re recommending in one place. Relevant categories should group products so people can easily find what they want. However, this is about the extent of customization that Amazon offers influencers when building their storefronts.
Having categories is helpful for your audience so that they can more easily find what you’re looking for. If one of your followers is looking for your list of book recommendations, you don’t want them to have to scroll through a bunch of home office decor to find it.
Amazon Product Research Tool
The good news is that there are tools like Jungle Scout and AMZScout to help social media influencers search for the best Amazon products to promote in their storefront beyond the Amazon Influencer dashboard.
Jungle Scout is the industry standard tool for finding winning products to sell on Amazon, optimizing your product listings, gaining customer data, and more.
The software is available as both a web app and a browser extension. The browser extension provides a quick snapshot of important product information. Alternatively, the web app provides a more detailed look at the product you’re analyzing.
One of the ways Jungle Scout can be most helpful to Amazon influencers is through its Opportunity Finder. The Opportunity Finder helps you find your niche’s best product opportunities. You can set search parameters like category, average price, and the average number of sales to find a high-performing product to boost your influencer marketing efforts.
To learn more about this helpful tool before you open a new account, including how it can help Amazon influencers improve their listings, read our full Jungle Scout Review.
Amazon Influencers vs. Amazon Affiliates
How does being an Amazon influencer differ from being an Amazon affiliate? Even though they both fall under the umbrella of Amazon Associates, there are major differences between the two programs.
Let’s discuss some of the main differences between joining the affiliate and influencer programs.
Amazon Influencers
Here are a few basics about the Amazon Influencer Program:
- You have to be an influencer to join the influencer program.
- As an Amazon influencer, you will be given an influencer page with your storefront. This acts as a landing page for visitors. It includes pictures and videos created by the influencer, live streams, and idea lists.
- In addition to bringing your own traffic from various social media platforms, you are also promoted within Amazon. Through this program, social media influencers become Amazon influencers.
- The influencer program is an extension of the Amazon Affiliate Program.
Amazon Affiliates
Let’s discuss a few basics of the Amazon Affiliate Program:
- You don’t have to be an influencer to join the Amazon Affiliate Program.
- You only have an Amazon affiliate storefront, not an influencer page.
- You have to bring your own traffic, whether it’s from your various social media accounts or your own website. Amazon does not promote your storefront the way they promote influencer storefronts.
- You do not have access to Amazon Live to promote products.
How Do You Make Money as an Amazon Influencer
Once you are an Amazon influencer, you are paid by earning affiliate commission on the qualifying purchases people make. Once someone purchases one of the items you promoted in your store, you will receive an affiliate commission. Amazon pays out different commission rates per product category, and these numbers do change. You may even get free products or services as samples, depending on the terms and conditions.
The highest fixed commission rate is 20% for products within the Amazon Games category. Other Amazon commission rates include:
- Luxury beauty products: 10%
- Furniture and home improvement: 8%
- Beauty, musical instruments, and industrial supplies: 6%
- Digital and physical music: 5%
- Physical books and baby products: 4.50%
- Amazon devices: 4%
- Toys and pet products: 3%
- PC components: 2.50%
- Grocery, health, and personal care items: 1%
- Physical video games and video game consoles: 1%
Remember, these rates can change – this is just an example of the current rates.
Commissions are paid out by Amazon 60 days after the end of the month that the sales were made. For example, your sales in May will be paid out to you at the end of July.
The three main ways that someone would access your affiliate links is by clicking on your:
- Amazon storefront link
- Affiliate link to an individual product
- Promoted influencer content that Amazon showcased on their website
You can also promote products through Amazon live streams and idea lists. These are additional tools for curating and presenting products to your audience engagingly. The more engaged your following is with the products you promote, the higher the chance of earning sales and affiliate commissions.
Suppose you’re concerned about your credibility as an influencer. In that case, the Amazon Brand Registry empowers influencers by enabling registered brands to maintain product authenticity and quality. This synergy boosts the credibility of Amazon influencers, ultimately increasing their potential to earn money through affiliate commissions and product endorsements.
In general, there’s some serious money you can make as an Amazon Influencer. For example, Thomas Smith generates $8k per month in the program.
Amazon Bounty Program
Another way to make money as an Amazon influencer is to participate in the Amazon Bounty Program.
Through the Bounty Program, both Amazon influencers and affiliates can post banners and links to their social media accounts and websites to promote specific Amazon products. Amazon offers a flat commission rate for promoting these products.
For example, let’s say you encouraged your followers to sign up for a program or activate a free trial. You can earn these fixed rates for bounty events:
- $15 for every successful registration for an Amazon Business account
- $10 for every successful registration for a 12-month Audible Premium Plus membership
- $5 for every successful purchase of a 12-month Kindle Unlimited membership
- $3 for every successful creation of an Amazon Baby Registry with at least one product added
- $3 for every successful creation of an Amazon Wedding Registry with at least one item added
- $3 for every successful registration for a Prime Free Trial for qualifying customers
This program is used for promoting the following Amazon products:
- Amazon Prime
- Prime Video Channels
- Amazon Music
- Kindle Unlimited
- Audible
- Amazon Pantry
- and more
As with the other products you’re promoting, you want to ensure that the Amazon product you advertise aligns with your content. For example, posting about a Kindle Unlimited free trial when you run a video game YouTube channel probably doesn’t make sense.
Tracking Amazon Influencer Conversions
The Amazon Influencers Program has a tracking system you can access through a dashboard where you can see data for the following key performance indicators:
- Conversion rate
- Number of clicks
- Ordered items
- Total items shipped
- Total earnings
- Earnings by program
- Daily earnings
A visual representation through bar and line graphs will show you the breakdown of sales. You can also check your real-time Earnings Report in different ways:
- Custom date range: This lets you select a date range, such as Today, Last 7 Days, or Last 90 Days
- Today’s Report: This section in the Commissions Tab enables you to view the orders for the day, including earnings. Meanwhile, go to the Bounties tab to check the bounties for the day
Daily trends report: This part in the Commissions tab shows information on the Daily Trends, including tracking ID summaries and Link Type performance
Ideas for Filling Your Amazon Storefront
You’ve joined the Amazon Influencer Program and are now staring at your empty influencer storefront. Where do you even begin?
Let’s discuss a few ideas for filling out your Amazon influencer store to help get you started.
Consider the Topic of Your Content
While creating high-quality content, brainstorm a list of items that align with the topics you post about.
For example, if you’re a gamer, come up with a list of items you use daily. This could include video game consoles, keyboards, digital video games, and comfortable chairs.
Start by filling your store with the products you use daily, weekly, and monthly. This will also ensure your Amazon store has an authentic feel that aligns with the direction of your content.
Review Your Shopping History
Look through your own Amazon account to see the products you’ve purchased in the last 3 months, 6 months, and year. If they’re products that provided value to you and that you still use today, decide if they align with your brand and are worthy of going in your influencer store.
Decide If You Can Genuinely Promote These Products
Determining whether or not you can genuinely promote the products you’re choosing is an integral part of being an Amazon influencer. The quality of your promotions will determine your success in promoting your influencer store and earning affiliate commissions.
If you can’t genuinely speak about a product you’re promoting on a livestream or in a product video, then it’s probably not a good fit for you.
Understand the Pain Points of Your Audience
If you are highly engaged with your followers, you will know their pain points because you’re probably already addressing them. Whether they’re discussing them in the comments or you’re addressing them in your YouTube videos, your audience is telling you about them (and you can always use a YouTube comment finder to find them quickly).
Look deeper into these pain points and brainstorm products to help address them. Then add them to your influencer storefront.
Let’s review our tips for promoting your Amazon storefront on your various social media accounts.
Make Your Storefront Link Easy to Find
If you’re promoting a product in a TikTok video, Instagram post, or Facebook post, you need to tell people where they can find your Amazon storefront link. Whether it’s at the link in your video caption or in an influencer link within the post itself, people need to go.
Also, assume that people have yet to see your other social media posts and don’t know where your link is. People need to know. Assume each post is the first post people see, and provide the information on your storefront link.
How you share affiliate links will be different for each social media platform.
For example, you’ll have to put your storefront link in your Instagram bio and TikTok bio. On your Facebook business account and YouTube, you can provide links in each post and video you upload.
Promote Individual Affiliate Links
In addition to promoting your Amazon store, you can also promote individual products with their affiliate link. While you should organize your store and make it easy to navigate, sometimes people want to avoid scrolling through a list of products to find the one they’re looking for.
If you promoted a particular item, share your affiliate link to that individual item. It creates less of a barrier for people when shopping, making it easier for them to buy for the item they want.
People are going to have different shopping preferences. Some people will want to look through your entire store and enjoy browsing. Others want to buy a product, find it, and move on with their day. Posting different types of content will help you reach your varied audience.
Amazon provides a daily list of active promo codes that influencers can share with their audience. This further incentivizes your followers to make a purchase today instead of thinking about it for later.
Use your social media skills to share these codes. Whether it’s through Instagram stories, TikTok Lives, or Facebook stories, you can share these codes with your audience in a timely manner.
Research Other Influencers
Pulling inspiration from other Amazon influencers can be a great way to spark ideas for your own store. Whether they’re serving a specific niche, curating thought idea lists, or hosting engaging livestreams, there are lots of ideas you can pull from.
Keep in mind this does not mean simply copying what another person is doing. Followers can tell when you’re being disingenuous, and it will deter them from interacting with your content in the future. Just look for inspiration, and put your own spin on it.
Show Products That You Use
Authenticity is key when being an influencer and promoting products. If it’s a product they see you use continually throughout your posts, that will help build credibility with your audience. This means that they will trust your recommendations when you promote products.
For example, creating a list of the best affiliate marketing books you recommend when you’ve never once talked about enjoying reading could be off-brand and confusing for your audience.
Tailor Your Content Around Your Promoted Amazon Products
Now that you are an Amazon influencer, it’s time to engage in some Amazon influencer marketing tactics. Crafting your content through the lens of influencer marketing instead of just creating content will help you post higher-converting content in the future.
For example, if you find yourself traveling for work, this is an excellent opportunity to create promotional content discussing your favorite travel products. Or, if you’ve moved offices, you could discuss your favorite office furniture and products.
Start thinking of how the products you’re promoting align with what’s going on in your life and craft your content schedule around it.
What is Amazon Live?
Amazon Live is an excellent way for influencers to promote their custom storefronts interactively. It allows you to engage with your following while demonstrating real-time products.
When you host a live stream, you are streaming a live video of you discussing products listed in your store. This is an excellent opportunity to answer any product questions viewers might have and explain the features and benefits of your favorite products.
You must download the Amazon Live Creator app to host livestreams from your influencer account.
It’s Time to Learn How to Become an Amazon Influencer
You now have the tools to apply to be an Amazon influencer and build out your storefront. It’s time to join the influencer program and earn additional income from your social media following today!
