How to Become an Amazon Influencer

For social media content creators, becoming an Amazon influencer can be a great way to tap into the rising popularity of influencer marketing and monetize content you’re already sharing.

Last year, influencer marketing was a $13.8 billion industry, and it’s no surprise that spending on influencer collaboration is only expected to grow. The Amazon Associates program has one of the largest affiliate marketing networks in the world that helps content creators, publishers, website owners, and social media influencers monetize their content.  

In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about how to become an Amazon influencer, including:

• How becoming an Amazon influencer can help grow your business 
• The prerequisites you need before joining Amazon’s influencer program 
• How to apply for the Amazon influencer program
• The steps you need to take once you have access to an Amazon influencer account

Why should you become an Amazon influencer? 

Before we dive into the details about what the Amazon Influencer Program is and how it can help you reach your business goals, let’s define our terms. Just what is an influencer? 

According to Amazon, an influencer is anyone who has a meaningful social media following. Influencers across all categories can participate in the program. There are no follower count requirements, although you do have to have an Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or Facebook account to apply. 

What is the Amazon Influencer program? 

The Amazon Influencer Program is an extension of the Amazon Associates program. Each program brings product related content from influencers onto Amazon to help customers discover and research products they might like. 

Amazon Associates was created to help entrepreneurs monetize their own websites or blogs. Meanwhile, Amazon Influencers was created as a monetization tool for content creators with loyal social media followings. Just like an Amazon associate, an Amazon influencer recommends a variety of products available for purchase on Amazon and receives a commission for completed sales.

“While Amazon associates share direct Amazon affiliate links on their own websites or blogs, Amazon Influencers create a custom storefront on Amazon where they house all of their recommended products”

The biggest difference between Amazon Associates and Amazon Influencers is the way they share about recommended products. While Amazon associates share direct Amazon affiliate links on their own websites or blogs, Amazon Influencers create a custom storefront on Amazon where they house all of their recommended products. The storefront URL is customizable and usually includes your social media handle. After the creation of a storefront, influencers can share the link across all social media platforms. 

When a follower clicks over to the influencer’s custom storefront, they can browse through all the recommendations that influencer has ever made. The storefront is organized so that social media followers who click over to the storefront can find everything within a few clicks. 

What are the benefits of being an Amazon Influencer? 

Joining Amazon Influencers has many benefits for you as a content creator and social media influencer. Amazon Influencers allows you to earn money simply by recommending a product, which means you get paid without ever having to create, source, store, or ship a single product

If Amazon shares your storefront on their social media channels or through the Amazon website, you could gain a large amount of new, international followers because of Amazon’s recommendation.

Amazon Influencers allows you to network and collaborate with brands, which can help you form important business relationships as a content creator. Businesses might send you free samples or new products before they go to market in hopes of your recommendation or review.

Finally, recommending products you discovered and love adds value to your audience, which increases their trust and loyalty towards you and your brand.

How much can you earn through the Amazon Influencer Program?

Amazon Influencers can earn up to 20% in commissions from qualifying purchases and programs. Although the commission rates for Amazon Influeners can fluctuate, current rates include: 

• 20% commission on Amazon Games
• 10% commission on Luxury beauty, Luxury Stores Beauty, and Amazon Explore
• 5% commission rate on digital music, digital videos, physical music, and Amazon handmade
• 4.5% commission on physical books, kitchen, and automotive products
• 4% commission rate on Amazon Fire devices, Kindle devices, apparel, luggage, jewelry, and accessories
• 3% commission rate on toys, furniture, home improvement, lawn and garden, pet products, headphones, beauty, musical instruments, business supplies, outdoors, tools, sports, baby products, and Amazon coins
• 2.5% commission on PC, PC components, DVD & Blu-Ray
• 2% commission on televisions and digital video games
• 1% commission on Amazon Fresh, physical video games and consoles, grocery, health, and personal care 

You can get the latest rates and  learn more about additional commission rates and events by browsing Amazon’s Associates Program Standard Commission Income Statement.

Becoming an Amazon Influencer is a great way to monetize content that you’re already creating and sharing on social media. Running a successful Amazon Influencer account is more than just sharing your storefront link through your social media channels, though. It’s also about following top Amazon trends, getting to know your followers, and sharing products with them that fill a need they’re experiencing.

“Becoming an Amazon Influencer is a great way to monetize content that you’re already creating and sharing on social media.”

Are you eligible for the Amazon Influencer Program? 

The eligibility requirements for the Amazon Influencer Program are simple. If you’re a social media influencer and you have an Amazon account, you can apply to become an Amazon Infleuncer.

The Amazon Influencer Program is for content creators or social media influencers who have engaged audiences on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. If you apply with your Instagram or Facebook account, you’ll need a business account on those platforms.

Some content creators experienced real-time approval when they applied to the program using their YouTube account. Meanwhile, applications associated with Facebook or Instagram could take upward of five days to get approved by Amazon staff.

Amazon currently only accepts Amazon Influencer applications from account owners in the following countries:

• The United States
• The United Kingdom
• India
• Canada
• France
• Spain
• Italy
• Geramy 

Do you need a certain number of followers to apply?

Amazon doesn’t require their influencers to have a certain quantity of followers. When Amazon reviews your application, they do look at the number of followers that you have. But they’re also paying attention to other engagement metrics.

The quality of your followers makes a difference when it comes to your Amazon Influencer application. Other metrics to pay attention to are your post count, how consistently you share content, and the engagement metrics of your audience. 

If you only have a few thousand followers but you regularly receive comments and shares, Amazon is able to see that your followers could respond positively if not enthusiastically to your recommendations. 

If you have a low follower account but are still interested in joining, spend some time boosting your engagement numbers by posting content that resonates with your audience on a consistent basis. Creating relevant content also includes defining your audience and knowing what kind of content you want to share with them. 

For instance, if you’re a mother of toddlers and want to share about the products from Amazon that make your life slightly less hectic, spend time planning content that fits your mission and vision. Just sharing popular memes or generic content won’t be as engaging as specific and intentional content directed towards your target audience. 

If you post about motherhood and share about products you love consistently, your audience will begin to see you as a subject matter expert in your realm and will be more likely to trust your recommendations and click through to your Amazon storefront. 

“The quality of your followers makes a difference when it comes to your Amazon Influencer application.”

Is there a limit to the number of times you can apply to the program?

Did you submit your application only to get rejected by the Amazon Influencer Program? There isn’t a limit to the number of times you can apply to the program. Take some time to improve your content, boost your ecommerce metrics and submit another application. 

What to expect during the application process

When you’re ready to apply for the Amazon Influencers Program, there are just two steps to complete the eligibility portion of the application:

• Login with your existing Amazon account or create a new Amazon account
• Connect your Instagram, Youtube or Facebook account 

If you apply with a YouTube or Facebook account, Amazon will tell you immediately whether or not you are eligible. Applying with your Instagram account requires you to share additional information like your Instagram handle, follower account, and post count. 

If you chose to apply with your Instagram account, it could take up to five days to hear about whether your application was approved or not. Complete the application using the social media platform where you have the most followers and highest quality engagement. 

After Amazon approves your account for the influencer program, you’ll complete the following steps:

• Create your influencer profile
• Set up your Amazon storefront
• Enter your account information 

Creating an influencer profile

The next step is to fill out some profile information. The information you share in this step creates the public profile that Amazon links to your influencer storefront. You need three pieces of information to complete the profile, although a few on this list are marked as optional in the form:

• Your public name (you will be unable to change this information yourself going forward)
• A short description of yourself (optional)
• Social links (optional)

After you complete your public profile, you’re ready to set up your Amazon storefront.

Setting up the basics of your Amazon storefront

In this section of the application, you begin to set up what will become your Amazon store, where customers can browse your recommended Amazon products all in one place.

The information that Amazon asks at this step includes:

• Storefront logo and background image
• Page title
• Page tagline
• An answer to how you found out about the Amazon Affiliate program

Entering account information 

The final step in the application process is your account information. Amazon uses the information you share for your earnings payout. If you logged into the application using a personal Amazon account, this information is stored separately from that account. 

Have the following information available:

• Payee name / business name
• Address
• Phone number

If you plan to link to your Amazon storefront from other places besides your social media presences, such as a blog, you’ll need to share the website URLs in this section of the form. You also must disclose if the content you create is primarily directed towards children under the age of thirteen. 

Then, you’ll select two primary categories of products you’ll be recommending through your social media platform. Currently, the options include:

• Books 
• Clothing, shoes, and jewelry
• Computer and office
• Digital downloads
• Electronics
• Healthy and beauty
• Home and garden
• Kindle
• Movie, music, and games
• Sports and outdoors
• Tools, auto, and industrial
• Toys, kids, and baby

When you recommend your favorite product through the Amazon Influencer program, Amazon requires that you disclose your relationship with Amazon to your followers and customers. 

Finishing and saving this section of the application will take you to the Amazon Associates dashboard. At this point, the final step is to follow the Amazon Influencer Program on Instagram through the account you used to sign up for the program. If you skip this step, Amazon will not approve your application. 

What to do after you’re an official Amazon Influencer

You applied for the Amazon Influencer Program and you just got a notification that Amazon approved your application! Congratulations. You now have access to some incredible tools to help you monetize your social media content. 

But what do you need to do now that you’re approved? Here are the four steps you can take to unlock the full potential of Amazon Influencer: 

• Build your Amazon storefront 
• Explore the Amazon Idea Hub
• Gain key insights through reports 
• Livestream on Amazon 

Building your Amazon storefront

The Amazon Storefront is where your followers can find every Amazon product you’ve ever recommended, all in one place. When you drive traffic to your storefront, you can earn a commission when shoppers purchase something you recommend.

But thanks to Amazon’s commission halo effect, you have an opportunity to earn a commission on more than just the products you feature in your storefront. Content creators continue to earn a commission for twenty-four hours from the time that a customer clicks through to their Amazon storefront and makes any qualifying purchases across the site. So if your Instagram follower checks out your favorite Prime Day finds and then goes on to purchase everything they had their eye on, you earn a commission on their entire cart, not just your recommended products. 

Amazon provides additional features to make browsing your Amazon influencer storefront easy for customers. You can highlight your top four pieces of content by using the pinning tool, create a short and memorable vanity url, and organize your different recommendations into categories. 

“Amazon Influencers grants you access to some incredible tools to help you monetize your social media content.”

Explore the Amazon Idea Hub

Sorting through the thousands of products, deals, and promotions on Amazon can be both exhausting and time consuming. That’s why Amazon influencers should utilize the Amazon Idea Hub, a one-stop shop for content ideas. You can browse consolidated product content through Amazon and quickly put together ideas for content creation.

After you log into Amazon Associate Central from your device, select Idea Hub from the promotions drop down menu. This will allow you to browse daily deals, check commission rates, keep in the loop about seasonal and holiday events and trending offers, and discover interesting finds.

Utilize the reports tool

Associates Central creates reports where you can see all of your commission earnings and bounties. You’ll also be able to see key engagement metrics like what links your followers are clicking, what items they ordered, what items have shipped, and the conversion rates. 

Some of the reports that you can generate as an Amazon Influencer include:

• Earnings reports, which list products that were ordered after an influencer referral dispatched
• Order reports, which lists products that were ordered after an influencer referral and provides information about how the customer was referred to the product 
• Link-type performance reports, which show performance of the different link and placement types offered by the Influencer program as it relates to product orders and shipments

Exploring these reports can give you key insights into what is working (and not working) with your influencer links and adjustments you can make to boost your revenue through the program. 

Livestream on Amazon

Livestreaming on Amazon combines the energy and interaction of live video with the Amazon shopping experience. When you go live, your stream appears on the Amazon Live home page, where new followers and customers can find your content. 

Amazon live influencers also appear on the influencer store front. You’ll earn a commission from all qualifying purchases of products you feature in the livestream. The more you livestream, the more benefits you unlock. These perks include Amazon notifying customers when you go live, access to priority support, and special access to Amazon Live events and opportunities.

“Livestreaming on Amazon combines the energy and interaction of live video with the Amazon shopping experience.”

Growing your brand with Amazon Influencer

Enrolling in the Amazon Influencer program is a great growth strategy for social media influencers and digital content creators. When you use Amazon Influencer to its full potential, you can set yourself up for business success. 

You can use the Amazon Influencer program to build a valuable business asset that can provide income for years. And if you ever decide to sell your business down the road, you’ll be set up for a successful exit!