Amazon Influencer Program

Greetings and a happy Saturday to you. Happy Easter to those that celebrate. May this be a time of hope and rebirth 🙏.

I had some time this weekend and made a couple of videos talking about the new-ish program from Amazon that allows "influencers", which is pretty much anyone with a wee social media following, that lives in a part of the world where the program is available. It's quite similar to the Amazon Associates, and later Affiliates, programs, but not quite the same.

Amazon Affiliates and Associates usually rely on their own traffic generated outside of Amazon. Whether it be their own blog or website, forum, social media pages, e.t.c., on which they place links to products on Amazon. If there is a qualifying purchase within a given window, then the affiliate/associate gets a commission. It's a profit share with Amazon and doesn't affect the buyer.

The Amazon Influencer program is a little different. First, one needs not worry about traffic, well, in America anyway. An amazon shop front is provided for each influencer, once admitted into the program, on which one can create various types of content. In the UK, we are allowed to create "Shoppable photos", which are photos with products tagged. We are also allowed "Ideas Lists", which are like wish lists but have tagged products in them. One can then direct traffic to the shop front. It's basically like Amazon affiliates, but the web space is provided by Amazon, and tagging is infinitely easier. That's pretty much where the advantages end in the UK.

In the US, on the other hand, they have video! "Shoppable videos" are highly converting since Amazon places them on the actual Amazon.com page! That's the hottest traffic in the world and the easiest to convert. People seeing the video have already made up their minds to buy something like what you're showing. Your job is to show them why they should buy it. That's pretty much it! There's also "Amazon Live", which is like Twitch or any online live stream, but with products tagged in a carousel. Any products purchased during a live stream will incur commissions for the influencer. The live streams are also available as videos after the fact, in perpetuity. Mind you, those are not as highly converting as the shoppable videos spoken about earlier.

It's a bit of Web2, and we are moving on the Web3 currently, but Amazon still presents a lot of opportunity to make some side hustle income. If you already have a lot of products at home that are available on Amazon, then why not offer your opinion to help others make a decision, and earn a little bit of change in the process? Of course, with these things, you to live in the "right" geographical locations. That's always the limit. Hopefully with Web3, we begin the process of eliminating these geographical gate keeping of opportunity. That's one of the great things about Hive. You can live on the Moon or Antartica, as long as you have an internet connection and a way to post content, you're good.

Peace & Love,

Adé