Is there any canadian influencer here? Reason I am asking is because it is getting difficult for me to get the free products brands sent to Canada, they don’t ship here 😞

So as a Canadian myself by shopping on Canada i can see they removed videos from the top photos like a month ago. For a while i did not receive anything but during prime day i did notice on select products they have the bottom carousal on canada but only very few select items.

I did have a good prime day number one (july 16th) on amazon canada but the odd part is the products that sold do not have a video carousal.

Does anyone have any insight as to if canada will ever become like the us program??? If its always going to be in testing & adding and removing carousels than that is really frustrating to me and many other influencers.

1.) First I have been accepted in the Amazon influencer program in both .CA (Canada) and .COM (USA)

2.) I have uploaded 3 videos for each country. I am not sure how to know when I am accepted into the Onsite placements. In the USA my 3 videos are published. In Canada my 3 videos are still under pending moderation. Is there any tell tale sign that I have onsite?

3.) Even though my USA videos have been approved they are not showing up on the reviews in the .com side because I am a Canadian. I looked it up and only the country that you post from it shows those reviews on the listing.

4.) So is there a way a Canadian can post a review and it show up on the .com side?

I’ve uploaded my first three videos- two have three views and one still says NA. The weird thing is that the one that says NA can be viewed by anyone now! But I can’t find the other videos for public viewing. Were these people from Amazon viewing them, and why would one be published but not the other two- I thought they’d all be approved or rejected at the same time? Thanks for any insight!

Does anyone else notice fluctuations in activity on their Amazon Canada Storefront?

Here’s what my past few months have looked like:

• September 2024: 60 clicks, $5.08 in commissions

• October 2024: 263 clicks, $55.76 in commissions

• November 2024: 59 clicks, $25.73 in commissions

• December 2024: 31 clicks, $12.07 in commissions

• January 2025: 338 clicks, $68.87 in commissions

• February 2025 (as of Feb 22): 8 clicks, $0 in commissions

I consistently add new review videos every month, so I’d expect to see a steady increase, or at least some consistency. I understand seasonal shopping trends, but the ups and downs seem unusual—especially February’s dramatic drop.

I know these are small-scale earnings, but I’m really wondering if it’s worth continuing with the Canadian Amazon Influencer Program. Has anyone else experienced similar patterns? Any insights into what might be causing this?

A week or so ago, Amazon Canada began some onsite. Many of us had a few hundred videos up there and UK already, and then sales started to trickle through. Then FB groups jumped on it, and many started uploading the rest of their videos and then realized they were not going onsite anymore. Even the videos that were showing are not showing now. It seems Canada hyped up the influencer. Had they second thoughts Amazon UK: I have returned my last bunch of orders as I am pure done of making videos that nobody can see on US pages. My rant this Saturday morning.

So as Canada stopped showing videos at the beginning of this month, you will be glad to know that they have been showing them again since Saturday. You should be making money again.

I posted my first videos in the Amazon Influencer program in June of 2022. For the year and a half after that, it was pretty easy money. Those days are gone. 2024 was the first year that I earned less money in the program than the previous year (though not by much) despite having posted over 600 additional videos for the year.

From reading on Facebook and Reddit, this seems to be the case for just about everyone. The good news is that even though it is more difficult to make money with the Amazon Influencer Program than before, I think there are still great opportunities to make a lot of money doing product reviews. For the year, I made about 80% more money doing product reviews than I did the previous year.

At the end of every year I like to do a deep dive into my stats to see what worked for me and what patterns I can pick out. I learned a lot of things over this year and my hope with this post is that I can share some of the things I have learned and that it will be useful information to you. I am long winded; sorry about that. If you just want to see my suggestions, scroll to the bottom and I will have bullet points of random tips or suggestions.

General observances

There seem to be two main reasons for lower income over the past year. 1) Amazon experimenting with video placement. 2) Exponential saturation of videos. We can’t get away from Amazon experimenting, and honestly I think it is a good thing they do. Amazon is finding out how they can make the most money possible. That means they will find which video performs the best and they will prioritize those videos (in theory). Those of us that can produce those sorts of videos will be rewarded more than those posting low quality or useless content (again… in theory). As far as video saturation goes, there is nothing really we can do about this, so I think it is important to find other ways to monetize our content. I found a lot of ways to do that this past year and will talk more about this further on in this post.

Amazon is going to get worse before it gets better (if it gets better)

The main problem I see right now with the Amazon Influencer Program right now is that Amazon does not know quite how to deal with videos that don’t follow the guidelines or work in a gray area. For example, people posting the same video for 10 or 100s of products, or people posting videos without actually showing the product or worse yet, people posting videos without even talking about the product. Somehow these videos are getting approved and posted in droves while other people are getting their videos rejected for containing a random unrelated barcode, or containing some random detail that “contains personal information.”

Until Amazon puts forth the effort to make it easier for people creating high quality videos to get published, and makes it harder for people to cheat the system, the program is going to get worse and worse. I think Amazon does indeed want to make things better, but this program has been around for a long time now and there are simple changes that Amazon could easily make to improve things but they have not. For example, for videos that are rejected, they could provide timestamps for the offending part or parts of the video. And for videos that are approved but should not be, they could have a more useful “Report” button that allows you to check a box that says something like “Video does not contain the correct product” or something like that. Why Amazon has not made simple changes like this is beyond me.

What is working for me

The three biggest money makers for me in 2024 were:

1. Amazon onsite (Amazon Influencer Program)

2. Amazon offsite with bonuses and incentives (Posting links in my Youtube videos)

3. Youtube adsense

I went over my top 10 ten selling items and categories for these and here are some of the trends that I have noticed.

• Of my top 10 videos on Youtube, 7 of those are comparison videos or general videos of a product category rather than a specific product. I find that on Youtube people are searching a lot more for things like “what are the best headphones” rather than “Raycon X96b headphones review”.

• Obviously my offsite Amazon earnings come mostly from the videos on Youtube that are performing well so again, comparison or category videos do well. I do have one video on Youtube that is a bit of an anomaly in that it gets a lot of views but not very many purchases. I should probably look into that more eh? I think I will go do that now.

• My highest earners for onsite (Amazon Influencer) are about half from products where I do comparison videos and half from random products that just happen to be selling really well.

• Another thing I noticed with Amazon sales is that most of my overall earnings come from having a lot of videos for a wide variety of products. While I do have a few outliers that are doing better than others, there does seem to be a lot of value in having a lot of videos that are performing OK.

• A good chunk of my income has come from Amazon incentives or bonuses. I will talk more about this further down.

Find many different ways to monetize your money

I read posts about so many people who are all in with the Amazon Influencer program but are doing very little outside of that. There are many ways to make more money doing very little extra work. Here are most of the ways I am monetizing my money starting from my highest earner to my lowest:

• Amazon Offsite + Bonuses and Incentives - My offsite earnings by itself is not amazing but Amazon often offers bonuses if you hit certain quotas. Hitting some of these quotas has nearly doubled my offsite income.

• Amazon Onsite - I am earning about the same here as I am with offsite and bonuses. Previously this was my highest earner. Unfortunately, the times are a changin.

• Google Youtube Adsense - My Youtube channel has about 20k subs and gets fairly consistent views and income. Youtube seems to have less ups and downs than Amazon. My daily earnings on Youtube are pretty consistent.

• Sponsored videos for Youtube - When people ask me to make a review video for them, I ask them for money. This has been working quite well. Not surprisingly, the bigger your Youtube channel is, the more people will agree with this. Over the past year I have been able to see as my channel has gotten bigger that people are more and more willing to pay.

• Flip - This is a weird platform. It was a HUGE money earner for me for two months then everything died. If you have not heard of Flip it is at least worth checking out though I don’t think I would really recommend it to anyone at this point (but I DO think that it is important to always be looking for other platforms. Being the first on a platform has major benefits. Just asking anyone who was in the Amazon influencer program 4 or 5 years ago).

• Amazon International - This is mostly from offsite and deep linking (I use Genius Link and have been happy with them). Some of this comes from international onsite as well.

• 3rd Party extra commissions companies - There are a lot of companies out there that are similar to Amazon’s creator connections (more on Creator Connections below) that track your sales and give you extra commissions if you sell an item from a company they are partnered with. The platforms for this that I have tried are Archer, Wayward, Logie, and Levanta. Of these, Levanta is probably my favorite. They have a decent website and I have been earning the most extra commissions from them. If you have never heard of any of those websites it is probably worth checking out. Realistically, if you are not making a lot of commission with offsite sales then these websites probably won’t do much for you but you should be aware they are out there.

• Selling items on Facebook - I have way too much stuff and give most of it away but if I think I can sell an item for $100 or more then I try to sell it. I should be doing more of this, I just don’t like dealing with people on Facebook marketplace.

• Sponsored videos for Amazon - I used to pass up a lot of opportunities when people would ask me to make Amazon videos for small inexpensive trinkets but I have found that people are willing to pay me and it does not take me very long to make a decent video. I actually really like doing these kinds of videos now. When my kids have parties we can give away small random things now like cat pens, or jewelry.

• Tiktok - I don’t care for Tiktok but honestly this is where the money is. Who knows where Tiktok will be in another week/month/year? If Tiktok sticks around I will probably try to do more with this.

Hopefully this list gives you a good idea that there are a LOT of ways you can monetize the videos you are making. If you are interested, I made a video with the full breakdown of the ways I make money from product reviews and how much I earn.

Amazon Incentives and Creator Rewards (bonuses)

As most of you are aware, Amazon frequently offers incentives where if you make a certain type of video, they will pay you extra money for that. Amazon also offers Creator Rewards or bonuses for offsite sales usually with a tiered structure where if you hit a certain milestone, they will offer a cash bonus.

I know a lot of people have a bad taste in their mouth for how poorly some of the incentives have been run in the past. I myself have been perturbed by the lack of transparency from Amazon’s side. They often don’t seem to keep their end of the bargain. What I will say about this is that even with getting hurt a couple times, these incentives are almost always worth trying. It is generally pretty good money for the amount of time you put into things. What I would suggest is that you always do the incentives and do it in such a way that you can still benefit even if you don’t get the incentive payment. In other words, make your videos good enough that you can still get decent video placement and earn commissions.

As far as offsite Creator Rewards goes, this has been very beneficial for me this year. If you are not focusing on offsite sales, you probably should be. The worse the Amazon Influencer program gets, the more important it will be for you to have decent offsite sales.

Creator Connections

I see a lot of questions about Creator Connections and whether it is worth it to sign up or not if you get the invite. Honestly, when I first started using Creator Connections I thought it was worthless. It is not a great way to get products to review and unless you are a blogger or Instagrammer, you kind of have to have the product to make a video to see success with Creator Connections. Throughout the year I have noticed that more and more brands are joining which means if you have a lot of videos up, you have a higher chance of having the product or having already done a product review video for a product in Creator Connections. I spend about 1-3 minutes on Creator Connections every day to see if it recommends a product I have already done a video for, then I accept the campaign and add my existing video link. By doing this I have earned close to 10k in earnings for the year from Creator Connections. For spending less than an hour a week just browsing, I would say that is a pretty good return on investment.

How to get good video placement for your videos? Does it even matter anymore?

With as much saturation as we have now I wonder a lot if making a video is even worth it for a product that has a lot of competition. Here is what I have observed. I have at least one video for an extremely popular item that has had the top stop in the upper carousel for a long time. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I posted the video when there were no other videos or if it worked its way to the top. I have seen some other videos for other popular items that have kind of worked their way to the top but fluctuated with other videos.

What this tells me is that Amazon does try to put priority on some videos. From what I have observed there are two ways to get to the top and stay at the top. 1) Be the first to post a video. 2) Post the best video. This is pretty obvious stuff but I think it is a good reminder that you can have success by making a high quality video. It might take a while to get a good spot but it will probably get there eventually… at least for a while.

So the other question now is if this even matters. So for the popular item I have with the top spot, I sold about 230 for the year. It sells about 5k a month. 230 is pretty good but I have noticed the number of sales wane throughout the year. Obviously with more competition even having the top spot, I am not selling nearly as many as I was previously. The competition hurts, but that is life. It is still better to get a handful of sales for a popular item then have the only video for an item that does not have any sales at all.

So what does this mean? For me it means I have stopped spending my time when I buy a product on Amazon looking for the product with the lowest competition. Now I just buy what looks like the best product for me and I try to make the best video for it. This probably is not the best advice but for me personally it is no longer with the stress of searching for an hour just to find the perfect product. It is too hard to predict if a video will be successful or not.

Do Thumbnails and Titles matter?

I see this question come up a lot. If you would have asked me a year ago I would have said “not really”. This year however I do think thumbnails matter. I don’t have any data to back this up. From my own experience though, when I am looking for a product on Amazon and see the videos, if I see a video thumbnail with a solid colored background, the face of a person pasted over it, and the seller’s product image with the text “Watch this before you buy,” you can guarantee I am not going to watch it. With so many fake or low quality videos coming out, it is getting a lot easier to spot which people are just mass uploading minimal effort bulk videos. I think other people are seeing this trend now as well and prefer to click on thumbnails where an actual real person is holding or showing the actual real product. Again, this is only anecdotal, but I think thumbnails do matter now more than they did in the past.

As for titles, I am still not convinced that titles matter a whole lot. I think they do have an impact, but not as much as the thumbnails do. Based on A/B thumbnails tests I am doing in Youtube, I would say having engaging text is better than no text at all. This is for Youtube and I don’t have any data for Amazon with this but I imagine it is pretty similar.

How many videos do you need to post before you will be successful?

This is another question that gets asked all the time and the answer is always the same. The number of videos does not matter. I get why people ask the question; it is something measurable that you can do; a goal. I have about 1750 videos on Amazon. About 1000 of these videos are getting no views at all or only getting 1-3 views a month. It is as if I really only have 750 videos. A lot of my videos not getting views are because the product is no longer being sold or the listing changed. Many of these are videos for popular products but my video does not show up anymore.

Instead of asking how many videos do I need to be successful, a better question to ask would be “what did you do to get good video placement on a popular product?” With that being said, creating more videos can help you see what does and does not work and it helps you practice to become better. In my opinion, persistence and continual improvement is what it takes to be successful.

Video Theftery

People steal videos all the time. I have reported countless “influencers” and sellers that have stolen my videos. Amazon does a great job taking the videos down quickly. Unfortunately, this happens so much now that I don’t really feel like it is worth my time anymore. If it happens on a really popular product I will report it. This is one area where Amazon really needs to step up their game. They need to do a better job removing accounts and videos (I see stolen videos stay up after accounts have been removed). They also need to make reporting easier to do.

Suggestions for success

Hopefully you were able to pick out some of my suggestions as I shared my experiences above, but here are the tips that I hope can be helpful to you.

• If you are not already posting your videos on other social media like Tiktok, Youtube, or Facebook, do it now. Don’t wait. If I was not posting regularly on Youtube I would have earned about 1/4th to 1/3rd of what I earned this year. I have been surprised at some of my videos on Youtube that have been successful.

• Focus more on quality vs quantity. It may not seem to help much on Amazon but it will help a lot on other platforms. I think this is going to help more in the long run. A year or two ago I did quite a bit of low effort videos that did well at the time but now better videos have overtaken all the video spots so they don’t see the light of day.

• Do comparison videos or product category videos. Focus on teaching people how to shop for the best of the product they are looking for.

• Skip the intros in your videos. Most people don’t care who you are or why you have the product. People watch your videos to get questions answered. This is definitely only my opinion and something I also struggle a lot with but I have noticed that as I have focused more on showing the cool features of the product in the first 10 seconds or so in the video, I see a lot more success.

• Upload thumbnails that let people know you really use the product.

• Always look for other platforms or websites where you can upload your videos or get higher commissions from your videos. New opportunities are popping up all the time. Don’t get stuck doing the same thing while the world around you is changing.

• Try to get into Creator Connections if you are not in already. If you are just starting out and don’t have a lot of videos, it is still helpful to check out what is there.

• If Amazon offers an incentive task, accept it and do it. Make sure that your videos are good enough that they could convert to sales so even if Amazon does not end up paying you, you can still make money from it and make it worth the time you put into it.

• If you are just starting out and you want to do this as a job or “side hustle” please think of it similar to a real job. For example, for most corporate jobs you will pay money to get an education, then work for cheap or free for an internship, then you will get an entry level position that does not make a lot. If you do well after that, then you can advance and make more money. There are a lot of similarities to product reviews. Despite what you hear online for making quick and easy money, most people will only be successful after dedication, learning, and persistence.

I hope this post has been helpful. Congrats if you read my whole novel. The Amazon Influencer Program has been life changing for me (in a good way). I am bummed that Amazon is not really doing a whole lot to improve the program but it has certainly opened up a lot of doors for me and I hope it can do the same for you.

I posted my first videos in the Amazon Influencer program in June of 2022. For the year and a half after that, it was pretty easy money. Those days are gone. 2024 was the first year that I earned less money in the program than the previous year (though not by much) despite having posted over 600 additional videos for the year.

Hi guys,

So my amazon.com influencer account got switched over to amazon.ca after they reviewed my videos. I know other influencers in Canada have said that they are able to earn commissions from their review videos as well as of Nov but I can't seem to find where I would know if i have been approved to earn commissions or not... like I cant see the equivalent to the creator hub for amazon.ca. Does anyone know where I can find this info?

thanks

Have any of you heard why this is happening? I have had zero views and Zero commissions since April 16th. I know one of you must have heard something or have heard back from a helpful support person at Amazon. I have contacted them several times and have NOT found a helpful person yet.

Ok so I got accepted into the Amazon influencer program and I’m in Canada but I have both a Canadian and American storefront, why am I not able to find onsite commissions for my Canadian one? How do it do that as well as when I try to update my Americans payment information I can’t because I don’t have a bank account in the states so how do I go about this? Thank you for taking the time to read this

I just got my first payment from Amazon and it went so smoothly.

Since you can’t add a Canadian bank account to receive payment, I originally opted for receiving a cheque. Then I realized the cheque would come in USD and I’d have to go to the bank each month to deposit it and the bank would hold the cheque for up to 30 days with higher fees taken out!

So I looked into opening a cross border banking account and opened one up at RBC since I already bank with them. Since the RBC us cross border bank account has a American branch, I was able to add it as a payment method for direct deposit on Amazon. So now I receive my Amazon payment directly to my US cross border banking account in USD and can instantly transfer it to my Canadian chequing account as CAD with a much better exchange rate.

Just thought I’d put this out there because I was having a hard time finding advice about this from other Canadian influencers when I didn’t know what to do.

Hi fellow Amazon Influencers,

I'm new to the program and based in Canada. In October 2024, I earned $120 in commissions, and in my payment history, it shows "Payment by Check" dated December 30, 2024. However, I still haven't received the check as of today (January 21, 2025).

Is it normal for checks to take more than three weeks to reach Canada? Should I wait longer, or is there something I should do to follow up with Amazon? Any advice or similar experiences would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance!

I have gotten 250 subs and 55k views in the past 8 days but I don't know if that's enough. all of my content is YouTube shorts that are unrelated to amazon. mainly shower thoughts

I have had videos posted in the Amazon Influencer program for almost exactly 6 months. I have been really happy with the program and I thought I would share what I have learned in this time. In the spirit of non-rule rule #4 about monetary numbers, I will keep numbers as generalizations and averages and avoid specifics.

A little background: I started doing product reviews about 7 years ago back in the day when Amazon would allow you to receive free products in exchange for a review. 6 years ago I created a Youtube channel to try to monetize my reviews. I joined the Amazon Affiliate program and posted Amazon links in my Youtube video descriptions. My Youtube channel has never been very big but it gives me decent hobby money (about $1000 - $2000 on average a month) and I have really enjoyed getting things for free and making videos.

Disclaimer

In the grand scheme of things, 6 months is not a lot of time. I am not an expert. Take what I say with a grain of salt. This is just one person’s experience from a short amount of time. Hopefully what I share will be helpful. You should not expect my experience however to be the same as what you will experience.

General Overview of Stats

Since July I have posted just over 300 videos. About half of these videos are modified videos that I had already created for my Youtube channel. I posted these in about the first 2 months. After uploading these videos I have averaged uploading about 40 videos a month.

Last 30 Days Stats

In the past 30 days my videos have just shy of 50,000 views. Keep in mind that the last 30 days was December which is typically a higher shopping month. That being said; many of my videos were also recently uploaded and have no or very few views; hopefully these two factors cancel each other out. Based on the last 30 days each of my videos is averaging about $11 per month. I would estimate for my videos I probably will make an overall average of about $75 - $100 per video, per year. This is probably a VERY conservative estimate but I don’t really have enough data from Amazon to make a better guess (and I would rather estimate very conservatively).

Some Observances

Quality vs Quantity - The subject of quality has come up a handful of times here. I have inferred that most influencers here who have been doing this a while would prefer quality over quantity. To me the single biggest indicator of monetary success is simply choosing the right product to review. I have several videos that I would consider to be higher quality that have few or no views. Likewise, I have several videos that I would not consider to be very good quality but they get thousands of views and hundreds of sales. That being said, I think there is a bigger lasting power with higher quality videos. Sometimes it is hard to know what products will sell well which is where quantity might have a benefit. Other times it is obvious when a product is doing well and only high quality videos will stand a chance of doing well in the long run.

Video placement/location - After product selection, I would say the second greatest indicator of monetary success is where your video shows up. As far as I am aware there are three locations where your video will/can show up:

Storefront - When you upload a video it will show up on your storefront until you have enough other videos/lists/photos that it gets rotated out. You can always pin a video or post however. In my experience videos on the storefront end up earning you the least amount of money (unless you have a large(ish) social media following and are able to direct a lot of people to your storefront.

Image View - This is the area with the product image. Usually there will be several product images and the last one will be a video. I emailed a bunch of sellers about this location and found out that influencer videos will only show up if the seller has already uploaded a video. Also, the seller has no input in which videos show up or which order. It is Amazon that does this. At any rate, this seems to be the prime location for your video. When I notice I start selling a lot of a product it is almost always because my video shows up directly after the seller’s video.

Video Carousel - These are the videos that show up under the product description and above the related products and reviews. I would say this is the second best location for your video to show up.

If I had to make a guess, I would say that Amazon periodically rotates videos that show up in the Image View and Video Carousel but gives preference and priority to the videos that convert to more sales. Unfortunately, Amazon does not really provide useful statistics for any of this.

Thumbnails and Titles - Unlike Youtube, I find that thumbnails and titles don’t have a hugely significant impact on the success of a video. Of my top 10 highest grossing and top 10 highest viewed videos about half of the thumbnails have a person (me) in them. Half do not. About half the thumbnails have text in the thumbnail. I usually make my own thumbnail and don’t use the one Amazon automatically generates but I generally don’t spend more than a minute coming up with the thumbnail. I have experimented changing the text on some of my videos. I have seen no real indication that it has a significant impact.

View fluctuation - Many of my videos have experienced some sort of fluctuation where they do well for a while, then don’t, then do well again. Some of this is due to the seasonality of some of the products but I suspect a lot of this is due to Amazon testing things out and rotating videos. I suspect that higher quality videos will do better for longer but I have seen some of my videos perform poorly that I would deem better than the other videos. Maybe I am biased but I feel like Amazon can be somewhat random with what videos they choose to place in more prominent locations.

View and Video Duration and Helpful Votes - I added all my videos to a spreadsheet and looked at the top 10 of my highest grossing videos (of the last 6 months) and top 10 of my highest viewed videos (of the last 30 days). I expected to see patterns like higher average view duration, longer videos, or more helpful votes. What I found however is there was really no discernable pattern. Some of my videos with the most helpful votes don’t really sell well and some of my videos with very few helpful votes do sell well. I don’t really know what to make of this. You could say this makes a case for why uploading a lot of videos might be beneficial.

Highest Grossing Videos - Of my top 10 highest grossing videos I have noticed two patterns:

1. On average, the products are more expensive. For my case the average product price comes out to be about $415.

2. 8 of my top 10 videos I created specifically for Youtube. This could mean a few different things. It could simply be that these were the first videos I have uploaded and they have been on Amazon longer. It could also be that I make Youtube videos of more expensive items. It could also be that I make longer and generally higher quality videos when I make them for Youtube. Another interesting thing about this is that many of these videos show multiple products but only have one product tagged. I think Amazon ends up showing this video on more “related video” areas in different products and this really helps get more views on different products.

Holiday Earnings - For major holidays where the whole country gets the day off I notice a huge drop in earnings usually the day of or the day after (or both). I suspect this is mostly due to warehouses being closed and not because of shopping behavior. My Amazon affiliate account does not have the same sort of drop off. I think Amazon Influencer earnings show what ships and Amazon Affiliate earnings show what was purchased.

Which items to review - Purchased vs Free vs existing vs Commissioned - Ultimately, how you get the item does not matter as much as what the item is and how popular it is.

Purchased Items Pros: When you purchase an item with your own money you can pick out exactly what you want to review. This allows you to get the best item.

Purchased Items Cons: Even if you pick a good product there is no guarantee that you will sell the item. You could easily be out of the cost of the item. As a general rule, if I need to purchase something from Amazon I will try to purchase something that will have the most success if I review it. I never purchase items just for the sake of reviewing them.

Existing items Pros: If you already have existing items in your home that are on Amazon you can do a review for these. I find these to be some of the best videos as typically you have had these items for a longer time and can do a better review. Also, you don’t need to purchase the items to do a review video.

Existing items Cons: Obviously you are limited to what you already have and can’t do the unboxing part of the product.

Free items Pros: When someone offers to send you an item for free to make a video you always get a free product. If you already need the product this can be great. A lot of time these products are new so you may be the first one to have a video. If the product takes off this can put you in a good spot.

Free items Cons: It is hard to predict how well the product will perform. It could end up that the product sells poorly and you never make any money off your video.

Commissioned items Pros: All the pros of a free item with the addition that if you get money upfront for the video then even if the product does not sell well, you still have money to make up for the time spent creating the video.

Commissioned items Cons: All the cons of a free item with the addition that asking for money sometimes might make sellers less willing to work with you. You could potentially be out of free items if you request a commission. I have definitely had this happen to me. Lost opportunity can be a big negative depending on how sellers you are working with react to your request.

I think it is a mistake to discount any of the above. If you decide to only do commissioned videos I think you will miss out on potential opportunities. If you decide to only do free items, you will likely spend a lot of time wasted on products that don’t do well. You need to find a good balance that works for you. For me personally, if I am really interested in an item I will typically do the video for free. If I am not super interested in the item I will charge a commission. That way if they accept I earn money. If they pass I am not really out of anything.

Fluctuating Commissions Rate - Amazon controls the commissions you get on items you help sell. Nothing you can do about this EXCEPT on occasion Amazon will send an email to allow you to opt into higher commissions. I got this email once and clicked on it but made the mistake of being signed into the WRONG ACCOUNT. So while it showed me that I was enrolled with higher commissions it did not apply to my Amazon Influencer account. I got an email like this I think in October and it would have gone through the holiday season. I estimate I am out $4000 - $6000 or more simply because I did not pay attention to what account I was signed into (to be more specific, I was signed into my Amazon Affiliate account and NOT my Amazon Influencer account).

Experiments I Conducted

Tagging Multiple products - I did a video for a hard drive. After I started selling a small handful I realized that there were multiple capacities of the hard drive. I decided to tag all of the capacities to my video. Once I did that I immediately stopped selling any hard drives and my video did not show up anywhere. I later removed all the tags except one and since then I have been selling hard drives just about every day of different capacities.
While Amazon gives you the option to tag multiple items I would caution you to be VERY careful when doing this. In my experience it is almost always best to just tag one single item per video. Amazon is smart and will have the video show up in places where it makes sense.

Reviewing wildly popular items - I purchased a couple items on Amazon that have tens of thousands of reviews. On one item my video showed up as the last video in the video carousel for a day or two but only got a handful of views before it went away. I don’t think Amazon really gave it a shot to see if it was any good. The other video I did for a popular item never showed up anywhere. It might still show up but it has been a month or two and I don’t think Amazon is even going to give it a shot.

It is totally possible that my videos are just not good enough to compete with the existing videos but it also seems like Amazon is not even giving them a fair shake. If you want to do a review for a product that already has many videos be aware that your video may not even show up despite the video quality. Hopefully I am wrong on this… I will do more experiments throughout this next year.

Hand Picking Items with low competition - I have searched Amazon to find items with many reviews and few or no videos. This has been pretty hit and miss. The first time I did this, I did this for a clothing item that was super popular but didn’t have any videos. I didn’t realize at the time if the seller didn’t have a video that my video would never show up with the product images. During the first month or two I rarely sold any of the item. Eventually the seller did end up posting a video and since that time I have been selling about 5-15 of the clothing item a day.

In my experience when I have purchased things on my own, while some things have done well, on average I have not broken even with these products. Things could change in the next year as most of these items were only purchased in the last month or two but this is something to consider. I would not recommend purchasing items for review unless you are already having a good amount of success selling items.

Faceless videos - I have seen some discussion here and in Youtube about if it is better to show your face talking or to just have your hands showing the product and do a voiceover. In my experience I have not really seen one way work better than the other. I think it mostly depends on the product. For products where people want to see how they work I think hands are just fine. For products where people want to hear more of an opinion I think it is helpful to show your face.

Conclusion and Tips

Before joining the Amazon Influencer program I just considered product reviews as a fun hobby. Over the past few months being in the program I not only think it is possible to do this as a full time job I think it might even be likely (though probably not for a few more years). Over the past 6 months I have averaged about $2500 a month. I feel like I could realistically double that within a year if I continue at the same pace I have been going. I have really enjoyed being in the program and doing reviews.

Here or some tips that hopefully will be helpful to some of you:

• Establish good relationships with sellers. This makes life super easy. Drop sellers you don’t like working with and make sure that you treat sellers well who treat you well. (Side note as someone who has lived in China… Please be nice to these sellers. Keep in mind that most of the people you interact with are probably not making much money. They are doing their job and they are being overworked. Most of us in this program are fortunate to live in an area where we have this opportunity. Don’t take this for granted. Be nice and understanding to the people that email you even if their English is not great.)

• Find a way to streamline your workflow. For me I usually save up items until the weekend then unbox them all at once. I use the item for at least a week or two getting more footage usually over the weekend. I put videos together early in the morning before I go to my full time job. If I have the video footage already done I can put 3-4 videos together each morning before I go to work (I wake up at 4:30 each morning).

• Be willing to do videos for free. This can open doors to get you more expensive items that help you earn higher commissions. Find a good balance between free and commissioned items.

• Get a good mic, a tripod, and decent lights.

• Be persistent and optimistic. Amazon is tricky. Just because you make a great video does not mean you will see success. Keep at it until you do.

About a year ago I posted my experience of being in the Amazon Influencer Program for half a year. Now that I have been in the program a year longer I thought I would post a follow up.

Here is the short version:

The Amazon Influencer Program is probably about 4-6 times more saturated than it was 1.5 years ago when I first started (maybe more). That being said, I still think it is the best and easiest way to make money online from posting videos.

Here is the long version:

If you just want to see my answers to frequently asked questions and tips to (maybe) be successful in the program, go ahead and skip to the bottom. If you have 15 minutes to waste and nothing better in your life to do, then read on.

General Background

Before I joined this program I was doing product review videos on Youtube so I already had experience making videos and I already had a pretty large handful of videos to upload. Because of this, I saw quite a bit of success right out of the gate and income kept going up until it peaked during the Christmas season. In the beginning of 2023 I felt the impact of the not shopping season and the influx of other Influencers joining the program, so while I have had a pretty steady output of videos, my income has not increased at the same rate and has stayed more or less the same with a pretty slight increase month over month. Amazon is always playing around with things so income fluctuates pretty wildly but on average I earn around $2500 - $3000 a month with Q4 being higher because of shopping season.

I made just shy of 500 videos last year (about 1.3 videos a day). In total I have just over 1200 videos (number of videos really does not matter… I will get to that later). Compared to others I have seen in this program, I make significantly less per video than most people. This is OK. Probably over half of my videos are for products that are not being sold anymore or sell very little.

Trends I Have Noticed this past year

When I first joined the program, you could grab your phone, point it at a product, do a single take video, post it, and make pretty good money. While this still might lead to some success, with how saturated the program is becoming I am seeing the need for higher quality videos to be successful (note, higher quality does not necessarily mean more produced). As I have been going over some stats for this past year I have noticed that a lot of my shorter, very simple videos that once performed quite well, are no longer showing up on the product page as they have been pushed off by other longer, (probably better) videos. Likewise; I have seen a lot of my videos that are for products with a lot of competition, continue to perform well as they have a great position on the product page. These videos tend to be a bit longer and take me a bit more time to make.

Another trend I have seen this past year is influencers posting multiple videos for a single product. This has become a bit of a point of debate as some people see it as gaming the system, and some people point out that Amazon has actually encouraged this. As a matter of personal opinion, I do get quite annoyed when people post multiple videos for something that could (should) just be a single video. I do think however that there are instances where it totally makes sense to post multiple videos, for example, you could post a review video, then a comparison video, then a 1 year follow up video etc. These are all different enough that they add value to the buyer. Posting a video on how to insert AA batteries into a flashlight, then posting a separate video on how to turn on the flashlight does not add any real value.

A Deep Dive into Analytics

I analyzed my top 25 money making videos to see what kinds of patterns I could discover to hopefully learn what I could do better. Here are the results:

Importance of Product Price

I used to think it was obvious that the more expensive item is the better it is to review because you get more commissions. The reality is, the more expensive an item is, the less likely it is to sell in large quantities. I have one very inexpensive product that sold over 1000 units and I have another expensive product that sold just 14 units. They both made about the same amount of money. The inexpensive item to a lot less work to make the video.

Video thumbnail - Face or no face

Of my highest earning videos, most of these had a thumbnail where I was either showing the product in my hand or just showing the product by itself. Showing my face or showing myself with the product didn’t seem to make a positive or significant difference.

Video thumbnail - Text or no text

Of my highest earning videos, half of the thumbnails have text the other half don’t. Text in a thumbnail does not seem to make a difference for me.

Helpful Votes

Some of my highest earning videos have very few helpful votes. While this is a metric that gives me warm fuzzies, it seems kind of meaningless in relation to the success of how a video might perform.

Video Competition

I looked at how many other influencer videos could be found with my highest earning videos and I was a bit surprised to find that nearly all of my highest earning videos had a lot of competing videos. That being said, I know that some of these videos started out without any competing videos and now have a lot and the video earnings reflect that.

Success of video style

Most of my successful videos were either videos where I was comparing two or more products or videos where I was doing a demonstration of the product. What didn’t seem to perform well were short, single take videos of me just talking about the product and how much I like it. This was not really a surprise to me but it is kind of nice to have this validated through statistics.

Video Length

Almost all my successful videos were long or very long. I only had a small handful of videos that were under 1 minute that were successful.

Frequently asked questions

These are questions I have seen pop up a lot on Reddit and Facebook.

How can I get my videos approved and get into the program?

• Honestly, I don’t really know the answer to this. I don’t think anyone does. It is a lot harder to get in the program now than it was a year ago. Based on what I have seen, having a good social following helps and having simple but informative videos without fluff is what has been working. Again though; I don’t really know.

What kind of thumbnails should I make?

• I really don’t think thumbnails matter a whole lot as long as you are showing the product. You can add text or not add text but I don’t think this is really something you should spend a lot of time on.

How many videos do I need to make to start making decent money?

• Video quantity impacts income stability a decent amount but if you want to focus on making more money then you should focus on videos that add more value. This didn’t always used to be the case. I think in the early days of the program you could film whatever you wanted and make a good deal of money by scaling up. I think now, quality matters a lot more if you want your videos to stick around. More important than both of these things though is product selection. That is what your focus should almost always be on if you are in this to make a lot of money.

How do I get sellers/agents to send me free stuff?

• You can try reaching out to sellers or agents via email or Facebook or Instagram and while this has worked for me in the past, it is entirely not worth the effort. If your social media following is large enough then it might work, but then you probably would not be asking this question in the first place. The best way to get free stuff is to consistently post quality videos on social media and make sure that your email address can be found easily on your social media. Agents and sellers will reach out to you.

I am freaking out because Amazon did a thing. How can I cope with my life now?

• Amazon changes things up all the time, testing out things. This is the nature of this program. Focus on what you can control and try not to let Amazon’s tests bother you. Think about Amazon’s goals; they are trying to make money. Whatever they determine makes them the most money is what they will do.

My views/earnings just went way down, what is happening?

• Earnings will go down on certain days of the week and around holidays. Don’t worry. This is happening to everyone. Also, sometimes your video that was in rotation might have gotten booted and is no longer in rotation. This is where having a lot of videos is less impactful. Keep on pumping out high quality videos and you will have more consistent income. If you only have one video that is doing really well, then you will feel the gut punch when it gets taken out of the video carousel.

My video got rejected but it is perfect in every way. Is someone out to get me?

• Videos get rejected for showing or saying certain things. Things to watch out for: Don’t ever show in your video a barcode, an address, a street sign that can indicate where you live, or a license plate number. Avoid using words that can be viewed as medical advice. Think words like “safe” or “cured” or something similar. This makes reviewing certain products (like medical products) hard. Keep that in mind before making a video.

Someone stole my video. What should I do?

• This happens. It happens a lot actually. If you know who stole it, reach out to them. Maybe you can get some money by giving them the rights to use your video. If you don’t know who stole it, click on the “Report” link on the video and that will give you the info you need. Amazon is good about taking down stolen content. Make sure that you have your video posted somewhere else either on Amazon or other social media so that you can prove that your video was posted before the stolen video.

Someone is not following the rules, how can I restore justice in the universe?

• I don’t know. You can report them or not. Just understand that a lot of people are gaming the system and it hurts everyone. This is a reality that will probably never go away. I would recommend you focus more on your own videos and control what you can control.

How can I pick the best items to review to become a millionaire tomorrow?

• Persistence and luck. If you are in this program to get rich quick then you will probably either become disappointed or dishonest. While you used to be able to get a lot of money by doing very little work in this program, this is all changing due to increased competition. You can still make fantastic money but you should expect to put in time and effort. Find out what works for you and do that. Be mindful that certain categories make more money than other categories. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a home run product that has little competition.

What is better, horizontal or vertical videos?

• This seems to depend on your audience and the product category. From what I have seen, horizontal seems to do better for most products. Fashion and makeup seem to be an exception to this. Like with everything else, you should experiment on your own and figure out what works best for you.

Tips - Things I plan on changing based on analyzing my metrics

*Disclaimer: These are things I am going to do for ME. These suggestions might not work for you. I could intentionally be trying to sabotage you by giving bad advice so I have less competition. If these tips resonate with you; try it out. If it does not work, stop doing it.

Create simpler thumbnails

While I have never spent a lot of time on thumbnails, I think I will try to focus more on having a simple thumbnail that just shows a closeup of the product. I am just going to take a screenshot from my video and call it good.

Change the intro in my videos

Going through a lot of my videos I noticed that the most common way I would start a video is by saying something like “This is XYZ product, it does XYZ thing.” Realistically, this is already information that people already know before clicking on the video. This does not add value so I am going to take it out. I am going to try to use the first 5-10 seconds of each video to give the viewer a good reason to buy the product then go from there. I have always kind of tried to take this approach but looking at my videos it is pretty obvious that I am bad at doing this.

Ask for more money

I had a realization a while back that when people offer me a product I don’t want, this is the perfect opportunity to find out how much money sellers are willing to spend. If someone asks me to review a product I don’t want I offer to make the video for about double what I would normally charge. If they accept, great! Now I know what that seller is willing to spend and I can use that for other sellers going forward. If they don’t accept my price, double great! I don’t have to spend time making a video for something I am not interested in.

Focus more on comparison videos

I have already been trying to do this but I am going to work on this even more. From what I have seen, either people prefer this type of video or Amazon does. Either way, my comparison videos almost always perform better than my videos of a single product.

Focus less on single take videos

In the past I have seen success making a quick video where it is basically me saying “I have been using XYZ product for X years and I like it for XYZ reasons.” These types of videos don’t seem to be making much money for me anymore. Maybe it is just the way I am doing it but I think realistically there is more competition now and these types of videos are getting pushed out by videos that show more of how the product works. I still think there is a ton of value for people to know how long I have had something and how much I like that, but I am going to incorporate that more into a video where I am still showing how to use the product and show the product in use. (Warning* This might be terrible advice. I have seen a lot of other people have success with this sort of video. I am just noticing a trend for what no longer seems to be working for me.)

Random thoughts
The Amazon Influencer program is amazing and has significantly improved my life. The program is getting saturated for good reason. It is a bummer for those of us in the program already but it will just force those of us who are serious to get better and try harder to succeed.
One thing that brings an interesting perspective to me is that I have a brother who is also in the program. We have about the same amount of videos but he is making more than twice as much as me. I think about this a fair amount and have come up with the following reasons that he is making more money than me. (these are guesses, not facts)

• He is reviewing more items that earn higher commissions than me. While I review primarily electronics, he focuses a lot more on tools and home items that tend to have a much higher commission.

• He is reviewing items that sell more units. A lot of what I review was sent to me for free to review. These typically don’t perform well. I am a sucker for getting free stuff but this is one of the reasons why I now ask sellers to pay me. At least if they are paying me upfront, I will recoup my time lost. I don’t expect these products to perform well.

• He is more personable / relatable in his videos. I don’t know if this is really the case or not but he does a great job in his videos being happy and having a very positive attitude. His video quality is not always the best but he brings up a lot of great talking points. I am working on this for myself but the reality is a lot of people have more charisma than others. I think this is something we can all work on and I am certainly working on this myself. I don’t think having charisma is a requirement to be successful but I think it can certainly help.

• He has help from his family making videos. My kids are still pretty young and while they help occasionally, they don’t have the same sort of vision or desire for reviewing that I do. If you have family members that can help out, take advantage of that.

My point in comparing myself to my brother is to say that everyone is different. Find out what you do well at and keep doing that. Find out what you don’t do well at and stop doing that. Find your own style. Some of my advice might be great for you. Some of my advice might be terrible for you.

I hope this was helpful to some of you. The Amazon Influencer Program is amazing and while I didn’t have as great a year as many of you, I am really happy with what I was able to accomplish this past year. I don’t want to list my earnings here, but I did put together a video of my total earnings and posted it here (https://youtu.be/morG08d1hLc) on Youtube. Good luck to all y’all. Happy to answer any questions you might have for me.

To the person that said Amazon was reverting these changes that are killing our views and commissions tomorrow (Oct 15th), I’m not really sure I believe you…. BUT GOSH I HOPE YOURE RIGHT 😂😭🙏

On the real though, I was investing thousands per month back into this venture, but that has completely 100% stopped.

Amazon, if you want me to be able to keep investing in this, please revert the changes 🙏