Amazon Affiliate vs Amazon Influencer Program - PROs & CONs For Content Creators

well hello there affiliate marketer did you know that you can be successful making money online even if you only have a small blog or online platform this is especially true when it comes to promoting Amazon products or being an Amazon affiliate but with that comes a little bit of confusion because there are actually two ways to partner up with Amazon when it comes to promoting their products you can be an Amazon affiliate or you can meet an Amazon influencer and part of their influencer program and I get asked all the time what's the difference between the two and which one should you go for so this video will explore all that to help you make the right choice but first of all let me introduce myself hi there my name is Anna and I'm a blogging coaches strategist over at the shoe approach where I help bloggers just like you get started and increase their online income in traffic and I do that through no fluff blogging strategies and this is what the Day's Video is all about there are a few key differences between being an Amazon affiliate and being an Amazon influencer and some of them are better for specific platforms forms depending on if you're a social media influencer versus a blogger versus both I help people with their affiliate strategy all the time and in fact I've just finished a 14-day blogging challenge that I've created especially for those who have website content to help them increase their clicks and conversion without any more traffic required because sometimes you only can work with what you have to work with right so that challenge is specifically designed to look at your Affiliates look at your conversion rates and figure out what's missing and optimize your content and create new content to really let those Affiliates shine AKA make more monthly commissions if you are interested in more of a step-by-step strategy the link to during that challenge is in the description but let's get into the meat of today's video so if you want to know if you should sign up to be an Amazon affiliate or Amazon influencer this is the video for you and here's what you need to know about the key differences the Amazon affiliate program or the Amazon associate program as they also call themselves is made for for vloggers who have websites and content on those websites the type of content they're looking for is mostly Evergreen so content that you can write today and it would still be applicable a year from now and not necessarily like news websites for example while the Amazon influencer program is made for people with a social media platform and you don't have to have a website to join that so you do need a website or an online platform of sorts to be approved by both of them the Amazon affiliate program will analyze your website so they want you to have a Blog that is live and has at least a couple of blog posts on there and the Amazon influencer program want you to link at least one to two social media platforms and this includes things like Instagram YouTube maybe a Facebook page not a Facebook group it needs to be a public social platform and not something behind a wall Tech talk also works well for example and they do want to see you have some numbers so it's a little harder to get into the Amazon influencer program program if you just started those platforms you need at least one of them that is that's performing well so the main difference is that you can join the Amazon affiliate program even as a beginner so you've just launched your blog and you have a couple of pieces of content in there they don't ask about your traffic they don't care about your numbers just yet but the Amazon influencer program is a little harder to get down they don't have a specific requirement of followers that you need to have but you need to have some engagement then the main difference is what they allow you to do once you're approved the Amazon affiliate program allows you to link to individual products so you can pick the product that you want and link to them directly and there's a lot more flexibility with kind of creating those links and sharing them well the Amazon influencer program allows you to create a store so this is like a storefront on your Amazon which is like a big wish list where you can send people and you can categorize this wish list but you can just link to one specific product this makes it a little harder for your audience if you're really trying to just get them to check out the specific product because the more steps you enable them to have to do the more likely is that they'll give up before purchasing it just because it took them so long to find it but you can create specific links to those categories instead so if you use different social media platforms to promote different things and you want people to easily find it you can be smart about it and how you use those categories in the first place and then people can just browse through that shop of recommendations as well I have seen loads of influencers doing a really good job with that but it's a little hard to keep up if you're trying to recommend multiple things for example I have found videos on Tick Tock that we surfaced on my feed that were from a while back where they're recommending like this magic mop or whatever and then you go into their storefront and they do have a category for kitchen supplies but because they've created so many other videos since they initially posted that video they added so many things on top that it's a little hard to to go all the way back to that so again keep that in mind in terms of how easy it is for your audience to find things and how content works is it only the most recent content that people are going to see or is it going to get resurfaced and it really depends on the platform right let's talk a little bit about their requirements to join both of them so as an affiliate you don't need a lot like I said you do need a website or social media platform and one of the biggest requirements is that you need to make three sales in the first 180 days to qualify this is like half a year there's plenty of time to make Stow sales but it is a requirement that some people struggle to meet if they are just brand new to this and have absolutely no traffic because traffic does take a little time to build up to that stage right I do have a whole video on the do's and don'ts when it comes to Amazon affiliate program and what requirements you need to meet to get in there so definitely be sure to check out that video as well and if you are in that position when you've created your Amazon affiliate program but you're struggling to get those three sales to qualify your account hop in my free Facebook group for the loggers that's also linked below it's called a smart blogging approach and in there there's a specific thread designated to helping you guys help each other out to make those three first sales and a lot of people have had that happen and I'm so excited for you guys right back to our discussion the requirements to join for the Amazon influencer program like I mentioned is a little bit different in their terms of service they say and I quote we accept applications from all types of influencers provided you have a YouTube Instagram or Facebook account when reviewing your applications we look at the numbers of followers you have in addition to other engagement metrics you need some sort of social media presence that is active when you apply to be an influencer they look into it a little bit more in depth than they do for your other application because for the affiliate application you join you get approved instantly but you just have to qualify to solidify your account so if you don't make those three sales in the first six months that they give you they might reject your application and you might need to rejoin which is not a problem you can do that at any time but for the influencer program they look into it before letting you in if that makes sense and again for the influencer program they take into consideration various numbers of metrics that don't really have a number that they're looking for they just want a good engagement and they want at least one platform that does really well when it comes to earnings in commission there's not much of a difference there whether you're part of the affiliate program or the influencer program it's pretty similar you get paid kind of the same the percentage of commission that you get paid depends more on the category that the product is in rather than if you're an influencer versus an affiliate these commission structures change all the time so make sure to check out the Amazon program page the commissions can range anywhere between one to ten percent for various products that they have my friend Debbie who's a home decor blogger makes upwards of five thousand dollars a month with Amazon affiliates it's an amazing achievement and she's actually created a course called The Journey to the Center of Amazon where she explains the best strategies to really leverage your content when it comes to affiliate marketing and getting paid for your efforts in there I will leave a link to her course below as it's a great resource for that and she also keeps it updated to follow all these Amazon rules and requirements that they change from time to time going back to the differences between the two the Amazon influencer program does have an added benefit that the affiliate program doesn't and that is that they let you share the link to your storefront or to specific categories in places where you wouldn't normally be able to share your Amazon affiliate link so if you watch my do's and don'ts video on Amazon affiliate practices you know that they do not let you add your affiliate link anywhere that is Offline that includes any PDFs emails social media conversations that are private Facebook groups that are private and so want you cannot share it if your Instagram account is private for example or you can't email it to your email list which is a little bit of a bummer there are ways around that with the affiliate program but you have to do some extra work but with the influencer program they give you a link to your storefront so they're able to track who lands on your storefront and give you the commissions for those sales it's also a benefit if you don't have a Blog and you don't plan on creating one you don't have that website or home base where you can promote these affiliate programs for example I have a resource Library when I'm able to categorize my own Affiliates in there including Amazon Affiliates but if you don't have that then the storefront provides the excellent place for you to do that without having to build a website there are a couple of influencers both on Instagram and Tick Tock that I saw do a really excellent job with their storefronts and they just add it into their social media links or linked trees but something that the Amazon affiliate program has that the Amazon influencer program does not is Geo tracking with Geo tracking you can set up what's called a one link setting into your Amazon affiliate program and I have a whole tutorial on how to do that as well on my channel and I'll put it somewhere here for you to check out but it enables you to create affiliate accounts for specific countries where you know you get traffic from so I'm currently located in the UK but most of my traffic comes from the United States so then I was able to join the US Amazon affiliate program and also get paid from sales that come from people buying from amazon. com but the beauty of Geo tracking is that it gets rid of any guesswork I don't have to guess where my audience is when they click on it Amazon and their one link setting sends people to the Amazon closest to where they are located so if somebody from London would to click on my link they would be taken to amazon. co.

uk if somebody from Canada clicking on my link that will be taken to amazon. ca so then I don't miss out on any International sales but the problem with the influencer program is that they can't do that you can create indeed storefronts for different countries and I have seen influencers that do that so when you click on their link tree they'll be like oh Amazon storefront us Amazon storefront UK but only a few of them do that the others would recommend really awesome products and they'll have for example of course their main Amazon storefront which is a US storefront and they'll talk about a product in their tick tocks or Instagram and I'll go to check it out and I'll go to their storefront and I'll find the product and I'm like oh my God this is amazing I want to buy it and of course it leads me to the amazon. com listing for that product I can't really order it from there unless I want to pay a 30 shipping fee and who wants to do that so what I do is of course then I go and I type in amazon.

co.