Understanding the rise of Amazon influencers
How creators and everyday people are making money
Amazon, Amazon, Amazon.
It can be the bane of our existence. It can also be a great way to make our everyday lives easier. Both things can be true!
Wherever your opinion falls, you can probably agree that it’s a necessary evil. From whatever we ordered last night to whatever reason it’s making headlines in the morning, it’s hard to find someone who hasn’t said the word “Amazon” at least a few times each week.
When it comes to our digital strategy world, you might be thinking of the brands you shop on the platform, or even the recent role it indirectly played in the Washington Post losing hundreds of thousands of subscribers. But recently, we’ve been fascinated by its work with creators, and the people using it as a side hustle.
Amazon isn’t necessarily the first platform that comes to mind when you think of content creators. Sure, a lot of them have storefronts, but for the most part, they focus on their social media channels and owned platforms. But since Amazon started paying people to review products via video in 2017, more and more people have been using that as a way to supplement their incomes.
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WaPo reported on it earlier this year, explaining how regular people were making money by just reviewing items they already had lying around their homes, and the beauty of it was that they didn’t need much of an existing social media audience.
“Successful influencers say their Amazon earnings help pay for their children’s sports teams and vacation travel or just supplement household income,” Caroline O’Donovan writes in WaPo. “But how much they earn — and whether they get admitted into the program at all — is largely at the discretion of the platform. The best way to earn more commission is to post more videos, which requires gaining access to more Amazon products — whether bought, borrowed, sent by a seller or otherwise found somewhere out in the wild.”
That means the people finding success as Amazon influencers really run the gamut, from teachers to big name reality TV stars.