7 Ways To Promote Your Amazon Influencer Store
Updated: Jan 9, 2023
I've been an Amazon Influencer now for about 6 months. It's definitely been a learning curve and I wanted to share some of the innovative ways I've been able to promote my store and earn more commissions.
What is the Amazon Influencer Program?
The Amazon Influencer Program is a bit different than the Amazon Associates program. To qualify as an Amazon influencer you have to prove to Amazon you are already an influencer on social media. When you apply to become an Amazon influencer, you will be asked to provide your social media username on either YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, or Facebook. You will then quickly know if you are approved or denied. Amazon does not disclose how many followers you should have to qualify so pick the social media account you have the most followers and engagement on.
I'm approved for the Amazon Influencer program, now what?
Build your Amazon Influencer Store! Create idea lists, upload shoppable photos, create review-style videos of products on amazon and upload those (more details below). Add a nice-looking banner to your store, add your personal info and your social media account icons. Once you have it looking the way you want it, you are ready to promote! Click here if you are interested in seeing my store and some examples of what I post.
How can I promote my Amazon Influencer Store?
There are 7 ways that I have learned to promote my Amazon Influencer store. Some I just discovered and I'm so excited to share these with you.
1. Add your Amazon Store link to your social media profiles
This is the most obvious way to immediately promote your store. Since you are an approved influencer by Amazon, you already have a good social media following and exposing your store link on your profiles can bring traffic rather quickly. Most social media accounts only allow one hyperlink, so the quick workaround for that is to register for a free "link-collection site" such as Linktree.com, Direct.Me, etc (there are several good ones!) Here is an example of what my Linktree looks like.
Notice my Amazon store is located near the top (the 2nd link). This helps it stand out a bit more encouraging my followers to check it out.
2. Upload shoppable photos of you wearing clothing from Amazon to your storefront
When I first created my store I added some photos of me wearing my favorite shirts I had bought on Amazon. I initially did this to test the shoppable photo functionality and to make my store look more personal to me and my brand. I had no idea that Amazon would use these shoppable photos in other areas of their apps and website. About a month after uploading these photos I started getting a higher rate of commissions from Amazon. My earnings report said it was coming from 'Stylesnap'. I touched on this in more detail in my last blog post, but basically Amazon's mobile app has the 'Amazon Lens/Stylesnap' utility that allows you take a photo of clothing and it will match it up with clothing on Amazon - and also show you influencers that wear similar clothing. It will also show the shopper the influencer photo with a link to their Amazon store! You can get to this Amazon Lens/Stylesnap utility by clicking on the camera icon in your Amazon app:
Also, Amazon manually selects shoppable photos of influencers wearing clothes found on Amazon and places them on their 'Shop The Look' page. This exposes your photo and Amazon Store Link to thousands of Amazon shoppers! See below how I showed up on this page and how my store link is displayed above my photo:
Because of this photo placement on their 'Shop The Look' page, I earned the most commissions I ever have from Amazon! Not one person bought the hoodie I'm wearing, but as long as they buy some clothing after clicking on my photo - I get a commission! I had all kinds of different clothing showing up on my commissions report.
3. Upload shoppable photos to your storefront of any product! (not just clothing)
Amazon's mobile app now has an 'Inspire' tab at the bottom of the app. It is displayed as a 'lightbulb' icon. When you click on this icon, you will see all kinds of shoppable photos uploaded by influencers - related to all kinds of products (not just clothing). Notice how the influencer's photo below on 'Amazon Inspire' has her name & store link at the top of the pic. Also notice the lightbulb icon at the bottom of the Amazon app, easy for all shoppers to access. If a shopper clicks on the influencer's photo and buys the product, the influencer earns a commission! They can also click on the influencer's link to see their store.
4. Upload shoppable videos to your Amazon Storefront
Amazon now allows influencer video reviews to be placed directly on the product pages. If a shopper watches the influencer video and buys the product - the influencer earns a commission! Any influencer can upload videos to their storefront, however not all influencer videos are eligible to be placed on the tagged product's page. For influencer videos to be eligible to appear on product pages and earn commissions, they have to go through another step that not everyone is aware of. If you go to your 'manage video' area of your storefront (after logging in), you will see in the top right hand corner if you're eligible for video commissions or not. Mine shows below that I am currently earning video commissions but initially it was locked and said not earning commissions from videos.
To qualify, an influencer must upload 3 review-style videos to their storefront. After 3 have been uploaded your videos will be placed in a queue for review. Currently the review process is taking about 6 weeks because so many influencers are now doing this. Once reviewed you will get a notification if Amazon thinks your video reviews are good enough to appear on product pages or not. Influencers only get 3 attempts to qualify. My first attempt was denied because I did not upload videos that were in the form of a product review. (It was me using the products in my comedy reels/Tik Toks basically). Amazon has published their best practices of how influencer video reviews should be formatted (I should have read this before my first attempt).
Once approved your videos can show up on the product pages to earn commissions! These videos are pushed out to thousands of shoppers and include your Store Name and Link! My second attempt to apply was just approved last week. So far I have created about a dozen videos and I'm already making commissions from these videos daily. I plan on creating many more soon! Here is a screenshot of my video appearing on Amazon's product page for Super Coffee drinks (these videos appear right above the customer reviews section):
5. Share your store content using the built-in 'Share To Pinterest' utility
I honestly just discovered this yesterday. After you upload something to your store, you are able to click on the 'Share' button. One of the options that shows up is Pinterest. I assumed this would share to my Pinterest account but I was 100% wrong - it's better than that. It shows on Amazon's Pinterest Page! This exposes your image/product image and store link to the thousands of people who already follow Amazon's Pinterest page. See below how my product is showing on Amazon's pinterest page after I share. Also see how many followers they have!
After posting to pinterest I started getting views to my Pin rather quickly. I noticed after a few minutes the Pin views started to go down. So my theory is that once other Pins get shared by influencers, my pin views start to decrease quickly. However it is still worth sharing since you get initial views (and potential clicks) right away! The amazon.com link at the top of the photo is the actual link to the product on my storefront which could bring in lots of new customers. I'm still experimenting with this since I just discovered it.
6. Share your Idea Lists, Photos, and Videos
After creating some good idea lists on your storefront, you could share these with whomever you think would be interested. You are able to post a direct link to your specific store posts on social media, text, emails, etc. This is just like posting an affiliate link and when the person clicks on your link it will take them to the product on your store which also reveals the FTC/affiliate link disclosure 'earns commissions' at the top of the page. It also provides a link to the main page of your store to see more products!
7. Add your Amazon Store link to your Youtube Video Descriptions, Email Signatures, and More
Now that you have a simple URL to your Amazon store, why not share it when reaching out to people? You could easily add this in your Youtube video descriptions, personal email signatures, email newsletters, and even on a business card. I love how Amazon doesn't make the URL very long which makes it easier for people to remember even in situations where a hyperlink is not possible. In case you were wondering, the link to my store is amazon.com/shop/tallfreak Notice that it is only a few characters long.
Summary
If you are currently an Amazon influencer, I hope you learned something new after reading this and that you are excited to start implementing some of these tips to promote your store. Please feel free to leave a comment and ask any questions that you like! I'm really excited to share my knowledge with others and to also learn about any tips that you all may have in promoting your Amazon Influencer Store!
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