One Year Later, Amazon’s Influencer Program Has Not Changed The World

Both because it is an intensely closed-mouth company, and also such a major player, any time Amazon makes a move people notice. And they dissect it endlessly. Amazon’s influencer program is no different. In March 2017, Amazon took its influencer program into beta testing, offering the service pretty much invitation-only, and then opening it up to an application process. Tech Crunch noticed, and then the punditry followed, including the claim that the program would fail. The influencer program operates much like Amazon’s affiliate program, where participants make money by linking to Amazon product pages. Any time a shopper uses an affiliate link, the affiliate partner gets paid. In the case of influencers, Amazon helps the participant create a page on Amazon’s site, filled with products the influencer recommends. If someone buys a product from an influencer’s page, the influencer gets paid. No one has yet to spill on how the payment compares to the affiliate program, except to say that it’s very similar. One year later, the program is still here. There’s no real directory of influencers that I’ve managed to find, but both Mark Cuban and Felicia Day have their own influencer pages on Amazon, and What’s Up Moms, one of the influencers that launched the beta test, still has a page and many products featured on it. Read more at Forbes.