How to Get an Amazon Storefront for Influencers

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is the system by which businesses can send their products directly to Amazon fulfillment centers for Amazon to handle logistics. That way, when a customer makes an order, Amazon does the packing and shipping, and even provides customer support and processes returns. As a result, you’re part of the most efficient network and can compete better with other players in your space, using Amazon’s fast shipping times, stellar reputation, and benefit from the trustworthiness of its storefront. Your competition must build up branding on their own landing pages, deal with lengthy shipping times, especially if they are drop shippers sourcing their product only after they sell them.

Of course, selling on Amazon has costs associated with it. Depending on your plan, these fees may vary. Your selling plan dictates the per unit fee you pay to Amazon. The Individual plan costs $0.99 per unit sold, while the Professional plan, at $39.99/mo stays constant regardless of how many units you sell. As you could have guessed, your shipping fees with FBA are lower than if you chose to ship on your own – but those vary depending on how large your products are. Finally, the big kicker, are referral fees. Amazon has a wide range of referral fees – starting at 8% and going as high as 45% on some items.

If scaling your own brand seems out of reach, that doesn’t mean you can’t sell on Amazon. That’s right, FBA and selling your physical products are just one component of storefronts on Amazon! Amazon actually has its very own influencer program.

Think of it like an affiliate program on steroids. Just like with many major affiliate networks, creators go through an application process to become Amazon influencers. Should they get approved, they will be given a unique affiliate link that will let them monetize their content. Influencers earn commissions for all purchases tracked through their link clicks within 24 hours.

The fun part here is the Amazon influencer storefront. This is basically a landing page that has the influencer’s favorite products. Typically, you’ll want to stick to a specific theme. If you’re a fashion influencer, perhaps you curate a collection of winter fashion trends. Or maybe you’re a fitness influencer curating a list of workout equipment and supplements.

The first method to find Amazon influencers is completely free. Amazon has a #FoundItOnAmazon feed which aggregates influencer content along with their collections. Naturally, you can filter by category. Similarly, you can head over to TikTok and Instagram and search by using hashtags. You’d be surprised by how many Amazon related hashtags that are prevalent on these channels - #AmazonFinds, #AmazonDeals, #AmazonMustHaves to name a few. From what we’ve seen, as social media has evolved, TikTok influencers seem to make much better Amazon storefront influencers than those on other platforms, largely due to their ability to go viral with video content.

You could also go with a platform like Smartfluence. With over 70 million TikTok influencers on our platform, you could find one suited to any niche of your choice, filtering by age, gender, location, hashtags, comparison profiles, and more. We also have our own automated influencer discovery and outreach for Instagram – simply fill out a few filters and let our platform handle the rest for you! Finally, we also offer Discovery as a Service, where one of our highly trained marketers will curate influencers on your behalf.

With advertising costs shooting up across the board on every platform, and SEO becoming increasingly competitive, influencer marketing is one of the remaining avenues that are still affordable. Given Amazon has already created an affiliate program, there is significantly less friction when getting set up as compared to setting it up from scratch. Amazon influencers that already have a storefront established could be a great fit – while they do have other curated products already, it’s likely they know how to navigate producing content specifically for Amazon stores.

On the flip side, if you’re an influencer looking for an easy way to monetize your personal brand, an Amazon storefront is one of the easiest ways to get started. You don’t need your own products, you don’t have to deal with setting up a website, you just have to funnel your followers to your storefront and let them do the rest. While you’re only earning a relatively small percentage as a commission on the product, the benefit of having a trustworthy site like Amazon and tested products with several reviews makes it much easier for you to rack up sales.

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If you’re interested in learning more about influencer marketing and how Smartfluence can help you establish and scale your influencer marketing campaigns, feel free to book a demo here.