SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

?? Episode Focus:
Tom explains how to earn passive income using the Amazon Influencer Program, which allows approved creators to earn commissions by posting short video reviews on Amazon product pages.
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??? Amazon Influencer Program vs. Associates Program:
• Associates Program: Standard affiliate links shared on social media. You earn a small commission when people buy via your link.
• Influencer Program: Your video reviews appear directly on product pages on Amazon, where buyers already are. More passive, as Amazon brings the traffic.
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? How to Get Approved (3 Phases):
1. Social Media Check:
o Submit a social account with the most engagement (not necessarily largest following).
o Approval depends on engagement, not size.
o You can reapply with different accounts if rejected.
2. Upload 3 Product Review Videos:
o Videos must be clean: no logos, no kids, no pricing claims, no personal info.
o Product must be visible, with natural lighting, and on sale on Amazon.
o Tag the exact product in the video.
o You only get three attempts—if rejected, you must start over from scratch.
3. On-Site Commission Approval:
o If Amazon approves your videos, they can appear on product pages, not just your storefront.
o On-site videos = where the real money is made.
o Amazon has to approve your style/quality before enabling this.
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?? Tips & Strategies:
• Keep reviews short (under 1–2 minutes).
• Use horizontal format and good audio/lighting.
• Focus on products with existing manufacturer videos, but few (or no) other influencer videos.
• Once you're approved, more products and videos can be uploaded quickly.
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?? Income Potential:
• Commissions range from 2% to 4.5%.
• Higher-priced, high-volume products = better income potential.
• Some users earn hundreds to thousands per month passively.
• Videos can generate ongoing income for years.
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?? Other Monetization Avenues:
• Free products from sellers who want reviews.
• Resell gifted items on platforms like eBay or Facebook Marketplace.
• Charge fees for product reviews once you're established.
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??? Tools & Resources:
• Amazon Creator Hub: Where you upload videos (Google it—it moves often).
• Picky.com: Used by Tom to create thumbnails.
• Software tools: Can help identify high-potential products with little video competition.
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?? Final Thoughts:
• This program is strict but rewarding.
• Tom likes it because it leverages products he already owns.
• He emphasizes: “Work once, get paid over and over.”
• If you're methodical and follow the rules, it can be a scalable passive income stream.

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Episode 1005 – Amazon Influencer Program
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1005 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about the, I call it passive income Amazon Influencer program. Not totally passive. You got to do something, but then it can be passive for actually years to come. So that's what we'll talk about today. Hope you didn't miss episode 1004. That was phone tips. I've got tons of episodes on phone tips and makes it lightning fast using your cell phone. So check that out at episode 1004, and anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, the episode number. That was 1004. And also, I've got tons more phone tips trainings at screwthecommute.com/training. This is where you find all my training episodes as opposed to my interview episodes, and pick up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and version 3.0 is out now. So if you have version two, throw it away and grab version three at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Check out my mentor program at GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org.

[00:01:46] Okay, the Amazon influencer program. What is that? Well, let me compare it to another program that they have called the Amazon Associates Program. It's basically Amazon's affiliate program where just about anybody can be approved for the affiliate program or the associates program. You basically get a link, you know, your affiliate link, or multiple ones, depending on what products you're promoting.

[00:02:17] And you can promote, send people to Amazon and get a commission when they buy something, you know, basic affiliate program. Now, if you don't sell anything, I think within the first 180 days or something, you just have to sell so many things, they kick you out. That happened to me years ago when I was signed up for it, but never really pushed it because the commissions were so low. And you can get a storefront on Amazon where you can put all the stuff that you recommend all the time and just send people to your storefront, and then you get commissions if they buy stuff. So that's all good. The Amazon influencer program is a little bit different and you got to apply for it. You still have to apply for the associates program, but you got to apply for it. But it's much more strict. There's like three phases to getting approved for this. And I'm in like the second and a half phase right at this moment. So I don't claim to be any kind of expert on this. There's tons of people with YouTube videos on this. However, if you do look at YouTube videos, look at how old it is, because some of these things have changed so much from some of the older videos on this program. So the idea of the program is you can do a video review of a product and it shows up on the actual product page.

[00:03:48] So it's not dependent on your traffic, like the associate program is where you're putting on social media and trying to drive people places. That doesn't hurt. You can still do that. And you should. But they have already tons and tons of traffic. So if you can get approved for this, you can do video reviews of products and it can be like 45 seconds long or even less. The longest one I've done is like five minutes, but most of them are much shorter, and that shows up on the actual product where people are looking at it, getting ready to buy. And so if they watch your video and then go ahead and buy the product, you get a commission. So that's the gist of it. All right. So what's the deal on you know getting an application for this and some tips on making more money with it. Well you can apply as many times as you want. It's called the Amazon Influencers program. So the first application you can do over and over and over again. And that means they're going to check one of your social media that you tell them to look at that has the most engagement. You don't have to have a million followers. You can be relatively new, but you got to get past that hurdle. They're interested. And even if you have a small following, are they engaged? Which I have been preaching for a hundred years, well, since social media started that that's the key.

[00:05:24] All the social media wants engagement. So that's your first little hurdle. And there's tons of people I said on YouTube that'll give you tips and tricks to getting past that hurdle. You may already be past it. I hardly do anything on social media, and I gave him my TikTok account because one of the first video on theirs got 600,000 views. 600, I don't know, 50,000 views. I thought, oh, shoot it, I got I didn't get accepted on that one. So I said, okay. So a couple of minutes later, I sent my Antion Associates Facebook page in and I got approved right away. So I have no idea the rhyme or reason of that. But anyway, so that's your first hurdle. And then what you do is you build a store. You have the ability to build a store. And you can put, uh, you know, go to your, the products that are in your, your orders list and put them in the store. And, you know, just add products to the store that you liked. You don't even have to have bought them yourself. You can just put them in your store. But then the next hurdle is one of the most important. You have to submit three video reviews of products that are for sale on Amazon.

[00:06:49] You don't have to actually own them, but you have to have access to them like your your mother or your brother or your sister could own it and you could own it, whatever. It doesn't matter as long as it's for sale on Amazon. The videos are very strict, so you can't have any logo like you can't do it in a t shirt that says Nike and be promoting Adidas footwear, you know? I mean, it's just it's just so no logos, no personal information. You don't talk about the price or it's on sale now or any of that. It's all wiped out and they must see the product. You must see the product in the video with good lighting. And they they promote natural light all the time. You can go see a lot of these when you're looking at other products on Amazon. And so and they don't want any kids in the video, they don't want any. You know, you probably should stay away from supplements and knives or any gun related stuff or your your main approval. You can do anything after you get approved, right? Well, anything. You can't promote liquor or any, you know, certain things, and it has to be for I mean, it goes without saying. It has to be for sale on Amazon. Okay. And there's again, plenty of people that will tell you that what to say and what not to say.

[00:08:15] And you can't say, hey, follow me on Instagram. No, never get approved. So anyway, you shoot the videos and you and you submit the videos. The Amazon Creator Hub is where I submitted mine. And you just to find it as hard because they're moving stuff all the time. So just Google, Amazon Creator Hub. I mean, this is already past when you've applied and got, uh, you know, got your social media approved and then that's where you're going to upload your three videos and you have to tag. They give you an opportunity to you have to tag the actual product that you're reviewing the exact one. Okay. So just because you're promoting. You're doing a review on product X. And product X is on ten different product pages. You got to do the exact one. You have to tag it with the exact one that you are doing the review on. Now later, if they really like you, they'll start putting your review on all the other X products, you know, and related products. So but that's more advanced. Okay. So I was all excited in that. Uh, probably within a couple hours one of my videos got published, it says, and I thought, oh man, I'm good to go. I came in this morning. All three were published. So that means, hey, I did it right. I didn't get kicked off or anything, or they didn't reject the videos.

[00:09:54] So I'm thinking, oh, I'm good to go. Well, phase three is what's happening right now as I'm recording this and I haven't passed phase three yet, getting those videos approved means that I'm okay to put them on my storefront and drive traffic of my own to them. They pass that level. The next level that they have to review the videos for is what is called on site commissions. If I pass that, that means those videos are going to show up on the product pages where people are ready to buy and all that traffic that's coming to Amazon. If they see my video and decide to purchase because of my video, I get a commission. Now, I've seen commissions anywhere from two that it's 2 to 4.5%, which again, I would, I would just poo poo. Although the reason I like this is because I got all these products anyway, and I review them and I start getting money back for maybe years to come. See? So I like that work. Get paid. Paid paid. Paid, paid. That's my philosophy. Those of you that know me. So if I pass that hurdle, then I can just start cranking out reviews. Some people do 20 a day because they're only like less than a minute. And you can you can make your own thumbnails. I use picky com to make thumbnails IPCC, so I take a still photo of the product and then make a nice thumbnail exciting.

[00:11:30] So it stands out from the other people's videos because you're not the only one doing this. Now here's the thing. If you're thinking about doing a review on a product, you just look through your products that you've purchased, but you have to open the product up and see if the manufacturer has made a video. If there's no videos at all, if the manufacturer did not make one, don't bother reviewing that. You I mean, you can review it for your own storefront. That's cool, but don't bother reviewing it for this. To make commissions with the on site product page commissions because they don't allow videos to to show on that page until the manufacturer puts one as soon as they put one, then you can put some. Now, if you find a product that the manufacturer has a video and there's no other videos from these influencers, well, you just hit the jackpot. If you put your video up there, you'll be the only one, and you'll get a chance to get the commissions. And you can. From what I understand, you can put more than one. I'm doing one on some windows and there wasn't any others, so I'm the only one. And so I can do another video, but it has to be quite a bit different. So maybe I'll do an unboxing video and then I'll have two videos in what they call the carousel.

[00:12:57] They have a top carousel and a bottom carousel. The top carousel Is clear. I mean, top is top, right? It's near the top of the page. And then way under all the related products, they have a bottom carousel that you can still get in. All right. But if there's loads of people already doing this, then your chances of your video standing out and getting the commission are less so. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, especially if you like the product, because you can still use the video in your own storefront, but you have more competition. So what you try to do is you find the ones that don't have any or just a couple other videos, and then you shoot a good video and get it in there. Now there's software that helps you with this. So I'm going to buy this software and it'll evaluate on any topic you pick. What are the products that you can put a video on so that you don't have to look through by hand. And then it shows how many other people are putting videos on that. So that's a way to automate this if you get really get into it. All right. Now the commissions from Amazon are not the only way you can make money with this. The people that get into this and after you start putting up some videos and you know, decent amount again, you can put them up really fast because of how short they are.

[00:14:21] And they don't have to be super professional. They need to just look real, you know, because people are trying to make a decision to purchase the product. So there's other ways to make money besides commissions. One is you will start getting contacted by vendors to say, hey, if we send you our product, will you review it? And so you'll start getting free products out of it, which you can then review, but then resell on Facebook Marketplace or offer up or, you know, eBay or whatever you want. And then once you get pretty good at this, you can be more selective on what products you'll review and you can charge to review them in addition to getting the product for free. This one lady I've seen, she's getting many bikes that are worth $6,700. Reviews them and resells them or gives them to her kids or grandkids or whatever. I mean, you know, so this can be very lucrative in other ways. So I suggest every time you're looking at Amazon, you look to see is there a video by the manufacturer and then is there any more? And just start looking at what people are doing. Some of them are vertical. Most of the people suggest you do them horizontal and just look at whether people doing some are really professional, some are just slopping it together, but it still showing the product how it's used.

[00:15:47] And you know, everything has it's not about you. It has to be about that specific product because people are right there ready to buy it right now. Right. So so it's not about you. It's about them. And as long as it's got good audio, reasonable lighting, and it features the product. Hey, you're good to go. All right, so that's something about the Amazon influencer program. I again I Pooh poohed Amazon's affiliate program for years and years and years because the same effort you can sell an e-book and get a 50% commission or 75% commission for somebody. But in this case, with Amazon's massive traffic, where they're not depending on my traffic, if I can get through this approval process, I buy hundreds of products off of Amazon myself, so I already have them. Some people will buy the product, review it, and then refund it, and I think they'd get mad at you if you start doing that over and over and over again, because that's, you know, I don't know that I wouldn't want people returning my products just to use them and return them. But anyway, this is a way to get a lot of passive income people in the first 30 days are getting up to a couple hundred dollars a month, some, some in the thousands. If you're using more expensive products.

[00:17:11] So that's another thing. After a while you'll start saying, well, that product sells for $100, and a lot of times they'll brag on the product page. How many per month are being sold? And also, I think that software will tell you that too. So if it's if they're selling 100, 100 a month of a $200 product. Well, there's a lot of money being spent. Some some of them are in the 60 or $100,000 a month range. And if you can get a tiny percentage of that ongoing, that can be a nice regular passive income. I mean, some videos are, you know, some of the the people doing this are saying, yeah, I shoot a video for a minute and it's bringing in $100 a year or $100 a month. So that minute was well spent for this. I like this program and I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get approved for the on site commissions. And I think I can't imagine it's going to be too terribly hard now. Oh, one thing about the the three videos. You only get three chances to get approved, and if you mess it up after three chances, you have to go clear to the beginning again and start over with your social media and go back through the whole system with three more videos and the whole bit. So. So you really want to take your time and learn what to say and what not to say.

[00:18:34] And there's like I said, there's plenty of people have cheat sheets on what to say, what not to say. And of course you can just see examples online. And I hear that once you get you get scrutinized for the on site commissions, that it's much easier for the rest of your videos to get approved and much faster because they already see that you're capable of doing this. It still doesn't mean every video you put out will not get approved or will get approved. I one guy was saying he shot a video and he had his bookcase in the background. They didn't disapproved it because you could see titles there of other products. So he just reshot the video without the bookcase in the background and got approved. You know, so it's very strict on how to do it, but once you get the hang of it, I mean, those three videos I did were no trouble at all. Of course, I'm talking out my butt because they haven't got fully approved yet, but they did get published and so they didn't do anything massively wrong or they wouldn't have got published even to my storefront. Okay, so that's my story. I'm sticking to it. If you want help for this and all kinds of stuff to be successful online, check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org, and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.