Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug show. My name’s Doug Cunnington. And today I’m catching up with my buddy, Jared Bauman, and we’re going to talk about what you need to know about the Amazon influencer program to get the most out of it, and we’ll hear about his specific experience and quick note.
I want to point out Jared has a course coming out very soon. It should be out by the time. This episode goes live and we’ll link up it’s in partnership with the authority hacker crew. So we know it’s high quality. And if you don’t know Jared, he’s the CEO of 201 creative and is an expert in business strategy, SEO, and marketing.
He founded Bauman photographers and co founded. Shoot dot edit before his current venture. He hosts the niche pursuits podcast, big fan of that, and contributes to search engine land and has authored a bestselling book on public speaking. He has a BS from UC San Diego, over 20 years in business, and he’s a sought after speaker and educator in the creative industry.
And. Well, that’s an impressive intro, Jared. How are you doing today?
Jared: It’s too long. We got to cut that down, man. It’s embarrassing.
Doug: You’ve done so much.
Jared: And, and an expert cook. I mean, man, we’re, geez, I feel like half that must be made up. I don’t even know if it’s true. Anyways. Yeah. Good to be here. Good to be back.
It’s been a little while and I’m excited for what we’re talking about today.
Doug: And you’ve been on the show a couple of times, and I think we end up talking longer after we finished the show, just catching up on other stuff, but we’ll link up to your other appearances today. We’re just going to focus on the Amazon influencer program and just jump right into it.
So you’ve been working. In this program for about a year or so, and I’m just curious about like some of your, you know, first impressions of maybe like when you were first getting started and then we’ll launch into some specific details of the program.
Jared: Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, I know I’ve heard about it before I joined from other people.
The program has been around actually for quite a while. I don’t know how long, but many, many years. I don’t know why I, and I feel like a lot of other people hadn’t heard of it, but I mean the concept, basically you make these videos, they’re a short. Easy to make videos from your phone. You drop them into the influencer program.
They end up on the pages of the products that Amazon sells. And then if people watch your video and end up buying them, you get a, you get a commission from it. I’ve been doing it just over a year. Super like side hustle. Cause like you said, I run an agency, so just kind of when I have time. And after the first year I, I made over 40, 000 from it.
So it’s it’s a pretty viable side hustle when you get down to it.
Doug: Over 40 K in just one year. And it’s, it sounds like, and it seems like you probably only spent a very short amount of time on it.
Jared: I mean, the videos are anywhere from one to two minutes long for really, you know, simple videos. Like, you know, I just finished my morning cup of coffee.
Like this would just be a nice, simple one to two minute video. If it’s like a more complex product, you know, maybe a three to five minute video, but like people don’t want to watch these long videos. This isn’t YouTube. These are really short videos that are just trying to give people better insight into the product than they can get from say a couple of pictures from the brand and a product description.
Doug: Perfect. And I’ll give a quick experience that I had in the last week or so. So I. Bought a weighted vest. So it looks like one of those sort of tactical, it’s like pretty thick nylon. And there’s a wide range, like so many products on Amazon. So you can get a weighted vest for like 30 to 50 or the one I ended up getting was like 200 because I actually watched a handful of those videos.
And to your point, I kind of wanted like a 32nd to one minute review that was straight to the point. I didn’t need an intro and a story. sequence and all this other stuff. There were some longer videos, but they kind of get, they go off on tangents. Yeah. It’s, it’s a little too much, but I just needed to know like a handful of things.
But I mean, to your, uh, to your point, it’s like, it’s fairly quick. And I bought a, you know, a 200 item after watching a few reviews, realizing like I didn’t want something that was going to fall apart. And when you. Expand this across, you know, so many of the products. It seems like an amazing program. So let’s get into a handful of the details here.
So you talked about potential earnings. You kind of did it on the side. What do you have to have to be accepted as an influencer? Cause I know at some point, like you actually needed a quite significant following. So is that the case now? Currently?
Jared: In part, yeah. I mean, you do the acceptance and approval process is the part that will trip people up.
And that’s, that it’s good that we’re getting into it. Cause you know, it’s not just like, Oh, just go start making videos and you’re off to the races. They want influencers. Now I, to be clear, I’m not an influencer. And what I mean is like, I don’t have social media accounts where people wait with bated breath on my product recommendations.
You know, no one’s like, Oh, Jared’s wearing that gray Amazon basics t shirt I’m off to buy it. Right? Like, I’m not like your traditional influencer. And so I think that’s important though, because they, they, they do have this program that’s available to people, but you don’t have to necessarily be the traditional influencer.
You do need to qualify with what they call a qualifying social media accounts is one of four things. It’s a tick tock account. It’s a a YouTube account. It’s a business. Facebook account and a business Instagram account. Side note, you can convert very easily your personal Instagram or personal Facebook to a business account for fairly, very easy.
And then, so what does it look like? We don’t tell us exactly what it is, but it’s a collection of the number of followers you have and the engagement. And I would actually say from what I’ve seen from talking to people, watching people, doing it myself, it’s probably a little bit more tuned to the engagement.
Subscribers or followers. I mean, it looks like anywhere from like a thousand to five or 6, 000 ish. They don’t tell us, but it’s really about that engagement. You need to be getting engagement, people watching your videos, commenting on your videos, perhaps sharing them and stuff like that. And that can sound overwhelming and it can sound like that’s a lot, but the reality is.
Depending on which platform you choose, what type of content you choose to post about it. It’s not quite as hard as you think. So that’s the way to qualify. That’s the way to get accepted. And those are the parameters around that.
Doug: Do you, what are your theories why companies don’t share the minimum standards for acceptance for certain things?
I have some ideas, but I’m curious, do you have any insight on that?
Jared: I mean, first off, from everything I’ve seen about this program, it’s very willy nilly. Like, we’ll get into, they don’t give you much data in terms of optimizing for better performance, which you think would benefit them as a brand. The better, the more information I know, the better I can make my videos to perform better for their platform.
They don’t give you a lot of transparency in terms of why videos will get approved or rejected. It’s kind of very open ended. At the end of the day, I, I do think, and we’ve seen this certainly in the blogging world with like the Googles of the world, like the less information they give you, the, in theory, less ability to kind of maybe spam it or abuse it or take advantage of it.
So that would be what I say. I think it’s just to keep the more vague they are, I think the, the, the less opportunity there is for maybe it getting taken advantage of.
Doug: I agree. Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking. If they gave a minimum, then people would just aim directly for that minimum. And then it’s kind of a waste to have the rule then.
Okay. So can you, like, if you apply and we kind of, we don’t have transparency on acceptance, can you reapply to, are you aware, like, you, Is there any limit on that you have to wait a certain amount of time or you can just keep reapplying?
Jared: You can just keep reapplying like every day, you know, okay and and i’ve never heard of a limit being placed I’ve never heard of anyone hitting some sort of max there, you know, and I think it’s a good rule I I I to your point I get why they do it.
It’s also good because The same chops you need to have to get some followers and some engagement are the same chops you’re going to have to make some videos that are going to be helpful to people. And ultimately you want to make videos that people like, like to your point, like if you’d had a bunch of garbage videos on your way to invest, you wouldn’t have gone on to buy the product.
I think that And we’ll get into it, I’m sure. But like people get caught up in how many videos they need to make and how many videos they need to make per week. And that is an important metric, but ultimately you have to make helpful videos that lead people closer to making a purchase they want to make.
And so all these rules around influencer and how to get in are really just to help you get better or learn the skills. To make those videos down the road. Yeah, back to your point. You can just keep reapplying and keep working on it and keep trying to build your social media account. If you already have one.
When I heard about the program, I actually had already built a YouTube account for one of my websites. And so I use that to qualify and was immediately accepted. It had enough of the metrics to get in. So you might already have something that would work already. I’ve talked to a lot of people who, you know, Have forgotten about some of the accounts they’ve created and had an aha moment and then able to use that.
So you might not have to start from scratch depending on where you’re at in your online journey.
Doug: So you apply, you’re accepted. How quick is it before you can start uploading videos and kind of get started with the whole process?
Jared: Yeah. So here’s where there’s another step for the shoppable videos, which is really what we’re talking about today.
Once you get accepted with your qualifying social media account, you now are an Amazon influencer, but you have, because the influencer program is a lot wider than just shoppable videos. There’s the inspire program. There’s creator connections. There’s probably other ones I’m not even aware of. It’s a pretty big program and it’s kind of like.
All encompassing, shoppable videos requires another step, which probably isn’t what everyone wants to hear, but it is what is required in order to allow you to have videos go live on Amazon’s product pages. So that’s the difference between on site and off site. Once you get accepted to the program, you have what’s called a storefront and you can start making videos and then use your social media accounts.
Or email or anything to drive traffic to those videos. And you can get commissions on those. And that’s what’s called off site commission because you’re taking traffic from off site and moving it over. But if you want to get and take advantage of Amazon’s traffic, you now need to get your first three videos manually approved.
So you submit your first three videos and it goes through an approval process. And they either accept it or they reject it. Here’s the key. This is kind of the bad news, not to create kind of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, but you only have three shots to get those videos approved. Okay. I promise you it gets easier.
Once you get approved, you’re, you’re, you’re off to the races, but you’ve got to get those first three videos approved. So you want to do a good job on those. You submit them can take. Anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, usually for someone to manually review it and either tell you yes or no,
Doug: I take it. There is criteria that is very clear about what could be in the video. So that you can, I expect they’re pretty transparent on that stuff. Right?
Jared: Yeah. They got a long list of things. It can be overwhelming at first become second nature after a while, but you know, a lot of the stuff you’d assume, like you don’t want to talk about the price because the price can change, you know, the price can go up, you don’t even want to allude to the.
Price, you know, you don’t want to be like, Oh, this is a cheap coffee mug because it’s like, well, what if it becomes expensive, you know? So you really want to avoid that. You want to avoid like medical claims like, Oh, I took this supplement and now I, you know, have all this muscle mass, you know, there’s a lot of those kinds of things.
So if you’re thinking like, what kind of rules are there? There’s just a lot of stuff to try to keep people out of lawsuits at the end of the day.
Doug: Okay, so fairly straightforward and might be a repetitive question, but I want to ask anyway, what are the top reasons why people’s videos are rejected when they have those three shots?
Jared: Saying the wrong thing, you know, so making claims about price or about health. Or about uh, they also have like a rule, like they really don’t want you to call people to take action. So, you know, you don’t wanna say anything like you know, go ahead and pick this product up today. You know, stuff like that.
So it’s those kind of things like making claims. The second thing would be personal information. So they want no personal information in the video. So, you know, like my. Nondescript white, plain white gray shirt would be great if I was going to be in the video. Uh, you know, like you’d be shocked by how often maybe your address or your license plate or personal information can end up in a video by accident.
No barcodes, you know, so like that would all fall into the personal information category. That’s a second reason people get rejected. And then the third is just quality. You know, the sound is not good. The video is really shaky. These are all like how you film it, how you video it. Again, they’re not expecting Mr.
Beast quality YouTube videos to be fair. Like, and if you go look at the program and you look at the videos that are live on the sales pages, like they’re not works of art, but there is a barrier, a minimum, a minimally viable video quality content that, that does need to happen. And that would be the third biggest reason why I see people get rejected.
Doug: Slight tangent. So I typically would enjoy and get more out of an authentic video, maybe that shot on someone’s smartphone versus a studio quality. So is there some preference or maybe it’s more effective to have the authentic video versus like you have a, you know, a DSLR that you’re shooting with and a sound studio and all this stuff, like where do you stand on that?
Or what do you, what do you find out in the field?
Jared: I can only go off anecdotal information there, but 100%. Yes, exactly. Like the, because oftentimes a brand will have a very well shot productized video that’s in their own image and video carousel. Right. And, um, and we still see lots of influencer videos show up.
And if you just like the ones that end up at the front of the carousel, we can. Correctly theorize that these are probably over time, the best performing ones. Again, I don’t know that. And just to be clear, like we don’t get much data from Amazon, but if we just look at those more than often, they’re not, they’re just someone being real filming this clearly somewhere in their house or somewhere in the environment, you would use it.
And it’s just someone being very, very down to earth about the product.
Doug: So you submit the videos, they’re approved. You follow the instructions. Then what happens?
Jared: And you’re off to the races. You start making videos. I recommend, this is a strategy I follow. I recommend you just start making videos about all the stuff that you already own.
No need to buy anything. No need to research anything. I don’t even look and see how many influencer videos there already are for it. I just start recording videos. You can go into your shopping history and just start making a list. You can go around your house and there’s a Amazon as an app with a camera so you can take a picture of a lamp.
I’m looking at my lamp right here and it’ll tell you, you know, through AI, uh, it’s pretty good about 80 percent of the time it gets it right, but I’ll tell you if what product that most resembles on Amazon. So you can start to make a list of that. And that’s good too, because if you’re someone who maybe doesn’t shop on Amazon very much, the rule isn’t that you bought it on Amazon.
It’s just as long as that product is available on Amazon. Lowe’s or Home Depot or Walmart or, you know, someplace else. And so you just. I recommend that you just keep it simple and you just start making videos of all the stuff that you already own. It also works well because you don’t have to overthink it.
Like usually it’s a, it’s a, in this case, I’m holding it up. If you’re watching on YouTube, it’s just a coffee cup, right? Like it’s a coffee cup I use every day. So I can talk about it. I can talk about how the handle works. You know why I like this oversized handle because I hate those handles where you have to balance two fingers, but this one I can fit all four fingers in if I want you to just start talking about products you use on a daily basis.
And so that’s the premise behind it, and that’s why they don’t take very long to make.
Doug: All right. So, and we’re getting sort of into your creative process. So you are compiling a list stuff you have around the house. You can use the app to figure out if the items that you have are potentially available on Amazon.
When you have the list, do you sort of make a script? Do you just speak from the heart and whatever comes up in your, your mind when you’re holding the item? What does it look like when you’re creating these videos?
Jared: I do recommend having a process for what you talk about. Otherwise. To your point, it can just get a little verbose.
It can get a little off topic. It can be less streamlined. So whatever that looks like for you, I’ve, I’ve created, um, a bit of a process for how the script goes and then you can kind of fill in the blanks and stuff. I mean, ultimately, and this is the thing for people to keep in mind, and this is where a lot of people get tripped up.
Like if you are a, if you come from the blogging world or you come from the YouTube world, these are two worlds where that are very different in terms of how you talk about products. bloggers and YouTubers tend to think of that as a review process. And I always encourage people, even though you are technically doing a review of the product, you’re really just trying to talk about the details of it.
You’re trying to fill in the blanks or the gaps that people have from reading the product page and seeing the images. So you’re really trying to zero in on. Specific things like how it looks, how it feels, how easy it is to use, how quickly it is to use these sorts of things. And so you can kind of gloss over a lot of the details that are already on the product page.
And so if you’re thinking, I’ll just regurgitate what’s on the product page. You can do that, but you’re probably going to be missing what people really want to see. What they really want to see is up close and personal. And, and some of the details I outlined, it helps to have a script. Now that I’ve done 1200 videos.
I don’t, I don’t have a script. I just, I just let, I let her rip. But I follow a very sequenced process that I’ve come up with in terms of how I talk about it.
Doug: So it’s really second nature after, I should have asked you that before, but 1200 videos, that’s a lot. How, how many videos would you say before you got the hang of it?
You know, a hundred, 200 I’ve heard, you know, get those reps in. But for you, what did it look like? So I’m a little, I’m a
Jared: little weird like this. I’ll just share, like, don’t expect that you need to do this. This is not me telling you, you need to just, I did a hundred in my first week and it was a little overwhelming, but I, it was like a three day weekend here in the United States.
So I just took that Monday and I just went for it. And then I did a couple of evenings. And so within the first week I had a hundred, but after that first week, I was super comfortable with the process and that made approaching the rest of The video creation really good because within a week that I got accepted, I already was really comfortable and mentally it allowed me to kind of move beyond the, Oh, how am I going to, you know, create a video about that?
How am I going to create to just a very process approach? Like, okay, let’s just get this list. Let’s just carve out time and let’s just start going. So for me, it was about a hundred videos. You know, I don’t know if that’s tied to it being a week or so, but for me, within a hundred videos, I was feeling really confident about that process and, and, and just talking, you know, for a lot of people who haven’t done a lot of, you and I talk on camera for a living to some degree.
So I get it. If you’re listening, you’re like, well, you guys are both podcasts. I was like, what the heck? You’ll, you’ll still find your rhythm because you don’t have to show your face. It’s faceless. And so you kind of, you kind of land on your rhythm. And, uh, I think a hundred is a very good, realistic number to shoot for, to get comfortable with it.
Doug: That’s, uh, it’s insane, but we’ll, we’ll move on. We’ll move on past that. That’s great to get the reps in that quickly though. So. Is it safe to say that you did minimal or no editing for those videos?
Jared: The first hundred I was doing editing and I realized really quickly In my opinion, that’s a, that’s a fallacy.
Don’t do that. And I really recommend to people not to edit. Yes, there are going to be the occasional videos that I edit nowadays. This would be for a complex product that maybe you really, you sit back and you’re like, you know, this is a really complex product. If I’m somebody who’s thinking about buying this stuff.
400 generator for my RV or my trailer. Like I’m going to want to see it. Not only an overview of all the features on it, but I’m going to want to see someone like how quickly does it start up? Like how loud is it? Like I’m gonna and so you start playing it through and maybe you need to do several sequences.
That’s very rare for the record. Most of the time, it’s a video that’s going to be one to two, maybe three minutes long. It’s going to be one take. It’s going to be one scene, as it were. And if I mess up halfway through, I just throw the video out and I start over. That’s quicker than actually editing it.
And even when you have to edit it, I would just recommend using some software and camera in your phone. Not even taking it and editing it from like a mainframe computer with a, like an Adobe Premiere or anything.
Doug: Cool. And that would be just like chop off the front and the back to make sure it’s like clean or you fade in and fade out.
Okay. Very good. And I know exactly what you’re talking about, where it’s just easier to start over than to try to edit or anything like that. Like when you know you goofed up, especially in a one to two minute video or so
Jared: it’s it’s yeah. Yeah. You’re like, Oh dang it. Why did I say that? Okay. Whatever.
Delete. Start over. Start over. You lost one minute of time. That’s easier than editing it and just, you just redo it.
Doug: So, and you’re recording everything on your phone, is that right?
Jared: Yeah. Everything on my, uh, my iPhone right here.
Doug: Okay. And then do you use any microphone or lav mic or anything like that to get the audio very, very clear?
Jared: I do. I personally do. I had a lav mic that I already used for recording other stuff so I had it and I use it. I don’t think you need it. I would say that sound is important, but It’s another one of these things that it just needs to be good enough. Like if you have bad sound, here’s where it really does help is if you go outdoors, because if you go outdoors, it’ll pick up the wind, it’ll pick up the birds, not the end of the world, but you know, someone honks their horn, starts up there, you know, the gardeners come next door or something.
It can start to be distracting if it’s a little bit windy that day. I like demoing a lot of outdoor products. You know, I live in California, so I got a lot of outdoor stuff. So, it does help with that. If you’re indoors, you’re just filming a very static, you know, kitchen product or something like that, it’s probably not very, it’s definitely not very important.
It does help clean the sound out a bit, but I don’t think it’s one of those, uh, Tools where you, you need to have it necessarily,
Doug: and I know from my recording experience, as long as you’re pretty close to the recording device, your phone, so if you’re holding it, it should be pretty good. But if it’s across the room for some reason, yeah, then you’re gonna pick up a lot of echo, depending on the room and a lot of other noise.
But if you have a, a good quiet space, then you’re probably, you’re good most of the time, assuming you’re not recording in like a very echoy bathroom or something like that.
Jared: So to your point. You’re always going to have the echo, even when you’re recording, there’s going to be a little bit of an echo, but again, like you and I are kind of sound nerds.
Like we’re both using the same mic I can tell. And this is a really nice microphone. And Most people are not to that level in terms of what they’re picking up on and what they’re looking for. They need clear audio. They need audio that isn’t distracting. Check those boxes. And that, that is, that is good enough.
Doug: And then I know there’s a like lav mics that are very good, that are Bluetooth and you can get them for like 50 bucks or less on Amazon. You don’t have to get like the super nice name brand stuff. Most of them work like perfectly. So yeah, not a huge barrier. All right. I use the same
Jared: 80 lav mic for all 1, 200 videos.
Okay.
Doug: Yeah, that’s yeah. So you just need a little something that’s a little bit better, especially if you’re outside. Okay. So I recommend for any other part of the, the creative process or recording or scripting or bullet points or anything like that?
Jared: No, not really. I mean, we touched on it earlier. I think a lot of people will get tripped up if they uh, a lot of people will take too long to make their videos.
That’s probably the number one long term ROI killer of this. And we can talk about this when we get into more of like the monetization of this and how much money you can make and all that. But just know that right here is where the devil’s in the details. It’s all about your ROI. Right. Your return on your investment.
That’s in all business, but with this program specifically, your return is going to be what you earn as your commissions and your investment is going to be either how much money you put into it and, or your time that you put into it. Now I’m not putting any money into it. I’m not buying products for this.
So it’s all about my time. So my ROI goes up, the more optimized I am with my time. And a lot of people will get tripped up by making videos that just take too long. They take too long. 30. They take 60. They take 120 minutes each. So this is the process where every every optimization you can make will really help as you go and do hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of videos down the road.
Doug: Okay. We’ll come back to the optimization, but let’s talk about the monetization portion. So I take it this is a commission situation, a lot like the affiliate program. And can you go into some details on the monetization?
Jared: Yeah, it’s very similar to the affiliate program, the associates program that a lot of people will know.
Cool. There are differences. They do pay different commissions for onsite earnings versus offsite. So again, this is about where the traffic came from. The traffic came from on Amazon that would be considered onsite and they have a different commission bracket, but it’s going to be very similar to what you might be familiar with on the associates.
So products go into buckets or categories and then different categories pay different commissions and then you get paid a commission. Now there’s all, I don’t, I don’t know this day exactly where it is. There’s a lot of different rumors about exactly what triggers a commission. Okay. And I’ll be honest with you.
I’m not really exactly sure they have to watch some part of your video. There’s been theories. They have to watch 30 seconds of your video. There’s been a lot of people that have come out and said, that’s not true. Uh, there’s theories. They have to buy the exact product that your video recommends. I know that’s not true because I will look at my sales and I’ll see stuff that I got commission on and I’m like, I didn’t make a video about that, but I did make a video about something similar to that.
So. Exactly what has to happen. I’m not exactly sure, but they do have to watch your video in some part. And then if they go on to make a purchase, you get a commission, which is that percentage assigned. There’s a product and the category that it’s in
Doug: interesting thinking about that weight vest. I watched several videos and as I was going through it, I was like, Oh, I wonder who gets credit for this because I actually watched a video that was very good and it encouraged me not to buy that product, but I ended up buying a different one.
And so I wonder if there’s some sort of a split because I mean, really it was five videos that. Right helped me understand which one I wanted to buy.
Jared: They make it in what we call the carousel, which is where these videos go. They’re in a carousel of anywhere from one to right now it could go as high as 10 videos, but they’re playing with that all the time and they make it really easy to just move from one video to the next.
And again, we don’t know about attribution here. Does first attribution get it? Does last attribution get it? Is there a split somehow? I do know that I have seen a lot of consistency between the product and the percentage they say they’re going to pay. So, a lot of them, the default is, is only 2%.
Remember folks, you’re capitalizing on Amazon’s traffic. You know, if you’re, if you’re thinking in terms of associates and having to send traffic there, It’s a different model. So 2 percent isn’t that bad when you think about all the traffic that Amazon sends to a specific product. But oftentimes if, if that product was in the 2 percent category, that’s what you get paid.
You don’t randomly get 1 percent like they split it or something like that. So like I said, there’s not a lot of data to give you. You got to take that as part of this. This game, like you’re not going to be able to really overly optimize. I’m a data scientist at heart. That’s kind of my background and university and college and stuff.
But boy, I had to throw all that out the door. There’s just not a lot to optimize on. Now you can do some deductive reasoning, which we can talk about, but. It’s really hard to figure out these things like attribution, length of time to watch all that.
Doug: Okay. So you get, let’s go into the data portion of it.
So you get some data, some metrics, but it sounds like it’s not super helpful. We really don’t know how the attribution is credited. So what, what data do you get and can you do anything? And how do you deduce? Anything useful.
Jared: Yeah. Going back to your original point, like a couple minutes ago, like I swear they could give us more data and I really do think they don’t because they’re like, no, no, we don’t really want you to have too much information.
Like the point is for you to use your influencer skills to make good videos and we’ll pay you. And like, let’s just kind of keep it at that. I don’t, we don’t want you to over optimize this, but. All right. What do they give you? Well, they do give you a report that tells you what you sold. And that’s great.
The report says what you sold and you can look at all the products for that day down to every single item that you sold. You can do historical. It looks very similar to the associates dashboard. If you’ve ever sold through like blogging or YouTube or other things, then they also give you a dashboard inside of the influencer program that tells you your video stats.
So which videos are getting Uh, every video will tell you how how how long the average view time is. And, and, well, that’s really basic about it, actually. What they don’t do is tell you which videos sold which products. There’s no communication between these two products. Spreadsheets, if you will, are these two data points.
So it’s very, you can look at videos that have high watch time and go, okay, well, that’s interesting. And then you can look at products that sell a lot and go, oh, that’s interesting. But you don’t really have a correlation between which videos and which, you know, which, uh, which products and stuff. So obviously, and this is where I was saying, you can do some deductive reasoning.
Like it’s, it’s very easy with some products. You sell a lot of coffee mugs. You know that you have a video about that. You go look and you’re like, oh, that video is high watch time. Cool. What am I doing right with that video? Let’s go do more of that. But oftentimes it doesn’t correlate like that. And it’s hard to understand some of the nuances.
Where am I in the carousel and stuff? So ultimately I don’t really put a lot of stock in the view metrics. They give you a lot of the products that you’re going to make the most money on are going to be from videos that don’t get married very, very many views because they ended up being a really high price product that pays a really nice commission amount.
And as a result of them being high priced, they don’t get a lot of views. They don’t get a lot of people looking to buy that product, but that still means it’s, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s one of your best selling products. So I say to go look at the sales page where, you know, the page where you’re selling the information on what you’re selling and look at where you’re making the most money and optimize around that.
Doug: Okay. Interesting. And it’s almost like, it’s almost like you. Don’t even look at the metrics unless you, you’re just curious, but it’s not really informing your actions specifically. You’re better off finding, you know, the high price products that you have in your home that you’re, you actually know a lot about that product.
Jared: Yeah. Bingo. Like I call them vanity metrics and they’re fun to look at. And it’s like, Oh, cool. Like these are the videos that get a lot of watch time. Like that’s interesting. That is, it’s interesting, but I rarely find myself making a decision off of it.
Doug: So, and anything else with metrics or otherwise, before I.
Kind of shift into another tangent real quick.
Jared: No, I think it goes back to like the lack of metrics is almost, I think, a positive, you know, like I come from the SEO world and we have so many metrics. And I think what it kind of sometimes does is it instead of making really good content, sometimes we make content that it checks all the metrics.
And so I think it’s, I’m personally fine with it. Like at the end of the day, you can spend all this time looking at what they give you and you’ll come out the bottom going. I really didn’t learn much except I just need to go back to continuing to make really good videos that help people out and I think that they got that right in my opinion.
I love data like I love data, but at the end of the day, what do I walk away with? I just need to make really good videos that help people out.
Doug: It’s the Amazon influencer program and you have to have an audience out there. We don’t know what it is, but you need to have an audience. Is there, do you think there’s any correlation of actual audience members watching videos by an influencer that they follow where they, where they purchase, or is it kind of to your point earlier, Amazon was just trying to get people that could create content that was compelling and you can get influencers to do that.
So the. The distilled question is, is there anyone from your audience that you think are that are actually watching your videos or just random Amazon purchasers?
Jared: Yeah, I totally get where you’re going with that question. And the answer is no, I don’t think anybody from my audience is watching my Amazon influencer videos because they’re part of my audience.
I know, though, from being in the program now, because I get their emails, you know, all the time, they’re just, you know, promoting different stuff that’s going on inside the influencer program. And I know that the true intention, and I would say maybe the long term intention, is that they are truly wanting to work with people who have influence in their own little network.
Inside of this program. And so I do think that long term, the program will continue to optimize towards people who, you know, have like, an, uh, an account that has influence, you know, like Doug, you’d be perfect for it because you have a podcast, channel, you have an email list. And inside of that, you have influence on the people that follow you.
And if you recommend something like maybe the Shure mic here, we’re talking about, like if you’re like, Hey, I’ve been podcasting for a long time, not trying to tell you what to buy, but if you have a budget and you want to buy a good mic, like this is the mic that I use, you know, that’s the kind of person they’re looking for.
And then on your storefront, you’ll be reviewing other products and I might go. Oh, here I am on Doug’s storefront. I’m on Doug’s influencer page, as it were. And I, I, he, I know he’s smart about microphones. Like what kind of computers he recommending? Like that’s the nature of the program. And to your point, it’s not there right now, but I would imagine more and more that’s, that’s how decisions will be made about where they go with it going forward.
Got it.
Doug: Okay. Makes sense. So it seems like a, you know, a no brainer as far as the investment, you are reviewing products that you have. I know some people, I chatted with a couple of folks and they were like, we kind of ran out of things to review and we started to buy stuff and then it wasn’t as profitable the time that it took and we’re spending money on products and that sort of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But let’s go over just like the pros and the cons of the program. One of the big ones that I’ll get us started, I heard you can kind of start earning money, like significant money, like fairly quickly. And I’m curious if that’s true. If you’ve seen that for maybe people that you’ve coached or helped out where they got started in a couple of weeks and started earning money.
Jared: Yeah. I mean, myself, I earned money on day three, which is wild coming from the blogging world, also wild. If you come from the YouTube world, like it takes months and months and often years to build up enough of a traffic source to generate. Um, now I think I earned under a dollar. I know I earned under a dollar.
It was in the sense, but it’s still to get that dopamine hit of earning money almost right away is I didn’t realize how much it was going to affect me. Like it’s, it was a big deal, even though it was less than a dollar. I couldn’t, I don’t even know what I could have bought. Um, you can’t even buy a candy bar for a dollar nowadays, you know?
Like, but it’s, so that, that’s important. I would, I earned over a thousand dollars in the first month. Granted, I did a lot of videos in the first month. But yes, most people I talk with are earning hundreds of dollars in the first month. It’s just very closely tied to how many videos you end up making because of, Kind of law of averages there and and how you end up making most of your money off of a handful of your videos in The end that’s kind of normal, you know Most of the most of the traffic to a website ends up going to you know, 20 percent of the posts You know Most of your YouTube video watches are gonna be to a handful of your most popular YouTube videos like this is very common That plays itself out in the Amazon influencer program So you want to make a bunch of videos, but you want to make them good because they’ve got to get watched and actually convert and that’s the closest relationship to how much you’re going to make, but yeah.
Your videos can end up in the carousel the day after you publish them and you can be earning money the day after that.
Doug: All right. So very fast. What are some other pros about the program?
Jared: You don’t have to make any investment. So you can go through all the products in your house and do all those. And to the people who are like, I don’t buy a lot on Amazon, or I live a very simple life, or what happens when I run out of those products?
Cause you do. Well, first off, you’re probably going to keep buying products. I know for me, I do 10 to 20 Amazon influencer videos a month now, just from the new stuff we’ve bought, you know, and I have a family and you know, so we might, maybe we buy more than you, but there’s also other things, there’s your neighbor’s houses, there’s your family member’s houses.
There’s Airbnb’s and rentals and all these things. My number one selling product during the really, really high paying Q4 sale season came. From a month prior, we did our two Oh one creative company retreat at a cabin or an Airbnb in Lake Tahoe. I had used the cabin all week. And then in the last morning I got up early and I made videos of all the stuff cause I’d used it all week.
I felt comfortable with all the different stuff that we were using. I made a video. One of those was my number one best selling video that made me well over a thousand dollars in December alone came from an Airbnb. So the second benefit is you don’t have to invest. Your own money, at least to get started.
You can use all the products you’ve bought, but Really the sky’s the limit. If you’re willing to get creative about, you know, the products you make videos about.
Doug: Gotcha. I didn’t even think of Airbnbs and like all the different products. And now I’m like, Oh, visiting family. Like you’re in a whole new environment with thousands of products all around you.
Jared: I did a business meetup with a couple of colleagues a month or two ago. And, uh, one night we kind of just cooked. It was a nice Airbnb, good view, you know, and one night we just started like, let’s just hang out here and. Talk business and we’ll just make a simple dinner. And I made a simple dinner and I noticed the knife I was using.
I was like, well, these knives are good. And so I got my Amazon app out. I took a picture of it. It’s a 330 knife set. So, you know, that’s a, that’s a good product there. If that sells in the kitchen category, which is usually 4%, You know, that’s 15 bucks right there.
Doug: That’s awesome. Okay. So great idea about expanding the product range.
Any other pros before we move on to the cons?
Jared: I think it’s so simple. You know, you don’t need to have a lot of knowledge, you know, getting into all these other online marketing side hustle ventures, there’s usually some sort of built in knowledge gap that you need to overcome this. You don’t like, this is very simple.
You can do it from your phone. We talked about a little bit of gear you could add on. That’s very reasonable, but you really don’t even need that. Pretty much everybody nowadays has a phone and almost all smartphones have cameras that are really high in quality. So the barrier to entry is so low. And then the knowledge gap is minimal because you just need to make videos and you’re, you’re not even, you don’t have to be an expert in knives.
You just need to talk about your experiences, using them and showcase that. So, it’s so, Simple to get in and the gap, the gap, you just have to overcome that, that that qualification process. But in terms of the knowledge gap, it’s so minimal.
Doug: Perfect. So moving on to the cons, I think you highlighted one, the barrier to entry is so low, so that could be.
A con with a saturation level just because so many people can get started quickly.
Jared: I agree. I mean, you know, I think I I think that the writing is on the wall just because of the nature of the program that at some point it’s going to change in its structure of some sort I would imagine we also can look at Amazon’s history with the associates department and the associates thing.
You know, we can, we’ve talked about it actually, you and I on the niche pursuits podcast about the commission changes they make and how, you know, the nature in which they do it can leave people frustrated and stuff. And that hasn’t happened yet to me, but I would imagine that that could happen down the road here.
I mean, whenever you are relying on some other system, some other company, For traffic or sales or leads or anything like you are subject to any changes they’re going to make. And this is no different. As a matter of fact, this is probably, you could say even a little bit more volatile because you’re not just relying on their commission structure.
You’re relying on their traffic. You’re placing your videos on their pages. It’s their traffic. Like you’re literally using their traffic. And so I think unlike some of the other things that we get subjected to Google, In the blogging world and all this, like it is their traffic. And and so I would expect the volatility to happen in the, in the future, but again, there’s also going to be evolutions of this, you know?
For example, Walmart has a similar kind of influencer program, but it’s not optimized at all. It’s not that good of an opportunity, but it’s there. And, you know, I think that I would not be surprised if Amazon is watching how I, sorry, if Walmart is watching how Amazon’s doing this and then might make an investment in that in the future as well.
So. Amazon’s pro program will probably change along with new opportunities coming up at the same time. And so I think that it’s healthy to keep both in mind as you weigh the cons out, which it is a con to be clear, but it’s helpful. It’s helpful to have that perspective.
Doug: Yeah. And I think, I mean, you covered it pretty well, but I just want to make sure there’s.
You know, there’s no other details around working with a big company like Amazon. And they’ve proven in the past to not be the most reliable partners. Where, you know, they don’t check with you on anything. They don’t check with us associates about changing the commission structure. And yeah. So is there any other thing, I mean, for you.
I’ll fill in a little gap. Obviously for you, you were doing this on the side. You have your agency, you have other business ventures. This was just kind of a fun thing to check out. And you made 40 K on the side, roughly in the ballpark. So yeah. How, how do you view it? I mean, obviously I think it would be.
Bad advice to say like, Oh, someone could earn a full time living and have their family rely on it. I don’t think I would feel really nervous about relying on this program for your sole income. But yeah, how do you view dealing with a big partner like that?
Jared: I mean, the very. thing that makes this such an amazing side hustle is the exact same thing that makes us an awful full time job.
Like all the amazing things we talked about as pros are all the reasons why this makes it so terrible to rely on as your, I would even say primary source of income, not even full time job, even just maybe you have three irons in the fire, you’re doing three different things, but this is your primary income.
I wouldn’t even do that. And it’s just because of, like you said, like you’re relying on them, not just for your commission, but also for your traffic. It’s super low barrier to entry. It’s still what I would say an undersaturated program. Like all these reasons make it so great to do now, but also, you know, come with inherent volatility.
So, I think it’s a great side hustle. I think it’s the best side hustle. I think it’s perfect for so many people and I think that it needs to stay as a side hustle. And I think that if you have. If you find yourself having additional side hustle time, perhaps consider also doing something else or consider doing another venture that would fill in the gaps just to be safe and to be secure.
And then you don’t have to have. The anxiety that comes with being locked up with a a specific brand or a specific traffic source, you can have it a little bit more of an open ended approach to this, uh, to this program.
Doug: Very good. And I think, yeah, we can keep going on on a couple of those points, but I know we got to wrap up here.
So you, you have a course coming out with authority hacker and there’s other courses out there in this. Topic area. So can you tell us a little bit about the course and why yours is different than others that are out there?
Jared: So my course is 100 percent focused on that ROI component. I told you, which is truly looking at this as a side hustle that you don’t want to invest any additional money into.
And you just want to make as much money as you can. With as little time and effort as possible on the products that you already have. So it’s really focused around that. Cause that was my experience. Like I don’t want to make a course about something that I’m not really experienced on. That’s what I did across 1200 videos and show it really just goes through.
It’s going to, the things that are unique about it, it’s going to teach you. exactly how to come up with a process. So you, you really actually only take a couple minutes to make a video. So you’re not spending an hour making the video. You’re not spending a ton of time in research. You’re not spending any time editing.
And then it just goes through all the do’s the don’ts and walks you through. So you don’t have to worry about the rejection process or not making it through. And then you’re on the path to making videos that will. Convert, you know, cause ultimately, yes, it’s about making a lot of videos, but it’s about videos that convert.
So those are just the areas that I focused on the course that I want to make sure to get across. And so if you’re someone who, for example, wants to get into the world of buying products and trying to find competitive advantages and which products to buy that are going to return the most money, like I don’t cover that, that’s not who this is for.
This is for that person who has a couple hours a week and wants to use those couple hours on this program to the best of their ability.
Doug: And, you know, just thinking about all the pros and cons and our overall conversation, it kind of makes sense. Also, if someone has like. Some social media following and they haven’t quite been able to monetize it very well Or they want to layer on again like a youtube channel Maybe you’re you’re earning a little bit with ads, but it’s pretty small and maybe the rpm’s a little bit low You can do this and maybe your rpm You won’t even look at that metric, but you could earn money just because you have the audience and you’re able to create the videos and the marketplaces right there, buying customers are ready to, you know, just one click by and have the item show up that afternoon or whatever.
So it makes perfect sense.
Jared: Awesome. Yeah. I think Amazon is the highest converting e commerce platform, I believe, you know, and so you kind of get to take advantage of this really high converting platform. But you know that there are upsides to the program, there are downsides, but in the side hustle world, it’s pretty amazing.
Doug: Pretty cool. Yeah. I, I know, um, I’ve looked at it a couple of times and I’m like, ah, should, and the thing is I’ve heard about it, like, I don’t know, maybe like two and a half years ago, like a pretty long time ago. And I was like, ah, I don’t really I don’t know. And then now looking back, I’m like, oh shoot, I could have been, you know, I’m looking at like, A hundred different products, like just in my field of view right here.
I’m like, Oh shoot. I could have done videos on all of these things, but that’s
Jared: a good final point. I don’t, this is kind of out of place as we end, but it’s a good point that I think is worth pointing out. Every single person I’ve talked to, I’m not even kidding you. I’ve never talked to someone who’s like, Oh yeah, I got a ton of stuff I can make videos on.
Almost everybody initially goes, I’m not really sure I have that many products to make videos on. I know that’s how I originally was. And then 600 videos later, I’m like. I’m still not done. Like, I’m still uncovering things.
If you follow suit to everyone I’ve talked to, like you have more than you think by a pretty wide margin. Yeah.
Doug: And I, I have, yeah, I have. So like I said, I’m just looking around. I’m like, I have so many, so many things around and it’s just all the crap on my desk.
Jared: You haven’t even gotten into the other rooms of your house.
Yeah.
Doug: Amazing. Alright, well, Jared, always fun to catch up. Is there anything else to add before we wrap it up?
Jared: No, I think we covered it. I think we went through it. You know, I mean, that one year milestone was a great kind of flag in the sand kind of moment, you know, put that flag in the hill and talk about it.
So it felt like a good time to come and chat with you about it. I think, um, you know, everyone’s results will be different, but the fun thing is you, it’s a, it’s a do at your own pace kind of journey. You know, you can kind of make as many videos as you can make and, and chip away at whatever your goals are.
And that income you can use for, you know, so many different purposes. That’s kind of the. That would be the 32nd elevator pitch I would give about the program. It’s just very open ended.
Doug: Awesome. Well, always fun to catch up and plug for your course with authority hacker. I’m an affiliate, so we’ll link up and people can check it out.
And one thing that I’ll give you kudos and authority hacker as well. You put in a year and you have all this experience, 1200. Videos later versus sometimes people do a course when they’re just one week in and there can be value in that. You know, there’s information that those folks could help teach others.
But with a year, you have seen this play out at scale and you’ve developed systems. And I know Authority Hacker, they’re famous for their templates and their systems. And they’re To make things very smooth as you’re scaling up. So good job on the course and we’ll link up so people can get to it. Jared, where can people find you?
Where do you want them to go?
Jared: Yeah. So agency is 201 creative. com. Probably most people would be more interested in weekend growth, which is my weekly email newsletter. I do share a lot about Amazon influencer. I do share about other side hustle stuff or whatever I see working in online marketing. Uh, those are probably the two best places.
I’m not really on Twitter very much anymore. I know that I used to be more active on that, but uh, those are probably the two best places. We’ll link
Doug: up and we’ll catch up soon. Thanks a lot Jared.
Jared: Thanks Doug. Good to see you again.