Amazon has announced that it will be expanding its ‘Influencer’ program to Instagram and Twitter, having originally announced the scheme for YouTubers earlier this year. What this means is that popular celebrities and well-known personalities will now be able to post a specially-curated vanity link to a custom Amazon storefront where they can display all the products they promote or endorse. Any items sold through that link will make these celebs eligible for commission just like the company’s usual affiliate program. Unlike the affiliate program, though, which is open for any business or individual, this particular scheme is targeted at celebs with large fan-followings on social networks.
While the YouTube integration has been a great success for Amazon, the inclusion of Twitter and Instagram is believed to be even more of a important step for the e-commerce giant because these are already two of the biggest platforms for celebs to promote products for monitization purposes. While the storefront itself isn’t really anything unique, what makes the process work is the relative simplicity of it all. It will be interesting to see how the program works for everybody, but seeing as celebs are already selling everything from toothbrushes to beverages and automobiles to financial instruments, it shouldn’t surprise anybody if this turns out to be major success.
Amazon’s ‘Influencer Program’ was launched last spring, giving YouTube stars the chance to earn commission not just through affiliate links individually, but set up a customized Amazon storefront for the products they are endorsing. They already have their own ‘self-service sign-up’ page that can be connected with their respective YouTube accounts. Once connected, these stores are immediately verified without any further action on the part of the creators. While there’s no hard and fast eligibility criteria per se, more subscribers with regular engagement probably doesn’t hurt. While all of that sounds well and nice, it will be interesting to see how fans react to being bombarded with more affiliate links (or should that be ‘Influencer’ links?) from celebrities going forward.
