Amazon Affiliates Can Make More Money Than Amazon Influencers (Here's Why)

You can make way more money as an Amazon affiliate than you can as an Amazon influencer. But you can make faster money as an Amazon influencer than you can as an affiliate. Sounds contradictory, right? It’s not — and once you understand why Amazon pays these two programs so differently, you’ll know exactly where to focus your energy. Let me break down the real difference between off-site and on-site earnings, and why you should be building both.

Affiliate vs Influencer: What’s the Difference?
Off-Site vs On-Site: The Mental Model That Makes It Click
Why Affiliates Earn Higher Commission Rates
Why Influencer Money Comes Faster
Creator Rewards: The Off-Site Bonus Most Influencers Never See
How to Get Into Each Program
Why Influencers Need to Become Affiliates Too
My Recommendation: Build Both, Starting Today

Affiliate vs Influencer: What’s the Difference?

An Amazon affiliate (the Associates program) is somebody who takes Amazon product links and posts them in different places — social media, a blog, a YouTube channel, a Facebook group. The goal is that people see your post about a specific product, get curious, click your link, and land on Amazon. Maybe they buy that exact product, maybe they buy something else entirely — either way, you’re in line for commission on what they purchase.

The Amazon Influencer Program — at least the way people talk about it when they talk about making money — is built around creating product review videos that you submit to Amazon. Amazon may or may not place that video on the product page. When a shopper who’s already on Amazon watches your video and buys, you’re in line for potential commission on that specific product.

Off-Site vs On-Site: The Mental Model That Makes It Click

Here’s the simplest way to keep it straight: think of off of Amazon as off-site. That’s the affiliate program — you’re driving traffic from somewhere else over to Amazon. On-site is the influencer program — you’re capturing shoppers who are already on Amazon. Everything about how these two programs pay flows from that one distinction.

Amazon has always wanted people driving traffic to Amazon. That’s been the main goal behind every one of these programs. The influencer program just takes advantage of traffic that’s already there — which is exactly why Amazon values it differently.

Why Affiliates Earn Higher Commission Rates

Building something off-site is hard. Whether it’s an Instagram following, a Facebook group, or a real YouTube channel, it takes a lot of time and patience to build a community — and you need that community before anyone will actually click your links. Because that’s genuinely difficult to pull off, Amazon rewards the creators who do it with higher commission rates on the affiliate side than on the influencer side.

Flip it around and it makes perfect sense: if someone is already on Amazon, already looking at a product, and your review video nudges them to buy — that’s not a hard conversion. They were basically already there. Lower difficulty, lower commission rate. Driving a cold click from a Facebook post all the way to a purchase? That’s earned, and Amazon pays for it.

Why Influencer Money Comes Faster

So why does anyone bother with the influencer program? Because it’s the easier and faster money. It doesn’t require you to build a community first. You get accepted, you start making product review videos, and if those videos are good, people who are already shopping see them. You can literally make a video today and start earning money on it tomorrow.

Compare that to posting affiliate links into a Facebook group with 20 people in it. There’s a good chance you post today, post tomorrow, and nobody clicks anything. Off-site is simply harder to build — the payoff is bigger, but the runway is longer.

Creator Rewards: The Off-Site Bonus Most Influencers Never See

On top of higher commission rates, Amazon rewards off-site creators with something called Creator Rewards — incentives that say, essentially, “if you generate X amount of revenue this month, we’ll pay you extra for hitting the target.” I’ve seen some of the reward numbers offered to big Facebook groups, and the incentive on a single month’s earnings would blow your mind.

The on-site influencer side does occasionally get incentives like this, but not very often — and when it does, they’re nowhere near as lucrative as what off-site creators are offered. It’s one more signal about where Amazon’s priorities sit.

How to Get Into Each Program

Both programs run off your Amazon account, but the entry paths are different:

Affiliate (Associates): Sign up and you’re basically in. The catch is you need to make roughly three qualifying sales in your first three months to stay in.
Influencer: Two steps. You fill out the application (you’ll need a social media account to apply), then submit three product review videos. Amazon reviews your videos and your social account together and decides whether to approve you for on-site earnings.

Why Influencers Need to Become Affiliates Too

Here’s the part I really want you to hear: even if you’re currently just an Amazon influencer, you need to be working on becoming an Amazon affiliate as well. At the end of the day, driving traffic is what Amazon wants — and a lot of the recent program changes point in exactly that direction.

Start building a Facebook group, an Instagram presence, a YouTube channel — something where you can create links and drive traffic over to Amazon. Not only is the overall money better if you pull it off, but as Amazon keeps pushing its focus toward off-site traffic, the creators who only rely on on-site commissions are the ones most exposed to whatever changes come next.

My Recommendation: Build Both, Starting Today

The influencer program is your fast money — low barrier, quick commissions, no community required. The affiliate program is your big money — higher rates, Creator Rewards, and alignment with where Amazon is clearly headed. The smart play isn’t choosing between them; it’s using on-site income to fund the patience it takes to build off-site.

And whichever side you’re building, don’t waste hours on guesswork. Oink’s product research tools, Storefront Cross Check, and the 5 Pillars system help you figure out which products are actually worth making content for — so every video and every link you post has a real shot at converting.