Everybody in the Amazon influencer and affiliate world has heard of Trybe. Almost nobody understands what it actually is, how the money works, or whether it’s worth their time. So I brought in someone who isn’t just talking about it, but doing it at a high level. Cole Schwartz has been part of the Oink community for a while, and I kept seeing him pop up on my TikTok feed breaking down Trybe results. Turns out he’s done roughly $60K in a few months on the platform. We sat down for a long conversation, and here’s what I pulled out of it for you.

In This Article

Who Cole Is and What His Numbers Look Like

I’m careful about who I platform when it comes to making money online. A lot of people are happy to talk before they’ve got results. Cole has results. He got into the Amazon Influencer Program in 2023 like a lot of us, then moved into TikTok Shop after seeing another creator post a $30,000 month. He built that up through live streaming, with his best single day hitting around $8,000 in commissions selling ice makers. When TikTok slowed down, he came back to Amazon and got his storefront to $10K-plus a month.

Then Trybe launched about four months ago. His first month was slow with just a few sales. Month two he did around $10,000. Month three jumped again, and over the last 30 days he’s done about $19,000. The afternoon we recorded, he was already at $413 for the day by 2:40 PM. This is not someone regurgitating a strategy he read somewhere.

What Trybe Actually Is

The first thing Cole pointed out is that there’s no barrier to entry. No follower requirement, no application review. Everyone starts at square one, and that includes you, regardless of what connections you’ve built on Amazon or TikTok.

Once you create an account, you see a large and growing list of brands. The workflow looks like this:

  1. Request to work with a brand, ideally attaching an example video.
  2. Once accepted, request samples.
  3. Make content following the brand’s content plan (their dos and don’ts).
  4. Submit the video for approval.
  5. The brand runs your approved video as a paid ad, and you earn the agreed commission, paid straight into your Trybe account and transferable to your bank.

Cole also shared something from his time working on the back end: when you send a brand a request, they can see your overall sales (GMV), how often you fulfill samples, and how often your videos get approved. So in the beginning, build a strong profile. You get about five slots for sample content, and he recommends showing different styles unless you’re intentionally niching down to one category.

Why Brands Need You on Trybe

This part reframed Trybe for me. It used to be that a brand would pay a UGC creator $200 to $400 for a single video, then test that one video on Meta and hope it performed. Often it didn’t, and the brand ate the cost.

Trybe flips that. Brands now get a steady stream of content from many creators, push it all into Meta’s ad system, and let the algorithm find winners. If Cole shoots a dog bone video with his lab in the background, Meta will serve it to people who own labs. When a video wins, the brand adds more money to it, and more, until the ad fatigues. That’s why it’s a two-way street: brands need volume and variety from creators, and creators get paid on the back of the brand’s ad spend instead of a one-time fee.

How Trybe Commissions Are Structured

There are three main payout models you’ll see, and Cole has a clear preference:

  • Flat fee per video (for example, $50 a video). Cole doesn’t love these because they cap your upside, and brands tend to be stricter on approvals when they’re paying a fixed amount.
  • Percent of sales. This is his favorite. He wants a higher percentage on supplements, where margins are big, and is fine with less on something like cookware.
  • Percent of ad spend. This confuses people. If a brand pays 10% of ad spend (which is on the high side) and spends $10 testing your video, you make $1. That’s why creators see 10 or 20 cent payouts and panic. The upside is that a winning video scales. Cole had one day where he made $500 because a brand spent $15,000 on a single video, though he’d have made more under a percent-of-sales deal.

Picking Brands Worth Your Time

Cole’s filter starts simple: it has to be a brand he actually likes. From there, he checks Trybe’s Top 100 list daily. If a brand shows up there repeatedly, it’s spending real money on ads, which makes it a strong candidate.

His advice has also changed over time. Early on he’d look for brands that were already on TikTok so he could repurpose old videos. Now he prefers brands that are only on Trybe. There’s less competition, and those brands are more focused on the platform, which makes it easier to build a real working relationship.

The Video Formula That Gets Approved and Scaled

Trybe content is short-form, and Cole’s structure is consistent across products:

  1. Hook in the first seconds. Usually a visual contrast: a deflated versus inflated water bottle, a before and after. Something that stops the scroll without words.
  2. The meat and potatoes. Show the product in use, explain why it’s better than alternatives, give concrete examples.
  3. A real call to action. The goal is a click to the brand’s site, because clicks are what convert. Use urgency (“it’s on sale right now”) or scarcity (“this has sold out three times”), within whatever the brand allows.

He shoots separate vertical videos for Trybe rather than chopping up longer Amazon content. TikTok videos can be repurposed to Trybe and vice versa, but Amazon storefront videos are a different format with a different job.

How Trybe Fits With Your Amazon Storefront

I don’t see Trybe as a replacement for your Amazon storefront. I see it as a second use for products you’re already filming. One practical overlap Cole called out: if you already own a product from your Amazon work and a Trybe brand doesn’t want to send a sample, you can still make the video. That’s where Oink’s ability to find Trybe brands already sitting on your Amazon storefront comes in. You’ve done the research, you own the product, and now there’s a second payout available for a second video.

With Creator Connections getting harder to earn from every week, having an off-Amazon channel where brands pay on ad performance is exactly the kind of diversification I keep telling you to build.

How to Start This Week

Create your account, fill all five profile slots with your best content, and request a handful of brands with an example video attached. Favor percent-of-sales deals, watch the Top 100 for brands that keep reappearing, and shoot clean hook-body-CTA verticals. Expect month one to be slow. Cole’s was. The numbers moved in month two once brands had content to test. The full conversation is below, and it’s worth the time.

Want to see which Trybe brands are already on your Amazon storefront and get more out of every product you film? That’s built into Oink for Influencers. Start there.

I'm an Amazon Influencer since 2023 and blogger since 2021. My goal is to help you succeed in the Amazon Influencer Program.

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