One of the most common questions I get on my lives is some version of this: “Hey Fizz, I don’t know if I’m actually an Amazon influencer that can make money on my videos or not.” And honestly, it’s a fair question. Amazon does a pretty terrible job of making this obvious. You can get an email that says congratulations, you can have a storefront sitting there with your name on it, and still not be able to earn a single penny from the videos you upload. So let me walk you through exactly how to check — it takes about thirty seconds once you know where to look.
Table of Contents
- The Two Stages of Becoming an Amazon Influencer
- How to Find Your Content Page
- The Blue Lock vs. Earned On-Site Commissions
- What You’ll See If You Haven’t Submitted Your Three Videos
- Why This Only Works on Desktop
- What to Do Once You’re In
The Two Stages of Becoming an Amazon Influencer
Here’s the piece that trips up almost everybody. When you sign up to be an Amazon influencer, there are actually two separate stages, and most people only ever clear the first one without realizing there’s a second.
Stage one is basically paperwork. You fill out a form, you tell Amazon your social media account URL, you give them some basic information about yourself, and you wait. Most people get through this stage without much trouble. You’ll get an email that says something like “Congratulations, you’re an Amazon influencer!” and you’ll get a storefront. That feels like the finish line. It isn’t.
Stage two is where the money actually lives. To earn commissions from your videos, you have to submit three videos to Amazon for review. Amazon looks at those three videos, decides whether they like them, and then goes back and re-checks the social media account you used in stage one. They’re looking for real engagement — do you actually have any influence, or did you just fill out a form?
So when someone tells me “I got the congratulations email,” my first question is always: did you submit your three videos, and did they get approved? Because that congratulations email and a storefront do not equal a monetized account.
How to Find Your Content Page
Start at your storefront. If you don’t know what a storefront is, I’ll be blunt — you’re probably not an influencer yet, or you’re not close, and that’s fine. Go get through stage one first. But assuming you know what your storefront is, log in and go to it.
When you’re properly logged in, you’ll see a couple of buttons near the top. They’ll say things like Create Content and Manage Content. This is your first quick diagnostic: if you’re on your storefront and you do not see those buttons, you’re not logged into the right account. That happens more than you’d think, especially if you’ve got a personal Amazon account and an influencer account sharing a browser.
- Log in and navigate to your Amazon storefront.
- Confirm you can see the Create Content and Manage Content buttons.
- Click Manage Content.
- Select Video from the options.
That takes you to your video content page, which is where the answer lives. Quick side note: if you’re running Oink — even the free version — there’s a button right in the extension that jumps you straight there from any page. You don’t have to be sitting on your storefront to get to it. Small thing, but when you’re checking this stuff constantly it adds up. For everyone without it, the storefront route above works fine.
The Blue Lock vs. Earned On-Site Commissions
Once you’re on that video content page, look over at the column that mentions commissions. This is the whole ballgame.
If you see the words “Earned on-site commissions” sitting there, congratulations for real this time. You’re through. Your videos can earn. Go make content.
If it does not say earned on-site commissions, you can’t make money from your videos yet. And if you got declined on that second stage specifically, you’ll usually get two signals at once: a warning message near the top of the page, and in the spot where “earns on-site commissions” would normally sit, you’ll see a blue padlock icon instead. We call it the blue lock. It’s not subtle once you know to look for it.
- “Earned on-site commissions” text → You’re approved and monetized.
- Blue padlock → You were declined at stage two.
- Warning banner at the top → Read it; it often includes a “delete all your videos and try again” option.
- Neither, plus an empty page → You probably never submitted your three videos.
What You’ll See If You Haven’t Submitted Your Three Videos
If you’ve never submitted your three videos, that content page is going to look pretty empty. None of the commission columns will be populated. Instead you’ll typically get a little prompt in the middle of the page saying something like “create your first content.”
That prompt is your upload path. That’s where the three review videos go. If you’re staring at that, you’re not declined — you just haven’t taken the test yet. Which is honestly a much better position to be in than the blue lock, because nothing has been judged.
And if you did submit and got declined, you’ll usually see that banner offering to let you delete all your videos and try again. That’s not a punishment, it’s a reset. Take it seriously though — if your first three didn’t land, filming three more of the same thing isn’t going to change the outcome. Pick products you can actually demonstrate, shoot them clean, and give Amazon a reason to say yes.
Why This Only Works on Desktop
This is the part that costs people the most time, so I want to be really clear about it: you have to do this check on a desktop computer. It will not show up on mobile.
The mobile version of the Amazon influencer interface simply doesn’t surface the commission status column. So if you pull this up on your phone, see nothing, and conclude you’ve been declined — you might be completely fine. You just checked in a place where the answer isn’t displayed. Open a laptop and check again before you panic.
What to Do Once You’re In
Let’s say you looked, you saw “earned on-site commissions,” and you’re officially able to earn. Great. Now the actual work starts, and the question changes from “can I make money?” to “what do I film?”
That second question is the one that separates influencers who make a little from influencers who make a lot. Filming random products you happen to own is a slow way to learn what sells. The faster path is figuring out which products actually have demand, decent commission rates, and not a wall of existing video competition already sitting on the listing — and then filming those on purpose.
- Confirm your monetization status first (that’s this whole article).
- Research products with real demand before you film, not after.
- Check how much video competition is already on a listing.
- Track what’s actually converting so you can film more of it.
That’s the whole check. Storefront → Manage Content → Video → look for “earned on-site commissions.” No blue lock means you’re in business.
If you’re through and you want to stop guessing at which products to film, that’s exactly what I built Oink for. It surfaces products worth making content for, shows you the competition on a listing before you waste an afternoon filming it, and puts the tools you need one click away instead of buried three menus deep in Amazon’s interface. There’s a free version if you just want to poke around and see whether it fits how you work. Go grab it here and start making videos that actually earn.
