I’m about to argue with myself in public, so bear with me. For the better part of a year I’ve told every Amazon influencer who would listen the exact same thing: focus on Creator Connections, that’s the game, that’s where the commissions are. I said it on video, I said it in comments, I said it to people who asked me for advice one-on-one. And lately I’ve started to think I might have been wrong about it — or at least wrong about how completely I said it.

So let’s get into it. Here’s my case against my own advice, and the numbers I’m using to make it.

Table of Contents

The Take That’s Going to Ruffle Some Feathers

Creator Connections is not the whole Amazon influencer game. It might not even be the most important part of it for most people reading this.

I know that lands badly, because the entire conversation in this space right now is campaigns, campaign approvals, brand payouts, who got accepted to what. And I contributed to that conversation. But I want to put this on record now, while I still have the receipts in front of me, because I think a lot of newer influencers are sitting frozen — convinced they can’t make real money until they get approved for campaigns they keep getting rejected from.

If that’s you, this article is the one I wish someone had handed me.

My First Month vs. My Five-Figure Month

Here’s the part that made me question myself.

  • My first month as an Amazon influencer: over $2,000.
  • Just over a year later: five figures in a single month.
  • Creator Connections commissions in that five-figure month: basically zero.

Same program. Same concept. Same kind of videos I’d been making the whole time. That five-figure month was straight Amazon affiliate commission — onsite earnings and my storefront doing the work.

That’s the thing I can’t argue my way around. If Creator Connections were genuinely the whole game, my biggest month should have been stacked with campaign commissions. It wasn’t. It was built on regular products, ranking in regular carousels, earning regular commission rates.

“But Fizz, the Commission Rates Changed”

Yes. I know. I’m aware. You don’t have to tell me — I watched it happen right alongside everyone else, and I understand exactly why people are frustrated about it.

But “the rates changed” and “the rates are gone” are two very different statements, and people keep using them interchangeably. The rates changed. They did not disappear. And the response I keep seeing — throw up your hands, decide onsite commissions aren’t worth chasing anymore, wait around for a campaign approval — is an overcorrection that’s costing people money.

The Categories That Still Pay

The 2%, 3%, and 4% categories still exist. There are still a ton of products sitting inside them. That is just a fact about how the program works right now.

So the question stops being “are the rates good enough” and starts being “am I being deliberate about which category I’m filming in.” Those are completely different questions, and only one of them is actually in your control.

If you’re smart about your product research and you go after the higher categories on purpose, the math still works. It works differently than it did before, and it demands more from you at the research stage than it used to. But it works.

The influencers I see struggling most right now are the ones filming whatever shows up in front of them and then blaming the rate card for the result. The rate card isn’t the variable. Product selection is.

Open Carousels With No Campaign Attached

This is the part I want new influencers to really hear.

I am looking at products right now with wide open carousels and no Creator Connections campaign attached to them at all. No campaign means no approval gate. Nobody has to say yes to you. You just film it.

An open carousel on a product with real demand is an opportunity that doesn’t care how long you’ve been in the program or how many followers you have. It’s one of the very few genuinely level parts of this whole thing, and it’s sitting there while everybody’s attention is pointed somewhere else entirely.

If you feel locked out because you can’t get campaign approvals yet — you’re not locked out. You’re looking at the wrong door.

How to Pick Products Smarter Now

Here’s roughly how I think about it these days:

  1. Check the category rate before you check anything else. A product you’re excited about in a low-rate category will lose to a boring product in a 3% or 4% category almost every time.
  2. Look at how crowded the carousel already is. A wide open carousel with a handful of videos is worth more of your time than a packed one on a more exciting product.
  3. Check whether a campaign is attached. If there isn’t one, that’s not a downside — that’s an unlocked door, especially if you’re newer.
  4. Then, and only then, ask whether you can actually make a good video about it. Because none of the above matters if the content is bad.

Doing that check manually, product by product, is miserable and slow. That’s honestly the whole reason I built Oink — I got tired of tab-hopping between listings trying to figure out which products were actually worth filming. Surfacing exactly this kind of product is what the tool is for.

The Real Takeaway

I’m not telling you to ignore Creator Connections. If you have campaign access and it’s producing for you, keep going — I’d be an idiot to tell you to stop doing something that’s working.

What I am saying is that I built a five-figure month without it, and I did that by being deliberate about categories and by finding products with room in the carousel. That path is open to you today, with no approval required, regardless of how new you are.

The advice I gave for a year wasn’t wrong so much as incomplete. Creator Connections is one lever. It was never the only one, and treating it as the only one is what’s keeping a lot of good creators stuck.

Here’s the full video where I lay all of this out:

And if you want to stop guessing which products are worth your time, that’s exactly what I built Oink to solve. Come find the open carousels before everyone else does.

Tell me if you think I’m wrong on this one. I’m genuinely open to it — I just changed my own mind, so I’m clearly capable of it.

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

Similar Posts