If you’re new to the Amazon Influencer Program and you came in because you heard something about free samples, I want to help you with three things: I don’t want you to light your money on fire, I don’t want you to be disappointed, and I’d like you to actually make money doing this the right way. I’ve been doing this for almost five years and have been making five figures a month since the end of 2024, and I can tell you the “brands are dying to send you free stuff” version of this program is not how it works for a new creator. Here’s what actually happens.
In This Article
- You Start at Bronze, and That Changes Everything
- What Creator Connections Actually Is
- The 7-Day Early Access Wall
- Why Brands Ignore Bronze and Silver Creators
- Most Brands Were Never There to Send Samples
- The Real Message Volume It Takes
- Free Products Rarely Turn Into Commissions
- The Tax Question Nobody Mentions
- What to Focus On Instead
You Start at Bronze, and That Changes Everything
When you’re new to the Amazon Influencer Program, you’re a Bronze creator. Amazon has four levels of what they call Creator Stars: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Everybody who comes in starts at Bronze. You move up by converting content through Amazon, meaning the revenue your content generates, and Amazon sets revenue markers for each level that you have to hit to climb.
That status isn’t just a badge. It controls what you can see and when you can see it inside the one system every new creator is excited about, which is why I’m anchoring this whole article on it.
What Creator Connections Actually Is
Creator Connections is a bonus program inside the Amazon ecosystem that both Amazon influencers and Amazon affiliates can use. Brands put their products into campaigns (think of a campaign as a bucket with all of that brand’s products in it), and if you promote those products and convert them into sales, the brand pays you an extra bonus on top of your normal commission. That’s what people mean when they talk about Creator Connections commissions being “pretty good.”
It’s important to understand that Creator Connections is a bonus program. It is not the point of the influencer program or the affiliate program. You have to convert as an influencer or affiliate first, and then you get the bonus. Creator Connections as an ecosystem has been a big part of Amazon’s plans for probably five to ten years. Amazon influencers didn’t really start using it until the beginning of 2025. We didn’t even know it was for us until then.
The 7-Day Early Access Wall
Here’s where it gets tricky for new creators. Every single campaign created inside Creator Connections goes into what’s called Early Access. Early Access campaigns are only visible to Gold and Platinum creators. If you’re Bronze or Silver, you don’t even see the campaign for a full seven days.
During those seven days, you know what Gold and Platinum creators are doing? They’re messaging those brands like crazy and asking for products. If a brand has samples to offer, they’re sending them out during that first phase. By the time a campaign reaches you a week later, one of two things is usually true. Either the brand is still sending samples, which means they’ve already shipped so many that the product has way too many videos and yours will probably never see the light of day, or the product is bad and everybody in Early Access already looked at it and said “no thank you.”
Why Brands Ignore Bronze and Silver Creators
A lot of brands simply don’t want to send Bronze or Silver creators samples. Part of it is fatigue: they’ve been fielding requests for seven straight days and they’re over it. Part of it is math: they know you haven’t generated as much revenue and probably don’t have as much experience as the people they dealt with in the first week. That’s not to say it can’t happen. It can. But it’s a significant decrease in opportunity compared to what Gold and Platinum creators get, and you should walk in knowing that.
Most Brands Were Never There to Send Samples
This is the part almost nobody tells new creators. Creator Connections was not originally designed as an Amazon influencer program. It was built for people who take products and promote them off-site: Facebook links, Instagram groups, YouTube channels, driving traffic over to Amazon. None of that activity requires samples. It wasn’t until Amazon influencers came in around the end of 2024 and into 2025 that creators started asking brands for products at all, and it really didn’t kick in until spring of 2025.
So a large share of the brands running campaigns right now have zero interest in sending anybody anything. It’s not why they’re there. Expecting samples from them is like showing up to a hardware store and being annoyed they don’t serve lunch.
The Real Message Volume It Takes
I had somebody on one of my TikTok lives recently say they weren’t getting any responses and they were sending 20 or 30 messages a day. They were Bronze. My honest answer was that at Bronze or Silver you probably have to send a minimum of 100 messages a day to make any real headway on samples, and even then you’re looking at a handful of responses. The people who say this is easy and that brands are lined up to send you things are wrong. It’s not, and they aren’t.
Free Products Rarely Turn Into Commissions
Even when you do get the product, there’s the thing nobody wants to talk about: these products are often not likely to make you any commission. It’s cool to get stuff, especially if you have a hoarder’s heart like I do, but you get the thing and then where’s the money?
Two reasons. First, a lot of Creator Connections products are brand new. The whole reason the brand put them in the program is to try to get some traffic going on a product that has none. Second, they’re oversaturated. Everybody is in Creator Connections, everybody is asking for the same products, and if the brand is shipping samples, there are a lot of videos being made. A product page only shows five videos in the top carousel at any time, and plenty of these products have thousands of videos sitting in the backlog. Your video goes into that pile.
There are products in Creator Connections that can make you very good money. That’s why people love it. The misconception is that everything in there can. If you’re not smart about how you approach it, you fall into the trap of thinking every brand wants to send you something and every product will pay. Neither is true. This is exactly why I run every product through Oink’s Storefront Cross Check and the 5 Pillars before I touch it, Creator Connections campaign or not.
The Tax Question Nobody Mentions
The dirty little secret about free samples is that there’s a tax implication. When somebody sends you something of value, there’s a question you need to be asking a tax professional. I’m not going to tell you what the answer is, and you shouldn’t listen to anybody online about it either, including me. There are too many legal implications in how you handle your taxes. Talk to an actual tax person before you build a strategy around collecting free products.
What to Focus On Instead
If you’re coming into this program with high expectations of free stuff because somebody told you that’s how it works, I hope you somehow buck every trend among the thousands of people doing this. Save this article and come back to rub it in my face if you do. But you won’t, because that’s not how it works.
Creator Connections is a bonus on top of the Amazon Influencer Program, and it only works once you’ve learned how to do the Amazon Influencer Program. That means picking products that are already selling, that have room in the carousel, and that pay a real commission, then making videos that actually convert. Do that consistently, climb to Gold, and Creator Connections starts working for you instead of against you.
Here’s the original video if you want the full rant:
Want to skip the trap entirely? Oink shows you sales history, carousel competition, and Creator Connections status on every product before you film, so you spend your time on products that can actually pay you. Get started at oinkforinfluencers.com.
