So you want to do the Amazon Influencer Program, but something about it makes you feel weird. You have never been a person who gets in front of a camera. You have never had to talk on screen. Maybe on work Zoom calls you were the one with the camera off, happily behind the scenes, doing your job. And now you are supposed to hold up a spatula and talk to your phone like it is a person.
You see the opportunity. You know there is money in it. And there is still a part of you that feels anxious, nervous, and maybe a little embarrassed to tell people what it is you actually do.
That is all normal. I get it. I have been around this long enough that I do not feel those things too often anymore — sometimes I do, but not typically. So I want to talk to the people who are trying to turn that corner and cannot quite get there.
Table of Contents
- The Conversation I Keep Having
- The Embarrassment Factor Nobody Talks About
- My Own Wedding Moment
- You Are Holding On to a Version of Yourself
- What People Actually Say When You Tell Them
- Consistency Beats Charisma Every Single Time
- If I Can Do It, You Can Do It
The Conversation I Keep Having
I have been talking to somebody recently whose life just changed, and they are looking to get into this. They know me. They know generally what content creation pays me. So they know the opportunity is real — it is not a pitch from a stranger on the internet, it is a person standing in front of them.
And they still cannot jump in with both feet.
Why? Because they have always had regular, quote-unquote regular jobs. They have never been in front of a camera. They are not a person who talks on camera. So there is this practical problem of: how do I suddenly become comfortable with the one thing I have specifically avoided being comfortable with my entire adult life?
I have this conversation a lot. If it sounds like yours, you are not broken and you are not alone.
The Embarrassment Factor Nobody Talks About
But there is a second thing going on underneath that one, and I think it is far more common than people admit out loud. It is embarrassment.
Not embarrassment about filming. Embarrassment about explaining it. The fear that when you tell your brother-in-law or your old coworker what you are doing now, it is going to sound fake. That it is going to land like you fell for something. That the words coming out of your mouth are going to sound like an MLM pitch even though it is a legitimate Amazon program.
That fear is doing more damage to more would-be creators than any camera ever has.
My Own Wedding Moment
I know it because I had it.
I went to a wedding, and it was the first time somebody asked me what I did for a living after I had gone all-in on this. And I did not know what to say. Part of that was that I genuinely was not sure how to quantify what I was doing — the job did not have a clean one-word answer. But part of it, honestly, was a little embarrassment. Because I knew that to the average person, it was going to sound like something that is not real. Like I was the guy getting taken advantage of.
I stood at a wedding and fumbled the answer to “what do you do.” So when somebody tells me they are stuck on this, I am not guessing at what that feels like.
You Are Holding On to a Version of Yourself
Here is what I think is actually happening in both of those cases. You are holding on very tight to some version of you — or some version of what you think your life is supposed to look like.
And first off, most of that stuff is not even true in the end. The idea of who you think you are is probably a lot less accurate than you believe it is. There have been stretches of my life, especially when I was younger, where I was certain I knew exactly who I was and exactly what mattered — and I was wrong about most of it.
That identity you are protecting is not really an identity. It is a protection mechanism. It is safety. It is comfort. And comfort is great right up until it starts costing you the thing you actually want.
What People Actually Say When You Tell Them
The other half of this is the story you are running about how people will react. You have convinced yourself they are all going to laugh at you.
They are not. Maybe one person will. Generally speaking, they are not.
Here is what actually happens, and I can tell you this across the Amazon Influencer Program, the affiliate program, blogging, and my YouTube channel — every version of this I have done. The predominant response I get when I explain it is: “That’s actually pretty cool. I can’t believe that’s real.” And then they want to know more.
But if you have never actually had that conversation out loud, all you have is the imagined version, where everyone in the room is silently thinking you idiot. They are not. Especially once they find out you are making real money — then they get genuinely intrigued, and you are the one fielding questions.
Consistency Beats Charisma Every Single Time
Now let me take away your last excuse, which is that you do not have “it.”
I know a lot of people doing the influencer program, blogging, and YouTube. I am going to be honest with you: I am not sure a lot of them are especially talented. I am not sure a lot of them have the it factor at all. What they have is a consistency talent — and that is worth more than being the person who can walk into a room and light it up with a dad joke.
You can make money with consistency. You cannot reliably make money with pizzazz, sparkle, or sex appeal. Consistency compounds; charisma does not.
You do not have to be special. That is probably the most special thing about these programs. All you have to do is show up, have a real desire to learn, and commit to it.
And if the part that trips you up is not the camera but the what do I even film — that is a solvable problem, not a character flaw. That is most of what I built Oink to handle, so the decision-making stops being the thing that stalls you out.
If I Can Do It, You Can Do It
So do not restrict what is possible for you because of who you think you are, or who you think other people expect you to be. I would not be sitting where I am now if I had stayed inside the version of myself I was protecting back then. And you never get to the part where you look back and go man, I’m really glad I did that unless you step out at some point and just go, “let’s do it.”
There is more than enough proof of concept out there. I have said this a lot of times: if I can make this work, that says more about the opportunity than it does about me. I am not special. I am not sure I am particularly smart. I know for a fact I cannot do math. I am just consistent, and I am consistently learning and doing stuff all the time.
So if I can do it, you can do it. Do not hold on to yourself so tight that you cannot grab what is coming for you.
If the thing holding you back is not nerve but not knowing what to film or which products are actually worth your time, that is the exact problem Oink for Influencers was built to solve. Go take a look, then go film something.
