New Tool Alert! Amazon’s Creator Connections: A Comprehensive Guide to Collaborating with Influencers with Kathleen Kobel

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New Tool Alert! Amazon’s Creator Connections: A Comprehensive Guide to Collaborating with Influencers with Kathleen Kobel

Kathleen Kobel is an Amazon selling expert with 15 years of experience elevating brands through strategic selling and consulting on the platform. After launching and growing over 1,000 brands on Amazon she has utilized those skills to become a dynamic force with the Amazon Influencer program. She not only connects authentically with Amazon brands and customers through curated content but also teaches others how to earn big by creating product videos for Amazon. She is your go-to partner for navigating and thriving in the competitive e-commerce landscape of Amazon.

Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn…

  • Impact of Amazon influencers on sales and conversions and how brands can leverage influencers to scale their business.
  • Different structures for partnering with influencers, including flat fees, bonus commissions, and utilizing Amazon’s Creator Connections tool.
  • Directing influencers to join Creator Connection campaigns, providing a potential strategy for brands to vet and engage with influencers.
  • Influencer Payment and Content Placement For Amazon Creator Connections
  • Tips and tricks for crafting an appealing message to creators, including promotion codes and free samples.

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Kathleen Kobel, an Amazon selling expert and influencer. They discuss strategies for leveraging Amazon influencers to scale e-commerce brands. Kathleen shares her insights on creating effective campaigns, emphasizing the importance of descriptive campaign names and offering competitive commissions to attract top influencers. She advises on setting a substantial budget for campaigns and targeting products with higher price points for better engagement. Kathleen also touches on the value of providing free samples and promo codes to influencers. The conversation includes tips for crafting appealing messages to creators and the potential of negotiating brand referral bonuses outside of Amazon. Kathleen recommends her favorite book, a new productivity tool, and an e-commerce expert to follow.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Action item #1: Create partnerships in affiliate campaigns using Amazon’s Creator Connections.

Action item #2: Offer free samples to influencers and vet them through a Google form.

Action item #3: Optimize your budget and commission percentage to attract dedicated influencers.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):


This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures. I started my business in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years. I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks. If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Transcript Area

Josh (00:00:35)** (((-))) – – – Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael E Gerber, author of The E-myth, Norm Farrar, Howard Tye, and Steve Simonsen. Today I’m speaking with Kathleen Kobel of KathleenKobel.Com and we’re going to be talking a lot about how Amazon influencers can help your brand scale and how to maximize and leverage the new tool on Amazon called Creator Connections. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough Consulting, where I help seven figure companies grow to eight figures and beyond.

Josh (00:01:12)** (((-))) – – – Listen, Kathleen, I started my business back in 2015 and grew it to an eight figure brand in seven years, but I made a lot of mistakes along the way. That made the path of getting to eight figures take a lot longer than it needed to. There were times where I doubted myself and my leadership abilities, but also launching the wrong product at the wrong time., issues with supply chain, issues with cash flow, and having to invest my own money in order to pay payroll and being able to make better hiring decisions. So to our listeners that have hit similar plateaus and obstacles and are looking for the next steps to take their brand to the next level, then go to EcommBreakthrough.Com, that’s Ecomm with two M’s to learn more. And as a special bonus to my podcast listeners, this month I’m giving away one $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit session at no cost. All you need to do is email me at Josh@EcommBreakthrough.Com and in your subject line say strategy audit and then plead your case as to why I should choose you and your brand to work with this month.

Kathleen (00:02:18)** (((-))) – – – But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Kathleen Kobel. She is an Amazon selling expert with 15 years of experience elevating brands through strategic selling and consulting on the platform. After launching and growing over 1000 brands on Amazon, she is utilize those skills to become a dynamic force with the Amazon Influencer program. She not only connects authentically with Amazon brands and customers through curated content, but also teaches others how to earn big by creating product videos for Amazon. She is your go to partner for navigating and thriving in the competitive e-commerce landscape of Amazon. So with that introduction, welcome to the show, Kathleen.

Kathleen (00:03:01)** (((-))) – – – Thank you. Josh, thanks so much for having me on here. I’m really excited to talk about this topic with you.

Josh (00:03:07)** (((-))) – – – Well, Kathleen, I’m super excited because I’m the one who reached out to you to begin with. It was literally just a few weeks ago for our own brand. We’ve been trying to figure out this thing called creator connections, and there’s not much content out there. I went to some YouTube videos and found your face over the majority of all of those YouTube videos talking about creator connections, and I was like, who is this, this gal? We need to get her on the show.

Josh (00:03:34)** (((-))) – – – She sounds like she has a lot of experience. She knows what she’s doing. And the one thing I want to tee up for our listeners here is that, Kathleen, a lot of your YouTube videos are focused on serving those Amazon influencers, right? So Kathleen is not here saying this is what’s working for my brand specifically. I’m going to help you in your brand. She’s on the opposite side of the table here saying, this is what I’m communicating to the influencers. This is what they’re looking for when they consider partnering with you. This is what’s in it for them. So I think this is going to be a very fruitful conversation. And for myself, selfishly, I’m going to be eating up everything that you talk about here. Kathleen.

Kathleen (00:04:19)** (((-))) – – – So yes, yes.

Josh (00:04:20)** (((-))) – – – Love it with that intro, Kathleen, why don’t you give everybody just a quick background? Because you also come with years of Amazon selling experience as well, which I think makes this whole, you know, pie, very, very focused.

Kathleen (00:04:35)** (((-))) – – – Yeah, absolutely. So I first started selling on Amazon back in 2009, all the way back when you could only sell books. That’s how I kind of discovered it. I had just finished grad school and was broke, like everyone else who went to grad school in 2009 and, you know, so I started selling my textbooks on Amazon. I found the platform, obviously, where they’re only selling books at the time. And so that was my first sale that I made was a grad school textbook and I. It was just so easy and I got really excited because I was able to sell my books very quickly. I didn’t have to do much work right besides like ship them out. And it kind of opened the door for me to learn more about Amazon. At the time, I was working for my uncle, who’s a serial entrepreneur, who just gave me this incredible opportunity to, you know, come work under him and learn from him. And so pretty quickly after that, he had launched a supplement company.

Kathleen (00:05:31)** (((-))) – – – And so, you know, being the entrepreneur that I am, I worked at this company, but I’m like, how can I take this to the next level? How can I earn more? And I was really interested in Amazon, so I asked him if I could, you know, kind of learn Amazon on the side, sell his products on the side. And it’d be a win win, right? Because you’d only have to pay me commission on sales, and I wouldn’t have to vet a product and invest in inventory and all that good stuff. So I just dove face first into trainings for Amazon, learned how to sell on Amazon, and we became very successful selling those supplements that he had. He already had the marketing behind it and was doing direct mail offsite or offline. And so that was really my first, you know, Amazon store that I had set up, kind of on the side of the job that I was already working. And so, you know, after a few years and,, quite a few other brands we had launched on Amazon, I decided to go out on my own, about a year after I had my first child.

Kathleen (00:06:32)** (((-))) – – – Right. So anyone that’s listening, you have kids. Your life gets turned upside down in a good way, but your time becomes so much more valuable than it ever was. Right? Because if I’m not working, I want to be with my child. So I ended up leaving working for him, which he was very supportive of. And we still do collaborations. And I’m just so grateful for that opportunity that I had to work with him. And he introduced me to the online marketing world, but then also Amazon. So when I went out on my own, I started doing consulting. I started building stores for brands and grew that into an agency where I had multiple people that were helping me do that. So many, many years of launching brands, over a thousand brands I’ve launched on Amazon and helped grow over the years. And,, about two years ago,, you know, it’s just a lot managing an agency. And we all know Amazon has its ups and downs.

Kathleen (00:07:29)** (((-))) – – – Sometimes it’s great. Sometimes you wake up with a big, giant headache because your top selling skew has just been delisted for reasons you may or may not understand. And so,, you know, I was really just looking for another opportunity that was going to bring me a little more passive income and just not having to do like that daily grind of client calls every day and Amazon cases and all that stuff. So. I look to Amazon as I do with everything you know. First, where can I find the opportunity? I know Amazon, and so that’s when I discovered the Amazon Influencer program. I was actually working on a client’s listing, and I noticed there were these videos on the listing that we hadn’t put up there. And as I’m kind of clicking around and searching, I’m like, where, where are these videos coming from? Who are these people that are creating these videos, and how does this all work? Because right underneath you can see, you know, earns commissions. So after doing a little more research, I discovered this program and just decided to try it out.

Kathleen (00:08:29)** (((-))) – – – Right? I figure I can make videos about Amazon products. I already create listings for Amazon products and do keyword research and all that stuff. So I started creating videos for Amazon products, uploading them to the influencer program. And very quickly I was earning quite a few thousand dollars. I think my second month I was earning a $5,000. And so it just scaled up even more every single month after that. And so now I’m over two years into the program, I’ve been consistently making ten, $10,000 plus every single month. And so about six months ago, I decided, you know, I need to teach other people how to do this. It’s just such a great opportunity. I love that, you know, I have the Amazon knowledge. That really kind of sets me apart from other people that teach this and know about the Amazon influencer program, because I can look at a product listing page and, you know, kind of know what’s going on. I know the ins and outs of the seller side, which is really, really helpful for the influencer side as well.

Kathleen (00:09:30)** (((-))) – – – So while I do have, you know, I still consult with clients and I’m still selling on Amazon very much in the seller space. I love the influencer space and I’ve been teaching people how to do it alongside, you know, doing it myself for the last,, just over two years now.

Josh (00:09:45)** (((-))) – – – Awesome, I love this. Well, I love that you’re having success as an Amazon influencer yourself. Now, you’ve been on the opposite side of selling on Amazon, so all the puzzle pieces fit together really well here. So Kathleen, the audience that you’re speaking to here, these are seven figure Amazon sellers. They’ve got established brands. They’ve obviously have the right product market fit. but they’re trying to figure out what are the levers I can pull in order to help scale my brand to eight figures and beyond. So with your experience, what are those levers and where do Amazon influencers play?

Kathleen (00:10:25)** (((-))) – – – Yeah. So, you know, something that I’ve noticed is that especially being kind of one of the more earlier Amazon influencers and having the seller background that I have, I would do these little experiments and kind of my own case studies, and when I would upload an influencer video, I would track those sales across a week, a month, a year, and see how have those scales increase? Have they increased? Have they decreased? What does the listing look like? You know, now versus six months from now, after my video has been up there for six months, and I can very confidently tell you that every listing that has Amazon influencer videos that I’ve ever done, or that you know, that are now, you know, filled with lots of influencer videos, they’re making more sales than they were without having those influencer videos.

Kathleen (00:11:11)** (((-))) – – – You know, Amazon loves videos, social media loves video. And I think customers are really starting to appreciate having videos on those product listing pages for Amazon, because it gives them more of an idea of what really the product is, right? It’s always funny looking at those memes where, you know, people are talking about buying on Amazon and they buy, you know, the doll house, right? And it’s supposed to be this, you know, giant doll house, but actually it’s only three inches because the product listing didn’t quite accurately, accurately represent that. Right. And so I think Amazon’s doing a great job encouraging videos to be uploaded by brands and by influencers. But I’ve just seen the progression of sales and increase sales and increase conversions, having not only a video on your product listing page, but then couple that with the influencer videos and I’ve seen some listings just completely take off because customers are watching influencer videos talking about these items on Amazon., it’s an independent. It’s independent from the brand.

Kathleen (00:12:14)** (((-))) – – – Right. And these are just your normal, average everyday people that are talking about these products. And so it’s very relatable to the Amazon customers too.

Josh (00:12:24)** (((-))) – – – Yeah. No, makes a lot of sense. So you’re seeing that there’s good success right. Almost the conversion rate tends to increase the more these videos that you get on there. Right. Which then creates that flywheel if you continue to get ranked better. And you’ll stay there. Right. And I think that ultimately it comes back to like do you have a good product. Right. Do you have a good product in our influencers and people going to love it? At which point you’re going to get more videos from it. And again, it’s more of this flywheel effect., so I guess the bigger question would be, Kathleen, what? I’ve got a good product. How do I go get influencers to create videos for me and upload them themselves without me having to do all the handholding and be like, all right, go to go here, click this button, click the upload.

Josh (00:13:14)** (((-))) – – – Right., so tell me, where do brands kind of start if this is something interesting to them?

Kathleen (00:13:21)** (((-))) – – – You know, I think, you know, a great place to start for that is creator connections. And I want to dive more into that too. But on top of that, you know, you can very much find these Amazon influencers just by searching around Amazon. If you happen to come across an Amazon influencer video, right, you see it on your product listing page or someone else’s. If you click on that influencers name, it’ll take you to their Amazon brand storefront. You know, similar to seller brand storefront influencers have their own storefront and that includes all the content, basically, that they’ve ever uploaded to Amazon. So if you click through there, you’ll be able to get more of an idea of what kind of content do they create, what products have they already created content for? But then they’re also links. Many people have links to their social media, so then you could take it one step further and say, okay, I want to find out more about this person.

Kathleen (00:14:16)** (((-))) – – – You’re going to look at their content, and then you can go see how many TikTok followers they have or how many YouTube subscribers they have. So if you do a little bit of kind of clicking around and research on Amazon, influencers are pretty receptive to receiving correspondence directly from Amazon sellers, especially if you proposition them with,, you know, a flat fee for creating a video or extra commissions, things like that. But that would be my, you know, kind of easiest way to go find influencers, especially if you see someone who is maybe on a competitor’s product listing and you want to reach out and say, hey, can you try you try mine out or do a comparison video, right? So something like that.

Josh (00:14:58)** (((-))) – – – Interesting. Okay. Do a comparison video and then maybe it gets uploaded onto both, product listings. Right.. Very interesting. With that being said so you’re reaching out, you can get their email address right. and contact.

Kathleen (00:15:14)** (((-))) – – – Details. Not necessarily emails. you can get their social media information.

Kathleen (00:15:19)** (((-))) – – – So that would be the best way really is to reach out via social media., on the influencer side, just as on the seller side, Amazon doesn’t really want you to connect outside of Amazon. So we are not supposed to be putting our emails on our storefront or anything like that. But that’s the social media is the easiest way I have found to be able to connect with people off Amazon, because it’s one of the few links that Amazon lets us put on that directs people off of Amazon.

Josh (00:15:50)** (((-))) – – – Okay, perfect. That’s great to know. And then you mentioned, you know, maybe even doing like a flat fee per video., you also talked about giving them some commission. Tell me like the typical structure, I guess the first question I’ll ask you is like, how do you offer them bonus commission? Right. Is this send me, you know, use your attribution link and send me the number of sales that you generate. And then I’ll, you know, cut you a check based off of a percentage or is it no use, you know, go to the creator Connect and I’ll create a campaign, things like that, for you.

Josh (00:16:25)** (((-))) – – – So if you wouldn’t mind maybe diving into like the different like structures there and how, how to best work that way.

Kathleen (00:16:32)** (((-))) – – – Yeah. So you know, I think the flat fee structure is the most appealing for most influencers because we get a lot of inquiries, especially from,, from agents that manage multiple brands, people that are based overseas,, that say, you know, we’ll send you a free sample in exchange for, you know, a video. And, you know, we don’t love that because for sure, free samples are fine, but it’s got to be something I really love if I’m only taking a free sample and, you know, we all value our time. So if you were to approach an influencer and say, hey, I, you know, offer them 200, 300, $500,, anywhere in that range. People get pretty excited about that. I think that’s really the easiest way. The other ways that you can do is that extra commission. And so I’ve also worked with third party agencies where they kind of manage that for you.

Kathleen (00:17:25)** (((-))) – – – So they have a catalog. And I’m sure your sellers are aware of some of these agencies, right, where you can submit your products, and those agencies will go find influencers for you and they’ll handle that. Right? You say, hey, I want to offer them an extra 10% for every sale. And so the influencers will then download their reports every month, send it, you know, through the agency, and they will then send you the payout. Creator connections is very similar to that. It’s just all based within Amazon. And you as a seller have all the control or as much control as Amazon will give you. So with Creator Connections, you’re creating a campaign basically looking for Amazon influencers to create content for the products that you choose so you can choose your products, you can choose your budget, how much basically you’re willing to spend overall in the campaign. And that’s really based upon what percentage commission on top of what Amazon is already paying influencers for that sale, what extra percentage are you willing to give them?, typically it’s 510.

Kathleen (00:18:31)** (((-))) – – – I’ve seen it as high as 40%, but typically like 10 to 15 to 20% is pretty appealing, especially, you know, based on your product pricing. Right? So if you’re selling something for $100 and you’re offering 10% on that, now, the influencer is going to make an extra $10 on every sale, whereas normally they’re probably making between $2 and $4. So that in and of itself is very appealing for influencers. And again, that’s all managed through Amazon. So Amazon is doing all that. Tracking you as a seller don’t have to do anything extra and the influencers don’t have to do anything extra. So I do think that’s one of the easiest ways to kind of get around. If you don’t want to pay a flat fee and you don’t want to negotiate with influencers, that would be my best recommended way to get started.

Josh (00:19:21)** (((-))) – – – Okay. Is there an opportunity? Let’s say I connect with an influencer from their social channels and I say, hey, I’m willing to give you 20% commission, right, for any sale or something like that.

Josh (00:19:33)** (((-))) – – – Could I almost direct them back to creator connections and say, I just created this new campaign? Here’s the campaign name, go find it and join there. That way it’s managed from Amazon. Does that work? Is that possible or is that like no, people are going to get lost and that’s not common.

Kathleen (00:19:51)** (((-))) – – – You know,, I think people might get lost and I don’t think it’s very common, but I do think it’s a really great strategy to find influence, to find good influencers for your Creator Connections campaign as a seller. Because one of the biggest issues that I hear from sellers, and again, I work with sellers, I am a seller., and I was talking with my husband about this actually yesterday as I was prepping for the podcast, because he has done quite a few Creator Connections campaigns as a seller, and so he was kind of giving me some of the pain points, you know, that he’s really seen. And one of the biggest pain points for sellers right now is the inability to choose the influencers that accept your campaign.

Kathleen (00:20:32)** (((-))) – – – And so, you know, sometimes videos will come back and they’ll be amazing. And sometimes videos will come back and they’ll be not amazing. So, Josh, I really like your strategy and that if you find influencers that are outside of Amazon, but you know, they’re Amazon influencers, they very much could go. You could direct them to opt in to your Creative connections campaign. And then you’re kind of vetting those people, knowing that they’re going to create better content for you and kind of inviting them personally to your creator. Connections campaign on Amazon.

Josh (00:21:03)** (((-))) – – – Awesome. Good. I’m happy to hear it. So is there a way, I guess, for the influencer? Like, I’m curious to hear what it looks like. I know what it looks like from the brand’s perspective, but like when a influencer logs in, how do they find these like creator connection campaigns that brands have created? Like is there a search filter like walk me through that.

Kathleen (00:21:26)** (((-))) – – – There is a search., it is not easy to find campaigns.

Kathleen (00:21:31)** (((-))) – – – , it’s actually very confusing and it’s not easy. So the way that influencers can find campaigns, there is a search bar. One of the things to, I would say, a tip for sellers is that you want to create your campaign name should be very descriptive. It should have your brand. It should have at least part of your product title, because there’s a lot of campaigns that have none of that. And it’s, you know, TikTok campaign for chair. And if I’m searching for the a particular brand, you know, and it’s TikTok campaign for chair. Right. I’m never going to find it. So if you include especially if you’re going to be looking for sellers, you know, to kind of vet them and bring them into your creator campaign, use your brand name and use somewhat of a decent description of the products, or at least the, you know, product list that you are including in that campaign, because then it’ll make it easy for us to find it. But really, the way it looks when you log in as an influencer, it’s just about 4000 campaigns listed in a, you know, you know, you can just kind of scroll.

Kathleen (00:22:35)** (((-))) – – – And yes, they have, they have categories. But, I mean, that’s a decent way to look for them. And I know on the seller side, you can choose your, your categories and your keywords and things like that. So that would probably be like the second best way to find things, you know. So if I’m looking for home items, I’ll look I’ll filter by the home category., but it’s not necessarily foolproof either. It’s it’s categories. And then the other way we can filter is, based on new so campaign date that it was created. And then another one that’s really interesting that I like to use is,, like commission opportunity or, basically like you can sort by the highest, highest opportunity. And what I found Amazon pulls is the highest budget and then the longest campaign,, term. So those are also two big ones that me as an influencer, I’m looking to make sure that you have a decent budget, that your budget isn’t just a $1,000. Right.

Kathleen (00:23:38)** (((-))) – – – , because I’m probably not going to earn I’m not going to quickly throw up a video and then, you know, hope I get part of that $1,000 if there’s 100 other creators on that campaign. So having a decent budget and,, and a good amount of creators that you let into your campaign is also very helpful and appealing. And we can kind of sort by that as influencers as well.

Josh (00:23:59)** (((-))) – – – Interesting. Okay. So what what should that budget be like? What’s a healthy budget to where you as an influencer, you’re like, oh I’m, I’m very interested. Like they’ve got money to spend here and I can get some of this commission. And then again, I think the other thing is like, what’s, what’s that commission percentage where you’re excited and are, are you also able to filter by, you know, the value of the product? Right. Is this a 9.99 product. Is this a nine $900 product. Right., all very different. So I would love to hear from you as an influencer, you’re going through creator connections and you’re trying to decide, all right, I’ve got limited time.

Josh (00:24:43)** (((-))) – – – I can’t do all of these. How do you decide which ones you’re actually going to work with?

Kathleen (00:24:49)** (((-))) – – – Quite honestly, I look for the ones that have the biggest budget first, because that means that they have the most money to spend. And that also means that. The campaign. Life is probably going to be more than a month, you know, because it takes time to get the item, try it out, create the video. So I’ve been in campaigns where by the time you get the video up, you got like a week that you’re earning the extra commissions. And so I don’t do that, you know, I don’t do those anymore. And so I believe I mean, I’ve seen them up to a year long campaign. So I’m looking for those campaigns that are at least six months, because that gives me time to try out the product and to really start earning on it. And like you said, with the campaigns that have the higher budget, it also typically is representative of a higher price point of product because those two items we cannot filter by with Amazon, you know, on the influencer side and you know, the other thing, then of course that goes with that.

Kathleen (00:25:44)** (((-))) – – – And the most appealing is the commission percentage. So I would say if you want to attract good influencers, you’ve got to go at least 10%. At least offer them 10%. And you know, again, the higher the price point of that item, the more incentive we’re going to have to choose that campaign. Because I’ve also found and you know, you guys are sellers. So you I’m sure you already know this, but I educate my influencers about this. And, you know, people that are searching for Kleenex or diapers or commodity type items aren’t necessarily going to be watching influencer videos because they already know what they want to buy, right? So the purchase consideration just really isn’t there. But any item that’s, you know, $50 up, definitely $100 up, and most certainly $500 and up. Customers are going to want to watch videos. They’re going to watch the influencer videos. They’re going to probably watch multiple videos, depending on what the price point is and what people are saying about it. So the higher price point means the higher purchase consideration, which means for me as an influencer, Amazon customers are going to be more likely to actually watch my video.

Kathleen (00:26:51)** (((-))) – – – So I’m looking for more of those higher price items as opposed to, you know, a $20 pair of sunglasses, which yes, I just bought and did create a video on, but don’t necessarily anticipate. I’m going to earn a whole lot as opposed to, you know, my $500 standing electronic desk, which I spent a lot of time doing videos for. And, you know, make sure that that video is always front and center, you know, whenever I can.

Josh (00:27:18)** (((-))) – – – Okay. Perfect. What would be like the estimated budget that you would see is like, oh wow. That’s a big budget. Like what? What? Give me some numbers.

Kathleen (00:27:27)** (((-))) – – – I mean, $100,000. I’m pretty much in, and I would say, you know, on the seller side, I almost never see that budget depleted., so, you know, go bigger and the budget is just based on it’s all based on sales, right? So you’re only paying as those sales come in. But if I see six figures in a budget, I’m very interested.

Kathleen (00:27:50)** (((-))) – – – I’ve seen up to a million, but I’ve also seen as low as a thousand. Right, $1,000. You’re a tiny business. I don’t think you’re very serious., but, you know, even, like, $50,000 is is good, especially, again, if the product is $100 or more. So, you know, 5000 thousand dollars budget at least six months as far as, you know, the term of the campaign. And then, you know, you can really be selective with the amount of creators that you include, right? If you want to get those better creators and the people that are really on top of their game and know how creator connections work, then I would say, you know, strategically as a seller, to keep the amount of people that you take in the campaign to be smaller, because once you reach those people, once those that number people accept that campaign, then Amazon’s not going to show it anymore. It’s not going to be, you know, creators can’t get in.

Kathleen (00:28:43)** (((-))) – – – And so Amazon is really cracking down on people, on creators that are accepting campaigns and not uploading any content. And so they’re very much scaring people because a lot of people, especially when creator connections first start, it’s like, oh yeah, accept, accept, accept, and I’ll do all these campaigns. And there used to be free samples and, you know, no obligations to, you know, no penalties, right? If influencers received a free sample and didn’t actually create the content, that is one of the biggest issues that sellers had with this program before that was changed. So now that has changed, and you are not obligated as a seller to give away a free sample. It’s actually not. It used to be like a checkbox and a filter. So Amazon made it really easy. It’s not an option anymore. However, you certainly can as a seller, but you don’t have to. And if you want to and you want to make it more appealing for influencers, you can just include that in your description.

Kathleen (00:29:42)** (((-))) – – – , you know, you can say, fill out this Google form if you’d like to receive a sample, and then you could really vet them as well. I mean, if you want them to include their TikTok handle or their, you know, YouTube channel or things like that.

Josh (00:29:55)** (((-))) – – – Awesome, I love that. I love adding that Google form. Okay, Kathleen, I’ve got my mind’s going 2 million miles an hour right now. Ideas. So I love this. I want to peel it all back to like, very basics. Let’s go to 101. How or where are these Amazon influencers? They’re creating these videos. Where are these videos going? Are they going anywhere else. Like how is Amazon paying these people at commission. How is Amazon tracking. Is it because they posted on their blog, their TikTok, their Instagram account? Or is it just from they uploaded the video onto Amazon? And if so, where did they upload this video to? So if you could maybe like dial that back for everybody, because I think a lot of the sellers, even myself included, I’m like, I don’t know where these things are going, but you know, people are obviously interested.

Josh (00:30:49)** (((-))) – – – But tell me more about that.

Kathleen (00:30:52)** (((-))) – – – Yeah. So I think one thing that’ll kind of clarify, like, so how do influencers get paid and kind of where does all the content go is that it’s really like two, two programs and one, right. So you have your Amazon associates and that’s, you know, your typical, your regular Amazon affiliate program where people can go pull their links. And, you know, the idea is that, you know, we call it off site, right? So you’re promoting your Amazon links off Amazon. So whether that’s your social media or your blog or anything like that. So you can create content and put it off Amazon, you’re bringing people, you know from off to on Amazon and that’s the Amazon associates or affiliate side. And then the Amazon is like.

Josh (00:31:35)** (((-))) – – – A 1 or 2%, 3% commission used to be a lot more. Now it’s like not a whole lot.

Kathleen (00:31:41)** (((-))) – – – It’s like yeah between one and the highest I believe now is four. 4% is so tiny.

Kathleen (00:31:48)** (((-))) – – – But at the same time, the commission rates are the same for Amazon influencers. But the difference with the influencer program is that the content you create, you upload directly to Amazon, and that content lives on Amazon, as opposed to you creating the content and going to promote it off Amazon with the hopes that people click. Come on to Amazon, which of course Amazon prefers. But with the influencer program, your content lives on Amazon. So whether you upload a video or a photo, everything that each creator uploads and is goes through the approval process with Amazon, it lives on their storefront. Just like sellers have their brand, storefront influencers have their own storefront, and that’s where all their content really lives in one place. But then on top of that, and why this is such a cool and fun opportunity is that the content lives on Amazon pages. So whether it’s the product listing page or it’s a thank you page after purchasing, or if you guys are familiar with Amazon Inspire, it’s,, you know, kind of a scroll portion of the Amazon,, customer app.

Kathleen (00:32:57)** (((-))) – – – Right? So it’s kind of Amazon’s version of like TikTok or Instagram. Right. And so there are all these different kind of placement opportunities that Amazon will take our content as Amazon influencers can kind of funnel it out to different spots on their site. And so when people click and buy or people watch your video, and by then the influencer is earning a very similar percentage, right? It’s usually between 1 and 4%, just like with the affiliates or associate side. But it’s all being tracked. It’s being tracked together but separate. So there’s actually like two kind of places where where I log in and I see one side of it is my affiliate associate side, and the other side of it is my influencer side. So I can see if I’m bringing in sales from off Amazon or on Amazon. And so kind of the beauty of the integration with creator connections with that is Amazon’s already tracking that. So any sales you’re bringing in off or on Amazon is being attributed to those campaigns. And so,, that’s kind of, you know, how do you get paid? And I think the good thing with sellers is that, you know, you guys are already paying that 15, 17%.

Kathleen (00:34:09)** (((-))) – – – Right? And so that is what Amazon is using to pay their affiliates. That’s not what they’re using to pay their influencers. So that’s not any extra money out of your pocket. Thankfully Amazon is funding that piece because again you’re kind of already paying for that., creator connections is going to be, you know, separate. That’s where your budget comes in. And that extra 10 to 20%. But that’s really how, you know, how are influencers getting paid. And then where does the content end up? It’s product pages. It inspires. It’s their storefront. And then it really just depends on, you know, are the influencers really focused on the on site side, which is,, much easier to convert a sale if your content lives on the marketplace where customers already deciding if they want to buy that item, it’s a much easier sale than bringing someone in who’s scrolling on Instagram or watching a YouTube video.

Josh (00:35:00)** (((-))) – – – Yeah, 100%. And with that, I’m curious,, when you as the influencer upload

Josh (00:35:09)** (((-))) – – – your video. Do you get to choose where that goes? Do you get to say, hey, I want this on the product page?, this one will live on my storefront and this one will also get uploaded to inspire. Or is it like, no, you literally submit your video and then Amazon just does what they do with it..

Kathleen (00:35:30)** (((-))) – – – Yeah, the latter. The latter for the most part., the way the really the only thing we have control over is,, the Asin tagging. So that’s really kind of what helps determine where that video is going to get placed. So when we upload our videos, the options, you know, besides the video, we get to choose a title, we get to choose a thumbnail, and then we get to tag an Asin. And so,, based on like my experience and my strategy on the influencer side, I can kind of decide where I’m hoping that video will get placed based on how,, based on the content of the video, the layout of the video and then,, the most important is the Asin tagging.

Kathleen (00:36:13)** (((-))) – – – So, like, I recommend, you know, influencers if you want to get on the product listing page for the item that’s in your video, you create a video about one thing and you tag that one Asin, and that will almost always get you on the product listing page. That’s what Amazon is looking for, right? But if you create a video that’s a compilation of, you know, my top ten favorite travel items, it’s not and you tag ten different Asins. And so Amazon says you can tag between 1 and 10., if you tag ten different Asins, that video is never going to go on those ten different product pages, because it’s just not a great customer experience. Right? But where it is going to go is inspire. When people are just kind of scrolling and searching for product ideas. Okay.

Josh (00:37:00)** (((-))) – – – Awesome. Okay. That provides a lot of context. And then how do you know? Is it the last video that somebody has viewed before they purchase? Like how does Amazon attribute them the commission? Is it just because they’ve seen it? And maybe they watched the video five days ago or they watched the video 30s ago.

Josh (00:37:21)** (((-))) – – – Like how short is that attribution window?

Kathleen (00:37:25)** (((-))) – – – Oh, Josh, if only we knew., it’s it’s one of the biggest questions that Amazon influencers have, because if you read through the documentation, Amazon calls it, you know, you earn on a qualifying purchase and then they never actually tell you what a qualifying purchase is. So there’s all kinds of speculation, right? We know that a customer has to watch the video for some amount of time in order for you and buy the thing, right, in order for the influencer to earn. But what we don’t know is how long do they have to watch it, and what percentage of the video completely do they have to view in order for you to earn that commission? Because on the influencer side, when we upload videos, we have very limited data, just like, you know, in many other places. But two of the metrics that we are able to see,, is percentage,, viewed of the video and then the duration in seconds and minutes.

Kathleen (00:38:24)** (((-))) – – – So there was speculation for a while that if the video was under 30s, the customer had to watch the entire video and then purchase and then you would earn. But if the video was over 30s, they would have to watch at least 30s not the whole video in order for you to earn, upon, you know, them completing a purchase. So we don’t know. And people, people test things, right? I know people that create seven second videos and earn on them. Right? Because it’s seven seconds and the customer almost doesn’t even have enough time to click off the video before it’s ended., that’s kind of a manipulation strategy. I don’t personally do that strategy, but I know people that have done that to test right. And so then we have other videos that are ten minutes long and, you know, those earn consistently. And even though, you know, the average view time is three minutes on those ten minutes, but they’re still earning. So, you know, we we don’t know,, I know people that have personally asked internal people at Amazon and they either don’t know or they won’t tell us.

Kathleen (00:39:27)** (((-))) – – – So I don’t quite know. But that is like the million dollar question if we could ever find out.

Josh (00:39:34)** (((-))) – – – Fascinating. Okay, I love that. And so I guess my follow up question to that would be like, so how in the world does Amazon give these affiliates this extra bonus commission? I say, hey, part of this campaign, you get an extra 10% last for six months a year, right. Do you know how Amazon’s attributing that to say like. Yeah. This video they created made this, sell that then. Now they qualify for this 10%. You know what I mean?

Josh (00:40:05)** (((-))) – – – Yes. And so, you know, going back to like the qualifying purchase, we don’t know exactly how that works. But you know, with your affiliates account or your influencer account, you can very much go and pull the report to see all the sales that you’ve been given credit for. And that’s how Creator Connections is pulling those sales for your campaign. So when a sale is actually going through and the influencer or the affiliate has been paid out for that sale, then it will appear within the Creator Connections campaign.

Kathleen (00:40:36)** (((-))) – – – So it’s, you know, it’s very much tracked and decided by Amazon. And then that is kind of like really the beauty of the campaign is they’re doing all that tracking already. So then they’re just pulling it over to your campaign.

Josh (00:40:49)** (((-))) – – – Okay. All right. That makes a lot of sense. Now with that being said, I would love to hear some quick hitting like tips hacks, maybe for walking a brand through creating,, a Creator Connections campaign. And I’m going to walk through this very basically because, you know, I know as I’ve talked with a few different sellers, there’s a lot of people that don’t even know about this tool. They’re like, wait, what is this? And where can it be found? So first of all, let’s clarify where this tool can be found. So go into your advertising console right now. If you hover over brand content okay, that’s underneath the sponsored ads on the left hand side of the screen right now. Okay. And you there’s, I’m seeing brand profiles, posts, stores.

Josh (00:41:36)** (((-))) – – – And then at the bottom there is creator connections. Okay. Once you get to creator connections, you know you’ll see your brand, any campaigns that you have there. There’s even a messaging feature which I’ll talk to you about., but then you can create some campaigns. So, Kathleen, I want to create a campaign. Give me and we’ll go through,, step by step here for the campaign. Name any tips or advice that you would recommend here to just attract more influencers to want to sign up?

Kathleen (00:42:10)** (((-))) – – – Definitely. I think one really big thing with the campaign name is to include your brand and a description of the product, because there are so many campaigns that just say, you know, looking for tick tock influencers, 10% commission. And while that is great information to have,, I don’t know anything about the product itself. And so now I’ve got to do a little bit more research, and I’m certainly not going to find that if I’m searching for something that I’m already looking to buy, I do this a lot as an influencer.

Kathleen (00:42:41)** (((-))) – – – Let’s say I want to buy, you know, a new, I don’t know, microphone. I will just go type microphone into the search bar creator connections and see if there’s any campaigns that are promoting a new microphone and maybe buy that one because I know I’m going to get the increased commission. So brand name is semi important, but product name is super important to include in their.

Josh (00:43:03)** (((-))) – – – Okay. Awesome. Good information. All right. The next thing that you have here is kind of like the description of your campaign. This is what Amazon says. Message to the creator. So it says please include a brief intro about your brand and products to the creator. You can include an introduction about your company, why you want to work with the creator, an overview of your products, and any promotions occurring during the campaign dates links to external resources with image assets or media kits. You cannot include personal information. For example, you can not include your email or phone number. So Kathleen, from your perspective, what are some best tips tricks hacks for the message to the creator? Because I already wrote down the offer free samples in Google form.

Josh (00:43:54)** (((-))) – – – , with that. So love that I’ve already got that one marked down as a hack. Give me some more of it.

Kathleen (00:43:59)** (((-))) – – – Yeah, I think,, one other thing would be a promotion. Are you going to have a promotion code available? You know, are you going to give people $5 off or 10% off? I would make sure to include that promotion code and talk about what the promotion term is. You know, is it the whole term of the campaign? Because as an influencer, it’s also appealing that, you know, we could go say, hey, this item is on sale. Well, we can’t say that on Amazon. We can say that off of Amazon. You know, this item is on sale. Here’s the promotion code. And that’s going to help encourage people to not only create content for Amazon, but to create content off of Amazon, to which as a seller, you want them to be doing both.

Josh (00:44:41)** (((-))) – – – Okay, so promo codes. Are they necessary? Do you see better success like influencers are more likely to join if there’s a promo code versus not.

Kathleen (00:44:53)** (((-))) – – – Think they’ll be more likely to join. I don’t think it’s a make or break, though. I’m not necessarily looking for a promo code, but if there’s one available, it’s appealing to me because I know I can promote that to my audience. I think the most important things for me is, do I have to pay for this product, or can I qualify for a free sample? And so, you know, including, you know, free sample available, fill out this Google form below. And then you as the seller are able to kind of go vet those people and say, do I actually want to send a free sample to this influencer based on the information that they’ve given me in their Google form?

Josh (00:45:36)** (((-))) – – – Awesome, I love that. Any other information that we should include in that description or message to creators that will attract or get influencers excited?

Kathleen (00:45:48)** (((-))) – – – You know,, not necessarily. I think, you know, it’s kind of like we tend to kind of skim over the campaign description and we’re really focused on the percentage of commissions and then the products themselves.

Kathleen (00:46:02)** (((-))) – – – And so yeah, really it’s it’s free sample and, promo code. But yeah, because the creators are going to find you’re able to link to all your products. Right. And so like I just go click on the links to the product. I don’t necessarily read, I guess if there was any other sort of, you know, bonus incentive for me,, you know, you could include that, but I think. You’re better off representing the products just by the product listing themselves, because then the influencers can go look at the product listing and, you know, see, do you have a video on there already and what kind of sales are you bringing in already?

Josh (00:46:40)** (((-))) – – – Okay, so it sounds like the shorter the better overall. Yeah, because they’re just skimming through this and maybe some bonus incentives. What are some bonus incentive ideas.

Kathleen (00:46:55)** (((-))) – – – You know, I would say, resample you could send them, you know, a bundle of things because in your campaign you can, you know, you can kind of say, do I want to have one thing? Do I want to have all the variations? And I’ve seen creator campaigns with like 20 different things in there.

Kathleen (00:47:10)** (((-))) – – – I don’t recommend doing that. That’s just kind of overwhelming., you know, I think the biggest bonus incentive is really just the commission rate, right? So you don’t know as far as the description goes, I think the creators are really just looking for can I get a free sample or am I going to have to pay to try out this product?

Josh (00:47:30)** (((-))) – – – Okay. Awesome. That makes a lot of sense. And then next question would be on that note would be can you include your brand referral bonus link for me as a brand owner? Obviously if they’re especially if they’re promoting off of Amazon, I want that, you know, that referral bonus to come back to me.

Kathleen (00:47:53)** (((-))) – – – Yeah. I don’t think you can. I don’t think you can. Because if they’re promoting off Amazon, in order for them to get the credit, they have to use their affiliate link. And so there would have to be a way to like have an affiliate link with the brand creator or with the brand bonus link. And I don’t think that is possible.

Kathleen (00:48:11)** (((-))) – – – However, something you could negotiate with a creator outside of Amazon would be just that, right? Because then you can track it, you can get that bonus, and then, you know, potentially maybe that is the way that you bypass a third party in order to give them an extra, you know, bonus percentage of sales that they’re bringing in. That would be a really good way to track that outside of Amazon.

Josh (00:48:40)** (((-))) – – – Okay. Perfect. All right. Makes a lot of sense. All right. So the next thing that we have on here is additional disclosures. I would assume that you can select no. Majority of the time yeah.

Kathleen (00:48:55)** (((-))) – – – And Amazon pretty much just at the end of every Creator Connections campaign that says, you know, make sure you include unavoidable disclosures. And so you don’t really have to include anything as a seller as far as that goes, because we all the influencers know what they they have to say, you know, either hashtag ad or I get paid an extra commission and it’s kind of on the influencer to make sure that they are in compliance as far as the disclosure goes.

Josh (00:49:24)** (((-))) – – – Okay. Awesome. And then you have you recommend the next one underneath that is start date and end date. And, right now it looks like you can only do like a maximum of a year., for these campaigns,, you recommend at least having six months to a year for the duration of the campaign? True.

Kathleen (00:49:45)** (((-))) – – – I do, because it just gives the influencer more time to earn. You know, if it’s only 30 days, it’s not really appealing because by the time you order the product and you get it and you try it out and you create the video and upload it to Amazon, that could be two weeks, you know, kind of minimum there. And you’re only earning and that’s, you know, if you get everything going,, lickety split. Right. And then you only have two weeks to earn. So, for me, I’m always looking for the longer the campaign, the better. Anything that’s a year I’m interested in. I’m reading through the information and deciding if I want to do it.

Kathleen (00:50:20)** (((-))) – – – , you know, three months is really my minimum, and I find that that’s fine for seasonal items, right? Summer items where you’re promoting it and,, the seasonal items, I think you can get away with a shorter campaign duration, but really, six months to a year is way more appealing because then the creator is going to be able to earn longer. And, you know, it’s up to you to to create that budget as well, which I know we’re probably getting down to that line too. But once the budget runs out and if it’s been less than a year, then the campaign’s over too. So, you know, you do have control over that as well.

Josh (00:50:55)** (((-))) – – – Okay, awesome. But I think here’s the good news. I think for like a brand owner, the reason why this is appealing is yes, you may pay a commission upfront, right. For the duration of this campaign. Let’s say you set it at the maximum even one year. Guess what? One year later those videos will still be on those product listings, correct? And so ideally.

Kathleen (00:51:18)** (((-))) – – – They’re forever until more creators come in and knock out the old creators and then, you know, you’re still going to have videos, right? So if your goal is to fill up that video carousel with influencer videos on Amazon, Creator Connections is by far the best and easiest way to get that done.

Josh (00:51:36)** (((-))) – – – Awesome. Okay, I love that. The next option that I have on here is Creator Interests. So it says target your creator audience by selecting interest filters. And it says there’s there’s I don’t know what would we say maybe 25 different filters here. They’re fairly broad accessories Amazon brands, automotive, baby products, beauty, books, children’s fashion designer fashion electronics etc… Thoughts here.

Kathleen (00:52:06)** (((-))) – – – Yeah. This is one of the few kind of ways that the influencers can filter is based on interest. And when an influencer signs up for creator connections, they ask, Amazon asks, right, what are your interests? And so it’s all the same ones that you have listed there. And so they will Amazon might be more likely to recommend campaigns to creators that have selected those interests that align with your campaign that you’re selecting.

Kathleen (00:52:35)** (((-))) – – – , but it’s. Most. Most Amazon influencers who are focused on the on site don’t necessarily have like a super targeted niche right there. Like, you know, for me, I do home and kitchen and babies and toys and electronics and office and, you know, I kind of do a lot of it. Maybe I don’t do power tools, you know, but I do a whole bunch of that other stuff. So I don’t think that part is super important. I think you could just kind of choose the categories that your product is, you know, listed under., and that’s it’s not it’s not a super important,, distinguishing factor to find those influencers for your campaigns. Okay.

Josh (00:53:17)** (((-))) – – – Fair enough. Awesome. All right. Last thing here we have is payment set the max campaign, campaign budget and the commission rate. So I think you initially said, you know, $100,000 budget looks amazing to people. Right. And I think the important thing, too, is this does not mean that is exactly how much you’re going to spend.

Josh (00:53:40)** (((-))) – – – We’ve tested this out and sometimes, you know, campaign like I set the budget at 50,000 and I only paid out $10 in commission. Right. Because it only generated a few sales. So you’re not like beholden to like Amazon’s going to force you to spend $100,000 now.

Kathleen (00:54:01)** (((-))) – – – Right? Right. And so right. I think that’s really important to note is that, you know, having a big budget, it’s going to help bring in influencers, but you’re not necessarily going to be spending all of that., you know, we really look for budget, right? 100,000 or anything more than that is very appealing because then, you know, then the creators know that there’s a there’s a good opportunity for them to be able to make good money, but then it’s on them to make the sales and promote because you as the seller, you’re not paying out any of that budget unless there is a tracked sale from Amazon coming through., and so, you know, yeah, we’re looking at the budget, but we’re definitely looking at the commission rate that you’re willing to pay.

Kathleen (00:54:43)** (((-))) – – – And so, you know, I see a lot of 5% and it’s not really appealing, you know, 10%. I really wouldn’t go lower than 10%., as a seller and as a creator finding campaigns 10% is a nice round number. I can do that math in my head real quick. How much extra am I going to be making on, you know, product XYZ, on top of what Amazon would already pay me for a sale?, I’ve seen as high as 40%. I don’t think that’s super realistic, for sellers, I know what margins we get on Amazon. And, you know, obviously you’re going to be losing money if you decide to go the 40% route. However, if you’re doing a product launch and you only want to have it, you know, the campaign for three months and you have a very targeted budget, you know, maybe you do want to go that route. You will get a lot of creators signing up for it, and they will promote it more because that commission rate is so high.

Kathleen (00:55:37)** (((-))) – – – But typically I see between 10 and 20%. And anything in that range,, pretty much gets the creators excited.

Josh (00:55:45)** (((-))) – – – Awesome. Yeah, I love that idea for like, how to launch, you know, maybe test it for three months. Right. Set it at 40% commission. You know, you’ll lose money for sure, but you’ll get a lot of good content out there quickly. And hopefully they’ll even,, you know, try to promote your product off site, which will then, like, create that flywheel and help you get ranked even faster. So that’s a golden nugget you just drop there.

Josh (00:56:15)** (((-))) – – – All right.

Josh (00:56:16)** (((-))) – – – And then the final thing there is you select which products right. You can enter your ace and list of which products are going to qualify for this campaign. So Kathleen, we have dove deep into the world of creator connections here., is there anything you think we’ve missed that we skipped over that you think is important for sellers to know about creator connections and how they can utilize and maximize them?

Kathleen (00:56:46)** (((-))) – – – Yes.

Kathleen (00:56:46)** (((-))) – – – One thing comes to mind. And, you know, when I talk with sellers, some of them realize this and some of them don’t. One of the biggest, most appealing things for the Amazon creators is that we want to see that you have at least one video on your product listing page, because what that does is then that opens up the upper video carousel kind of slots. Then for the influencer videos to basically show up underneath that. So when you’re looking at your product listing page, you see that video, click on the video right. You can actually have up to ten videos in that top carousel., only five of which Max can be influencer videos. So you as a seller can have ten videos., that doesn’t look great for influencers because people are going to watch your ten videos for hours. But my best recommendation is to make sure you have one brand video on your product listing page, because, again, that opens up the carousel for influencers, that gives influencers the top best opportunity placement in order to earn with their video and to help you sell your products.

Kathleen (00:57:54)** (((-))) – – – There are other placements around Amazon. There’s a lower carousel, which sometimes we see and sometimes we don’t. And then Amazon will put videos and images, you know, kind of here or there. But that is the main place where creators want to get their videos placed on Amazon. And if there’s no brand video, a lot of creators just kind of skip over that product listing page because they know even if they create a video, it’s not going to be very visible to Amazon customers. So I think that’s the best advice I could give you is that if you are looking to I mean, just increase your sales overall on Amazon, right? You need to have a video., and then of course, if you want to, if you’re going to dive into creator connections, it’s going to make your listing that much more appealing than those,, listings that don’t yet have a video, that creators are just going to kind of pass over because it’s not a great opportunity for them.

Josh (00:58:47)** (((-))) – – – , that amazing,, another golden nugget.

Josh (00:58:50)** (((-))) – – – , because if you don’t have that,, yeah. Fewer influencers excited to promote your product. I think that’s an amazing hack. Kathleen. Anything else?

Kathleen (00:59:02)** (((-))) – – – Oh, man. I could talk about this for, like, hours and hours. No, I think that that’s the biggest thing, right? Is make sure you have that video on there. Obviously you need brand registry for that. But make sure you have a decent video that you have good product listing, you know, like Josh or you already said, you know, if you have a great product,, you’re going to get great videos from influencers. And if you have your product listing page buttoned up, you have good reviews. You know, I teach people, you know, look for at least a 4.3 star rating, because why would you promote a product that was 3.5 stars? Right?, I think, you know, maybe one other thing too, that we’re looking for and that we have some really awesome software tools now that help us identify is that if you are running paid ads to your product listing, that’s also very appealing for influencers because, again, that helps with visibility of your product page.

Kathleen (00:59:54)** (((-))) – – – And then that also, you know, reaffirms to us that, you know, you have the inventory behind it. You’re not going to run out of inventory, You have the ad dollars behind it, meaning that you are actively promoting it because there’s so many product listings on Amazon where people aren’t doing that. And so, you know, having those ad dollars behind it is also really great for influencers and a much bigger incentive for us, because we know you’re promoting the product and more people are going to see it. So ideally we’re going to earn more from our content.

Josh (01:00:22)** (((-))) – – – Awesome. I love that. Kathleen, there’s one final thing I wanted to ask you about. And you mentioned this earlier. You know, working potentially with like an agency or maybe some third party platforms. I’ve heard of tools such as Logi AI. We’ve had Ehud Segev, he’s been on this podcast. He talked about Logi., there’s Levanta, right? There’s a few other platforms that allow this bonus commission to be paid out that’s being tracked.

Josh (01:00:52)** (((-))) – – – They upload their affiliate campaign reports and then that it does all of that matching. What are some of those platforms or softwares or agencies, if you wouldn’t mind just listing off a few that you know, as you’re working with all these influencers they’re utilizing or looking at and maybe sourcing product ideas and brands to work with from.

Kathleen (01:01:15)** (((-))) – – – Yeah. You know, Logi is definitely one of my favorites. One of the top ones that,, I’ve, I’ve just kind of skimmed the surface of there, but all of the people in my network have great things to say about it., Logi is a good one. And then I started when I first started with the influencer program, I joined the Thracian program. And I know, you know, Thracian wasn’t doing great these days, and we’re not really sure what’s happening with them, but,, they’re another option. And I know, you know, kind of all of those, all of those brands are under Thracian already., but I love Logi for that. And, you know, there’s a couple other ones.

Kathleen (01:01:53)** (((-))) – – – I personally haven’t dove too far into those connections because, you know, for me, as an Amazon seller,, and in my experience with people that have approached me to create content for them, I always find that I could just find better product opportunities on my own., and so, you know, even just purchasing, you know, I do strategic Amazon purchasing. And so, like, if I need to buy something, I will go vet it and I’ll use my tools and find, you know, find good opportunities for videos. And then also, you know, products that I know make good sales and have ad dollars behind them and all that good stuff. So I wish I had more information about that,, for you and your listeners. Josh. But,, you know, one thing that I’m personally working on and it’s not ready yet, but,, you know, I teach people how to be Amazon influencers. And so one thing that I’m working on, you know, for my influencers, is we’re actually creating a database of all the influencers that I’ve trained that will then be available to sellers.

Kathleen (01:02:51)** (((-))) – – – So it won’t be, you know, a commission,, necessarily campaign kind of platform, but it will be a database where you can find, you know, good, reputable, ethical Amazon influencers and just connect with them on, on your own and decide, you know, do you want to pay them a flat fee to create content? You want them to create content on Amazon or promote it on TikTok or or whatever that may be. And I’m sure there are plenty of other platforms and databases that do that as well that you could kind of Google around and find there too.

Josh (01:03:21)** (((-))) – – – Awesome. This has been fantastic. Kathleen, thank you so much for your wisdom that you’ve shared with us. Now, I’d like to wrap up each episode by providing three actionable strategies that you can implement in three takeaways from the podcast. So my number one takeaway here is that you should be actively looking to create these partnerships in affiliate campaigns. We talked about how Amazon’s already funding a portion of this for you, and through Amazon Creator Connections, you’re able to give them a a temporary bonus.

Josh (01:03:58)** (((-))) – – – And then that content that they upload lives on hypothetically for forever. Right. And it’s going to help increase your overall conversion rate. So my action item number one is if you’re not thinking about influencer and affiliate campaigns,, for your business, start doing so now, because the brands that I think are going to be able to survive and win in the long term are going to be the ones that have external traffic coming in. They’ve got lots of videos and they’re just well established. Action item number two is going to be more specific as it relates to creating those creator connection campaigns. And that’s going to be offering free samples in there and stating it probably at the top. Because that’s one thing I heard from you, Kathleen. They’re skimming it. They want to make sure they don’t have to actually purchase the product in order to create the video, especially if you’re not having to pay them per video, which you threw out, you know, $103, $100 like that can add up really quickly if you have 1500 skews like I do.

Josh (01:04:59)** (((-))) – – – So for me, I can offer free samples all day long and I’m happy with that. So offer free samples right at the very top of your message description. And the big hack there is not just,, offering it within,, the description, but adding it as a Google form that then will allow you to vet people a lot better, so that’s the second hack. And then hack number three is making sure that you maximize your budget and the timeline. This is way too many. I think most people are like, I’ll, I’ll experiment with this. I’m going to do a two week campaign and I’m going to do $1,000 budget just to test this thing out. And I think they’re seeing poor results because they’re serious influencers are skipping over that and be like, yeah, no, not not worth my time. So the biggest action item is like, make sure you have a healthy budget, $50,000 or more, $100,000. Again, it’s just a budget. It doesn’t mean you’re actually going to spend it.

Josh (01:06:00)** (((-))) – – – And then your commission percentage being healthy 10%, minimum 20% is a good probably average 40% if you’re doing a temporary launch., so, Kathleen, is there anything else that you think I missed or skipped? Over here.

Kathleen (01:06:15)** (((-))) – – – No, no, those are all the big things. The only thing I would, I would say is just the video to make sure everyone has a video on, on your product listing page, because it will just help with sales and conversion in general, and then make your listing your product even more appealing to creators.

Josh (01:06:31)** (((-))) – – – I love that. Kathleen, I like to ask the guests the following three questions to wrap it up. So here we go. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Kathleen (01:06:43)** (((-))) – – – So the most influential book I have read is called Chill and Prosper by Denise Duffield Thomas. It is a money mindset book, and it really changed the way that I think about business and making money in general., and she really talks about, you know, why you need to have the right mindset in order to create a successful business.

Kathleen (01:07:06)** (((-))) – – – But she also talks about, you know, not not the side hustle culture, but how do you chill and prosper at the same time, earn great money, but not just be always busy and doing things all the time. So I love that book. If you’re in a money mindset, yeah, check out Chill and Prosper.

Josh (01:07:24)** (((-))) – – – Love it! I have not heard of that one, so I’ve got one to add to the audible wish list. All right. Question number two: What’s a new productivity tool or software tool that you’ve recently discovered that you think is going to be a game changer?

Kathleen (01:07:40)** (((-))) – – – So for this one I’ve got to bring it back to the Amazon influencers., for this one I love the software tool called Fluencer Fruit. And it was actually developed by,, a very brilliant woman who used to be on the C-suite at Jungle Scout. She created this tool in order to help Amazon influencers find good product opportunities on Amazon, on the influencer side. And so this is an amazing software tool.

Kathleen (01:08:09)** (((-))) – – – It also integrates with Jungle Scout. So some of the kind of features that I was talking about that we look for, you know, is the product listing being advertised and how many average monthly sales do they get. You know, this tool then vets that and it’s a grading system from 1 to 100 for influencers to decide, you know, kind of the product opportunity before they go in and create a video for an Amazon product listing.

Josh (01:08:36)** (((-))) – – – Interesting. So for brands, probably check out your score to make sure that it’s high there, because that your influencer is going to be checking it out. Right?

Kathleen (01:08:46)** (((-))) – – – Yes, exactly.

Josh (01:08:48)** (((-))) – – – Love it. Love that., that’s a new tool I have not heard of. So super exciting. All right, Kathleen, last question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Kathleen (01:09:02)** (((-))) – – – So one of my favorite people that I connected with so many years ago in the e-commerce space, is Scott Voelker.

Kathleen (01:09:10)** (((-))) – – – And he used to have the amazing seller podcast, and now his brand is called Rock Your Brand. But he is a guy that really just is so down to earth and relatable for me that when I first dove into e-commerce, I listened to every single one of his podcasts., he’s got a great book. I’ve been to his events and, he’s just a really brilliant mind. That’s just a down to earth, like he’s a dad, you know, he puts his kids first, but he’s just so smart when it comes to selling on so many different e-commerce marketplaces. Now he’s really into Etsy right now., and so I haven’t listened to a ton of the stuff he’s been doing just because I don’t do Etsy. But, you know, he knows e-commerce, he knows Amazon, and he’s been in the space for,, over a decade.

Josh (01:09:57)** (((-))) – – – Excellent. I have heard his name as well. He is a good one to follow and keep around. Kathleen, this has been super informative.

Josh (01:10:05)** (((-))) – – – If people want to follow you and especially as you build out your database of influencers, I know I’m excited to maybe tap into that one day., where can people find you and learn more and follow your journey?

Kathleen (01:10:19)** (((-))) – – – Definitely. You guys can all come find me at KathleenKobel.com KathleenKobel.com. That is my new website where I’m kind of putting everything together. Right. So whether you’re a seller and you’re looking for that influencer database, you’ll see it right there., or if you or someone you know is like, maybe I would like to become an Amazon influencer, how do I get started? You guys can find all that information there.

Josh (01:10:45)** (((-))) – – – Awesome. Love that Kathleen. Thank you again for your time. It’s been a pleasure getting to know you and having you digest the amazing world of Amazon influencers to us all.

Kathleen (01:10:56)** (((-))) – – – Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me on your podcast, Josh and having me. This has been so fun. I love talking about this stuff, and I really hope that it’s been helpful for all of your listeners.