Amazon Influencer vs Affiliate: What is the difference between the two?

Many are confused regarding the terms Amazon influencer vs affiliate.

Both terms can be defined as people (social media personalities vs website owners), who are taking part in the Amazon Associates Program.

The key difference between an Amazon influencer vs Amazon affiliate is the primary medium each is using to promote Amazon products.

Influencers promote via social media, affiliates promote via their websites.

Both the influencer and the affiliate participate in the Amazon Associates Program.

The Amazon Associates Program was launched in 1996, before the rise of social media. Back then, “affiliates" were website owners who wrote blog posts that referred to Amazon, earning them a referral commission.

Today we still call this segment of Amazon Associates Program participants “affiliates”.

The Amazon Associates Program has an extension program to it, in which people with a social media following, can participate in. This is called the Amazon Influencer Program.

Another important detail is that the Amazon Influencer Program has an extension of its own! This is called the Amazon Onsite Associates Program. This program allows content uploaded by Amazon Influencers to the Amazon.com website to be displayed throughout the website pages, like the home page or product details page.

When did these programs start? Amazon Influencer vs Affiliate

In 1996, when the affiliate program was launched, it gained recognition from website owners, and was considered to be one of the best affiliate programs for website owners.

In 2017, after and with the rise of social media usage, the Amazon Influencer Program was launched, which acts as an extension of the Amazon Associates Program.

In 2018, the Amazon Onsite Program was launched.

What is the commission structure? Amazon influencer vs affiliate

Amazon Influencers and Affiliates earn the same commission rates for referred sales. However, for sales generated through onsite content viewed on Amazon.com (which only Influencers do), the commission structure is different.

In general, the onsite commission rates are lower than the offsite commission rates.

To look for categories and their onsite and offsite commission, you can use our searchable Amazon Influencer Commission Rates Table.

If you want to dive deep into how commissions are calculated for Amazon products, we recommend this post about amazon review video commission.

Where are referral links allowed to be shared? Amazon Influencer vs Affiliate

Amazon influencers are allowed to share their Amazon StoreFront link via email, whereas amazon affiliates do not have a storefront, and are not allowed to share referral links of any kind via email.

Both Amazon influencers and Amazon affiliates are allowed to share their referral links via their social media accounts. For example an Amazon affiliate owns a website that has a Facebook page, with a post referring to an Amazon link with an Amazon partner tag.

What is the cookie duration for referrals? Amazon Influencer vs Affiliate

In order to track a sale that is referred by an Amazon Associate, Amazon uses a cookie to remember the time and source of referral.

The same cookie duration is used for both Amazon influencers and Amazon affiliates - 24 hours.

In short, this means that if a person clicked on a referral link and purchased anything on Amazon.com within the next 24 hours, the Amazon influencer or affiliate owner of that referral link will get a commission if the purchased product is eligible for commission.

What products will yield the highest earnings? Amazon Influencer vs Affiliate

In both cases, products with high commissions and high monthly sales will yield the highest profits possible.

To find these products, you will need to look at Amazon products on Amazon.com and evaluate their commission, and use their best seller rank to estimate their sales performance.

In case you’re using Chrome browser, you can use our free extension, which calculates the commission you’ll earn for you right away.

The extension is used by 150+ Amazon influencers and affiliates, has a five star rating score, and has a Featured badge, which means it follows Google webstore’s technical best practices, and meets a high standard of user experience and design.

If you are serious about finding the right products to promote you can also try our Private Products service. This service is built for Amazon influencers and affiliates that want to be completely free of needing to do product research, so they can focus solely on content creation.

The service finds 7 products each week and adds a link to them via a dedicated page only you can see.

AffiliateWorthy is now offering the service to new customers with a free 30-day trial. Sign up here, or read more about it on our homepage.