How Much Should You Pay An Amazon Influencer? [GUIDE]

It’s hard to survive on Amazon, let alone thrive nowadays without driving external traffic to your products on Amazon.

As a top-rated and award-winning Amazon Consultant, I would know.

Plus, it is part of the a10 algorithm after all.

This impacts how visible you are in Amazon Product Searches, your ad costs, ad visibility and much more.

This is why Amazon Influencers have been so powerful for brands since 1996 and they can be for you too.

For every dollar you spend on Influencer Marketing, statistics show that you’ll average a $23 ROI. Most ROI shoots for a 5:1 ratio, so you can see just how wild these statistics really are. – Neil Patel

That said, it can be difficult to know how much to pay an Amazon Influencer when there are no industry standards or “what do most people pay” since Amazon Influencers are independent businesses with their own rate cards/media kits and even negotiations that impact what one brand pays vs another.

So what can brands do?

Brands need to put together what Amazon Influencers are worth to them first.

This is EXACTLY how to determine how much to pay an Amazon Influencer.

How Do Amazon Influencers Get Paid?

First off, What is an Amazon Influencer?

Amazon Influencers recommend products to their audiences in exchange for a commission from Amazon when someone buys.

RECOMMENDED READING: How To Find Amazon Influencers & How To Evaluate Amazon Influencers.

Amazon Influencers get a small percentage of sales paid by Amazon which is why the Amazon Influencer market has been around for over 20 years.

However, some of the best Amazon Influencers are so good at referring sales on Amazon that they realized they could also increase their own revenue by charging the product owners for placements on their websites, YouTube channels and wherever they have an audience. (remember, these are business people themselves and are entitled to make additional revenue in a free market system).

(Learn More: What to Ask For From Amazon Influencers)

There are situations where Amazon influencer Storefronts and Amazon Live Influencers are still willing to place products in their content in exchange for free samples. But increasingly, the Amazon influencers landing at the top of search results require additional payment beyond free samples.

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NEW!

Amazon Shoppable Videos

$149.99 $49.99 ea. 
(SAVE 66%)

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LEARN MORE

Get product reviews, unboxings, product demos, lifestyle UGC, and how-to Amazon shoppable videos from vetted Amazon Influencers.

No Searching

No Vetting

No Building Relationships

No Negotiating

How Much Do Amazon Influencers Earn Per Sale From Amazon?

Whether Amazon Influencers are referring sales from their blogs, social media or YouTube, they earn a commission from Amazon for each sale they facilitate.

Same goes for Amazon Live Influencers promoting products on Amazon Live.

Here is how much Amazon Influencers earn…

On-Site Amazon Influencer Commission Rates:

Amazon Affiliate Commission Rates:

How Much Do Amazon Influencers Cost?

What Amazon Influencers charge can vary widely, depending on the size and influence of their platforms.

Like we’ve been discussing, you will find no “industry standard” equation like this:

• If Influencer’s audience size = X then Influencer is worth Y per piece of content.

This is because they are each independent businesses that have invested various amounts in content research, content creation, understanding the algorithms to earn their followings, and more.

So, to recoup those costs, as any business would, they all charge various fees that they deem fair and reasonabe.

What’s more, when you first approach an Amazon Influencer about a collaboration or sponsorship opportunity, many will present you with a rate card or media kit with pre-defined prices and packages of content you could partner with them on.

Now, an important thing to focus on here is that ultimately, they are businesses just like you are.

So, that means everything is negotiable.

You can and should see if Amazon Influencers are flexible on their pricing structure, open to other compensation opportunities, bartering, etc.

That said, we can work off some typical industry averages that may help you determine what to pay an Amazon Influencer.

Let’s take a look at Amazon Influencer average rates…

Average Amazon Influencer Rates

Thanks to our friends at Influencer Marketing Hub, extensive research has revealed industry average rates for Influencers.

You can use these with your Amazon Influencers to calibrate your negotiations.

Instagram Influencer Rates

YouTube Influencer Rates

TikTok Influencer Rates

We take a deeper dive into these rates in: Average Amazon Influencer Rates.

Now that you have some averages to work from, how do you determine how much an Amazon Influencer is worth to you?

How Much Should I Pay an Amazon Influencer?

So, what do you need to know to properly assess how much you are willing to pay an influencer?

The first thing is to know how much a customer is worth to you. If you sell a product that is primarily a one-off type purchase meaning your customer isn’t likely to return to buy more of that or any of your other products then this is a fairly simple equation – a customer is worth slightly less than your gross profit on your product.

If you want to take this a step further you could divide your total fixed costs for the year, divide that by the number of products you expect to sell and then subtract that number from your gross profit. That number is the most you can afford to pay to acquire a customer.

However, if you have a product that customers may purchase repeatedly or you have great product inserts with good sales pitches for related products then you will need to know the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer.

This is how much you can reasonably expect to make from a customer over the lifetime of your relationship with them.

For example, if you know that on average a customer buys three products from you then you would multiply the average total sales for a customer by your average gross margin to get the LTV.

Let’s say that a customer makes a purchase and then comes back and makes two more from you totaling $150 in gross sales. If your average gross margin is 30% then that means you can expect to make $45 on that customer during their lifetime as a customer.

That means you cannot afford to pay more than $45 to acquire that customer.

The final piece is to determine how much traffic an influencer may send to your page and then how well your product page is converting.

For an influencer’s blog page you can see average monthly views, but you can also ask the influencer to see click throughs to amazon from their other articles and use that as an average for how much traffic you may get.

Multiply that number by your conversion rate and you will have the number of customers you can expect to gain from that influencer.

In an ideal world you want to pay the influencer less than what you expect to gain.

Still, if you need help negotiating with Amazon Influencers, we wrote a comprehensive guide called: How To Negotiate With Amazon Influencers.

How To Determine The Value of an Amazon Influencer To You

While these give you the raw numbers of what a customer may be worth to your business, it is important to remember the value in brand awareness and brand recognition that an influencer can bring for you as well.

Even though an influencer’s follower doesn’t click on your link and buy immediately, they may remember your brand or product at a later time, especially if you have good presence across multiple influencers.

Since you will only have your side of the equation when initiating the conversation with an influencer it is tough to offer them a concrete number.

However, you can determine a range that you would be willing to pay based per user that they send. For example, if you expect to make $15 on a transaction and you know your conversion rate is 5% – meaning that you need 20 people to visit your site for every one purchase, you can approach a prospective influencer with the following proposition:

“I typically pay $0.50-.60 customer that you can send me.” Fifty cents multiplied by the 20 viewers you need to convert one is $10 spent on leads for that $15 in profit.

Depending on your business model, you may only be able afford much less. Or, maybe you can afford to pay much more, especially if you are focused on building your brand over the longer term.

No matter what you are willing to pay, approaching the influencer first with concrete numbers and thoughts will let them know that you are serious and you know what you are talking about.

They may have unrealistic expectations of their value (and some may be worth it based on brand alone), but when you make the first move based on facts at least they know where you stand and how to proceed from there.

Then ask them for proof of their traffic counts and click-throughs via screenshots of Google Analytics.

You can reasonably assume that they will select some of their higher converting content, so don’t hesitate to try to negotiate on the lower end of that or ask for data from specific or multiple pages.

Frequently Asked Questions