#342 – Best Side Hustle of 2024 (Only 4 Hours A Week)

It’s no secret that the industry has been struggling for nearly one year now following the Google helpful content update.

Building content sites is still kind of possible, as sites like NapLab.com are showing us.

But there’s no denying that it’s very challenging and turbulent right now.

And it’s been particularly difficult to get started for beginners, as Google has been favoring more established sites and real businesses in their search results.

And to try to compensate for that, we’ve been trying to share about funnels and push people in that direction.

And several of our most advanced members have started to implement this stuff and are starting to get results.

However, it’s much more challenging to execute this kind of stuff than building a simple content site.

Which is why understandably, the beginner crowd has been a bit resistant to the idea.

And so that leaves us with a question.

What should beginners do to get started in 2024?

Now, across the industry, several people have come up with different solutions.

I’m not going to go too much into the details, but we haven’t been very convinced about the future-proofing of many of these solutions.

Many are spammy in nature, sometimes illegal.

And yeah, I’m talking about stealing people’s images and posting them on Pinterest or the platform.

And they will probably be short-lived and people will get back to where they were a year ago.

And so this takes us to today’s podcast with Jared Barman, who you might know as the host of the NicheProceed podcast, to talk about the Amazon Influencer program that he has been part of for the past year.

And during his first year, Jared has managed to make $40,000 from this program, which is more than many people did before HCU with a new affiliate site.

So this result really got me intrigued.

And if you don’t know about it, the Influencer program by Amazon allows you to shoot short video reviews, sharing your experience with products that are sold on Amazon.

And then Amazon takes these videos, puts them on their product pages to boost their conversions.

And if someone watches your video, they will actually pay you a commission, which is very similar to the Amazon Associates program that you might know with one major difference.

And that is that you don’t need to drive traffic to Amazon to get paid.

They embed the videos on their website and show it to their traffic and still pay you when a sale is made.

And that makes all the difference.

There’s no need to drive traffic from any platform.

You don’t need to talk to anyone or sign up for individual products affiliate program.

You don’t need to have bought the products on Amazon as long as it’s the same item that they actually sell.

You don’t need to show your face on videos.

And there’s really low expectations in terms of quality.

So just shooting videos with your phone is actually good enough in most cases.

Jared says that he only takes seven to eight minutes per video he uploads.

So all of this together, in my opinion, makes a really attractive package for beginners to start learning how to create content without the tech hustles and without the challenges of driving traffic to make sales.

So in this episode, we’ll dive deep into Jared’s experience going from zero to 40k a year, how he does it and some of his best tricks.

But I want to be completely honest here.

We went a lot further than just recording a podcast episode.

After talking with Jared about his experience a few months ago and reviewing his claims to make sure they’re actually true, I convinced him to work with us to put together a course for those who want to get started with this program.

A piece of training that would have the practicality of what you expect from an authority hacker training program combined with his experience doing it for over a year and being quite successful with it.

This program to me after reviewing it is the best replacement to review sites for those of you who do not want to build a full business, but are rather looking for easy, reliable side hustle that can make you $100 to $200 a day.

And I know there’s quite a lot of you out there and I’m quite excited to have a brand new training on what I’m happy to call the best side hustle of 2024.

This program should be available next week and if you want to hear more about it, subscribe to our newsletter on autohikhaka.com/subscribe.

Or if you want to learn more, just listen to this episode and get a better idea of how it works in practice.

For now, let’s get started with the episode.

Hey Jared, welcome to the Authority Hacker podcast.

Super happy to have you here.

Super happy to have another podcast host as well as getting to make my life so much easier.

I listen to your podcast regularly, so thanks for joining.

And let’s jump in right there.

I want to tell you to tell me, you know, what is the Amazon influencer program and why did you jump into it?

Great.

Okay.

So the Amazon influencer program has actually been around for quite a while, which was surprising to me when I first learned about it.

The influencer program covers a whole host of different things.

For what I’m going to talk about today, for what I’ve been focusing on is just one part of the influencer program, which is basically the idea around shoppable videos.

These are small videos, short videos, one, two, three minute videos, and they live on the Amazon sales page.

So if you want to go buy a phone case, that video will live on that page.

And if viewers watch those for a certain period of time and then going to buy it, you get a commission.

Okay.

And so I don’t have to drive any traffic to it, right?

The videos live on anazon.com.

That’s the big thing.

Videos live on amazon.com.

So you get to take advantage of Amazon’s traffic, one of the largest, well, the largest e-commerce brand, one of the largest websites in the world, spending billions of dollars to drive traffic to these sales pages and your videos sit there.

And as long as they watch them, you get a commission.

That’s kind of the key to it.

Yeah.

I think that’s super interesting that you don’t have to drive traffic.

Like there’s not many online businesses where you don’t have to drive traffic.

And I would argue that’s probably the hardest thing to do.

Yeah.

When you start online businesses, it’s not how to make a website.

It’s how to get people to actually go on it and consume their content.

So it’s pretty cool that Amazon basically shares their traffic and gives you a small percentage of the sales when you’re making your sale.

That’s the most important thing to understand, especially in the last couple of years, the traffic generation becoming so hard and yet you have this opportunity where, yeah, you got to work for it, but getting the traffic is the hardest part.

They’re basically giving that to you as long as you help them sell the product.

Yeah.

That’s super interesting.

And how long have you been doing this for?

Just over a year.

So I’m in like month 14 or 15 now.

So you’ve seen it for a while.

It’s not something you’ve started two months ago.

And it’s been working for a while for you, basically.

And it’s quite interesting, I guess, because when we talk about online business, we talk about like, okay, you need to build a brand, you need to build an audience, you need to capture an email list, and you need to sell them stuff.

It sounds like a lot of steps and complicated.

And it looks like you’re skipping all of that with this program.

How did you feel when you discovered it?

And did you believe it would work the way it worked for you?

No.

I mean, to your point, it’s the simplest thing to put together from A to Z, compared to so many other aspects of online marketing.

I mean, I run a marketing agency for a living.

And when you’re putting together these complex ad campaigns, or these complex SEO strategies, email marketing, through a variety of traffic, this is so much easier.

This is really very basic.

We can get into the steps, but it’s so simple.

Most of the time, from start to finish, each video takes me three to five to eight minutes.

That’s it.

That’s start to finish.

That’s literally check the box, and you’re done.

And you move on.

It’s shorter than what it takes me to get one video idea for a story hacker.

So that’s just the idea, right?

Yeah.

I probably could get 10 videos done in the time that it takes for you guys to edit one of your YouTube videos that are all editing and cut together nicely, you know?

Yeah.

That’s the thing.

It’s appealing to do YouTube, for example, but it’s so difficult and almost fully professionalized at this point, if you want to get good reach.

It’s quite difficult.

So yeah, it’s pretty interesting.

We’re going to dive into that.

But before that, I want to talk a little bit about the results.

People want to know, like, how you’ve been doing.

So like, essentially, how much money have you made from this?

And how many videos have you done that take about seven, eight minutes to make?

Yeah.

So I like at this point, like I said, I’ve been doing for maybe 13, 14, 15 months now at this point.

So I like to look back at the first year.

The first year I earned over $40,000 on this completely as a side hustle.

I ended up with about 1200 videos live in the first year, but I front-loaded that.

So I ended up with about 1000 videos live in the first six to seven months.

Thousand videos.

Each video takes me three to eight minutes in total, which we went over.

We can kind of do some of the math there, but basically, not a lot of extra time per week.

And then when you look at everything from the holiday sales periods to Amazon’s promotional days, they run like Prime Day, just the general flow, the seasonality of the different seasons of sales on Amazon ended up earning over 40K in the first year.

That’s pretty good.

And for how much time?

Because you want like 1000 videos, three to eight minutes.

How much time is that total per week or something like that?

Just so that we get an idea of how long it would take for someone to run this as a side hustle, basically.

Well, yeah, let me get my phone.

I’m just going to get my calculator right here.

Thousand videos.

Let’s just say the high end.

Let’s say that because I have a little bit of a photo.

I have a photography background.

So let’s say that some of that translates to video.

I don’t…

It’s not necessarily a one-to-one, but let’s say it takes you on the average of like the eight minute, the high part.

So 1000 videos, that’s 8000 minutes divided by 60 minutes in an hour.

We got 133 hours.

So 133 hours to get to 1000 videos.

That took me, let’s say seven months.

That’s 19 hours a month.

So that’s 4.5 hours a week.

So that fits the bill.

It’s about how much time I was spending on average per week.

Some weeks I do more than others, but yeah, four, five hours a week.

Okay.

That’s, I mean, that’s the side hustle area, basically.

To me, like side hustle is like something you do on Saturday afternoon.

It’s like, I kind of like do what I have to do usually on Saturdays.

And on Sunday, I really have to rest because otherwise I just can’t do the next week.

So I feel like this is pretty good.

And that’s kind of like, there’s not many side hustles that can make 40 grams on their first year that you can do for four hours a week, a little bit over four hours a week and get these results.

So yeah, it’s pretty interesting.

Do you still record videos at this point?

I do.

I recorded five or six videos last week.

Okay.

So it’s just something.

And when you say eight minutes per video, does that include the planning as well?

Like, do you have some, because if I’m going to show you a thousand videos, you probably need a thousand items.

Like how does that work?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The three minutes includes everything from getting the product off the shelf in your garage, or, you know, down out of the kitchen cabinet, getting the phone ready.

Because by the way, we’ll talk about this.

This is all done with your phone.

You don’t need fancy video equipment.

Actually doing the recording.

Many people will prepare a script.

I have a fast way of doing a script.

We can talk about that.

I don’t do a script anymore because of 1200 videos.

You kind of have the process down.

There’s no editing involved.

When you’re done, when you hit stop on the record button, you can upload straight from your phone.

Or if you do a bunch, like let’s say you do 10 videos in bulk, you could then push them to your desktop computer or your laptop and then upload them from there.

Okay.

One thing that people tend to brag about is like revenue.

So like 40k, but did you have expenses in that?

Like, did you actually spend money to get this done?

Because I feel like this is online marketing, right?

Everyone brags about making a ton of money.

And nobody talks about like spending 80% of that money to actually make the business work.

How did that go for you?

Yeah, you’re talking about all the e-commerce brands that do a million dollars in sales.

And they spend it only nice anyway.

So yeah.

Well, I hate to like, it’s, it’s, if it’s starting to sound too good to be true.

I mean, this isn’t going to help.

Like I had zero expenses.

My strategy, and this is one of many.

So this is not the only strategy.

And I would argue, I probably left a lot of money on the table by doing this strategy, but this is the easiest one.

My strategy is just to review everything I have in my house.

I probably have more products than the average person to be fair.

Like I’ve kind of touched a lot of different things.

I’ve got a lot of different gear from, you know, being a podcast host and being an online marketer and photography and all this stuff.

I’ve got a lot of different stuff around the house.

But I did all my own stuff.

And when I ran out of items in my house, there’s a lot of other strategies to take advantage of like, hey, pop by the neighbor’s house, your parents house.

And but I think what we’ve settled into, and that’s why you asked me, like, why did I do five to six videos last week?

Well, because we were five to six items from Amazon that week.

That’s why.

And so over time, you’ll also just develop into a rhythm of seeing things that maybe you didn’t have when you first started the program, but you’ll continually get a stock of items to review.

So again, there’s all there’s other strategies, by the way, you can strategically buy stuff.

Because you see a gap in the market, you see no influencer videos, or you see bad influencer videos and you see a good opportunity there.

But the strategy I used is just review what I had or what I had access to.

Okay, so I guess there’s like some further optimization to go compared to what you’ve done mostly.

And then you could take it a little bit further, basically.

Another thing that I wanted to know about is like, you know, there are kind of like side hustles or platforms where you post and you make money and then you stop posting and you just everything just crashes overnight and you just make no money anymore.

Is that like that?

Or is it more like SEO where it’s kind of like, you know, I call it gliding, you know, it’s like, you’re still kind of like, you’re still ranking, but you slowly go down as you as it goes.

Like how does revenue go if I stop posting for like a month, for example?

It does not drop much.

I would say that revenue fluctuates a lot more based on Amazon’s changes, because they will move things around.

I don’t, it would, you know, you could suggest they’re testing different things.

You could suggest that at different times of year, they move these what we call video carousels into different places.

That has a bigger fluctuation on your revenue than not making new videos.

I let’s see.

So just a quick, I won’t go through the whole timeline because we can, we can talk about that later if you want, but let’s go through the timeline.

Actually, let’s just do it now.

You want to do it now?

Yeah, let’s do it now.

All right.

Let’s cut into it.

So I got accepted to the program at the end of May in 2023.

So, you know, whatever that is, 14 months ago at time of recording, but whenever you’re listening to it, it could be a little bit longer.

And I got, I got 100 videos done in the first week.

Now, that’s probably abnormal.

I’ve come to realize and that’s fine.

But what it did was whether you get 10 videos done in the first week, 100 videos done in the first week, I was earning, I got, I was earning money on day three.

And it’s, it’s hard to like, and again, I’ve like built websites, I’ve sold websites for, you know, five figures, I’ve run six figure websites, like so I, I’ve made money online.

And it’s hard to describe what it’s like to start a new project and make money on day three.

It’s hard, like the motivation you get.

So if you’re maybe come from the blogging world, where you’re waiting six months before you even start to see, you know, traffic, let alone earnings, like this is so different.

It’s hard to underscore the dopamine effects of earning money, pretty much right away.

I made just over $1,000 in my first month, I hit, I think just over 200 videos in that first month.

So I was already starting to slide back from making that, that initial batch of videos.

The next few months, I grew into the two to $3,000 range, but tons of fluctuations.

July, August, September, coming to realize that, you know, summer, there’s a little bit of a lull, a spending lull on Amazon.

That’s probably why they do Amazon Prime Day in July, typically, then you got back to school, though.

So you transition from summer to fall, different products come into season, all your summer stuff, people stop buying all this stuff for the yard, they start buying all this stuff for the holidays and for warmer weather, we’ll get into seasonality, because it’s important.

And then you start to ramp up to the queue for spending season.

And so as we were ramping up to that, I was still in the two to $3,000 per month range, I was still cranking out anywhere from 35 to 75 videos a month going through all the products I bought previously.

Then we hit, then we hit the queue for sale season.

So November, Black Friday, November came in at over $4,000.

December came in over $4,000.

And I hit the 1000 video mark in December as well.

And so that was kind of a nice cherry on top, right?

Like tie the bow, did the queue for sale season.

By the way, I had friends who started around the same time as me who made over $6,000 during the queue for sale season each month.

So it’s really about what products you select and pick.

But then after that, I slowed down.

So that I hit the 1000 video mark.

We moved into the new year, January, February, typically very slow in terms of spending on ecommerce in general.

And so that did drop down to about $2,000 a month.

But by March, it was back up to about $4,000 a month, and has hung out in the three to $4,000 a month range ever since.

And even as we moved into the summer for my second summer now in the program.

Okay, so would you agree when I say like, it’s a good side hustle, and like you make a steady revenue, but it’s quite volatile, months to months, depending on the holidays.

And you can’t count exactly on receiving a set amount of money every month or something like this, right?

Correct.

There’s so many variables that if you get too far into the weeds, you’ll probably start to stress out over every little product, every little item, and where everything is in the seasonality.

Like, there’s a lot of variables from seasonality to Amazon moving things around to just a straight up volatility of the program to, you know, the fact that, you know, like you don’t maybe you have a lot of summer stuff.

So you do really well in the summer, but maybe you don’t have a lot of like, you know, you don’t decorate your house for Christmas, or you don’t have a lot of warm weather stuff, or you don’t live in an area, you may live in the desert, where it’s hot all winter, right?

So you don’t do as well in the winter, like these are variables you can’t really imagine until you’re going to the program, you’re like, Oh, I didn’t realize that.

So it’s great side hustle, especially if that’s the perspective, I would really feel so differently about the program, I think I’d be a lot more stressed out about all the things I can’t control if this was something I relied on every month for, say, paying my bills.

But aside of someone come out, I want to stress as much about all these variables that that get introduced.

I agree.

It’s like, it’s like, it’s kind of like putting audio eggs in one basket.

And like, another is essentially your traffic source and your conversion.

And so like, it’s really centralized into what platform and so that introduces mobile utility, like the way to stabilize the business is to play what I call the portfolio effect, where you would have like multiple traffic sources, multiple ways of converting that traffic.

And then you know, one goes up, one goes down, it doesn’t affect your business as much as the variation of that one single platform.

Here, you’re like exposed to extreme volatility, the trade off is very easy, basically.

Yeah, you get to take advantage of their traffic, like it’s amazing.

But it’s their traffic, like it is literally their page.

So you have to be okay with that volatility, like it’s their traffic, like we have this opportunity is phenomenal, but it’s their traffic.

And so that volatility is just part and parcel with the program.

So you mentioned some of your friends starting at the same time as you and having up to 6000 videos, like what’s the best performance of someone that you know, with this program?

Oh, man, I, there’s somebody who I started sharing about my journey on this on the on the podcast, the niche proceeds podcast, and someone started well after me.

And I mean, well, after me probably like end of summer.

So three, four months after me.

And if memory starts me correct, he was making just under or just over $10,000 in the month of December.

Now he went down again, going back to he from what I’ve learned from him, I never had a conversation, we just exchanged a few DMS and stuff on Twitter.

But I think he went down the path of purchasing products strategically to get that so he had some expenses built into that to my understanding.

But even Spencer, you know, my co host on the on the podcast, he started before me, but he and I hit the 1000 video mark right around the same time.

So you could say that we’re on the same path and his December.

And again, I keep saying December guys, that’s the big month, right November and December, that’s where you kind of get that extra swell of earnings.

His December was well over $6,000, you notice, because he just happened to pick and make some videos about some products that performed really well as as kind of like gift items, right.

And a lot of my items weren’t quite as popular during the sale season.

So you, again, it’s a little bit of luck, but you will experience an uptick during Q4, because that’s when people spend a lot of money.

And if you can get started on the program and get a bunch of videos live with a month or two or three before that Q4 sale season, I mean, you’re kind of starting at just the right time.

I mean, that’s why we’re pushing the course now, actually, it’s kind of a good time for people to learn about it.

There’s enough time, you know, to learn about the program, make some videos and actually get some proper earnings by the end of the year, which like would be a good timeline for most people.

So it’s like, if you use that, if you use the calendar, that’s included in the course, it’s actually going to help people pick the right products for the right timeline.

So yeah, I think good timeline right now.

Let’s talk about like the actual practicality of using the Amazon Influencer Program.

I know there’s different layers to the Amazon Influencer Program.

And you’re using like a specific one, like how does that work exactly?

Yeah, so there’s creator connections, there’s the Inspire program, there’s shoppable videos, there’s other stuff that I probably don’t even know about, because I’m just very laser sharp focused on this.

And it just wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be worth it, it was time to listen to me talk about those other programs.

I don’t know anything about them.

I know that one main distinction that people can listen to to help them understand, because it took me a while to get this is Inspire, basically at practical level is vertical videos.

Okay.

And shoppable videos at a very practical level are horizontal videos.

You won’t ever at current stead and historically speaking, you won’t ever see a vertical video as a shoppable video.

Okay, that can all change going forward.

I don’t know.

But that’s where we’re at right now.

So that helps people get their mind around it.

You’re doing horizontal videos for shoppable videos.

Inspire to my understanding is much more like, we’ll get into what is an influencer and how do you qualify.

But if you look at the term influencer, right, we know what that is, right?

That’s like a social media person who’s built up a following based on something they have influence on, right?

I am not an influencer, to be clear by that definition, but I am an Amazon influencer.

We’ll talk about those differences.

The Inspire program is from what I can see much more meant for true influencers.

Whereas if you’re not really an influencer, like no one really cares what you think about something like me, like think Jared, that’s what shoppable videos works really well.

Okay, yeah.

I mean, that was my next question.

Like, do they accept anyone because it’s called Amazon influencer programs are like, yeah, I’m not an influencer.

Or like, even like my personal accounts, like it’s like, I don’t really, I wouldn’t call myself an influencer, at least in a personal level on the shoppable item thing.

Like, does that everyone in?

Like, how do they work?

Yeah, they don’t let everyone in.

They have a they have an acceptance criteria.

This is what will trip a lot of people up, although I encourage people not to get tripped up by it, because it might sound difficult at first.

It’s not.

It’s not.

It just takes a plan and takes executing if you don’t have a qualifying account.

So let’s go through the qualifying accounts.

As of now, and this has been the case since I was looking to the program over a year ago, you have to qualify with one of four social media accounts is either a qualifying YouTube account, a qualifying TikTok account, or a Facebook or Instagram business page.

One of those four has to qualify.

Now, what does it take to qualify?

Good question.

They haven’t told us.

However, based on all the information that you have based on enough Facebook groups and, and all that it’s like, you need to have we’ll call it a couple thousand followers.

But the most important metric is those followers plus good engagement.

I don’t know how they’re able to see engagement, but they are able to see engagement.

So you can’t just drive a bunch of fake bots to follow your TikTok account and call it a day.

There has to be engagement on say your videos.

And so it’s the combination of those.

But the great thing is, you can apply every day.

It’s an automated process.

No one’s reviewing your application.

And you’ll either tell you’re right there that day, you’re accepted or you were not.

And you can go back and try the next day.

And so for a lot of people, the challenge is to get that qualifying account, but it’s really not as hard as it sounds, you know?

And how long does it take for them to like review account and tell you if you’re accepted in or not?

Instantive.

Oh, okay.

So you can just try, you can just do a little bit more social and just contact the next day and do that.

Okay.

That’s really interesting because like after checking the course, actually one of our team members, Jon, you know him, has actually like he wants to do this basically.

And so like that was his challenge.

It was like getting a social account approved, right?

And he started just by ads on TikTok and he bought 10 bucks and he got like a lot of engagement and quite a bit of followers.

That’s like, I don’t think he quite made it.

I think he’s going to spend like 50 to 60 bucks or something like this to kind of get to that point.

But like, it looks like it doesn’t take a lot of effort basically.

Like his trick was to post like videos of his cats or something like that.

And then people just like liked it like crazy.

He would just boost it a little bit with ad revenue, with that, but it’s like really cheap on TikTok.

And then, yeah, like pretty sure he’s going to get in at this point.

Like he’s, it’s not super hard basically.

And I’d encourage, this isn’t like, I haven’t ever heard of anybody getting kicked out for getting a social account and then like not posting to it.

I’m lucky in that the one I qualified with is one that is a YouTube account that I run for one of my websites.

So it’s still getting new content.

It still gets engagement.

I didn’t have to do any of that stuff.

I would just say like, if you want to be very safe, keep posting to whatever account.

If you’re starting a new account, like keep it live, keep it active.

Because as the influencer program grows, you know, we don’t know, they might start to, you know, go out and look at those.

They might not, but just that’s one thing to consider is like, in the vein of being an influencer.

And they do want you to be an influencer.

Like they want you to drive some traffic to that is the intent of the program.

So consider keeping it live, keeping pushing all that kind of stuff on it once you get it live, you know, so Jon can just post a cat video every week, you know, and hope that he keeps getting it.

Yeah.

If you have a cat, he could come in with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But like, all I want to say is like, it doesn’t seem like to be extremely difficult.

No, it’s not.

And the fact that you can try every day, it’s, it’s like, you know, you can basically fail and keep trying.

And if you use a little bit of ad spend, I think it can go quite fast actually.

I agree.

And that’s what I would do.

You probably make your money fast.

So after that, once you apply it, you can’t yet do those shopping videos, right?

Like what happens after that?

Yeah.

So it’s a good point.

There’s a second step to get shopable videos.

So at that point, you have a storefront, as they call it, they give you a unique URL, and it’s your storefront, and you can start creating a variety of things.

They call them idealists, you can actually do photos, which you would think I would be doing photos because I was a professional photographer, but they don’t seem to convert very well.

Videos are where it’s at.

And it’s shopable videos.

There’s a difference between getting your videos placed on site versus in your storefront.

Your storefront would be just fine if you had 100,000 eager followers that wanted to buy whatever you recommended, because then you could just send them to your storefront, that would be offsite traffic, right?

So it’s traffic you referred from off Amazon to your storefront to convert, you qualify, and you can start doing that now.

For those of us every day, every man, people like you and me, we don’t have eager followers waiting to buy whatever we recommend, we still need to qualify for shoppable videos, which means our videos will get placed on Amazon’s listings.

And for that, there’s a three video review process.

So you submit your first three videos, and they do get manually reviewed.

It can take anywhere from three days to months.

I’ve heard all of the above.

Mine got reviewed within a week.

But that was over a year ago, so who knows?

You can kind of join some various Facebook groups and stuff if you want to kind of keep track of where it’s at right now.

But yeah, so you got to get these manually reviewed, and you got to make sure that they’re good videos because you only get three chances.

If you get your videos reviewed and rejected three times, you’re kicked out of the program.

And so this is why it’s so important forever.

Yeah.

I’m sure there’s ways around that.

But you know, forever.

Yeah, that’s the rule.

So you got to make sure that at least your first three videos are pretty good.

From that point on, you know, you can do whatever you want, then we can start making videos that are based on what converts well for you and all that.

But those first three videos are going to get manually reviewed.

So you got to make sure they’re really good, because you only get a couple shots at it.

Yeah, that’s pretty scary, actually.

So like, while it’s easy to get in, like the first thing, the storefront thing, it’s actually it probably is a little bit challenging to get through.

How hard are they when they review the videos?

Like, do they expect some the new Transformers movie?

Or is that like, what was expected from my first three videos?

So I would say that this type of video you’re producing right now for this podcast is much more sophisticated than is needed.

And so if you’re thinking Mr.

Beast style YouTube videos, no, it’s not it’s not that.

However, if you’re thinking the kind of videos maybe your friends text you about their night out, they’re going to need to be better than that.

So somewhere in between.

I mean, there’s a lot of people that get their videos rejected in this process.

But it’s, but it’s also, but I’ve, but I’ve also seen tons of everyday people with no video experience, they get their videos accepted.

So it’s not something to worry about, but it’s something to take seriously.

How’s that?

Okay, yeah, that’s, that’s why we have a whole section on the first three videos in the course, actually, because I guess it’s quite important.

I actually think it’s a good thing that there’s a little bit of a barrier that probably brings you a lot less competition on the Amazon pages when you post your videos.

And if everyone could just go in and flood it with a videos or whatever, like probably you’d make a lot less money.

So it’s like, it’s probably something to welcome rather than to, to be afraid of.

You need to do that, right?

But I like that.

I like not being in competition with every other spam or something like this.

Well, it’s, it’s like, you know, it’s, it’s the way I liken it to, although not in any way, shape or form, because I have friends that are in the military.

This, I’m not trying to compare it directly, but they train and train and train and prepare so that when they’re actually involved in something in real life, like they’re so well prepared for it.

And in a very small microcosm, like this is training you on how to make good videos, right?

Like you need to make decent enough videos that people want to watch them and then buy it.

And at the end of the day, like that’s the point.

Like a lot of people ask me how many videos you get live.

That’s a good question.

But if you’re not making good videos, at least good enough videos, then it doesn’t matter.

People are going to just bounce right off your video and go on to somebody else’s.

And so a lot of the mechanisms you’re learning in these first three videos are really going to help you make really good videos and set that muscle memory up for how to make a decent influencer video.

So I agree.

I think it’s healthy.

I think it’s healthy to help keep all the junk out, but I think it’s also healthy because it just helps you get, it makes you do some training to get good enough to make videos scale after that.

It’s kind of like ranking round up reviews as well.

A lot of people are used to rank, but have terrible pages and make no conversions.

It’s like you need to make the conversion to make the money here on Amazon.

So it’s like you need to learn how to make that content.

And I guess that’s what they’re scanning for.

So if you’re in, you know, you can make videos that convert, I guess.

Yeah.

I think you said it exactly right.

Like driving traffic to blog articles doesn’t matter.

It’s important.

And it’s a first step.

But if all your reviews, if all your, if your copy is junk, if you’re, if you don’t have all the sales boxes in the right spot, if you’re called to action or terrible, whatever it is, you don’t convert, you don’t end up making money.

So yeah, it is about getting videos live and it is about volume.

And there’s a lot to that.

And no, these don’t have to be works of art and you don’t have to overthink them.

But if they’re not good enough, you’re not going to make as much money.

So talking about getting videos live, let’s just go through the process of creating a video, like kind of like an overview of that, right?

It’s like, can we just go from like how you pick your product to what happens after that?

It takes eight minutes.

So you shouldn’t, like if it takes more than eight minutes to explain, it’s crazy.

So go ahead.

So yeah, the best thing to think about and I’ve heard this described a lot and I get it.

Like when we say the term review, like a review video, most of us can then kind of get into the right ballpark of what this video is.

The reality, if we’re being specific, is it’s not a review.

You are not really doing the classic blogger style review.

What really the intent of the influencer videos are to help show people what they can’t see in the on-page images and description.

You know, like if you’re going to buy a shoe, you’re like, how big is it really?

How is the material really?

How, how would I put it on and tie it?

How far up my ankle does it really go?

Like sometimes you can’t see that in the pictures.

When you look at the description and they say it heats the water in four seconds, it’s like, I don’t really know what that means.

You’re looking at the picture of the tea kettle, the water kettle, and you’re like, it looks normal size, but how would that look next to my microwave?

And so the intent of the program and the videos you’re making is not so much to just go through all the stuff that’s already on the landing page.

Like you don’t need to tell them that it can heat to 1600 Watts of power and blah, blah, blah.

You can mention that if you want, but what people really want to see is how big it is, how it’s used, how to set it up, how to use it in action, how hard is it?

Is it difficult?

Do I have to have my full attention on it?

Is it?

And so really, instead of thinking about it like a review, you’re really just describing your usage of the product.

You’re describing the things you like about it.

You’re sharing something you might have done differently about it.

But in, in reality, when you look at it from that, it’s not a long video.

It’s one to two minutes for a very simple product.

Maybe it’s two to five minutes for a more complex product.

And then yeah, you’re right on the front end and on the back end, there’s not much time because these are products in theory you’re using, right?

Like going back to the tea kettle example, like that’s the tea kettle you make tea from every morning.

So it should be fairly simple for most of these products to be able to talk about it really easily.

This isn’t some, you know, a blogging environment where it’s a product that you have some familiarity with, but you’re comparing it against a product you don’t use, you’re having to, you know, use these kind of different abject descriptors to put it together.

It should be very simple.

And thus, it should be a very quick process.

I see.

So it’s more like a perspective rather than a review.

It’s kind of like our day in the life using this product.

Here’s what I like about it.

Here’s what I don’t like about this, like in real life, like, Oh, this kettle is really noisy, for example, like that would never be on the sales page.

But if you say that, then that’s going to help.

That probably won’t help conversions.

Unless you say something good about it that make people buy it anyway.

Well, that’s actually a great point.

I mean, you could say something like, Hey, this kettle, it’s noisier, but you want to know why it’s noisier is because it blows water twice as fast as my last kettle.

And so, you know, I kind of like that.

And you know, so you can say stuff like that.

And I that’s funny.

You mentioned that because my new tea kettle actually boils water about twice as fast.

And it does make a little more noise.

It’s like it is a little noisier, but it’s not that noisy.

And it’s awesome, because it goes really fast.

Like these are exactly the types of things you can talk about.

I was going to say, like, this is basically what you would say on your video, right?

It’s to your point.

Here’s the best way to think about it.

Here, let me just give you this kind of vision.

Like, let’s say that you wanted to buy a tea kettle, and you were looking at it and you were like, boy, it looks really good.

And you’re like, Oh, that’s right.

My buddy has this one.

If you texted your friend and said, Hey, I’m thinking about buying this tea kettle.

Could you just make me a quick video of what you think about it?

That’s pretty much exactly what an influencer video would be.

It’d be your buddy going like, Oh, yeah, man, like, here’s what I think about it.

And they’re not going to pull up the sales page and tell you like, this thing’s got 1600 watts of power, dude.

Like, right, like they’re gonna say, they’re not, they’re just going to tell you what they think of it.

That’s the best way I like to think about these videos.

Okay.

I see.

One thing as well is like, I know a lot of people in our audience don’t want to show their face.

Like they just don’t want their face on video for some, feels like it’s a general sort of thing.

Like I feel like kids don’t care at all.

But like, our generation, people don’t like that.

Do they have to show their face?

And is it better?

Is it worse?

Like, how does it work?

No, you don’t show your face.

I have on occasion to show something.

And I have not correlated any difference to showing my face versus not showing my face. 95% of my videos are faceless.

Okay.

That’s, that’s like a lot more approachable for a lot of people.

Like a lot of people have like this camera fright, right?

But if you’re just talking and we just hear the sound, it’s a lot easier to recall the video.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, you don’t have to worry about that part of the video.

Okay, that’s, that’s pretty good.

Talking about video setup, you said that you use your phone.

Like is that, is that all you use to record videos?

Out of the gate, all you really need is your phone.

That’s it.

You can hold the phone with one hand, demo the product with the other hand.

There’s other tools that can make it easier, you know, so you can get like something to hold your phone for you, whether it’s a tripod or like around the neck thing, they call it the neck mount.

So then you have both hands available to kind of manipulate the product and show it.

I, because I already had it anyways, I just use a little wireless microphone, because I own one anyways, from making video content and courses and stuff.

And I have one that plugs straight to the phone.

I use that because it controls the sound.

So as I move my phone closer or further, like the sound doesn’t change.

I can guarantee you don’t need it because I’ve watched a lot of influencer videos on these sales pages.

And most of them don’t have that.

But I think it’s a nice effect.

You get a tripod if you want, if you want to do more demo style, right, where you’re going to be away from the camera and demoing product instead of having it up close, but you don’t need to certainly.

You really just need the phone, but there are a few additional tools that can help.

Okay, so it’s like, basically, if you have a good phone, I feel like phones are good at stabilizing video at this point as well.

Like you don’t be in the gimbal or anything like that.

So yeah, I guess just your phone for the sound as well.

There’s a lot of like AI tools now that will actually like enhance the sound like in a crazy way.

So you can drag and drop your file.

And probably is good enough to capture the sound from your phone actually.

So okay, that’s not a lot of work.

Now in terms of editing videos, you say it’s very quick.

Do you edit videos at all?

Like how how does that go?

Do you use any tools or like, how does it work?

I rarely edit videos.

Okay, I started off editing them and quickly realized like, no one no one is so it’s certainly not essential.

There are times when you’re when you have a product, usually more of the expensive kind of like more sophisticated ones will meet this criteria, but you have a product where you’re like, man, I really got to kind of demo it in several stages, you know.

And so in that case, you could do a video clip and then wait a while or reposition and do another video clip.

But there’s like lots of info and editing software, I really recommend doing that I wouldn’t take it back to your computer and boot up Adobe Premiere and like that.

It’s a bit much.

It’s over.

It’s just overkill like, you know, even if you live in Premiere, I don’t know, I still think it might be overkill because you just don’t need to do that.

Most of my videos and I’m talking over 90% of my videos don’t require any editing.

They’re one take.

And frankly, if I mess up so much halfway through that it’s that would need editing, I just start the video over.

It’s actually quicker.

Okay, yeah, I think for like a two minute video, it’s faster to reshoot than it is to edit.

I guess if you’re into an editor, maybe something like CapCut would be fine on your phone or something like that.

Yep.

It’s free.

That’s what I use.

Yeah.

Okay.

CapCut is very good.

It’s very good on desktop too.

Like, if you want a free video editor, use that.

One thing that some people are going to be interested in, how it’s also is the process.

Like, can I can I actually outsource this to someone and is it viable economically?

Do you think?

Yeah, that’s a good question.

I mean, I have I played around with it a tiny bit.

And again, for me, I’m just so fast at making the videos.

To me, that’s more intriguing from the idea of being able to expand the amount of products you can have on your Amazon influencer program, the number of products you make videos about.

But for me, it was just easier to do it myself.

Spencer, again, Spencer Hawes, who also did the program with me at the same time, outsourced the whole thing.

And he and I had, I’ll be honest, probably very similar numbers the whole way through.

So it’s ironic that he and I took totally different approaches.

And he had a very successful approach.

And he goes through and talks about the number breaks down breakdowns and how to pay people.

The interesting thing about it is this falls under the category of UGC user generated content.

And there’s a whole swath of people on Upwork, Fiverr, and different job boards that are literally their freelance job is to make UGC content.

And so I know there’s a viable market for it.

I just I’m not really the one to talk about it.

But yes, you could outsource it.

And yes, you could figure that out.

But you got to kind of, you know, do some math on it.

That’s for sure.

Yeah, I was gonna ask, do you know if Spencer made a profit from me?

So like, yeah, yeah, he’s profitable.

Yep, he’s profitable.

And he breaks all that down and in stuff that he shared as well.

But he’s profitable.

I know he paid in the end, you landed on paying I think per video, just like a flat rate.

And you just find people who, you know, look kind of like me are pretty quick at it.

You know, I’ve thought about joking with Spencer.

I’m like, maybe I should start doing videos for you.

You know, you pay a nice flat rate, crank them out.

Maybe that’s a better rate per hour.

I mean, you can crank out a lot.

You could crank out a lot of videos.

But I’m like, well, I’ve already done an influence of videos.

I probably shouldn’t double dip.

That’s probably not against terms of service.

That’s probably against terms of service.

You’re going against your own videos as well.

Exactly.

I’m not doing that.

So yeah, that would be the model there.

All right, let’s talk about optimizing.

You’ve done this for over a year now.

If you had to start over, what would you do differently that you did when you started?

Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway I’ve gotten, and we can get it if you want.

But let’s be clear, like the data that Amazon gives you on this is paltry at best.

It’s like very sparse.

So you’re really left to your own intuition, I’ll say.

The 80/20 of it is, what are you selling?

Okay, why am I selling those?

Let’s try to figure out what it is about those videos that did well.

Half the time I’m like, I don’t know.

But a couple takeaways and probably the biggest takeaway of all is everyone right now in their head is doing the math like, oh, is it better to make like a lot of videos about low price stuff?

It’ll sell more of it, right higher volume?

Or is it better to make like fewer videos about high price stuff?

It won’t have as much volume, but the commission will be higher.

I have found the latter.

I have found that if I could make more videos about the higher price stuff.

And a lot of that’s just because when people make that buying decision, they want that your video content.

So they’re more likely to watch your video because it helps them make a decision about an expensive product.

And believe it or not, they’re also far less likely to return it.

When you buy something expensive, you might think like, oh, the returns will be higher.

But they actually aren’t because people take a lot more care, they actually do their research where they buy that.

So the returns are a lot lower.

On the flip side, some of this, you know, lower price stuff, people just press a button and they don’t even watch your videos.

They’ll glance over it, the videos don’t matter as much, they don’t get as many views, because we’re like, whatever, if I don’t like it, I’ll return it.

And then guess what they do, they return it, it returns it.

Even if you do get credit for selling it, you get a high return rate a lot of it.

And that’s not everything.

But just generally speaking, the more high I as time has gone on, I’ve really sought out every high price thing I can find in my house.

And it’s a good time to mention it.

By the way, you don’t have to have bought it on Amazon, it just has to be for sale on Amazon.

So like my wife will buy something at Walmart or Lowe’s or Home Depot or name your big box store.

It doesn’t have to be sold.

You don’t have to buy it on Amazon, it just has to be available on Amazon.

So sometimes we’ll buy something, I’ll be like, Oh, I didn’t see that in our sales list.

You know, but it’s nice, it’s products.

So that’d be my biggest takeaway in terms of optimizing is the higher price products seem to be a better use of time.

Yeah, okay, I can see that.

Like I was looking at it, right.

And I saw like reviews on toilet paper, for example, I was like, Who watches videos on toilet paper, before ordering it on Amazon.

Whereas if you buy a laptop, I guess it’s just a lot more likely.

Like you want to know how much it overheats, you want to know what the fan noise is, etc.

And you probably won’t get that from the sales page.

So it’s like I would watch the videos for that.

So yeah, it’s quite interesting.

Do you also like optimize your calendar?

So like maybe you, you know, like before Easter, you review like Easter evenings before Thanksgiving, maybe you’re gonna, you’re gonna talk about products that people would buy around then, etc.

Does that matter?

Like does the timing of upload matter as well?

Like is there some kind of strategy you can do around that?

Yes, the timing matters.

I mean, seasonality is much more important in this than I thought it was.

Okay, that was one of my mistakes of the first year is not not thinking seasonality was as important as it is.

So I know as annoying as it is, by the time I learned this, we got all of our Christmas decorations down in September.

It was still really hot out.

And it felt super odd to be going through a Christmas wreath, hanging on our front door and making a video about it when I was in a t shirt shorts and sweating my tail off.

But seasonality matters tremendously.

And yes, you you would be wise, although again, it’s not I still make great money without having any clue about this until the latter half of the year.

But yeah, seasonality does play into it.

You need to, if you want to optimize your results, you want to have that content counter dialed in.

And you want to be in sync with making both the big holidays, but also the seasons and you want to be in advance of it.

Yes, can you make a video and get it in the carousel within days?

Yes.

Are you is it safer to make it a month or two in advance or more to kind of give it more time to make its way into the carousel?

Yes.

Yeah, that was one of my things as well.

It’s like is Amazon biased towards fresh videos?

So then you would really need to time your upload, right?

Or are they more, you know, evergreen content?

It doesn’t matter, basically.

I’d love to have a good answer for you.

And you know that I have a data background.

So as much as I can look at the data on this, I do and I don’t, I can’t give you an answer.

I don’t know.

Okay, I will say that getting a video in the carousel is harder than keeping it in the carousel.

So what I mean is I found over time that once your video makes it in the carousel, it’s not there forever.

But it it’s it usually doesn’t go in and out.

It usually once it makes it in, it’ll usually stay in for a good run.

And so it’s about getting in the carousel, which to me is why I would rather be a little bit more front loaded than trying to get stuff in on the backside.

It does happen, by the way.

My story, I’ve told quite a bit, I’ll tell it right here is that in December, I earned over $4,000, right?

That was my biggest month on the program.

And the bulk of that, I would say, I don’t know, maybe a quarter of that income came from one product review video I made, I made it the month earlier, in the middle of November, while I was at a company, a 201 creative company retreat as my marketing agency at a company retreat in a cabin in Lake Tahoe.

So I made it with a product that I had used all week to live in this cabin.

And I made a video in the last day and uploaded it in the middle of November.

And that ended up being the so I sales as the caveat, like it’s it really you can get a video in the carousel within a week, and then it can go on to be your best seller.

But more often than not, giving yourself some time for it to work its way into the carousel, I found to be smart, because it tends to stay in the carousel for for a little while after you get in there.

Okay, so like you want to be there like maybe two, three months before whatever holiday?

Yeah, you’re targeting basically, okay, makes sense.

So it’s like, I guess you can make an optimized calendar around that.

So we have the calendar actually in the course, but like, it’s like actually makes a difference.

How economically valuable is it to buy items to review them?

I haven’t done it.

There’s plugins, Chrome extensions, different tools that help you identify gaps that are available.

You know, you’re looking for products that convert well, which we can use Amazon’s best seller ranking to determine, because you want a highly converting product.

People are already buying with or without your video, then you want a product that is has as an opening basically like that, that we can see there’s room for more Amazon influencer videos.

Now that doesn’t mean that if you make a video about something that already has a stacked carousel, you know, it’s already got a ton of videos, it doesn’t mean your video can’t make it in there.

But you know, we’re all about optimizations, and we’re all about going after gaps.

And so the gap would be as if there’s maybe one or two videos, but not a full carousel worth of videos.

So yes, there is a way there’s plenty of people that I know I don’t do it myself because it takes more time to like, go through.

Yeah, then your time, right?

And I talked about this a lot, like the ROI for me is what makes this program the most amazing is return on investment.

And so that’s it.

There’s two factors that go into that.

There’s how much money you make and how much time you invest.

And I don’t have to invest any money in the program because I’m not buying products to make videos about.

And I’ve optimized my time to where I’m just quickly making videos.

So if you’re going to go that route, you have to both buy product and invest time.

And so your return has to adjust accordingly.

That’s why I haven’t done it doesn’t mean it’s not a good strategy.

As a matter of fact, a lot of people that I know are doing that strategy.

But those are some of the things you have to look for to find products that would be a good opportunity to buy in anticipation of making the video on.

Now here’s the second thing that I’ll share with you what this is very much in the vein of side hustle.

You might not want to go that route.

But let’s say you know, you need a new, you know, I don’t know ceiling fan.

Well, maybe part of your decision on which ceiling fan to buy that you were already going to buy anyways, is by doing some of this competitive research to figure out which one has the biggest gap in the marketplace that also meets your criteria, right?

That’s where I know a lot of people do a little bit more work like, I have to buy that ceiling fan anyways, for my house, why don’t I buy one of the 10 that I’m looking at that meets some criteria where I might be able to get in the influencer spot to okay, I can see that.

And you know what I can see is like, let’s say you want to buy that ceiling fan, I would buy three review all three and return two or something as like, if you just buy items and return them, they will ban you eventually like they don’t like that.

But if you keep one of the items, there is the same product category, etc.

Like that’s pretty normal shopping behavior at that time.

And it’s like I feel like you could get a lot more bang for your buck for every purchase you make, right?

That’s exactly right.

Yeah.

And it is very normal.

Like my wife when we’re like getting a new rug, she’ll buy a couple and you know, you’ll buy 20.

And maybe you can I don’t know, feel like narrow it down, right?

And then we’ll get like two or three and look at all of them.

And it’s like we’ll keep one.

So yep, you’re exactly right.

Yeah.

I also heard of people getting items for free through this program to review them.

Do you know about that?

Yeah, that is typically done through what’s called their creator connections program, where they have different brands that are looking to get influencers to create videos for them.

So they’re actually almost inside of this creator connections, creating campaigns where they’re looking for influencers.

Now, most of them are not offering free product at this point, there was a time period before I got on that, you know, brands were throwing product at people.

But I think as a program has expanded, they found there’s probably enough people willing to that either already own it or willing to buy it or that kind of thing.

But I have a lot of people who have success with reaching out to brands proactively.

I mean, yeah, I feel like you guys have done a podcast on how to link build and how to do outreach.

I feel like it’s very similar to what I’ve heard you guys talk about, ironically, not quite as cumbersome, but you’re kind of reaching out to brands and looking to get product.

Obviously, at some point, the brands might reach out to you if you get to a certain place, I will say, I haven’t bothered doing it.

Here’s why is because I’m not actually much of an influencer.

I think the brands would rather send someone product who’s going to make an influencer video, but also posted on their socials that also get lots of engagement.

And since I’m not incredibly popular on social media, I haven’t bothered because I think the brand really wants to work more with people.

But you can always find brands that are willing to do it no matter what that is.

That is what I will say, but it’s harder if you’re not truly a social media influencer.

Yeah, I need to get like that.

I kind of like see two ways to run this is like either you maximize your profit for as little time as possible.

And you aim to make like three to seven care months or something like this.

Or you really go all in and you do all these things.

And potentially you could make a lot more money, but then that becomes your full time gig.

And you’re exposed to that volatility that we talked to earlier, because if Amazon changes the way they display videos, etc, that could be a lot more dramatic if you’re spending so much more time on it.

Four hours a week, like you can you can recover if they change things a bit.

But if you make it your main thing, then I would say that would not be my preferred route on this right now.

So I agree 100%.

Couldn’t agree more like you can either go the route I’ve gone, which is about optimizing your time, the ROI is all about your time and dollars out and you’re trying to maximize the return for as little amount of time.

That’s the true side hustle vein, right?

Like we’re just doing this on nights and weekends, we’re just trying to do this.

But I mean, look at a different strategy to your point.

Like you just had Sammy Allard King on the podcast a little while ago.

And so Sammy would be great on the influencer program.

He’s got a really substantial Instagram following.

And he’s built a business out of that Instagram following.

And he can also do the influencer program with that at the same time.

And he could promote products, financial products and financial things to his audience along with so the influencer program for him would butt would butt Trist nicely up against a business model he’s using social media for.

So to your point, you can grow this, but you’d want to have multiple irons in the fire.

So you’re not just on platform risk with Amazon.

Yeah, you don’t make this the center of your business.

It’s always a side income, basically.

I agree.

Do you think this is ever going to get oversaturated?

Oh, yeah, 100%.

Yeah, I do think long term.

I do think long term now, you know, I say that and do I think it’s gonna happen tomorrow?

No, no, like, I think long term, all these things change.

And so I think over time, this program, like so many other things will mature.

And as it matures, it will change.

And as it changes, those of us who had better opportunities in the early days will get disgruntled and complain, and people who are new to it more remind us it’s still really good.

And that you never should have put all your eggs in that basket anyways, and we’ll round and round we’ll go right.

This is how the internet works.

But by oversaturated, I don’t mean like not a good opportunity.

Just yes, as time goes on, I think more and more people are going to get on it and more and more people are going to take advantage of this.

And more and more optimization will happen, which goes back to why I say like, don’t shortchange yourself like make good videos, make videos that are really helpful, because long term, those videos will will stand the test of time.

If Amazon ever gets to the point where we start seeing them truly keep videos in the carousel that are performing the best, which I haven’t seen any evidence of that yet, but it would make sense as they gather more data, they’ll start to keep the videos that lead to higher conversions.

Well, what’s gonna lead to higher conversions, longer watch time, more engagement, people buying more from you for what you’re saying like, so make good videos.

And it’s only going to help future proof you as the, you know, as this as this program matures over time.

Yeah, I agree.

It’s like, you know, all new platforms tend to offer an outside opportunity compared to the amount of resources you have to put in, right?

It’s like, that’s how they attract people, they pay better than other opportunities, they bring people in, that makes the whole thing work for them, they have enough videos to show, etc.

When essentially supply and demand, right?

Then when is the supply matches the demand?

That’s when the incentives start to decrease, basically.

And eventually, if there’s more supply than demand, then incentives decrease further.

So it’s really like a balancing act from these platforms on how much they pay.

We’re kind of in the honeymoon period of this, I would say right now, probably, was like, they pay a lot for, you know, very easy to do videos.

Like we did the math, actually, right?

It’s like the RPM on Amazon Influencer is nine times higher than YouTube’s RPM.

Now, provided you can get a lot more views on YouTube, right?

It’s like, so it’s like, it balances out.

But like, also, it’s so much easier to make one of these videos and make a YouTube video, right?

I make YouTube videos, by the way, I have a YouTube channel.

And I’ve made like 18 YouTube videos and like 1200 influencer videos.

So if you want to side by side, I couldn’t agree more.

Exactly.

And which one took more time?

That’s the question.

Probably 18 YouTube videos.

Exactly.

So it’s like the RPM is insanely good right now for what it is.

Like, it’s, I don’t think that’s going to be sustainable in like three, four, five years.

I think there’s an opportunity for like the next two, two, three years, probably, like by the time it actually fills up, especially if there’s a, like, it’s essentially there’s a barrier to entry with the first three videos and so on.

It’s not like everyone can go in.

But yeah, I think eventually, eventually, it will level off a little bit, or potentially it will just be harder to get your videos in the pages and that kind of reduces your earning per video and, and level things off basically.

Yeah, I agree 100%.

You know, but the new opportunities will come up with that, for example, exactly.

Yeah, Walmart has one of these for the record.

And as you said, the opportunities are not as good right now.

But who’s to say that maybe as Amazon’s opportunities change, Walmart’s won’t change too.

Yeah.

Like, there’s other e-commerce brands.

So, you know, could this get saturated more than likely?

Will other opportunities come as a result of that?

Yeah, more than likely.

So, you know, not only that, but I feel like you’re picking up skills that can help you with other areas of your online marketing carrier here.

So it’s like, if it’s a two to three year opportunity to like learn how to do videos and get paid the most out of any platform, like it’s a really, really good learning experience, where like paying for most expenses, making some money, etc.

And then like, yeah, you talked about Samuel Larking, right, who does these short videos on Instagram, builds an email list from them and then just runs them through sales files.

Like, essentially, you could evolve what you’re doing to that.

Like you could you could become a short video, even a full YouTuber eventually, as you’re learning how to make better and better videos, you learn how to present on camera, you learn, you get feedback on which videos worked well, and then you you learn.

It’s like, I feel like while there’s a limited opportunity here, there’s a lifetime opportunity to learn something and get paid for it, basically.

And that’s pretty cool.

And as you start to mature in the influence program, I start to run out of videos, like let’s say you’re down to the point where you’re just making videos about things you purchased.

Remember, I talked about there’s a whole marketplace for UGC content creators.

And so you can go on upwork, and you can start taking these skills you’ve honed, where you now have made hundreds of videos, and you’ve got the process, you’ve got the lighting, and you’ve got the sound, and you’ve got the camera set, you got it all done, it’s all dialed and you’re ready to go.

Then you can also start freelancing that for other brands.

There are lots of brands looking into it.

So there’s so many opportunities that come as a result of these skill sets you create.

Yeah.

And I guess the UGC market is pretty big as well.

So yeah, it’s like, there’s going to be lots of demand.

Okay, so you probably, when we talked off camera, you told me a lot of people asked you about this, etc.

What kind of profile should be looking into starting this?

What kind of people should do this?

And what kind of people should not do this, and would be better off doing something else?

Yeah, so I would say that the perfect type of avatar is someone who has a few hours a week, someone who doesn’t overthink things, and someone who is really comfortable just talking about something about a product.

It doesn’t have to be Picasso, it doesn’t have to be Shakespeare, doesn’t have to be Dickens, it doesn’t have to be perfect.

You don’t need to have great video editing, video filming, video editing skills, but you need to be able to talk about something in a way that makes sense.

And someone who has a couple hours a week.

And if you’re saying like, wow, that’s a pretty wide range of people.

Yeah, I mean, I talk about this with my neighbors, and all of the, all the people who who have nine to fives, you know, are really like, hmm, this is interesting, I could do this maybe on like a Tuesday night, all the stay at home moms are like, hmm, I dropped the kids off at school, I could do this.

A lot of people who are doing online marketing, they’re looking for a new, a new area to go into to kind of kind of flatten some of the volatility that they’re experiencing.

They’re yours.

I know you’re talking about right now.

Google updates, right?

Yeah, Google updates.

Let’s just be cutting the chains.

I started this.

Ultimately, yes, it’s a side hustle.

And yes, I share about side hustles a lot in my email newsletter, on weekend growth, and we talk about the podcast as well.

So I have other reasons.

But honestly, May 2023, we were staring at AI in the face and didn’t know what it was going to be doing chat GPT was six months old.

And we really didn’t know where blogging was going.

Little did we know was actually Google, we should be the most worried about not AI, ironically, but you know, ultimately, it was a hedge.

It was a fun hedge.

It was a hedge I knew that I could do and I could just see it through but it was a hedge.

So for you online marketers, that it’s a good avatar as a hedge.

But it’s more than just a hedge for online marketers, it’s really interesting as I talk to people in my community that have no online marketing experience and their ears perk up consistently.

So I agree.

I feel like it’s more I put this more on the beginner side.

Like I really feel like people who the people who wanted to be like a quick blog and make like three to three to seven grams a month type thing, like do this, it’s just like it’s the best opportunity right now for you.

You need to make video, okay, but you don’t need to show your face, you can use your phone, you don’t really need to edit.

It’s pretty simple and you probably have enough items at home to try it out and see if it works for you.

It’s not really complicated.

Now, for the more pro people who listen, like people who can run sales funnels, people who can learn paid traffic, people who could launch an income store, people who can be out of your business, etc.

I would say it’s probably not for you, in my opinion.

I feel like it’s like for these people, there’s a bit of a ceiling on this, I feel like it’s like it feels like the most people you talked about these guys who makes like 10k amounts or something.

Like I haven’t heard of someone making 100k amounts from these.

And I don’t know anyone.

Yeah, and I think it’s like, it might happen, like there might be like five people who do that, you know, but it’s like it’s not necessarily like that huge business growth that you’re expecting.

It’s that little side hustle thing like what people started blogs for on the side, but not really making a real business like that’s, in my opinion, the kind of people who should consider this because it’s a lot easier than ranking a blog on Google at this point.

Yeah, the majority, if we look back historically at like a lot of the audience that you guys, you know, I first started listening to Authority Hacker probably all the way back to like 2017 when I was starting a blog.

I know that’s how long I’ve been listening to you guys.

And you guys helped me figure out how to start a blog like a website, right?

I wasn’t thinking about brand building when I was starting that I take myself back to 2017.

I wasn’t trying to build a brand.

I was trying to make four figures online.

You know, like I started to start a website and that’s the kind of person that this is perfect to if you got all those skill sets and you’re talking about how to start five and six figure projects, this probably isn’t going to be worth your time.

But most people aren’t starting to five or six figure projects are trying to start a three and four figure project.

I agree.

And it’s like, again, it builds up these skills that will eventually lead you to have the skills to start considering doing these bigger projects.

But like, it builds experience in a fun and fun way that can make money quickly.

What I really like about this is the speed, right?

You mentioned you make money like three days after and it’s like, you know, last time I started a content site, it took like eight months to start making money or something.

And everyone’s talking about this lately, right?

Because, you know, we’re talking about the hell of a content update, but like the difference just to be clear, because again, 2017, I sat down after coming home from my day, I ran the company at the time, but my day job, but I’d write a blog post about something, right?

And the difference between writing a blog post and making sure all the headers are optimized and all the internal link anchor text is optimized.

All the rules, and there are rules here, by the way, there are rules, but they’re so different.

There are rules you need to pay attention to, but they’re not those types of rules.

They’re not constricting.

They’re not restricting.

They’re not squeezing the enjoyment out of it.

This is like, instead of writing that blog post and not say that’s wrong, but just for those of you who are feel a little bit overwhelmed by that, this is like, oh, this is the coffee cup that I use every day.

You’re telling me I just got to press record and say something coherent about it.

That’s, that’s what we’re talking about.

It’s so much more freeing for so many people.

Yeah.

It’s more, it’s more authentic basically.

Okay.

That’s pretty much it.

Did I, is there anything that I should have asked you that I did not ask you and that you would have asked if you run this on the niche process podcast?

Fine.

Yeah, it’s true.

Oh, you were talking before you hit record about some of the differences in how we do podcasting.

They’re subtle by the way, but no, this was great.

I mean, I think that we covered the high level of it and I think that’s what’s important.

However, the detail, the devil’s in the details because of our conversation from earlier, return on investment, ROI.

The real key to this is that you’re maximizing your time.

The biggest mistake I see people making, and I talked to a lot of people to, you know, we just end up cutting conversations about it, is that for whatever reason, and there’s like 10 different reasons as we get into the details, but for whatever reason, they’re taking way too long on the videos and therefore they’re just not making very much money from an ROI standpoint.

And so that’s where the, that’s where, that’s where this goes from being, is this too good to be true?

It sounds amazing to, oh, that’s where you really make your money.

You really make your money by optimizing the process, getting a really good process in place.

So you’re actually making conversion focused videos in three to eight minutes each.

That’s, you have to do that.

I just want to say that’s where the course comes in, right?

Because if you end up spending like half an hour per video, then obviously you’re making three times less money per hour.

And so like the course that’s coming out is basically your process, what you use and how you create the videos like over the shoulder, showing you recording videos and stuff.

I saw all the footage.

That was pretty fun.

And that’s, that’s pretty much the key to this because if you cut the earnings, if you divide it by three, like it’s okay money, but it’s not great.

It’s all about building that process basically.

And that’s what I liked about, about your approach in general.

It’s like, you’re not necessarily maximizing the revenue, but you’re maximizing the revenue per hour spent and per dollar spent basically, which is what allows it to be a pretty high paying side gig for you.

Basically.

It’s not uncommon for me to get a message from someone saying, I really think I’m going to get accepted this time around with my three videos.

I spent all day on them.

And I’m like, okay, as so long as once you get accepted, you never spend more than 10 minutes or 15 minutes on a video going forward.

You know, like it’s all about that.

That’s how you keep the momentum up.

And that’s how, because you really don’t know at the end of the day, the, the what we, what, what I can tell you from having 1200 videos in the program is I only make money on about 150 to 200 of them.

And so it is a volume game.

It’s a volume game of high quality videos.

You can’t short circuit high quality convertible videos, converting videos.

You can’t just say buy this product because then people aren’t going to watch your video long enough to, for you to get the credit for it, but you also can’t make junk because if you don’t say right, you have to make good videos, but it’s a volume game.

And so that’s where the devil’s in the details, right?

We talked about this.

It’s easy.

It’s fun.

You got all this stuff in your house already.

But the reality is, is if you’re not playing the volume game, you won’t have enough videos in to, to, to just play the Russian roulette game of which ones are going to make it and make all your money.

And then that’s where you make your money.

So yeah, but with a process, it is three, four, five, eight minutes.

With a process, you can just push forward, get videos live.

And because you’re doing them in the right way, people are going to watch them and they’re going to, you know, they’re going to buy stuff because Amazon is the best converting e-commerce platform in the entire world.

And that’s the day of the day.

Why this is so special.

Yeah.

I was in a mastermind last weekend in London and it’s like big e-coms guys don’t buy PPC traffic to their store anymore.

They buy PPC traffic to Amazon directly because it makes them more money in the end.

So that, that gives an idea of like how crazy conversions are on Amazon actually.

There you have it.

All right.

Well, Jared, thanks for joining in a podcast.

If you guys want to hear more about the course and when we’re launching it, there will be a link in the description, whether in your audio podcast or the video podcast.

So watch out for our email.

I think it’s coming like a week after the podcast, but we’ll let you know.

And Jared, thanks for joining in.

It was a pleasure.

It was an honor.

I, like I said, listen to you guys for a good number of years.

You guys have been so helpful for me.

Happy to be on here and talk about this.

All right.

So this was my interview with Jared Bauman.

I’m personally excited for the Amazon Influencer Program.

And I can tell you for a fact that after going through the training that we co-developed with him, we have two team members, Matt and Jon, that are already jumping onto the bandwagon and starting to upload their own review videos to Amazon because of how easy it is to generate a decent side income with little time and effort on your end.

So if you’re interested in learning more about the upcoming course, it’s coming up next week.

So sign up for email list or toyhiker.com/subscribe is where you can do that.

And if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, like, and we’ll see you in two weeks for another one.