In late fall of 2022, Brooke JuLyn transitioned from stay-at-home mom to full-time influencer.
But the primary platform where JuLyn posts her frequent videos isn't YouTube, TikTok or Instagram. Instead, JuLyn is building her career as an internet celebrity on a site known less for likes than for shopping carts: Amazon.
To understand JuLyn’s decision one need look no further than a recent clip she posted to Amazon Inspire, the internet giant's version of TikTok, showing her fans what she wears to walk her dog.
The 41-year-old blonde thrusts beige New Balance sneakers at her smartphone camera before lacing them up over white Nike mid-calf socks—neutrals that satisfyingly offset her matching hot pink sports bra and bike shorts. It’s a perfect outfit, and with just three taps on Inspire, users can purchase any of these items on Amazon.
“Amazon is just so much easier to shop than platforms like Pinterest and Instagram,” JuLyn tells Fortune. “With [Amazon Inspire], everything is rolled into one where you can just shop right from it.”
Inspire, which is embedded in the Amazon Shopping app, is the company's latest push into the creator economy. Though Amazon Inspire only launched nationwide in May, influencers like JuLyn report high degrees of satisfaction with the mobile-first platform.
The powerful combination of content and commerce is at the heart of Amazon’s campaign to woo creators and influencers to its platform. Coupled with its other initiatives—notably Amazon Affiliates and live shopping network Amazon Live—the internet e-commerce giant has emerged as an important player in the creator economy; and one that is increasingly competing with the big social networks to attract talent.
The value of shopping hasn’t been lost on social media networks. Last week, YouTube launched a nationwide Shopping affiliate program for YouTube Partners with 50 brands that range from Nordstrom to Sephora. And ByteDance-owned TikTok has been tinkering with its version since November, where commission rates are set by the individual brands, according to Insider.
But with its massive catalog of retail products, in virtually every category imaginable, Amazon has an advantage in this corner of the creator economy that other social companies may struggle to match.
“Amazon is becoming the retail version of YouTube,” says Duke McKenzie, CEO of talent management company PRJT Z that manages top creators including the world’s most popular TikToker Khaby Lame in the U.S. “You are able to put Amazon affiliate links and all their programs in everything you do, making it one of your strongest sources of endemic revenue—like how YouTube is.”
From celebrity storefronts to TV-like shopping
Amazon's social products are, at their cores, content to inform shopping decisions, with influencers like JuLyn acting as charming and deeply knowledgeable sales associates.
The oldest and most significant aspect of Amazon’s creator initiatives is its affiliate network called Amazon Influencers. Through this program, originally launched in 2017, creators ranging from small-town moms to Charli D’Amelio curate their favorite products on their own Amazon "storefront" and earn a commission of 3%, according to a source familiar with the program. This may seem low, but it’s a relatively low lift for creators and an easy way to monetize daily content by stitching it to shopping habits. Creators do so by simply linking their Amazon Storefronts in bios, and calling on viewers to visit the link in bio to purchase products.
Eric Bogard, CEO and founder of talent management company UnderCurrent, represents top Amazon product reviewers and knows these small commissions can add up. He says that some of the top influencers on his roster can generate over $1 million per year from Amazon commissions.
With frustration from creators on Meta and TikTok about lack of compensation, many creators see promoting Amazon storefronts as a no-brainer. “Amazon Storefronts are doing really well because you can buy everything in one place—from your home to your clothes to your beauty; it’s two clicks and you’re done,” says Christina Jones, executive vice president of talent management at Digital Brand Architects, which manages 200-plus creators.
Another significant initiative is the company’s live shopping platform called Amazon Live. This platform has around 100 livestream shows that range from Try Tech Live, where minor celebrities test SkyMall-esque objects like a $49.99 Bluetooth speaker that resembles a fire torch, to seasonally appropriate episodes with big-time creators like Olivia Culpo. Amazon has never discussed how well this content performs nor how much it has invested into the platform, and did not provide a comment by Fortune's deadline.
Where affiliate shopping is common across socials, live shopping in the U.S. has been relegated to kitschy network TV channels HSN and QVC. Amazon is banking on the fact that influencers could make live commerce fun and modern, propelling the medium to the mainstream popularity it enjoys in China where, for example, influencer Li Jiaqi amassed 63 million viewers to a two-hour livestream. (Fortune attended My Summer Beauty Routine with Olivia Culpo, which aired at 5pm ET on June 15 and amassed a paltry 750 concurrent viewers for the one-hour show for comparison.)
“The [live] trend is growing,” says Peter Kennedy, founder and president of influencer marketing and social intelligence platform Tagger about live shopping on U.S. social media networks. “I don't think it's completely there from the live shopping standpoint, but we're seeing brands put a lot of effort towards it. For me, it's still unknown whether or not it will overtake the majority of social commerce.”
Can Amazon turn shoppers into an audience?
While Amazon has a formidable head start in e-commerce, it’s still playing catch-up when it comes to social media savvy. Of course creators and influencers are eager to tap into new revenue streams, but having a social platform with an audience is vital.
One problem in Amazon’s social ambitions is that it doesn't have separate social platforms; all of its creator-driven initiatives live in URLs of Amazon.com and Amazon Shopping. This makes the content-to-commerce pipeline smoother, but requires training users to go to amazon.com for creator-made content.
“It's difficult because people don't go to Amazon for content or recommendations; they go to TikTok or YouTube or Instagram for that,” says Bogard, the CEO of talent management company UnderCurrent. “And Amazon is very much viewed as a platform for shopping, but I know they're trying to change that.”
Amazon has a nice base to work with, including its 200 million Prime users, who watch long-form content and listen to music through Amazon. With Amazon Inspire, the recently launched TikTok-like product, the company is giving shoppers on its commerce app a taste of social content.
If Amazon shoppers decide they like watching videos by influencers on Inspire, the opportunity could be especially lucrative. Whereas social media companies try to discern their users’ interests by analyzing the content they’ve watched, from cat videos to cliff hawking, Amazon can recommend creator-made content to users based on their past purchases. And since the videos on Amazon Inspire are designed to drive sales, creators are reaching an ideal audience.
“Amazon has a better chance [than TikTok] of having [creator-led shopping] be effective in the short-term because of their experience with ecommerce,” says Khaby Lame U.S. manager McKenzie. “When we talk to creators, if they want to leverage [an affiliate] strategy, we push them towards Amazon.”
