Happy Thursday!

Really quick before I dive in, I get this question all the time: “How do I actually make money with all these AI tools?” Thats why I built Playmakers- my AI agency program where I teach you how to charge local businesses $500-$5,000 a month to set up and manage AI for them. You get three live calls a week, plug-and-play automation templates you can deploy for clients on day one, a 5 Day First Client Challenge, and my personal lead lists with businesses in your area ready to connect.120+ people are already in the community building agencies right now. Go to playmakersai.com and check it out.

Okay, let’s get into it!

I sat down with a guy named Trevin a couple weeks ago when I was in Utah. He makes over $10,000 a month and spends 4/5 hours a week doing it. He films short reviews of products he already owns, uploads them to Amazon, and collects a commission every single time someone watches one of those videos and then buys the thing. And he never has to share the videos on his personal social media.

Two and a half years ago, Trevin filmed a quick video of an umbrella base at a pool. That one video still pays him somewhere between $300 and $500 a month. It made him $150 the day before we talked. He shot it once, in about 60 seconds, and it has been printing him money ever since.

He roped a bunch of his family and friends into the hustle too. His brother-in-law filmed 700 videos in his first week and now averages $25,000 to $30,000 a month. A mom of four up in Idaho does this part time and clears $12,000 a month. Trevin's sister ramped to $15,000 a month within three months and quit her six-figure corporate job. Grandparents in their seventies are doing it, and so are people who can barely work their own phones.

Anyone can do this. I want to walk you through exactly how it works so you can start this week. And if you get fired up about this idea like I did, find out more during our conversation on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Why This Exists

Amazon has over 30 million products and hundreds of millions of shoppers. When you post a video to Instagram, you are competing against every other video ever posted. When you post a review to Amazon, you are only competing against the other people who reviewed that exact product. A pink Fourth of July Stanley tumbler has its own tiny pool of competitors, and that one fact is what makes this work. You are not driving traffic anywhere. You are stepping in front of the traffic Amazon already has.

Step One: Get Approved

There are two approvals. The first one is simple. Google "Amazon influencer program," click the link, and sign up. You can use your existing Amazon account or a fresh one, because it makes no difference to whether you get approved. Then you link a public social media account, and it can be Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. It has to stay public, because Amazon uses it to confirm you are a real person. TikTok tends to be the easiest, and people get approved with as few as ten followers, though you do need some post history and it can take a month or two to season the account. If you are protective of your personal Instagram, just spin up a new TikTok account, post a few videos, and link that one instead.

The second approval is a hidden one. The won’t give you tips or tell you why you’re denied. To get your videos actually placed on product pages where humans can see them, you have to upload three videos that real Amazon reviewers watch and approve. You get three tries, and if you blow the third one you start over from scratch. So here are some tips from Trevin:
-Keep them clean. Do not show license plates, street signs, shipping labels, or any personal information in the frame.
-Avoid trigger words like "free," "buy now," "BPA free," or "eco-friendly," because those are claims that can get a seller sued.
-Pick boring, safe products for these first three, like a phone tripod, a backpack, or a soccer ball.
-Stay away from vitamins and baby products, because health and safety claims get flagged instantly.

Step Two: Find Products You Already Own

Log into Amazon and open your order history. Anything you bought that is still selling on the site is fair game to review, and you can go back ten or fifteen years. You do not even need to have bought it on Amazon in the first place. If the product is sold there, you can review it, which means you can walk around your house, borrow your mom's order history, or grab something at an Airbnb and still tag it.

The thing that separates people making a few hundred dollars from people making thousands is competition. You want products that are still selling well but have very few reviews on them already. There are tools that show you the true number of competing videos on a listing, since Amazon only displays six but there may be a thousand sitting behind them. As a beginner, choose the products that sell steadily and have low competition. ***You can 100% do this without tools, but it does help you choose winning products more quickly.

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Step Three: Make The Video(s)

Film horizontally, not vertically, because the data shows horizontal reviews perform better and surface more often on desktop, where the serious shoppers do their research. You want decent lighting and decent sound, and an iPhone mic in a quiet room is plenty to start with. Aim for 30 seconds- 2 minutes because longer watch time tells Amazon's algorithm to show your video to more people.

Talk like you are telling a friend about something you actually like. You do not have to show your face, so you can film just your hands, or write a script in ChatGPT and record a voiceover over footage of the product. One trick Trevin uses is telling viewers up front what he is going to show them at the end, which keeps them watching longer.

Two rules will save you a lot of pain. Tag the exact product, meaning the exact brand, color, and version, because mistagging is a fast way to get flagged. And never say the price or push a hard "buy now," because Amazon flags both of those too.

Step Four: Turn On The Big Money

Amazon's standard commissions are small, running from half a percent up to about 3 percent depending on the category. The actual money lives in something called Creator Connections, where brands offer boosted rates of 10, 20, even 50 percent to get creators reviewing their products. Of the $12,000 Trevin earned in one recent month, $10,000 came from these boosted rates and only $2,000 came from standard commissions. Once you have posted twenty or thirty videos, you unlock access, so from that point on you prioritize products that carry a boosted rate.

Step Five: Scale It

Your videos compound. Each one sits there earning for years, so the best move is simply to make more of them. Once you have a track record, brands start sending you products for free after a single message with your address, and you can resell those on Facebook Marketplace on top of the commissions you earn. You can also cross-post the same videos to YouTube with an affiliate link, which earns Trevin an extra $500 a month from content he already made once.

Here is the math that matters. A conservative beginner makes a few hundred dollars a month. Get consistent and learn product selection, and $1,000 to $3,000 a month is realistic. Trevin clears over $10,000 on four or five hours a week, and the outliers with a few hundred compounding videos are pushing $25,000 to $40,000. You are not risking capital or inventory to find out where you land, and the only real way to fail is to never upload.

So log into Amazon tonight, connect a social account, pull up your order history, and pick three simple products sitting in your house right now. Film them, get your three approvals, and build from there. And again- if you get fired up about this idea like I did, find out more listening to our conversation on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Have a great week!

Chris

P.S. I share deep dives on business ideas and complete playbooks three times a week on YouTube and every podcast platform.