Amazon Affiliates
Creator earnings meet trusted Amazon recs
Problem
By 2014, influencer marketing was exploding on Instagram and YouTube, but Amazon’s Affiliate Program wasn’t meeting creators’ needs. Managing multiple links was clunky, and influencers struggled to monetize at scale. Customers wanted trusted recommendations in one place, and Amazon wanted to strengthen its social commerce presence.
My Role
As the sole design lead, I shaped the product vision and guided it from early beta to launch:
Scoped and validated the MVP concept of “Vanity URLs.”
Partnered with marketing and engineering to integrate with existing Amazon initiatives.
Defined roadmap enhancements including storefront personalization and brand partnerships.
Execution
Designed influencer onboarding and earnings dashboards.
Created the customer-facing storefront experience with follow and discovery features.
Co-designed beta experiments with influencers to validate adoption.
Outcomes & Impact
41,000 influencers received vanity URLs in the first week.
32.4% of active influencers generated $34M in revenue in the first month.
“Follow” buttons on storefronts had 4x higher engagement than other placements.
Press coverage in Cosmopolitan and TechCrunch.
Strategic Takeaways
Design systems for ecosystem shifts (influencer → customer → Amazon).
Validate early with core users (beta with influencers created momentum).
