Amazon lets creators in India earn commissions on YouTube and Pinterest as its influencer program hits 200,000
The retailer says its India creator base doubled in a year and that most participating creators are based outside the big metros. The festive season is the first test of the new setup.
Amazon is letting eligible creators in India tag its products in YouTube and Pinterest content and earn commission on qualifying purchases, the company said in a post on its India newsroom in late October. It said the Amazon Influencer Program in India has grown to more than 200,000 creators, double the figure a year earlier.
According to Amazon, creators have helped close to 40 million customers shop on Amazon.in this year. The rollout comes during the Great Indian Festival, Amazon's main festive-season sale.
How it works
On YouTube, Amazon has joined the platform's Shopping affiliate program in India. Creators can tag Amazon products in Shorts, long-form videos and livestreams, and viewers who tap a tag can buy on Amazon.in, Net Influencer reported, citing Amazon's post. YouTube added Amazon to the same program for U.S. creators in August. Creators need to be in the YouTube Partner Program and have an active Amazon Influencer or Associates account linked through their Amazon Storefront.
On Pinterest, creators connect their Amazon Storefront once. Affiliate links are then applied automatically when they tag eligible products on a Pin, and their Storefront handle appears on their Pinterest profile. Amazon cited Pinterest's more than 80 billion monthly searches and said more than half of Pinterest's users visit the platform to shop.
Nidhi Thakkar, Amazon's head of social commerce for emerging marketplaces, said creators are changing how customers discover, research and buy products, Telangana Today reported.
Beyond the metros
Some of the most notable figures in the announcement concern geography. Amazon says nearly 70% of shoppers who buy through its creator programs come from non-metro cities such as Guntur, Dehradun and Patiala. About 75% of participating creators are also based outside major metros. Amazon says earnings per creator are up 60% year on year. It did not disclose absolute earnings.
Amazon launched Creator Central in India in late 2024 and added category programs in 2025, including a Tech Influencer Program.
Our analysis
For years, Amazon's influencer business worked as a storefront that creators drove traffic to. This announcement reverses the flow. Amazon now goes to where creators already publish and pays them there. That makes Amazon a commerce layer that sits on top of other platforms, not one that competes with them for content.
For creators, the main gain is less friction. A tech reviewer in Meerut can now earn from a YouTube video without telling viewers to "check the link in my storefront". The 60% rise in per-creator earnings is encouraging, but it is a percentage with no base figure, and it comes alongside a doubling of the creator base, which means more competition for the same shoppers.
For brands selling on Amazon India, the change widens the pool of creator-driven traffic without new contracts. Products sold on Amazon can now be promoted by creators on two more major platforms. Brands that have relied on direct influencer deals may find affiliate-led reach in smaller cities cheaper, although they give up control over how their products are presented.
For YouTube, Amazon is a major catalogue partner in a key market. YouTube's India managing director, Gunjan Soni, has said more than 450 million people in India run shopping-related searches on YouTube, Net Influencer reported. It also supports YouTube's Made on YouTube pledge in September to extend Amazon tagging to India and Brazil and expand its affiliate program to 35 markets.
For competitors, the setup puts pressure on any social platform without a large retail catalogue. Meta's Instagram has a strong creator base in India but no comparable checkout partnership with a retailer of Amazon's size. Flipkart, Amazon's main domestic rival, will face questions about how it competes for the same creators.
The structure also differs by platform. On YouTube, Amazon is one retailer inside YouTube's own affiliate system, so YouTube controls the tagging tools and the viewer experience. On Pinterest, Amazon's Storefront is the main connection: links apply automatically and the creator's Amazon identity appears on their Pinterest profile. Amazon gives up some control on YouTube in return for reach, and keeps more of its own brand presence on Pinterest.
The festive-season timing is significant. If tagged videos and Pins drive strong Great Indian Festival sales, Amazon will have a clear template to export to other emerging markets.
Amazon also has an advantage in scale that rivals will struggle to match quickly. A creator base of 200,000, combined with a catalogue that already serves non-metro shoppers, gives it supply and demand in places where newer social-commerce efforts are still building both.
The take
Editors' opinion: This is a confident and well-timed move, and the figures on smaller cities are the most interesting creator-commerce data Amazon has released in some time. But Amazon is reporting growth rates, not earnings, and a doubled creator base can mean a smaller share of commission for each creator. India's creators should take the extra reach, but Amazon needs to publish median creator earnings before anyone calls this a broad-based boom.