How to Create an Amazon Storefront (Influencer vs Brand Store)

TL;DR: "Amazon storefront" means two different things. One is the Amazon Influencer storefront, a shoppable page where creators recommend products and earn affiliate commissions (you don't sell anything of your own). The other is the Amazon Brand Store, a free branded destination for sellers who own their brand and are enrolled in Brand Registry (which generally needs a trademark). Both are free to set up. This guide explains which one you actually want and how to build each.

I run a print-on-demand research tool, and "how to create an Amazon storefront" is one of those searches where half the people asking want one thing and half want the complete opposite. If you read the wrong guide, you'll follow steps that don't apply to you and get frustrated.

So before any steps, the single most useful thing I can do is help you tell the two apart. One "storefront" is for creators and influencers who want to recommend products and earn a cut. The other is for sellers who make or brand their own products and want a proper branded shopping page. They have different requirements, different setup flows, and different ways of making money.

Here's how to figure out which one you want, and then how to actually build it.

The two kinds of Amazon storefront

When people say "Amazon storefront," they mean one of these:

1. The Amazon Influencer storefront. This is part of the Amazon Influencer Program. You get a personal, shoppable page on Amazon where you curate and recommend products you like. When someone buys through your storefront or your links, you earn an affiliate commission. You are not selling your own inventory. You are a recommender, and Amazon pays you for driving sales.

2. The Amazon Brand Store. This is a free, multi-page branded storefront for sellers who own a brand and are enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry. It's a mini-website inside Amazon for your products, with your logo, your imagery, and multiple pages. This is what a real brand (including a print-on-demand brand) uses to give shoppers one branded place to browse everything it sells.

Here's the side-by-side:

Notice the key split: the influencer storefront needs an audience but no products, while the Brand Store needs products (and a brand) but no audience of your own.

Which one do you actually want?

Quick self-check:

• You make TikToks, Reels, YouTube videos, or post to Instagram/Facebook and want to recommend products for commissions → you want the Influencer storefront.
• You sell (or want to sell) your own products on Amazon and want a branded page for your brand → you want the Brand Store.
• You have a print-on-demand brand and want it to look legit on Amazon → Brand Store, once you're brand-registered (more on that below).
• You don't sell anything and don't have a social following yet → honestly, neither is available to you today. You'd start by either building a small audience (influencer path) or launching products under a brand (seller path).

Pick your path and jump to that section.

How to create an Amazon Influencer storefront

The Amazon Influencer Program is Amazon's version of affiliate marketing built for social creators. Instead of just dropping text links (that's the older Amazon Associates model), you get an actual storefront page you can send people to.

What it is

Your influencer storefront is a curated page under your name. You add products into "idea lists" or shelves, you can post shoppable photos and videos, and everything is tagged with your affiliate ID. When a follower clicks through and buys, you earn a commission. Commissions vary by product category and are a percentage of the sale, so a beauty product and an electronics accessory pay different rates. I'm not going to quote exact numbers because Amazon adjusts them, but the model is: percentage of sales you refer.

Who qualifies

To get in, Amazon looks at your social presence. You apply with an eligible account, generally one of: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook. Amazon then reviews your account for engagement and audience quality, not just a raw follower count. I want to be clear here because a lot of articles state a hard follower number as if it's official policy. As far as I've seen, it isn't a fixed public threshold. Amazon reviews the whole picture. A smaller account with real, engaged followers can get approved where a larger but dead account might not.

How to apply

At a high level:

1. Go to Amazon's Influencer Program sign-up page (search "Amazon Influencer Program" to find the current one).
2. Choose the social account you want to qualify with and connect it.
3. Amazon reviews your account. This can be quick or take a bit.
4. Once approved, you get your storefront URL.

I'm keeping this high level on purpose. Amazon changes the exact buttons and screens, so follow the steps on Amazon's own current help pages rather than trusting a screenshot from a year ago.

How to build and share it

Once you're in:

• Curate products. Add items you genuinely use or recommend into lists/shelves. Group them so they're easy to browse (for example, "my desk setup" or "kitchen favorites").
• Add shoppable content. Post photos and short videos featuring products. These can show up in more places on Amazon than just your page.
• Share your storefront link everywhere. Put it in your TikTok/Instagram bio, YouTube descriptions, and link-in-bio. Your storefront is only worth as much as the traffic you send to it.

Realistic expectations

Affiliate income tracks your traffic and how well your audience trusts your picks. A creator with a small but loyal audience who recommends the right products can do fine. Someone with no consistent posting habit will earn close to nothing, because nobody is arriving at the page. The storefront is easy. The audience is the actual work.

A couple of things worth setting expectations on. First, commissions are usually a modest percentage, so volume matters more than the occasional lucky sale. Second, Amazon uses a cookie window, meaning you get credit for purchases made within a limited time after someone clicks your link, not forever. And third, the products that convert best on Amazon tend to be things people were already going to buy and just needed a nudge on, not big-ticket impulse items. Recommend things your audience genuinely asks you about and the commissions follow. Try to force products that don't fit your niche and they won't.

How to create an Amazon Brand Store

This is the seller path, and it's a completely different animal.

What it is

An Amazon Brand Store is a free, multi-page storefront for your brand inside Amazon. Think of it as a small branded website: a homepage, category pages, product tiles, banners, your logo, your imagery. Shoppers get one branded place to see everything your brand sells, instead of finding your products scattered as individual listings.

The prerequisite: Brand Registry (and a trademark)

Here's the gate most people hit. You can't just open a Brand Store on a whim. You need to be enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, and Brand Registry generally requires a registered or pending trademark for your brand name.

So the real order of operations is:

1. Have a brand name.
2. Get a trademark for it (registered, or in many cases pending is accepted, check Amazon's current requirements).
3. Enroll in Amazon Brand Registry.
4. Then you can build a Brand Store.

That trademark step is not a formality. It costs money and takes time, and you want to make sure the name is actually available before you file. I'll come back to why that matters for print-on-demand sellers specifically.

How to build it (high level)

Once you're brand-registered, Amazon gives you a Store builder. Broadly, you:

• Create your Store and add your brand logo and hero imagery.
• Build pages (a homepage plus category or theme pages).
• Drop in tiles and modules: product grids, images, text, video, featured products.
• Preview it, then submit it for Amazon's review before it goes live.

It's drag-and-drop and doesn't require design or coding skill. I'm not naming exact menu labels because Amazon's Store builder UI changes; the current help docs walk through the live version.

A few things that make a Brand Store actually convert rather than just exist: keep the homepage focused on your best-selling or newest products so people see something worth buying immediately, group products into clear category pages so browsing feels like a real shop, and use consistent imagery so the page reads as one brand rather than a mismatched grid. You can also link to your Store from your individual product listings and from sponsored brand ads, which is where most of the traffic to a Brand Store actually comes from. The Store doesn't get discovered on its own; you drive people to it.

How a print-on-demand brand fits

You can absolutely run a Brand Store for a print-on-demand brand, once you're brand-registered. This is how a POD operation stops looking like a pile of random t-shirt listings and starts looking like an actual brand. For the full picture of selling POD on Amazon, see my Amazon print on demand: the complete guide.

One important clarification, because it trips people up constantly: a basic Amazon Merch on Demand account by itself does not give you a full multi-page Brand Store. Merch gives you a public "brand" listing page that collects your designs, which is useful, but it's not the same as a classic Brand Store. To get the full branded Store, you go the Brand Registry route above. If you're not sure what Merch even is, here's what is Merch.

Do you need your own products?

Short answer, because this is the cleanest way to separate the two paths:

The influencer storefront is built on recommending other people's products, so you need zero inventory. The Brand Store is built on selling your own products under a registered brand, so you need products and a trademark, but you don't need a personal following.

And again: having a Merch on Demand account is not the same as having a Brand Store. Merch gets your designs listed and gives you a brand page; the full Store comes through Brand Registry.

The hard part isn't the storefront

If you're on the seller path, here's the honest truth I've learned watching POD sellers: building the Brand Store is the easy afternoon. Getting the trademark and Brand Registry sorted is a paperwork hurdle. But the thing that actually decides whether you make money is boring and it comes first: do people want the products you're putting in the store?

A beautiful branded storefront full of designs nobody searches for sells nothing. I've seen it many times. The order that works is: validate real demand first, then design, then brand it up with a Store.

This is the part my tool helps with. Trendlytic helps print-on-demand and brand sellers find niches and keywords that have real demand and beatable competition across Etsy, Redbubble, TeePublic, and Amazon Merch, each scored so you're not guessing. It also runs a live USPTO trademark check, which is directly relevant here: Brand Registry needs a trademark, and you don't want to build a brand around a name that's already taken or that infringes something. It's $5/month for 100 searches, with a free trial and no card required.

If you want to see what shoppers are actually typing on Amazon before you commit to a brand direction, my write-up on the most searched keywords on Amazon is a good next read, and what is Amazon BSR explains how to read demand signals from Amazon's own rankings.

The storefront is the packaging. The product-market fit is the product. Get the second one right and the first one is a formality.

FAQ

What is an Amazon storefront? It's one of two things. Either an Amazon Influencer storefront (a curated, shoppable page where a creator recommends products for affiliate commissions) or an Amazon Brand Store (a free branded, multi-page storefront that a brand-registered seller uses to showcase their own products). The phrase gets used for both.

Is it free to create an Amazon storefront? Yes. Both the Influencer storefront and the Brand Store are free to set up. The Brand Store has an indirect cost, because you generally need a trademark to enroll in Brand Registry, and trademarks cost money to file. But the storefront itself carries no fee.

Do you need followers for an Amazon storefront? For the Influencer storefront, you need a qualifying social account and Amazon approves you based on engagement and audience quality, not a fixed public follower number. For the Brand Store, you don't need any followers at all, because it's tied to your brand, not your personal audience.

Do I need a trademark for an Amazon Brand Store? Generally yes. A Brand Store requires Amazon Brand Registry enrollment, and Brand Registry generally requires a registered or pending trademark for your brand. Check Amazon's current requirements, since the details can change.

Can I make an Amazon storefront for print-on-demand? Yes. Once your POD brand is enrolled in Brand Registry, you can build a full Brand Store for it. Note that a basic Merch on Demand account alone gives you a public brand listing page, not a full multi-page Brand Store. For that, you go the Brand Registry route.

How do you make money with an Amazon storefront? On the influencer side, you earn affiliate commissions (a percentage of sales) when people buy through your storefront and links; rates vary by category. On the Brand Store side, you make money the normal way a seller does, by selling your own products, with the store acting as a branded shopping destination that can lift conversion and repeat purchases.

Conclusion

"How to create an Amazon storefront" has two right answers, and the whole game is knowing which one is yours. If you create content, chase the Influencer storefront and pour your energy into the audience. If you sell your own products, go the Brand Registry and Brand Store route, and remember the storefront is the last 10% once you've got products people actually want.

Which path are you on, the influencer storefront or the seller Brand Store? Tell me where you're stuck and I'll point you at the right next step.