Getting approved for onsite video placement

🚪 The gate that actually matters

Once you are in the Influencer Program, Amazon asks you to upload your first product review videos, and human reviewers evaluate them before your content is allowed on product pages. Historically this meant your first three videos were reviewed; Amazon adjusts the exact process from time to time, but the shape is the same: a small batch of videos decides whether you get onsite placement.

Pass, and every future video can appear on product pages automatically. Fail, and you can fix the issues and try again, so nothing is lost except time.

• I understand onsite approval is a separate step after joining the program

🔍 What Amazon's reviewers check

Your videos must be genuinely useful to a shopper deciding whether to buy. The bar is lower than "polished YouTuber" and higher than "shaky unboxing." Concretely:

• You show the actual product, in use, with your real assessment of it.
• Decent picture and sound: a modern phone is plenty; wind noise, backlighting, and blurry footage are not.
• No prohibited content: no prices ("it was only $20!" ages badly and is not allowed), no mentioning discounts or promotions, no directing people off Amazon, no packaging-only shots, no claims you cannot support, no music you do not have rights to.
• Landscape (horizontal) format is required for onsite placement. Vertical videos from your TikTok will not pass as-is.
• You own the product. Review products you have and use, from your own purchase history when possible.

❌ The most common rejection reasons

Straight from thousands of creators' experiences:

1. Mentioning price, deals, or discounts in the video
2. Vertical video or heavy on-screen text formatted for social media
3. Poor audio (usually filming outside or across the room)
4. Not showing the product in use: talking-head-only or box-only videos
5. Watermarks or logos from other platforms (the TikTok watermark is an instant fail)

• I checked my planned videos against all five common rejection reasons

🎬 Your first three videos: a simple recipe

Pick three products you own, use, and have opinions about. Boring is fine; useful is the goal. For each one, film 60 to 120 seconds, horizontal, in a quiet room with daylight:

1. One-line hook: what the product is and who it is for.
2. Show it working: the actual thing doing its actual job. This should be most of the video.
3. The honest verdict: what is great, what is annoying, who should buy it, who should skip it.

That structure passes review and, not coincidentally, is also what converts shoppers into buyers. Module 5 goes deeper into filming.

⏳ After you submit

Review times vary from days to a few weeks. While you wait, keep filming: build a backlog so that the moment you are approved, you can upload steadily instead of starting from zero.

✅ Do this now

• Pick the three products you will review first and put them on your desk

Module 5 covers how to film them well without fancy gear.