Gracey Ryback: Queen of Tiktok with more than $5 million in Amazon affiliate sales

Introducing Gracey Ryback:

Gracey Ryback, known as @dealcheats on Tiktok, Amazon Live, and Instagram is an influencer, content creator, and Affiliate that has sold more than $5 million through the Amazon associates program. She has more than 1.1 million subscribers, and reached this point in less than a year and a half.

Gracey Rybeck's Super Hero Origin Story

I kind of started my account differently from how everybody else starts. And you know, my intentions were never to monetize, it was never to make this a thing.

I really started it because I personally would always seek out these promo codes and these discounts. And I love Amazon, you know, Amazon has me in their grip. So I would always look for these discount codes. And then I would be like really excited when I found like a really good deal on something. And I would want to like share it with my family and my friends and like they were just like so incredibly uninterested. And they're like, Oh, it must be a bad product. Oh, it must be a scam. Like, I don't even believe it like oh, what is this Gracey.

So I was like, okay, like these people obviously aren't interested in this the way I am. So I saw a couple people kind of like sharing deals on Tik Tok, Maybe I can help a couple people save money on Amazon. And that was my intention behind it. And then I was like, maybe I'll get 1000 followers, maybe 2000 If I'm lucky. And that was how it started.

I originally started out just like behind my computer screen taking videos of the product listing and then like I put in the promo code, the price would drop dramatically. And it would be like, just that was it. It was so simple. I used to crank out like eight to 10 videos a day and one video like really popped off and I never popped off on Tik Tok before that, but once it did, I kind o got the ball rolling and more people found my account.

Then I would just take requests that people would comment. They'd be like, I want to find a cat tree for my cat that she outgrew it or like, I want to find like a gift for my dad. Like do you have any deals? And so I would just be so excited about helping these people like find deals. I was almost like their personal shopper. And it made me so happy when people are like, I got it. I wanted it for so long.

Content Strategy from Listening to Her Audience:

Downside of Deal Content:

Zack: Deals are just super powerful content because the urgency is there. Everything you do is essentially time limited which means you can't make a huge buffer of content and you need to actually do this every day whether you feel like it or not for this podcast I can record 50 podcasts in one day, release one a week, and then take a vacation.

Gracey: Is this the kind of content that is going to wreak havoc on my mental health? The answer is yes. Because you know, there is no way to batch there is no way to, you know, take a day off, God forbid, you know, like, you have to be like, in the moment if you're one second to slow you might miss it, you know, it's and also all the content that I create, and spend time planning and actually filming, it does become irrelevant after well, somewhat irrelevant after the deal kind of goes away. So that's just the how deals go I guess.

Tiktok - content longevity

Tiktok Culture

I watch Tiktoks for hours at a time.

Oh, here's a quick little secret on how to succeed on TikTok. Half the battle is just knowing the content that's native to the app, it's understanding the little tricks of like, how to put text on the screen, what to put on the screen, what sound to use behind it, the time that you know, how long to make the video, how to do a voice over like there's there's things that you learn in the process of getting to know the app, I could almost guarantee that somebody's just making a good quality video that might do great as an ad on Instagram or like as a YouTube video. If you don't really know the TikTok quote unquote culture it just might not do as well as somebody who kind of makes a lesser lower production quality video, but it looks more native to how Tik Tok is.

Kickstarting audience by promoting other deals, then getting brand partnerships

Standing behind your content - responsibility as an influencer and content creator

I have to fully stand behind whatever I talked about, because we're just at that point where I have to, I can't just be promoting weird things willy nilly.

So I have to really think about is this product a good fit for my brand? Is it a good fit for me personally, is it something that my audience cares about and would find value from because if it's not, then it would kind of not make sense for me to you know, work with them. So then there's that and then a lot of times the brand will offer a unit of product and then I'm able to kind of test it out, use it myself kind of get a good idea of all its uses. And then shockingly, there's a lot of planning that goes behind these tiny little tick tock videos that look really easy and like quick like oh, it's a 30 second video Don't tell me you're so busy that probably would took five minutes no, there's a lot of planning behind it.

I then go and research that product on TikTok see if there's any viral videos surrounding that product already if there's any kind of videos talking about that video already or that product already and see how I can kind of spin any virality into my video and see like, what do people know about this product already? Why aren't they buying? it is it too expensive? Is it you know that it I like whatever and then where my value is is like yo u haven't yet, here's a deal. So now pull the trigger. So now you can buy it. And that's kind of how that goes.

Influencer industry standards

I've gotten a lot of questions from other Amazon sellers, like, what, how much do influencers charge? Like, what can I expect? The answer that always give is like, as much as I will hope and pray and wish for an industry standard of anything, there is none. It's kind of like buying a car. If you ask me like, oh, how much is a car? I'd be like, well, a Lamborghini is going to be different than a Toyota is going to be different from you know, like, it's every influencer has their own specialty. Maybe this is an influencer, specializing in lifestyle and mommy life and that era. I'm an influencer in the deal world. And like, there's every there's tech, you know, every influencer is going to have different pricing and different highlights and like different, whatever. So I'll kind of talk about my experience.

Influencer commission

Flat fee plus commission, or some influencers are able to do commission only commission based and I think that's a really great, like, almost win win situation for brands because, you know, they're only paying for the sales that they make. And then I usually do like having a contract laid out just because that avoids any like misunderstandings. And there's a lot that can go into that. It's like there's usage rights copyright usage, there is exclusivity, there is whitelisting there is you know, promo codes usually and then there is just all these details to be laid out. And I usually think that you know, it is more formal to use a contract and sometimes safer for both ends to do that. But a lot of times there is you know, it's less formal than that as well.

I think the only issue with that from an influencer perspective that I've dealt with is that when you do have a lot of those, you know, going on at the same time, it's hard for me to like, you know, be like, okay, like going after the money that for the commission money, that lane, you know, you have to wait for the return window to close. And then that's like, 30-35 days after the promo goes out. And then it's just a lot to have to follow up with. And so that's why I personally, am going with more of like a upfront flat fee.

Amazon Live

Amazon is doing a huge push for Live streaming and Amazon live this year. They've been inviting reality show stars, like from the bachelor or Bravo reality shows. I even saw J-wow the other day.

there's so many kinds of influencers that you can find on Amazon live, there's tech, there's like fashion, there's lifestyle, there's pets, there's baby, there's everything. And so, I think Amazon live is a really, really good way to like get some UGC, get some like good testimonials, get some good content, like just have like a well known influencer, talk about your product, do a demo of your product. And then like have it linked in their carousel for their viewers to click on.

And since I'm in like the deal world, a lot of times Amazon will feature me on their like deal page, which gets a ton of traffic, crazy traffic. And then I'll be able to talk about the recent deals. And that's really fun and cool. But I will kind of give a tip to anybody who is looking to work with Amazon live influencers is to focus more on, you know, purchasing copyright usage or like working with the influencer to be able to get a copy of their live stream for you to use in your future ads and your future social media, your product listing, like whatever you want that for the content usage is going to be more important than just having an influencer do an Amazon live. The sad thing about influence Amazon live is that the live stream only plays for a couple of hours to a couple of days after it happens. And then it kind of goes away into like the archives of like that person's account.

I definitely think the value there is going to be like using that content long term. Instead of just being like oh, this influencer is going to talk about my product for five to 10 minutes and then it goes away forever, like the value is in the content. And that content can be used in so many places like your social media, you could put it on your product listing as like a video another

Tiers of Amazon Live Influencers

There are three tiers of Amazon live influencers, there's rising star, which everybody starts as there's insider, which is like, once you stream for a certain amount, you get to Insider level and then you get placement on the Amazon live page. And then there's A list

B Roll Content in Amazon Live Video

Amazon recently, kind of switched their goal. Before, people were talking about products they didn't necessarily have on hand. Recently, Amazon encourages to have the product in hand people like seeing product demos, people like seeing the product in use. So now usually people will, okay, so before they had a rule where like, you can't have more than like, I think five minutes of pre recorded content in your live stream that was like a red flag you'd like they would take down your live stream if you did do that. But now, since we are required to have you know the product, a lot of times like if I were to talk about a patio umbrella, I'm not going to bring that into my bedroom and like be like, here's a patio umbrella. So now, there probably is more like B roll. I wouldn't call it pre recorded footage but like, probably like if you're talking let's just use the patio umbrella. I could be like, Okay, here's a video of me setting my patio umbrella. And that would be like the relevant content

Spicy Tip - Amazon Shoppable Video

Amazon is now like doing a very big push for the Amazon influencers to start creating short shoppable videos for these Amazon products, and also allowing them to earn commission off of those videos. Some people are doing really well with these. And that's why there's almost a shift away from live streaming, and into purely focusing their time on these short shoppable videos.

Listen to the Episode Here:

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