How to Promote Prime Day as an Affiliate (even if you aren’t a deal blogger)

As someone who loves affiliate marketing, I find the excitement of promoting a big sale exhilarating. It’s a time for research, writing and, hopefully, increased income.

In case you have been taking a social media hiatus lately, Amazon’s Prime Day is coming. And it’s two days this year – July 15 – 16.

This is one of the biggest days for sales on the site and one that nets a lot of bloggers some big money when it comes to bounties and commissions. If you are a new blogger, perhaps this could be an opportunity to make your very first affiliate sale.

Why Prime Day?

There are a few reasons to promote Prime Day regardless of your niche:

• Thousands and thousands of people will be shopping these sales. This promotion has been around for a few years now – since 2015 – so people are familiar with it.
• People love Amazon and are comfortable shopping on the site.
• Amazon has everything. Orders will likely be even larger on Prime Day than normal.
• The sale only lasts 36 hours so the 24-hour cookie is less of an issue. People will see, shop, buy.

Today, I wanted to share a few tips for the bloggers out there who aren’t sure how to best promote Prime Day if you aren’t in the deal or coupon niche. Good news! You still can! (P.S. You may find these tips help you with promotion year-round!)

Prime Day Affiliate Promotion Tips

1. Start Promoting Now

The “prelaunch” period can have a big impact on any sale. This is the window leading up to the promotion in which you build excitement and get people ready to buy. They are anticipating a purchase. They know a sale is coming. They have time to get prepared.

Especially in the case of Amazon, people are already familiar with the site and are likely regular shoppers. Most of us already have a wish list and cart full of items on any given day anyway! (No? That’s just me?) This is the time to get them thinking about the things they need and want. Give them a quick overview as to what Prime Day entails. Give them a few shopping pointers. Amazon has a few tips in Associates Central.

While Amazon keeps the actual Prime Day Deals close to the vest until the actual event, they have released a few products that will be launching that day to get people excited. They also have a few deals you can get in on now such as the daily Countdown deals and the Toshiba Fire TV which is over $100 off right now for Prime members.

2. Start Promoting Bounties

One of the best ways to make money as an Amazon affiliate is with their “Bounty Programs.” These programs pay you a flat fee – usually around $3 to $10 – when people sign up for an Amazon service. I’ve seen some bloggers report almost half of their Prime Day income comes from bounties. That’s awesome. Some of the bounties available at this time include:

• Amazon Prime
• Amazon Video
• Baby Registry
• Audible
• Kindle Unlimited
• Music Unlimited
• AmazonFresh
• FreeTime Unlimited
• Twitch
• Prime Student
• Prime Video Channels
• Amazon Home Services
• Wedding Registry
• Amazon Family

And possibly more. These can change at any time.

Obviously, your big focus this week would be to get people signed up for Prime. They can only shop those Prime Day deals if they are a member after all. The good news is Amazon offers a free 30-day trial which makes promoting it a breeze. Make sure you let your readers know the cost involved if they don’t cancel, however. Aside from Prime, many of the above programs have specials or free trials available as well You will find those in your Associate dashboard under Promotions.

 

Connect the dots between your one reader and the program you are promoting whether that be Amazon Family, Audible, AmazonFresh or something else. What makes it appealing to them?

3. Do I Have to Post Individual Sales?

No. You get to decide how far you want to take your Prime Day promotion. Maybe all you want to tackle is the prelaunch this year. That’s totally cool. It’s your blog.

If you are feeling frisky, you may want to do a single round-up of Spotlight deals on July 14, 15 or 16. Choose some of your favorite deals that align well with your niche.

I would caution against going around the clock with Lightning Deals, however, unless you know what you are getting into and your audience is cool with it. If you are normally publishing one blog post per week about how to be a freelance writer and suddenly go off the rails with post after post on the latest flash sales for 36 hours, you are likely going to lose a good portion of your followers. Keep it cool. If your followers couldn’t care less, you aren’t going to make any more sales with 20 spaghetti-at-the-wall posts than you will with one really good targeted one. Why stress yourself out and lose out on sleep if you don’t have to?

As I said before, we won’t know until Prime Day arrives what the deals will be. However, we can get a little insight into what’s expected by looking at bestsellers from years past. Those things have typically included Amazon products – Echo, Kindle, Fire, Fire TV, Fire Stick, etc. We’ve also seen big sellers like Instant Pot. Start thinking about the things you love and regularly promote on your blog anyway. Make a list of those items to check come Monday.

Also, be cognizant of Amazon’s rules on image usage and pricing. You can only display these things if extracting data via API. Not a biggie. Just use the link builder plugin or the nifty new Native Shopping ads for displaying product details. It will update accordingly when the sale is over. Below is what a Native Ad looks like. You can build them with SiteStripe.

A Word About Email

Don’t forget that it is against Amazon’s rules to share affiliate links in your emails. You will have to link to the post on your blog. The only exception to this rule is Influencer Pages. Even then, you can only share a link to your Page, not individual items. That being said, those Influencer Pages will be a great opportunity to share some of those select deals on Prime Day now that they allow for customization and categories.

As always, don’t forget to disclose regardless of whether that be email, social media or on your blog. Just a simple “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases” is enough. << That applies to this post, too! 😉