Product Research

What is the Amazon Brand Referral Bonus Program?

by Dirk Llorens Aug. 13, 2021

Amazon’s unbelievable growth has been driven, at least in part, by clever tactics to drive traffic. For instance, the Amazon Associates Program has led to thousands of websites recommending and linking to Amazon over the years.

Another way that Amazon has tried to embrace traffic from other sources is the Amazon Brand Referral Bonus Program. This gives brands an incentive to send people to the Amazon platform to buy their products.

Some sellers will send their traffic to Amazon directly from their own website or blog, but others use PPC channels such as Facebook and Google advertising platforms, knowing that they can get some generous bonuses if they drive enough traffic.

The Brand Referral Bonus program is a great way that Amazon effectively supports and rewards sellers’ efforts to send them traffic.

 

Program Details

 

The Brand Referral Bonus Program is a way for certain Amazon sellers to get a rebate on the seller fees they would normally pay, if they have driven the traffic to their own product. Instead of paying a 15% fee to Amazon, they usually pay around 5% if they have driven the traffic themselves.

It also has the same bonus for the next 14 days if the customer buys any more products that fall within your brand.

The program launched in July 2021.

The 10% earning is as a bonus rate is not set in stone. The rate does depend slightly on the category, and it can also be impacted if a customer decides on a different type of shipping or to have a product gift-wrapped.

 

How to Enroll

 

It’s important for sellers to know that this is not an automatic program. Amazon doesn’t detect the traffic coming to the site automatically, and only certain sellers are eligible.

Firstly, you need to sign up for “Brand Registry” on Amazon.

Selling any kind of branded product on Amazon, it makes sense to sign up to brand registry so that you can enjoy all the features and tools in your account, such as Brand Analytics to help you to grow your store.

You need to apply for brand registry on Amazon, and the first step to this is to get a trademark for your own brand. This can be time-consuming. If you don’t already have a trademark, this should be your very first step. Of course, this has other benefits including making it harder for people to counterfeit or jump on a successful product listing.

Once you’ve got your trademark, fill in the forms at Brand Services on Amazon to be eligible. Once your registry is confirmed, you can start out with the Referral Bonus program.

 

Amazon Attribution – Tracking Your Links

 

Attribution is how you can track the traffic sent to Amazon, and it is also the way they track your campaigns, and the traffic you have sent to your own products for your bonuses.

It gives you a lot of data and analytics to delve into, and to show you whether your advertising campaigns are paying off. Attribution is currently an option on Amazon US, CA, DE, ES, FR, IT, and in the UK. Once again, you need to register.

If you’ve been accepted to the program then it is time to create links to track all of your different channels of external advertising, and traffic you’re driving through your mailing list or website.

Things can get a little bit complex if you are using a landing page or content funnel, but just make sure that the very final link before visiting Amazon contains the attribution tag, otherwise, your data won’t be reported, and your bonus can go down the drain.

 

Why The Change? Amazon’s Brand Referral Bonus Motivation

 

If you look at Amazon’s accounts, they hardly suggest that it is time to panic and try and get a lot of new sales on the platform. So, why have they introduced this now?

Quite simply, it makes more sense for them to be involved in the transaction if they possibly can. Plus, Amazon’s website is designed in a way that increases loyalty and even upsells and gets people to buy more and more items once they are on the site.

Any way that Amazon can get people to visit their site, they are likely to buy. If they come to buy your product, there’s every chance they will pick up other items while they are there. Plus, even if Amazon is only making a 5% cut rather than 15%, this is better than nothing as far as they are concerned.

 

Selling on Amazon or Your Own Website

 

So, you’ve put in the hard work to drive traffic. Whether this is a blog that gets thousands of views or it is a tailored PPC campaign, why would you send this traffic to Amazon, rather than your own website and eCommerce platform?

Well, there are actually a number of benefits to sending the traffic to Amazon, even if you don’t make quite as much money this way:

 

- It can improve your bestseller rank, meaning you show up for more searches within Amazon and boost your sales on the platform.

- It can give you a more hands-off experience. If you’re using Amazon FBA, the packing and sending are done in an Amazon warehouse.

- You might convert more. People are more likely to buy on Amazon, a platform they know and trust, than on your own eCommerce store. Typically, ads sent to Amazon experience excellent conversion rates.

 

Conclusion

 

The gargantuan size of Amazon means there are many different ways to run an Amazon business. While the Amazon Brand Referral Bonus program isn’t totally essential for every seller, it makes sense to sign up if you are sending traffic to Amazon listings anyway, or if you want to increase your profit margins by sending PPC ads to your Amazon products.

The 10% difference it can make could actually be hugely beneficial for your business and boost your profit margins significantly, and the whole process is relatively hands-off once you have applied and been accepted.