What is an Amazon Giveaway?

Updated 2/7/2020

As of November 2019, Amazon retired its Giveaway program. It was launched in 2015 and allowed businesses to run sweepstakes with Amazon products. Amazon opened up the program to include FBA merchants in 2016.

The Amazon Giveaway program is a marketing tool used to create sweepstakes promotions on Amazon products. Amazon Giveaways are an option for sellers who want to increase brand and product awareness, as well as encourage customer engagement. Products eligible for Giveaway include items sold by Amazon, Fulfilled By Amazon, and Kindle eBooks; Digital items like movies and apps are not allowed.

Although there is no additional cost to run this type of promotion, the host of an Amazon Giveaway pre-pays for the prize, as well as estimated sales tax and shipping charges for the winner(s). The Amazon Giveaway program secures prizes, enforces entry requirements, and ships prizes to winners.

When setting up a giveaway, you determine what item you want to give away, how you want to give it away, and if the entrant must perform an action for a chance to win. Once a prize is chosen, you have the option to award it as a sweepstakes, a random instant win, a lucky number win, or on a first-come, first-served basis. Entrant actions can include watching a video, answering a poll question, or following someone on Twitter; however, an action is not required for a giveaway. In addition, you provide any written content or images participants will see when entering your giveaway.

You can offer as many giveaways as you’d like. Each giveaway for a single item is limited by a maximum of 30 (physical) or 50 (digital) prizes, and the total value of the prizes cannot exceed $5,000.

A bonus of this particular Amazon promotion is that aside from you publicly sharing the giveaway with your customers via social media platforms, Amazon also shares it daily to Today’s Giveaways email subscribers.

Prepare for Amazon Prime Day – and every day – with Amazon Giveaways.