With Amazon’s Brand Referral Bonus, you can earn a bonus averaging 10% of qualifying sales when you drive traffic to products in the Amazon store from search, social media, and other sources.
What is the Brand Referral Bonus?
Amazon’s Brand Referral Bonus lets you earn a bonus when you use non-Amazon advertising to help customers discover products in the Amazon store. Bonuses accumulate as credits that offset the referral fees for future sales when you use Amazon Attribution tags as part of your ads.
The bonus isn’t available for Amazon advertising (like sponsored or video ads), but you can earn a bonus from your social media campaigns, search and display ads, emails, and other marketing beyond the Amazon store.
How is the Amazon Brand Referral Bonus calculated?
The amount of the bonus varies according to several factors, including sales price and product category.
For example, clothing has an estimated bonus rate of 11%. Furniture has an estimated bonus rate of 10% for the portion of the total sales price up to $200, and 7% for any portion of the total sales price greater than $200. For a complete list of estimated referral bonus rates for each product category, check the Brand Referral Bonus Help page in Seller Central.
The amount of your bonus can also change depending on factors like shipping and gift wrap charges. If customers make cancellations or returns, it can impact the bonus amount. But in general, you’ll see the full amount of your bonus credited after a waiting period of two months (to accommodate sales or returns).
For example, say you sell a $100 backpack with a referral fee of 14%. By driving a sale through the Brand Referral Bonus, you might earn a 7% credit. That credit could offset the referral fee on a later sale of the same backpack, increasing the net profit from $86 to $93.
3 steps to get started with Amazon’s Brand Referral Bonus
1. Check your eligibility and enroll
Sellers in Amazon’s US store with a Professional selling plan can enroll their brand in Amazon Brand Registry to be eligible for the Brand Referral Bonus, along with other protection tools and selling benefits.
If you don’t have an active or pending trademark (which you’ll need in order to enroll), check out the Amazon IP Accelerator program.
If you’re not a brand owner or don’t have a registered trademark, you might be able to join Amazon Associates to earn commissions from sales you help generate. Amazon Associates offers a way to make product recommendations and earn up to 10% in associate commissions from qualifying purchases.
The conversion rate has been 3 to 4 times better, in some cases 10 times better when the shopper clicks on the Amazon link.
Read the Honest Paws success story
2. Create campaigns and drive traffic
To start earning a Brand Referral Bonus, you’ll use Amazon Attribution to generate tags for your qualifying marketing campaigns. This ads console also allows you to measure the traffic and purchases from customers you direct to the Amazon store. Sign up for an Amazon Ads account to access Amazon Attribution and create tags manually or in bulk.
Amazon Attribution also allows you to create ad groups. While not visible to customers, these ad groups track activity and conversion from your public-facing marketing campaigns, allowing you to earn a bonus based on how much traffic you direct. You can create an ad group for each ad, or one for each link or button within an ad, if there’s more than one.
The Amazon URL you want to drive traffic to can be a specific product detail page or your brand’s Amazon storefront. Click the Create button to generate a unique tag for each ad group.
After you have your tags, you’re ready to apply them to your non-Amazon ad campaigns. This process will vary from one ad publisher or campaign manager to another. For example, if you want to drive traffic from a particular social media site, you’ll use that site’s advertising campaign manager. Here’s the process:
- Start by accessing the campaign manager of your choice.
- Copy and paste one Amazon Attribution tag into the destination URL (the field which allows you to send customers to a particular webpage). Note that each tag should be unique, meaning apply only one to each ad (or one link or button within an ad).
- When you’ve added the tags to the advertising campaigns that qualify for Brand Referral Bonus, launch the ads to start earning a bonus.
[The Brand Referral Bonus] is the best bang for your buck that you’re going to get.
See how Honest Paws used the Brand Referral Bonus to boost conversion rates 4x
3. Track sales and earn credits
With Amazon Attribution, you can measure campaign performance with advertising analytics for clicks, detail page views, sales, and more. As customers discover and buy products, you’ll see bonuses accumulate in your Seller Central account.
For example, maybe you earned a 7% Brand Referral Bonus on a $100 backpack that a customer purchased in July. In September, you might see that bonus applied as a credit against a single referral fee of $14, bringing the total fee down to $7. Or you might see your $7 Brand Referral Bonus applied to a $5 referral fee, then a $6 referral fee. In this case, it would eliminate the first fee, and reduce the second fee to $4.
Supercharge your marketing strategy with Brand Referral Bonus
You can use the Brand Referral Bonus to track, assess, and optimize your marketing efforts. Use metrics from Amazon Attribution to make data-driven decisions and maximize the return on your advertising investment.
For instance, try boosting the sales of a new or slow-moving product by using the Brand Referral Bonus to increase discoverability. Then use the insights you get from Amazon Attribution to see what resonates with customers and optimize your marketing strategy accordingly.
Monitor the results, track the impact of campaigns, and experiment with different combinations to maximize sales. For ideas, check out this guide to ecommerce marketing.
