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If you’ve been making money through the Amazon Affiliates scheme, or are planning to, or you’re involved in any online affiliate marketing program, you absolutely need to know everything about the Amazon Bounty scheme.
In this article, we’ll explain exactly what it is, why we think it’s the best marketing program out there, how to get started, and how to make it work at the maximum possible level for you, while staying carefully within Amazon’s rules. Want to make money? Then read on!
What Is The Amazon Bounty Program?
You’ve probably already heard of the Amazon Affiliates program, and perhaps are already using it to make a steady income. It’s a terrific scheme and allows many people to make a very significant passive income. It’s one of the best out there, which isn’t a surprise when you appreciate just how vast Amazon’s market is, catering for everything from egg timers to quad bikes, paper straws to rockets.
So what’s the Bounty program, then? Well, put simply, where the Affiliate scheme is for ‘things’ – items that can be posted in those exciting brown boxes, the Bounty scheme is for things that can’t fit in a box, largely because they’re ‘virtual’ products.
So, for example, one of the items on the Amazon Bounty list is Amazon Prime Video. It’s a membership scheme, where people sign up to access the Prime channel with thousands of movies and popular TV series.
But here’s the real difference. With Amazon Affiliates you get a percentage of the final sale. That might be 4%, so from a product that’s sold for $75, you’d get $3. However, through the Amazon Bounty scheme, you’d get that $3 just for someone signing up for a FREE TRIAL of the Amazon Prime Video.
The core difference, other than the fact that the Bounty program deals entirely with ‘virtual’ products such as memberships and subscriptions, is that you get paid a fixed sum for every registration or purchase. And as some of these are just for trial memberships, you can get paid without your customers having to spend a single cent!
What’s Included In The Amazon Bounty Program?
The list of items that are included in the Amazon Bounty program is always changing, so it’s important to keep an eye on Amazon’s announcements. But currently, this is the list of items that qualify, along with the fixed amount of money, or reward, you will receive for each person who signs up or registers for the service or trial.
| Amazon Bounty Service | Fixed Commission Fee |
| Audible Plus | $5 for a free trial and $10 for paid membership |
| Audible Gift Membership | $10 for 12 months, $8 for 3 or 6 months |
| Audible Premium Plus | $5 for a free trial and $10 for paid membership |
| Amazon Prime | Not specified, but does reward for a 30-day trial registration |
| Prime Discounted Monthly Offering | $3 |
| Give The Gift of Amazon Prime | Not specified |
| Amazon Prime Video | $3 for a 30-day free trial |
| Amazon Prime Music | $3 for a 30-day free trial |
| Kindle Unlimited Membership Plans | Not specified |
| Prime Wardrobe | $3 for every Amazon Prime customer who places their first Prime Wardrobe box |
| Personal Shopper by Prime Wardrobe | $4 |
| Amazon Business Account | $15 |
| Amazon Family | $3 for a 30-day free trial |
| Prime Student | $3 for a 6 month free trial |
| Create an Amazon Baby Registry | $3 |
| Create an Amazon Wedding Registry | $3 |
As you can see from this list, there are a significant number of opportunities to make money without customers ever having to spend a single cent. If you have a steady following on social media, or through a newsletter, blog, or YouTube channel, and your followers enjoy reading, learning, books, a particular genre perhaps such as romance, science fiction, thriller, or such like encouraging them to sign up for a free trial for Audible means that:
- They get a completely free trial to Audible
- They don’t pay a single cent
- You get paid $5 for every registration regardless.
If you could get 100 people a month to sign up for a free trial to Audible, that’s $500, without you having to sell anything.
If your followers are business entrepreneurs, then imagine how much you could make selling them an Amazon Business account. At $15 for every registration, it’s an insane way to make a stack of cash very easily.
And the fact that these services are so popular, with a solid reputation and a heap of incentives anyway makes this a particularly easy sell.
Can You Earn More With The Amazon Bounty Program Than With Amazon Affiliates?
Although it’s impossible to guarantee for every individual situation, for the overwhelming majority of people the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. Possibly with ‘absolutely’ added to it.
With a traditional Amazon Affiliate scheme or any other affiliate scheme for that matter, you still have to sell something. Selling involves, at some point, the customer getting out their credit card and parting with money.
For you to make any decent amount of money you have to make this happen a lot. With commission rates of 3-4% in many cases, it’s possible to make a lot of money, but only with a lot of traffic. And conversion rates aren’t always what we’d like.
But with Amazon Bounty, you’re selling something that’s free in most cases! And in all cases, depending upon your audience, they’re the type of service they’d be highly likely to want to try anyway.
Let’s say the demographic of your followers or visitors is generally young, perhaps in their twenties or thirties. Perhaps a mix of men and women, but possibly with a slight tendency towards the women. Maybe you’ve tweeted, blogged, or showcased wedding-related content before, which has gone down well.
So you mention the benefits of registering for an Amazon Wedding Registry. It’s certainly not hard to see how the benefits would help your followers. After all, the Amazon Wedding Registry is completely free, you get a 20% discount after the wedding on anything left on the list, an extended 180-day return window, the facility to have group gifting, which allows friends and family to contribute towards a higher-priced item, a 5% cashback, and an easy system of recording who bought what, so the thank you cards are easier to do.
How easy is that to sell?
And you get a $3 fixed commission for every single person who signs up.
Remember – it’s something they will want, something that really benefits them, and it’s completely free.
And you get paid for them to get those benefits for nothing!
Are you seeing how easy it is to make money with this scheme? Selling things that cost nothing to people who would really benefit, and getting a fixed fee of up to $15 at a time.
If you managed to get 1,000 Wedding Registry signups, not one of those customers will have had to spend a penny, yet you’ll have earned $3,000.
To make that much from a 3% commission your customers would have had to spend $100,000!
So… sell $100,000 worth of goods, or give people something for free. Either way, you pocket $3,000. It’s really a no-brainer.
How Do You Get Started Making Money With Amazon Bounty?
The first step is to sign up as an Amazon Associate if you aren’t already. Of course, if you’re already using the Amazon Affiliate scheme then you’ll already have an account, but if not simply visit the Amazon Associates website and sign up for a free Associate account. If you have an Amazon account then you can use those same details if you wish, or have a separate account for your affiliate work.
As part of the signup process, you’ll be asked for various items of information, such as name, address, and your payee information. You’ll also need to provide the website address where you’ll be publishing your Affiliate or Bounty links. You can add multiple URLs, including your website, blogs, YouTube channel, or social media profiles.
You’ll then need to choose your Store ID, which will generally just be your business name or website name, and then write a short description explaining what your website, blog, or channel is all about, and how you intend to promote the Affiliate or Bounty products. This will also involve a brief explanation of how you plan on driving traffic to your site or channel.
Once you have completed all this you’ll be asked to provide some verification and tax information.
None of this should take too long, and then you’ll be ready to begin.
Once you’ve joined the scheme, getting the links you need for whichever Bounty items you’re going to promote is very straightforward.
To begin with, log in to your Amazon Associate account, and look at the main menu bar along the top. You will see an item called ‘Promotions & Bounties’. If you click this you’ll see a list of the different Bounty items available.
So, to continue with our earlier example, if we were to scroll down this list we’d find the Wedding List.
Clicking on this item will open a page that explains all about how this particular Bounty works, how much you can earn from it, and what links you need. In this particular case the link you need to share with people will be:
All you need to do is to replace the part of the URL that says “AssociateTrackingID” with your own ID, which you’ll see at the top right of the page.
You’ll also see a link that takes you to a further page where a range of banners can be found, with the HTML code already produced so that you can insert them immediately into your blog or website.
In the ‘Audible Books’ section (found through the same ‘Promotions & Bounties’ menu) you’ll not only get your custom link, and a range of banners with the HTML code, but also information that shows how you can link to a specific audiobook.
So if there’s an audiobook on Audible you think your visitors would like, you can tell them how they can listen to it free, with a 30-day free trial, and you’ll still get paid $5, rising to $10 if they end up signing up for a full, paid membership of Audible.
You can see how easy it is to get started, how easy it is to get the links and banners you need, and how easy it is to make a significant income from promoting these services. And since your followers and visitors won’t necessarily have to pay a single penny, they won’t feel as though you’re trying to push a hard sell on them. It will feel more like you’re doing them a favor, which goes a long way to increasing your conversions.
What Are The Limitations Or Rules Of Using The Amazon Bounty Program?
As with the Amazon Associates program, there are a number of rules you have to follow. If you break any of these rules then you do run the risk of having your Associates account canceled.
The first is to make sure that you are clear in your use of the Bounty links that you are an affiliate and will benefit from any sales or sign-ups resulting from people clicking your links. This affiliate link disclosure rule has been around for some time, and you may have already noticed that YouTube videos that include an affiliate link in the description and a promotion of the product in the video now have to disclose this clearly.
If you’re using social media, including the affiliate disclosure in the post if you can, in the description, and in your bio profile. In essence, our advice is to make it clear. Make it abundantly clear, and then there’s no risk of falling foul of Amazon’s rules and becoming disqualified.
Another rule is that the links must be published on networks that are public and widely accessible. This means that the links mustn’t be somewhere which requires people to pay to access them.
You also need to be the sole moderator of the account you’re publishing your Bounty links on.
In general, as long as you’re not trying to mislead anyone, you’re clear about what you’re doing, and you ask Amazon directly if you’re not sure, you will be absolutely fine. And frankly, since the Bounty products are likely to be very attractive to many of your visitors, followers, or customers, and many don’t even require payment, you’re not going to find following these rules any obstacle whatsoever in making a significant earning.
Conclusion
As affiliate programs go, Amazon has always been one of the major players, and a way for almost anyone to make a steady income reasonably easily. But with Amazon Bounty the opportunities to make significantly more money, in a much easier way, are astonishing. With fixed fee commissions paid, even when people are only signing up for trials, this is a highly recommended way of extending your current affiliate marketing strategy, or as a first step into monetizing your website, blog, channel, or social media profile.
We recommend taking the time to look carefully through all of the Bounty products and think carefully about which ones will benefit your followers or visitors the most. Make it relevant, and you simply can’t fail to see the dollars rolling in!
Are you tempted by the Amazon Bounty scheme? Have you signed up already? Do you have any tips or strategies for making the most of this program? Let us know in the comments below and join in the conversation! 💬
