How To Take Advantage Of Amazon Prime Day

Last year, a lot of us Amazon affiliates cashed in during the “Prime Day” sale and this year is no different.

This year, Prime Day is starting on July 15-16.

This post is going to cover a few ideas that you can implement both in the build-up to and during the day itself. Whether it's your first Prime Day or not, you'll do well to take advantage, even if it is only for 1 day.

As an aside, a lot of these strategies will work year-round, because they fall under the basic Conversion Rate Optimization field that you can apply to your site at all times.

First Off, What's Amazon Prime Day?

Think of it like Black Friday, but for Amazon Prime subscribers. On July 10-11, there will be dozens of deals in every category, which has caused a huge shopping frenzy on Amazon for the past 2 years since they first rolled it out in 2015.

Of course, it also means a large number of people will sign up for Prime as well.

Remember though, as an Amazon affiliate, you get a commission for *almost* any product that someone buys after coming through your link, regardless of whether it's a product you recommended off your site. Which means that you can promote a few deals in your niche, and there's potential of you getting a customer on a shopping frenzy that day.  Earning you commissions across the board.

You Can Take Advantage of This Even If You Don't Have Traffic

A lot of you will be reading this with a fear of missing out. Your website might not get a lot of traffic to it right now, and your rankings might not even be close to where you'll need them to be come July 10th.

Have no fear! This post is going to suggest some things that anyone can implement, even if their traffic is non-existent.

Of course, the more traffic you have, the more things you can do and the more effective they'll be, but I don't want to leave anybody out.

It's well worth reading both parts, because even those who already have traffic will benefit from the second part, since they'll be able to get even more traffic from it.

Am I saying the word traffic too much?

Terrific.

Before You Start – Make A Deals Page

This is an important step. In order to be compliant with Amazon and Facebook, you can't email your list directly with Amazon links, and you can't stick Amazon links in FB ads, so you'll need a bridge page. What better than to make a “Deals Page” with a list of some of the best deals you've found in your niche.

The Deals Page will be a core part of some of the strategies below, such as a place to send your Facebook Ads or email campaigns.

You obviously can't publish the deals until they come out, but you can prepare the page in advance and just fill in the blanks on the day itself.

Here are some examples of deals pages for you to replicate: one, two, and three.​

In all honesty, you don't even need that many deals, you can just use the page to talk about Prime Day and mention some of the deals available and the fact that people should go to Amazon to browse more. You really want them to get over to Amazon as quickly as possible.

So when July 10th rolls around, you can send ads, email traffic, and also internal traffic directly to the Prime Day page on your site, and from there, visitors will hop over to Amazon and get spending.

Who knows, you might even get some organic to the page as well, so put some keywords in the title like “Prime Day Deals NICHE”.

Things You Can Do With Existing Traffic

You can do some of these immediately, and others will have to wait until the actual day itself. 

1) Add a Hello Bar

On The Day Itself:

Using Hello Bar or the SumoMe equivalent, you can add a message telling people about Prime Day right away.

Something like this should get you a few clicks:

During The Next Few Days:

In the days building up to Prime Day, you can use this same method to build your email list.

Example: Get notified of the upcoming Prime Day Deals!

Not got an email list yet? We recommend Aweber. We'll also go into a lot more details on what to do with this list later on.

2) Add A Sidebar Banner

Do people still look at the sidebar? In some niches and on some websites, yes they do.

You can do the exact same things for the hello bar, but using a sidebar banner instead.

Amazon actually has pre-made some banners for you. Go to “Featured Promotions” inside your affiliate dashboard, pick the banner you want to display and copy the HTML.

You can then paste that HTML into your post (in text editor) or into a text widget in your sidebar:

Pick your banner and click “Get link”

3) Add A Countdown

Using something like Thrive Ultimatum you can add a giant countdown to your site. Put it on your homepage, put it at the bottom of posts.

Put it wherever you want.

What's important is that you make it stand out and have it contain an Amazon link!

4) Feature Some Deals

Once the day has arrived, you can also consider featuring relevant deals in your posts.

Got a post about a certain product type and know there are some Prime Day deals for those products? Stick some big CTA buttons or boxes on the article featuring those products.

5) Add More Optin Forms Or Optin Related CTAs

In the build-up to Prime Day, you can do everything possible to build an email list with Prime Day in mind.

Stick Opt-In Forms on your site with messaging along the lines of:

Prime Day is coming! We'll email you a list of all the best deals when they are live.

You can play around with different ways of displaying this opt-in as well. Lightboxes, sidebars, in-content forms, all the usual best practices should be applicable.

6) Grow Your Social Media Pages

Got a Facebook Page? Start being more active on it and letting people know that Prime Day is coming and that you'll share a list of deals as soon as they come out.

You can then tell them to like your page, sign up to your email list, or otherwise take action so that you can notify them on the day.

If you've not got a social media page or it doesn't have a large following, now could be a time to play around with Facebook ads. Get some more likes, or boost some of the above-mentioned posts.

7) Re-target Your Visitors With Ads

Get that re-targeting pixel installed on your site ASAP and start advertising to your website visitors. Re-targeting ads are among the cheapest clicks you'll get.

Before the day itself, you can send ads letting people know you'll be sharing some deals with your list (and they should sign up).

On the day, you can just send them directly to a “deals page”.

What About If You Don't Have Traffic Yet?

You've still got time to prepare and start getting traffic, but even if you're reading this right before Prime Day, you can still do some things to take advantage. Let's first look at what you can do if you're reading this with a few days to spare.

And remember, you can still do these things if you're already getting traffic. If this is you, use them to get even more.

1.) Get Active In Social Media Groups

I don't really think you'll get very far if you join a bunch of Facebook Groups on Prime Day and start spamming about deals right away, but on the other hand, if you join a few days early, and start engaging in the groups, you might fair better on the day.

The idea here is that when Prime Day comes, you can try sharing a link to your deals page (or even directly to Amazon) in those groups. You could either join niche specific groups or deal groups. For example, join a dog training group if you're in the dog niche. There's also deal specific groups like this Reddit thread for Amazon prime deals.

Just make sure that whatever you do, it's the right angle and not spammy.

Something like:

“Hey guys, today is Prime Day and I've put together this page showing a bunch of deals that you might be interested in.” or “There are a bunch of great deals on Amazon right now.”

Some groups might delete (or not approve) your post, but other groups will thank you for sharing.

By the way, make sure you're doing this in relevant groups. If you don't have any relevant groups to join, try going a little broader. For example, there probably aren't many groups about specific Kitchen appliances, but I bet there are plenty of groups related to cooking or something similar.

2.) Build A List

Much like in one of the points above, you can start building a list.

Here are my tips for doing this when you have little or no traffic:

• Share your content on social media – Whether it's in Facebook Groups or Pinterest or wherever, just share it and see how much traffic comes. Then, make sure you've followed the steps above to put opt-in forms throughout your site. You won't get a huge number of subscribers this way, but you'll probably get some.
• Share your opt-in on social media – Again, many groups won't allow this, but you can try just sharing a landing page in Facebook Groups too. Something like “Hey everyone I'm preparing a Deals Page for the upcoming Prime Day and if you want me to email you when the day comes, just sign up here”. It's not going to get fantastic results for everyone, but it's worth a try for sure.
• Pay for traffic – You can do the two actions above, but with paid ads. Follow our PDF below for the finer details. Remember as well, if you've got that Facebook tracking pixel set up on your site, just sharing your articles and getting visitors will be building that re-targeting list we talked about earlier.

3.) Send Paid Traffic To Your Deals Page or Review Pages.

I talked about this several times already, but I feel it warrants its own section still. You can't pay for ads and send people directly to Amazon, but you CAN send them to your deals page or any page on your site.

However, I want to point out that Facebook ads cost money and there's a chance that you'll spend more on ads than you'll earn from commissions. If you ARE going to do advertising, I recommend you do it in advance and capture people's email addresses so that you can recommend more products to them later, and increase your ROI.

You might end up glad you built that list once December comes around.

How Many Emails Should You Send?

I've talked about sending emails quite a lot already, but I haven't gone too deep up until this point. Let's look more closely at the actual strategies you can use once you've got people on your list. To some of you, this might be completely new.

Remember, you want this list to stay around for a while, for future use, so spamming them isn't likely to help you achieve this.

Is All Of This Too Much Work?

You might be reading this post and thinking “Man, this sounds like a lot of work for only a few extra sales”, but many affiliates last year made more money during Prime Day than the rest of the month combined.

Remember, people aren't just going to buy the stuff you recommend, they're going to buy a whole bunch of things, and some of them might be in the 10% commission categories too.

I'll admit that it's a lot easier to take advantage of Prime Day if you already have traffic, but that goes without saying. For those of you who are struggling to make your first sales, this could also be just the thing you're looking for.

Incidentally, as I mentioned before, you can do all of these things at many times of the year as well, and the general list building strategies could benefit you year-round. Black Friday anyone?

Now go out there and get yourself prepared for one of the biggest Amazon shopping days of the year.