How to Create Single Use Amazon Coupons (Promo Codes)
Today’s topic is going to be on Amazon coupon codes (promo codes) that you use for discounting your product that you are selling on Amazon. Creating the proper coupon for your product changes depending on on what you are trying to achieve with your promo code. I will be going over a couple different uses for these coupons as well as how to create them in Amazon Seller Central.
Creating coupon codes is something that I have been doing a lot of recently as my product has just arrived at Amazon and I have been giving them out at a discount to friends and family so that they can leave reviews for me. I have been doing a lot of research for myself and I thought it would be a good idea to compile everything I have learned for you all in this post.
Let’s hop right on in:
The Two Main Uses of Coupon Codes
There are a couple of different things that you can use coupon codes. Some types of coupon codes will work better for certain scenario while other types of coupon codes will work for other scenarios.
Below are the different uses for a coupon code:
1. Discount your Product for Family/Friends
One way that I have used promo codes is to discount my product for friends and family that are buying my product to leave a review for me. This is a very common use for coupon codes, especially when you are just getting started with selling your product.
2. Product Launches
The other very common use for Amazon promo codes is to use them to heavily discount your products so that a large amount of people will buy and leave a review for you. These type of launches are very effective at getting you a good amount of reviews as well as increasing your ranking for your keywords.
There are a lot of services that will launch your product for you and send out your product to a list of people that will review your product for a discounted product. You will have to give these launch services coupon codes for them to use in the giveaway.
Single Use Codes vs. Normal Coupons
I want to take a minute to quickly explain the difference between single use coupons and regular coupons on Amazon.
Single Use Codes: These are codes that can only be used one time. That means once it the code has been used no one else can use it again. These types of codes are useful when you are doing a product launch and giving out coupons to people. With single use codes people can’t share them with their friends or anyone else, this protects you from giving away your product to too many people.
Regular Coupons: These coupons are available for anyone to use. You create one coupon code and anyone can use it for a discount on your product. This could get bad if you discounted your product for $.99 and this code was shared with a large group of people. NExt thing you know, all of your inventory is gone for $.99! You have to be really careful with these types of coupons.
How to Create Single Use Coupon Codes
Now that you know what single use codes are, let’s talk about how to create them.
1. Go to your Amazon Seller’s Account Homepage
First, you need to be inside your sellers account and on the homepage, see below:
2. Go to the “Promotions” Page
From the homepage, click on “Advertising” then “Promotions” on the top navigation bar. This will take you to the promotion page.
3. Choose the “Money Off” Option
Next, you will see a couple different options to choose from. For single use codes and just about everything else you will need, choose the “Money Off” option.
4. Fill out the Page
I am going to breakdown each section of this page as this is where all of the most important information is needed. This is also where you need to make sure you follow the directions closely so that you don’t make any mistakes that will sell out all of your inventory for $.99!
Before we get started, you should see a page like the one below:
5. “Conditions” Section
The first section we will talk about is the conditions section.
Buyer Purchases: This is what the buyer must do to get this promotion. I would leave it as-is with the “At least this quantity of items” to 1.
Purchased Items: This part is important. You are going to have to create a new product selection, you have to click on the blue link right next to it. Follow the steps below:
Click on the link:
Choose “ASIN List” from the drop down menu and click “Create Product Selection”:
Fill out the next page. The first two slots are for your tracking purposes only and name them what you would like. In the “ASIN List” section, input the ASIN number of the product you want to run the promo for.
You should then see a success notification:
Now, go back to the page below and click refresh in your browser:
Next, choose the product selection that you just created from the drop down menu:
Buyers Gets: In this section, you need to decide how much you want to discount your product for this promo. You can choose between giving a percentage discount or a specific dollar amount off. It is highly advised to use ONLY the “Money Off” option to prevent you product from being wiped out. To read more about why you need to choose money off rather than percent off you can do so here – http://www.fbathenextlevel.com/blog/never-ever-do-this-in-your-amazon-fba-business
Applies to: This is where you choose what this discount applies to. I would stick with the “Purchased Items” selection.
Buyer Benefit Applies to a Quantity of: This is important. You need to put 1 here if you want the code to only work on ONE item. This eliminates people from buying all of your inventory at the sale price.
Advanced Options: Leave as-is
This what your section should like now:
6. “Scheduling” Section
The next section will be the setting for the scheduling aspect of this coupon/promo:
Start Date: This is where you choose what date the promo code becomes active. You can click on the calendar icon and then click on the day you want to start.
NOTE: It takes 4 hours from the point you create the coupon code to become active no matter what time you choose here, keep that in mind
End Date: This is where you choose when you want to end the promo.
Internal Description: Name your promo code. Name it something that you will be able to recognize later on.
Tracking ID: I would leave this as-is
Here is what my section looks like for me example promo:
7. “Additional Options” Section
This last part is probably the most important because this is where you choose who get’s to use the coupon code. Here is what the section looks like:
Claim Code: Check the box next to the “Claim Code”. This will create a drop down menu full of options for you to fill out.
You should now see this:
One Redemption per Customer: Check this box.
Claim Code: This is the code people will enter to get the discount, however, since we are creating single use codes this claim code doesn’t really matter. I would still keep track of this code.
Claim Code Combinability: Choose the “Exclusive Option”.
Custom Messaging: Click on this section and you will be presented with a drop down menu of more options and settings. See below:
IMPORTANT: Uncheck the “Detail page display text” box. If you don’t do this then your promo code will be available for anyone that visits your product listing!
Uncheck the box!
After you uncheck the box, you are done with this page. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the “review” button:
8. Confirm the Settings
On the next page, you will need to review all of the setting and make sure everything looks correct. If it does, you can click on the “Submit” button:
9. Go to “Manage Promotions”
Now that you created the promo, you need to now create the single use codes. To do this, click on the “Manage Promotions” tab:
You should now see a page that looks like the one below. To be able to view your promotion, click on the “Promotion Status” and choose “All”:
10. Click on Tracking ID
Now that you see the promo that you just created, click on the “Tracking ID” for this promo:
11. Manage Claim Codes
That should take you to a new page. From this page, click on the button that says “Manage Claim Codes”
12. Create Claim Code Group
We are almost done!
You should see a page like the one below:
Group Name: Name this something that relates to why you are using these codes. If I was doing a 100 product launch I would name it “100 Product Launch Codes”
Quantity: If you were doing a 100 product launch, then create 100 single use codes. This make sure that the maximum amount of codes that can be used is 100. This keeps you and your product safe from your coupon codes getting into the wrong hands.
Once you are done, click “Create”:
13. Download Codes
Now you need to download these codes and save them somewhere. Click on the download link:
Conclusion
You now have 100 single use codes that you can use for a launch or to give to friends/family to use when they buy your product.
All you have to do is give them a single use code and they will input the code during checkout to receive the discount. Using single use codes is the safest route to go when creating promo codes because it will prevent people sharing your coupon code which would lead to a huge amount of people buying your product for cheapo. With single use codes, only the people that you give the code to can use it. You also can cap the amount of codes available, in our case that was 100 codes.
Whenever you create a coupon code, make sure that it is single use.
I hope this was useful to the people looking how to create a coupon and if you have any questions leave them below. Thanks for reading the 4th tip of the week and tomorrow will be the last tip of the week.
Thanks for reading!
Comments
23 Comments
hey josh,
thanks for sharing this but have you tested it yourself?
Hi Laura,
Yes, this is exactly how I created my own promo codes. Did I miss something?
I meant as in, have you tested the promo codes that you have created against your own products and see if that works exactly how you wanted it to be?
Oh, yes I have used this exact method to create all of my promo codes and it has worked great!
With this method, is the 55% off for 1 product, or total order?
It could turn out dramatic if it is 55% off over the total order and someone buys out your enter stock at 55% off.
Hi,
Good question.
It is 55% off of one unit of your order. You set the limit to only one item so you do not have to worry about selling out all of your stock at 55%, that would be a disaster haha
Josh
Where do you set this limit? Because I followed all your steps and (luckily) tested it myself before giving the codes away, and it is x% over total amount.
Are you sure about that? I’ve done this exact process for several coupon codes, and have been wiped out on inventory by just a couple of customers ordering 10 or 12 units each and applying the code to the entire order. Single use codes means it only applies once, NOT that it only applies to one item in one order. Go ahead and try; I’ve just done it on several promotions, and using alternate Amazon accounts was able to add however many items and the coupon applied to them all.=(
If I’m wrong could you do a screenshot showing multiple items in cart but the code % only applying to one item?
Thanks!
Hi Bob,
Good point, It looks like Amazon has updated some settings that combat this problem. See the new setting below:
Josh
I wonder if you have tested it, this is not working at all, 50% off will applies to the entire order no matter it is 1 unit or 1000 units, it will destroy your entire inventory.
Still wonder how exactly to limit the discount to apply only 1 unit or up to X units.
Hi Jimmy,
I see what you are talking about. I did some research and it looks like Amazon has updated some settings that now allow you to specify how many units the code applies to. See the image below for the new setting:
Hope this helps and I will update my post!
Josh
I actually just tested all different settings recently, only “Amount off” works, but the ” Buyer purchases ” option has to be ” at least quantity of 1″
I submitted ticket to Amazon support a few days ago, no reply yet.
Hi Josh: Thanks for posting this article. The only other question bugging me is if you have China ship the products to your home, what is the address of the FBA Warehouse that you forward your shipment to by UPS? And vice versa, does China know the address of the FBA warehouse to ship your products to or do you have to tell them?
Thanks in advance for a reply.
Marilyn
Hi Marilyn,
Good question and you will have to tell them where to ship your products. You can find out your Amazon warehouse after you start a shipment creation workflow within your seller central account.
Josh
Hi Josh,
Great help here! But, just got a question, u mentioned that in Claim Code, this is where the code people will enter to get the discount. However for single codes, you mentioned this claim code doesn’t matter. But if i want to give let say 100 buyers a 10% code, and i need to send them the code to enter, how do i do it?
Im not 100% sure but, I think that you would have to create a code for 10% off and then send that code out to 100 people but then limit it to only that 100 people.
Josh
Hi Josh..
Can you give screen shots of how to create Regular Coupon?
What do you mean?
Hi Josh,
How have 2 kind of coupons:
1) Single use coupon
2) Regular use coupon
You explained how to use single use coupon.
Can you please explain how to use regular coupons?
A Coupon that I can give to any one to use it..
Did I explain myself? 🙂
Thanks, Josh. Just used this guide to set up coupon codes for my first FBA product. Very easy to follow. Your work is still benefiting others.
thank you for this easy to understand walkthrough. I just set up my promo code.
Sweet, glad I could help!
Thank you Josh for the step by step guide. It was really useful.
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