Amazon Vine for Vendors – Any good?

If you are an Amazon Vendor ready to launch a new product on Amazon and looking to quickly increase your product rankings, customer reviews would be the first thing to target. Along with driving conversions, customer reviews are a key factor in ranking your product well on Amazon.

Some time ago, Amazon banned giving products away for free in return for a review. However, it still happens and Amazon has been on the firing line many times. In this article, it questions – why would anyone want to write reviews for batteries? The quantity of reviews is phenomenal.

Moreover, Amazon’s Vine Program is the answer when looking to quickly increase your product rankings initially when launching a product. It is an Amazon administered process for Vendors only. The cost of the program is £500.00 per product.

What Is Amazon Vine?

    – Available only for Vendors – who sell their products to Amazon

    – Amazon Vine is a product review system administered by Amazon

    – Amazon selects customers to review your product and there is no guarantee you’ll get 5-star reviews

    – The reviewer gets free products in exchange for their unbiased and honest product reviews.

How Much Does Amazon Vine Cost?   

    – £500.00 per ASIN

    – Free products for reviews from 50+  or –

What’s positive about Amazon Vine?

    – Vendors can speed up their product ranking process with better reviews sooner rather than later. This ultimately results in more sales quicker.

    – Customers may assume Amazon Vine reviews are better reviews or are more of an expert opinion. 

What’s not so positive about Amazon Vine?

    – It is only feasible for top brands who can afford to lash out an enormous sum of money for their products

    – Only accessible for vendors and not seller central users  

What’s an alternative?  

If you are a Vendor Central user the only alternative below won’t work for you. Which is why it is good practice to have a Seller Central account as well, where you can build rapport with your customers directly.

    – In the US Amazon has a service called the Amazon Early Reviewer Program which is available to brand owners. You pay $60.00  per SKU and the system will continue to gather reviews for an SKU for up to 1 year from the time of enrolment, or until 5 reviews are received through the program, whichever occurs first.

    – If you are a Seller Central user you can use Xsellco to follow up with your customers for reviews. Once a template is set up, it follows up with customers at a time you choose.

    – It is a best practice to combine email follow up with sponsored products and price promotion. More sales = more emails = more chances of getting reviews.

Amazon is undoubtedly a good platform to use, and over the years I have found myself using Amazon more and more as there is no doubt of trust.  As a seller, it is good practice to stay within Amazon’s terms and use the various options discussed above to build your product reviews, and you can expect growth in about 3 – 6 months time.

If you are looking for help in improving your product reviews please get in touch.