Amazon’s Giveaway Service
Launched in 2015, but now discontinued and no longer running, the Amazon giveaway service provided customers with a chance to win free items from vendors, and vendors with a chance to attract more potential customers. Prizes most often consisted of electronics and Kindle e-books, but you could also easily find giveaways for home goods, kitchen accessories, and even exercise gear.
To create a giveaway, vendors would access a special page through the Promotions tab on their account, where they would be able to select what item they would like to give away to lucky customers. They could then choose the type of contest it would be, whether a random instant win, a sweepstake or even first-come-first-serve. Finally, any special requirements for contest entry such as watching a video promoting the product, or following the vendor if they were an author, would be added and a giveaway would be created.
This service was an amazing opportunity for vendors to attract new potential customers and to promote their products. With each giveaway, vendors were given a discount code they could offer to those who did not win prizes, which often resulted in a large number of sales – many people would decide that the product was worth purchasing if they did not win, and were further encouraged by hefty discounts of 20% to 30%.
Unfortunately, now that Amazon has discontinued this service, customers will need to look elsewhere to find gift card and product giveaways. Below are several gift card giveaway sources that work similarly to the Amazon giveaways.
Giveaway Websites
One of the most common sources of free Amazon gift cards are websites specially dedicated to giveaways. Some offer only Amazon gift cards, while others also have gift cards for various retailers, phone app stores, and games.
These most often require users to create an account and answer some questions in a survey format; many websites offer these gift cards in exchange for information about personal preferences, or general information that helps them determine demographics for their websites. Sometimes, these surveys can be quizzes about a specific topic, either related to the item being given away or to the website that’s being used. Other sites simply ask users to provide an email address or phone number that can be used to contact them if they are a winner.
One example of a dedicated giveaway website is Give Zone. There, you can find Amazon gift cards with values from $10 to $200, as well as gift cards of various values for Xbox, Steam, iTunes, and even League of Legends. To enter these giveaways, users are asked to complete quizzes and tasks to earn tickets; each ticket gives users an additional chance to win the giveaway, so the more the better.
Social Media
Another source of Amazon gift cards is social media. People most often use Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to promote these giveaways, and offer gift cards with a wide range of values – as these are run by many different people, it is always up to the individual how much money will be loaded onto a gift card.
During these giveaways, people most often ask users to follow their profiles, as well as like, share or comment under the giveaway post, sometimes even tagging friends and family to increase their chances. Then, after a certain period, the person will either manually go through each of their comments, likes, or shares to choose a winner, or they will use an automated program to randomly select a winner that meets all of the criteria they have provided.
Some people do these giveaways simply to be generous; celebrities or influencers want to say ‘thank you’ to their fan base, or just help someone in need. Others may use these giveaways as a way to promote themselves, or a brand they represent, as their generosity will be seen as something positive, and will most likely lead to them gaining more exposure and popularity.
Of course, there is always the risk of scammers creating fake giveaways on social media to try and either cheat people out of their time and money or simply bring more fame to themselves. They will offer almost ‘too good to be true’ prizes, such as a $1,000 Amazon gift card for seemingly nothing in exchange, but when it comes to picking a winner they will somehow try to convince someone to send them a small fee to receive the prize or will completely delete all posts related to the giveaway and never choose any winners. Please stay safe while engaging in giveaways on social media, and make sure to never send anyone any money or personal information!
3rd Party Platforms
The final sources of Amazon gift card giveaways are 3rd party platforms, such as Gleam or Rafflecopter. These platforms are used by other websites to host giveaways, rather than creating the giveaways themselves.
For example, if someone wanted to run a giveaway on their reading blog to win a $20 gift card for Kindle e-books, they would be able to go onto Rafflecopter and launch the giveaway. Sites like this give users the ability to customize and personalize the giveaways in whatever way they would like to: how winners are selected, what types of entries are accepted (i.e. watching a video, signing up to a website, answering a question, following a social media account, etc.), what the terms and conditions are, and many more can be changed and selected at the click of a button.
Of course, the more advanced features come with a price, with many of these sites offering both monthly and one-off plans to suit every need. Many users can probably get away with using the free versions of these sites, particularly if the giveaway they are planning to launch will have simple rules and a straightforward method of picking winners.
Some of these sites also allow users to browse live giveaways that they are currently hosting from one main list. This allows lesser-known sites and blogs to be discovered through these giveaways and opens up the opportunity for new clients to engage with them.
