8 Ways to Get Free Products and Big Discounts on Amazon

Do you want to get big discounts on Amazon or, even better, free products? Of course you do. Amazon, however, does not really offer your typical coupon codes or promo codes. However, there are ways to get big discounts on Amazon and legitimately get free products (This isn't clickbait; I'll legitimately show you how to get free products).

I'm writing this article as a seller who has sold tens of millions of dollars worth of products on Amazon—I'll show you the insider secrets to why sellers give away products on Amazon and how you can get them.

If you're an Amazon Seller, check out our guide on using coupons and promotions effectively for your Amazon business.

Does Amazon Offer Discounts Codes?

The short answer is that Amazon does not offer blanket discounts codes, i.e., a coupon code that you can apply and get 10% off any product.

However, a very large percentage of individual products have significant discounts if you know where to look. Why? Because Amazon is a cutthroat marketplace with millions of sellers all competing for the top position in the search results.

The most common way they get to the top of those search results is by selling more products with bigger discounts.

#1 Amazon Giveaway Sites

Here's a little secret most people don't know: there are a ton of sites that give away Amazon products with big discounts or for free. Why do they do this? Basically, Amazon sellers giveaway products at a big discounts to try and get more sales and higher search engine rankings.

Typically, these discounts will range from 50% off to 100% off.

Some of them will give you the discounts code when you purchase, and some will mail you a rebate check after your purchase. 

Here are the most popular sites:

• RebateKey.com (you will get a check mailed to you after your purchase)
• CashBackBase.com
• JumpSend.com
• SnagShout.com (you will get a check mailed to you after purchase)
• MyVipon.com

#2 Lightning Deals/Today's Deals

Amazon's Today's Deals is a little-known page on Amazon where buyers get discounts of roughly 25% or more on some of the most popular items on Amazon. 

Why does Amazon offer such great deals? Well, Lightning Deals are an advertising program from Amazon where sellers pay a fixed fee of about $500 and (here's the important part) offer a discount of at least 25% off the regular price, to appear on the Today's Deals page on Amazon to hopefully get more sales for their products.

Lightning Deals, as the name suggests, are rapid discounts that typically last for only 24 hours, so continuously check back to look for new deals.

#3Amazon Coupons (Note: Don't Forget to Clip Them)

Remember how I said in the beginning that Amazon doesn't offer blanket discount codes that you can use on any items? This is true but individual products do have coupons. 

You can find coupons either from the Amazon Coupons page (warning: you'll be doing a lot of searching) or look on a normal search results page after searching for your item. A good chunk of items will have coupons available on them.

Now one important note: do not forget to actually clip the coupon. Most customers (about 60% of customers in my experience as a large-volume seller) do not actually clip the coupons because they assume that the coupons get automatically applied to their product. Coupons do not get automatically applied—you need to check the coupon icon to actually get the coupon applied.

#4 Hidden Offers

By default, Amazon will show you one price for an item. In Amazon seller lingo, this is called “winning the Buy Box.” But unknown to a lot of people, Amazon often has many prices for a product. Most people don't know where to look for these other prices though.

A lot of the time, the best price will win the Buy Box and the hidden offers are made up of warehouse deals. However, a good chunk of the time, there are brand new items available in these hidden offers that Amazon hides for a variety of reasons (most often because they are a third-party seller and not Amazon itself).

Always check these hidden offers. Sometimes, you'll get some incredible bargains of up to 50% lower than the Buy Box price. 

#5 Page 3 and 4 of the Search Results

Here's another secret: sellers aggressively fight to get to the first page of Amazon's search results because approximately 90%+ of sales come from the first page and almost no one browses past page 2.

If a seller has a product that has been relegated to page 3 or page 4, they will fight aggressively to get on to page 1 or 2. How do they fight aggressively? They lower their prices. Prices for nearly identical products on page 3 of search results can often be 10% to 50% cheaper than those on page 1.

If you're buying a commodity product (think yoga balls and weighted blankets) the quality will be almost identical for the top-ranked product to the 50th-ranked product, but the latter will often be much cheaper.

#6Amazon Warehouse Deals

You might have seen Amazon warehouse deals where you can get popular items at 5% to 25% off the regular price. But are they worth it?

As a seller who, for better or worse, deals with hundreds of thousands of dollars in returns a year, I'll share with you some insider baseball about how returns work on Amazon:

• Amazon does a very cursory examination of returns. If the packaging looks new, Amazon will assume the product is new and put it back into inventory or put it in a warehouse deal with the condition Like New. If someone exchanged a PlayStation 5 for a PlayStation 1 and put it in a brand-new-looking box, Amazon will rarely discover this.
• Most items will incur some packaging damage even though the contents inside are fine.

What's that mean for you? There are four categories of conditions for Amazon Warehouse deals: Like new, Very Good, Good, and Acceptable.

I, personally, will not buy a Like New product for just a 5% discount. It's not worth the risk that a return scammer messed with an item unbeknownst to Amazon. However, I'll buy warehouse deals with Very Good or Good classifications as the discount is significant and the risk is low.

#7 Bad Product = Free Product

Did you receive a product that didn't live up to your expectations? If so, you can probably get the product for free from the seller.

First, contact the seller and explain why the product didn't live up to expectations (for better or worse, if you mention something about potentially leaving a bad review, it'll help your case).

You can do this by viewing your orders page and clicking “Get product support.” Typically, sellers will refund you and let you keep the product as they would like to avoid a potentially bad review at all costs.

As a seller, I must warn and request you to not abuse sellers' generosity. Only contact the seller if you legitimately had a negative experience with a product. 

#8 Become an Amazon Vine Reviewer

Amazon Vine reviewers get free products in exchange for leaving their honest reviews of a product. You might have seen some of these reviews on Amazon as shown below.

There's one big catch to the program: it's invite-only. So how do you get an invite to the program? Amazon doesn't disclose the exact criteria, but essentially, it comes down to this: write lots of lengthy reviews of products in a particular product category that get lots of up-votes.

How many reviews do you need to leave? Again, Amazon doesn't disclose the exact number, but it seems to be in the low dozens. So make sure to review your purchases on Amazon.

#9 Get Free Amazon Samples

There are many brands that offer free samples through Amazon, for example free food samples, makeup samples, etc.

There's a couple settings that need to be checked to get access to this, specifically in your communication settings you need to make sure to have “send new Amazon products and services, deals or recommendations by mail”. Check out our full guide on getting free Amazon samples.

Conclusion

It is surprisingly easy to get free and deeply discounted products on Amazon. The best way is easily to scan the rebate and giveaway sites like JumpSend.com.

After this, regularly check the Today's Deals pages and look beyond Amazon-branded products (e.g., Kindle, Amazon Basics, etc.) which Amazon heavily promotes but offers only slim discounts compared to third-party seller products.

Do you have any other tips for getting great deals on Amazon? Let me know below.