Amazon announced the launch of their new tool, Amazon Giveaway, today.
According to a release, the service will allow everyone from “authors, aspiring artists, non-profits, brands, bloggers, social media gurus and more” to create a giveaway using physical products from Amazon’s inventory. Amazon will even handle the shipping, making the platform an all-in-one, easy solution for users.
There are, of course, a few stipulations. According to TechCrunch, there is a 50 item limit and the items included have to total under $5,000. Obviously, the products also all have to be sold by Amazon.
Users will, of course, have to take care of product costs and shipping fees themselves. There are no Amazon Prime shipping benefits for winners, either. As the Verge reveals,
“Everything is shipped “standard” and Amazon won’t even provide tracking numbers for giveaway prizes.”
These drawbacks appear to present only minor issues when looking at the bigger picture, however. Aside from the actual prices of the products included, the tool is free and open to any Amazon user and significantly easier to create than traditional giveaways.
“Amazon Giveaway is the first self-service tool that takes care of all the hard work of a giveaway, from setting up all of the rules to shipping prizes directly to winners,” shared Steve Shure, VP of consumer marketing.
Another big feature of the tool is its social media component. According to GeekWire,
“Features include the ability to require contestants to follow the contest organizer on Twitter to be eligible for a chance to win a prize.”
For brands, the prime target of Amazon’s new tool, this feature holds a lot of value and will be a big draw in moving people away from other giveaway platforms, like Facebook and Instagram. In addition to competing with bigger social media platforms, however, Amazon’s new tool puts the massive fish in the same pond as smaller sites like as Rafflecopter and PunchTab. Amazon Giveaway also heightens competition with other popular ecommerce platforms like eBay and Etsy, the latter of which already has a giveaway feature called Etsy Giveaway.
Photo Credit: Amazon
