Amazon review sites are websites that curate and list interesting Amazon deals and promotions. These promotions can often be significant (50% or more), so they can be a steal if you had already intended on buying that product or a similar one.
These websites also provide great benefits for Amazon sellers. I know this may sound unrealistic to some people considering many sellers make almost zero profit with deals listed on these websites (some of them even lose money) but bear with me there, I’ll explain in a bit!
How Amazon review sites work
So before I actually list some of the top websites for you, let me explain how they work first. Most of these websites work directly with sellers to offer these deals. You’re usually given a unique coupon code that can be used during checkout at Amazon to get your product for free or at a steep discount.
You will still have to pay for shipping, but if the product is Amazon-prime eligible, you can get free shipping with an Amazon Prime membership. If you don’t have one already, you can activate a free Amazon Prime trial for 30 days. Do note that Amazon will automatically charge you once the trial ends if you don’t cancel before then.
What’s in it for sellers?
Amazon reviews are the lifeblood of healthy Amazon sales for any Amazon seller. How many products have you previously bought on Amazon without checking the reviews first? Exactly. Probably none. How many products were you super excited to get your hands on but then decided not to move forward because their reviews sucked? Well, you get the idea.
Not only do Amazon reviews serve to attract or deter sales, but they’re also an important Amazon listings ranking factor. They help determine if and where your product ranks when buyers search on Amazon for keywords related to it.
The old way (vs. the new one)
Amazon review websites used to blatantly help sellers trade free/deeply discounted products for positive Amazon reviews. Amazon eventually caught up on this and determined that these practices can affect the quality of the Amazon reviews and may deceive customers. Since then, many of these websites had to to completely shut down or rebrand themselves.
Those of them who were able to survive now have to strictly comply with Amazon’s new policies. They cannot explicitly ask the user to leave a positive review in exchange for getting a deal on the product. Furthermore, the customer is required to disclose in their review that they received the product at a discount or for free.
Some of these websites now allow sellers to manually “approve” or “disapprove” you for their deals. They do this to try and minimize the number of people who take the deals and never leave reviews, since they can no longer “force” you to leave a review. Before approving you, some sellers would check your Amazon profile first, so it’s a good idea to generally be active in terms of leaving reviews for your recent purchases, this can help you land the kind of deals that require “approval”.
Unlike Amazon’s own Vine program (which is invite-only), anyone can join these websites. Amazon’s Vine selects the top Amazon reviewers which they deem “the most helpful” and asks them to try out and review new and pre-release products from participating manufacturers. These reviews are clearly “Vine-labelled”. This is the only “incentivized review” program that is sanctioned by Amazon (no surprise there). As mentioned earlier, other websites have had to change their business model to “deal curators” instead of “trade the product for a review” type of website.
The Top Amazon Review Sites
As you can imagine, there are dozens of websites out there that adopt this business model. For buyers, the best of them would be the ones with the largest selection of deals and the highest discounts. For sellers, the best ones would be the ones that have a huge community of following to help sellers get the maximum exposure and engagement with their products.
Below I’ll walk you through the most popular review websites. The first 5 are the biggest ones, others are also good alternatives.
#1 Vipon
“AMZ Review Trader” was their previous name. They rebranded to “Vipon” and, like many others, changed the language on their website and no longer “require” users to post reviews in exchange for deals directly.
Vipon allows you to try out up to 20 products at the same time, many other websites don’t do this and force you to try one product at a time then give you access to other deals when you post a review. The catch here, however, is that deals require merchant/seller approval before you can claim them.
This means sellers will probably want to check your Amazon profile and may not approve your request. It also means some sellers could take a while to get back to you. If a seller takes too long, you always have the option to swap out that deal for another, though. The approval thingy isn’t that bad at all either, because that’s an advantage for sellers, so it means more/higher quality sellers are attracted to the platform.
Vipon is also one of the oldest websites around of its type, so there’s a wide variety of deals on there to choose from.
#2 JumpSend
JumpSend has one the of the largest selection of products out there. Their UI is also pretty easy to navigate and they neatly list all the available deals by category. Some deals require seller approval before you can claim them, but that doesn’t apply to every deal.
JumpSend also doesn’t appear to limit the number of deals you can claim at a time (as of writing this, at least). Their website has a books category that offers both physical discounted books and even free electronic ones. Many deals at JumpSend come really close to free, with some items selling at less than 50 cents.
#3 Snagshout
Snagshout is again one of the oldest and most popular websites of its kind. For shoppers, the top advantage there is that you can instantly claim a deal or “snag”. You don’t have to wait for seller approval. You can only accumulate up to 5 snags at once though, and their team monitors whether you leave reviews or not on Amazon products you’ve claimed deals for.
Their customer support is usually very responsive and helpful. You can sort deals by popularity, price, biggest % savings as well as filter based on category and min/max price. You can also choose to show prime-eligible deals only to save on shipping if you’re a Prime member.
#4 Product Elf
Product Elf is a popular one with over 40,000 active reviewers and a wide product selection. Many products there retail for $5 or less though, and deals might not always be that enticing (since even if you get 80% off $5….it’s still $5 at the end of the day so not that much savings in terms of $$$).
They have offers that both instantly approve you or require merchant approval before you can redeem them. Offers in here can disappear quickly due to the site’s popularity, but the constant updates make up for it as the team works hard to keep the website fresh with new deals. Product Elf is also quite popular for supplement-related deals, if that’s your cup of tea.
#5 Giveaway Service
Out of the bunch, perhaps these guys come on top when it comes to offers on products retailing at 50 bucks or more. They don’t require merchant approval before you’re allowed to claim the offer and their deals are mostly pretty solid.
For less expensive products, you can also often find 100% off promo codes (giveaways). You should take note of each offer’s redemption terms, though, as sometimes the merchant would expect you to do more than just post an Amazon review. They might require a social media share/post, a blog post, a review on another website (other than Amazon)…etc. So before claiming an offer, make sure you’ve read all the terms.
#6 Dollar Deals Review
This is a smaller site that isn’t updated as frequently as the other ones. This makes it harder to find freebies on there as they’re claimed quickly. The website works with a “credit-like” system called deal tickets. When you sign up, you get 200 deal tickets. To claim an offer, you’ll typically spend 100 deal tickets.
There are two ways to get deal tickets. You can do so either by reviewing products you’ve tried out or by buying them at $1 a pop. The deals here are at least 75% off, but as mentioned earlier, there isn’t really a huge variety of products and the website isn’t updated that frequently.
#7 I Love to Review (DealHustl)
These guys send a daily email with the latest deals. There aren’t that many deals and people compete fiercely to claim them, so you’ll have to take action quickly if you’re particularly interested in an item.
Their branding changed to “DealHustl” now, though, and the new website seems a little dodgy. I still included them on this list because they’ve been a solid resource for quite a while.
#8 VIP Power Club
Like DealHustl, VIP Power Club sends you the latest offers via email, so no going through their website digging for deals. While I’m no fan of any kind of promotional emails (I unsubscribe from all promotional newsletters without even looking at them), the deals from VIP Power Club are worth it.
You can expect to pay around 5 bucks per item, and discount on most items is 90% off or more. One thing to note is that VIP Power Club really values Amazon users with constant buyer activity and a history of credible reviews. Without those, you may have a hard time getting offers or even getting in, in the first place.
#9 Honest Few
Also mailing-list based, Honest Few allows you to sign up to receive discount offers when available. They typically have deals that are over 80% off their retail price. Their most prominent niche is health and beauty, but they do have offers from other niches as well. It’s free to join Honest Few.
#10 Loot Hoot
Loot Hoot runs offers ranging from 40% to 100% off. Their website doesn’t only support the US Amazon marketplace but international marketplaces as well including Amazon CA, UK and others. This can be great for international shoppers but confusing for US-based shoppers as it makes it harder to find relevant deals. Thankfully, you can filter the deals out by country to get around that easily.
Loot Hoot also runs a weekly contest and the winner gets a $25 Amazon gift card. Might not seem like much but it’s a nice touch considering most competing websites don’t have anything similar running.
Joining the website is free and you can sign up in a couple of clicks using your existing Facebook account.
#11 ProductTesting.co
ProductTesting is relatively new compared to the other websites on this list. They let you browse deals through their website or receive them via their email newsletter. Having the two options is pretty convenient, especially for promotional email haters like me.
Their discounts start at 20% and go all the way to 99%. They don’t have a crazy selection of products but most deals are worth it. For instance, their website shows (as of writing this) 53 available products from over 160 sellers. They also do have many products selling at just a single cent.
#12 Secret Deals Club
Secret Deals Club sends daily emails at 10 AM PST covering the latest offers. Their deals start at $1. It appears something is up with the website design at the time of writing this article. I can sign up normally and everything but the design looks too plain as if something is broken.
Anyway, the website claims to strike exclusive deals with Amazon merchants. So some deals on here may not be available anywhere else. US west coast residents also have an added perk here, because they can get their hands on the hottest deals before anyone else does if they’re early risers.
#13 Oz Naturals
Oz Naturals run a business model that is bit different. Instead of curating deals from different merchants, they only advertise and sell their own products. To get your hands on their heavily discounted deals, you’d have to sign up to their “VIP email list”, which is free.
The brand specializes in health and beauty products from moisturizer creams to toners, eye treatments, cleansers and sunscreens. The majority of products will cost you less than $2 once you use the promo code they send you after signing up to their email list.
Tips for Buyers
The biggest tip I can give you as a buyer is this: You need to vary your purchases on Amazon. Meaning, don’t make it appear like you only make purchases when you have a heavily discounted deal. The reason being that Amazon can pick up on this and get suspicious. This can lead to them disabling your ability to review products altogether.
The logic behind this is that Amazon suspects that you have direct relationships with manufacturers and because most of your purchases are heavily discounted deals, your reviews may no longer be credible.
If this happens (and it has already happened to many people), you’ll completely lose the ability to take advantage of any of these deal sites, so it’s not worth it. Make sure you only pick up interesting deals every now and then, and between each huge discount you grab, make normal purchases on Amazon like anyone else would.
If you decide to sign up to several websites (which you should if you intend on maximizing your chances of getting the best/most deals), then it’s probably a good idea to sign up with a dedicated email address. Your email inbox will be hammered with offers all day long, so it’s probably not a good idea to register with your main/primary email address.
Finally, always remember to check all the terms related to the offer. If the item is “free” but the fine print says you have to pay almost its whole retail price in shipping, well then, it’s not really free, isn’t it? Also as mentioned earlier, pay attention to offers that expect you to do more than a review to claim your discounted deal.
Always keep a healthy buyer profile on Amazon. Buy discounted and regular items and leave unbiased, helpful reviews. This will help you qualify for more deals and keep Amazon happy at the same time!
Tips for Sellers
One big tip for sellers is that you need you understand that a heavily discounted deal does not automatically make you entitled to get a crazy positive review from the customer. You’re not “buying a review”. This mindset may have served you well before, but with the new Amazon changes, it can be highly problematic.
If your product sucks, expect the customer to say so, even if you give it away for free. It’s really important to work out any quality issues and ensure your products are up to the standard before running a review promotion. Doing this will ensure that you increase sales velocity, get amazing reviews and keep everyone happy including your buyer and Amazon.
Another tip is to prioritize websites that give you some control over who claims your deal and how many times they claim it. I know sellers that got burned by people “bulk claiming” heavily discounted products and then reselling them at retail price on eBay, Craigslist or even Amazon itself.
If that happens, you go from a review promotion to increase sales velocity and positive reviews, to selling your products in bulk to a competitor at less than what it cost you to produce them. Yes, I hear you. Nightmare.
Last but not least, never encourage or incentivize users in any way, shape or form to leave positive reviews. Even if you get away with it, it’s really not worth your Amazon business in the long run. Instead, you can use other ways to deter negative reviews and increase positive ones. Using tools such as Jump Send you can send automated follow up emails to your customers asking for feedback and reminding them that you’re there to help if any issues arise.
This makes it much more likely for a customer to come to you with problems first before going to Amazon or leaving a bad review. Most customers just want to get their issues fixed, you will rarely encounter customers with an unexplained vendetta to ruin your business.
Conclusion
Amazon review sites can be greatly beneficial for buyers and sellers alike. Sellers get higher exposure, sales velocity and reviews, which can be cruicial to having a successful product launch. Buyers get to buy products at less than half their retail price. That’s a clear win-win.
As long as both parties adhere to Amazon’s policies, they’ll reap the benefits of these websites. Don’t forget to use the tips above to ensure you get the smoothest possible experience when using these platforms.
Have you tried any of these platforms before as a buyer or seller? Feel free to share your experience in the comments section below.