10 Tips To Prepare For Amazon Prime Day As a Seller
Prime Day 2025 stretches from July 8 to 11—four full days (96 hours) of deals that eclipse last year’s 48-hour event. U.S. shoppers spent $14.2 billion during Prime Day 2024; analysts expect the extra two days this year to push that record even higher. However, Amazon also introduced new promotion fee hikes effective June 2 2025—including a $5 up-front coupon fee plus 2.5% of coupon sales and flat daily charges for Lightning/Best Deals.
These changes can squeeze sellers’ margins, limiting how deeply they can discount while still aiming for double-digit net profits. Layer on the recent tariffs that have pushed up cost of goods, and the new promotion fees feel like salt in an already fresh wound.
That’s why I’ve distilled your Prime Day prep into 10 focused tips, each critical for winning your share of sales during this late-summer shopping surge, and helping you protect your margins as much as possible.
Tip 1: Inventory Status
By now, your Prime Day units should already be pre-positioned in FBA so every hero ASIN can ship with a Prime badge on July 8 – 11. First, confirm you’ll stay in stock all four days by checking your run-rate (average daily sales over the past 7-30 days) against the units currently available plus anything en route
If the math shows you’ll dip below break-even safety levels, expedite a top-up before Amazon’s cut-offs: June 9 for “minimal-splits” shipments and June 18 for “Amazon-optimized” splits.
Next, double-check your FBA Capacity Monitor. If any storage type is already pushing past 80% of its cubic-foot limit, file a quick request in Capacity Manager or clear slow-moving SKUs so Amazon doesn’t throttle your inbound shipments or charge overage fees.
As a final safety net, create a parallel FBM offers for your catalogue especially your high velocity skus. That way, if FBA units hit zero during the event, Amazon can automatically surface the FBM listing and keep your revenue—alive.
Tip 2: Prepare for a Four-Day Marathon
Last year Prime Day ran July 16–17; this year it’s July 8–11. Treat the event like a relay, not a sprint. No brand is the same so make sure to visit last year’s prime day and discover which day is the highest in terms of traffic (sessions/glance views), and revenue.
- Lead-In (14 to –1 day prior) – Tease 5-10% coupons to minimze the window shopping affect and run awarness campaigns to grab early clicks in order to build your audience for remarketing during the big event.
- Prime Day (Days 1 & 2) – Push deepest discounts and lift CPC bids 20-50% during 6 p.m.–midnight, the window that drove ~30% of 2024 revenue.
- Prime Day (Days 3 & 3) – Assess your discounts results from the previous 2 days and adjust current promotions based on margin, gross revenue and costs. For many brands, they might have to pull back if they’ve overspent on the first day or two of prime day.
- Post Prime Day (July 12-21) – Maintain some sort of discounts whether through coupons or promotions for late buyers. Of course if stock and margin allows it.
Tip 3: Account for The Promotion Fee Increase
Since June 2, every coupon costs $5 up front plus 2.5% of redeemed sales; Lightning/Best Deals cost $70/day + 1% of deal revenue off-peak (or $500/$1,000 flat during Peak). High-ticket goods (>$50) usually justify Lightning/Best; low-priced volume movers still thrive on coupons. Discover which Amazon promotions is right for you based on the recent fees.
And keep in mind Amazon locks Lightning and Best Deal submissions on June 6, Prime-Exclusive Price Discounts close 12 hours before the event ends, and you can tweak coupons right up to the final Prime Day countdown.
Tip 4: Promotion-Based Margin
Now that Amazon has shifted from a flat-fee–based to performance based deal fees. It’s paramount to assess your net margin after the new promotional fees. Run everything through the Amazon FBA calculator to figure out your net margin after Amazon fees and how much you should discount based on your net margin.
Also, don’t be shy about cancelling a promotion if the numbers don’t pencil out—Amazon waives the fee on any Lightning Deal, Best Deal, or Prime-Exclusive Discount that you or Amazon cancel before the scheduled start time.
And keep in mind Amazon locks Lightning and Best Deal submissions on June 6, Prime-Exclusive Price Discounts close 12 hours before the event ends, and you can tweak coupons right up to the final Prime Day countdown.
Tip 5 – Set Your Advertising Budget
You should set your advertising budget for July and how much of that will you allocate to prime day. To determine how much should you spend for July and prime day – you can start by assessing last year’s July and determine your TACoS and profitiblity for the whole month and during prime day 2024.
Assuming you’ve generated $500,000 for July 2024, and you’ve spent $75,000 on Amazon ads. That puts you at 15% TACoS. And by assessing your profitibility for the month, you can then make an informed decision on wether you should spend more or less than that. Of course, while accounting for the 4-day prime day stretch.
Tip 6 – Lock in TACoS Goals
To remain profitable while discounting, you ought to set a TACoS goal for prime day as don’t want burn through your budget and spend more than you should have. TACoS ought to trump your budget.
So let’s say you did 200k in prime day 2024, and this year you’re expecting to do 200k, and you want to be at 10% TACoS, that leaves you at 20k total budget or 5k per day. However lets say the first day of prime day and you sales surpass 50k by 4pm PST, then you can increase ad-spend with time as sales pick up and you’re under your TACoS goal.
Secondly, you ought to set TACoS goals across your catalogue so the budget is split evenly and based on the type of promotion set and the ROI/Sales expected.
Tip 7 – Retargeting Campaigns
Roughly 70% of Prime Day carts disappear without checkout, and Sponsored Display is the cheapest way to chase them past customers who view your detail pages but didn’t purchase.
Build retargeting sponsored display campaigns – 1 per ASIN: 1–14-day viewers (bid high, aim for conversion) and 14–90-day viewers (bid lower, aim for awareness). If you have DSP orders, leverage it’s capability for narrow re-targeting and make sure to not over-spend on Sponsored Display to refrain from any overlap. Adjust bids every morning: raise them on Day 3 if conversion dipped when discounts lightened, or cut them if ACoS climbs above goal.
Tip 8 – Use Historical Data
Whether you’re a vendor or a third party seller, check last year prime day sales and promotions, and use this data to make better promotional, advertising and margin based decisions. With the recent deep DIVE feature on business reports, it’s very easy to assess how last year’s prime day and July played out. Watching your sales, units, orders, featured offer, business orders and other critical KPIs.
Armed with those numbers, you can decide whether to repeat a discount, raise bids during proven traffic spikes, or trim offers that tanked margin. In short: last year’s data isn’t history—it’s the playbook for smarter promotions, tighter ad budgets, and healthier profit this July.
Tip 9 – Increase Cart Size
Average-Order Value is your quiet profit lever. Activate Virtual Bundles on complementary ASINs and surface them in “Frequently Bought Together. Pair that with multi-buy promotions like “Buy 2, Save 10%” to nudge quantity. Moreover, run a brand tailored promotion targeting your exisiting loyal customer base or even re-egnage churnched customers, abondored carts…etc.
Tip 10 – Drive External Traffic
If you don’t see a sales lift on your D2C website for July, then you might want to promote prime day discounts on your actual website, especially if you’re not part of buy with prime program. By driving external traffic to your Amazon storefront via Meta, TikTok, Google ads as well as email, you can earn a 10% kickback on those sales and help maximize your sales velocity on Amazon, aiding your organic rank and overall exposure.
In many cases, I’ve had better CPC via external traffic than traditional Amazon ads. So if you’re looking to enhance your Amazon ads strategy, feel free to opt for a complimentary Amazon audit to discuss opportinities for growth.
Key Takeaways
Prime Day’s four-day format rewards sellers who pace spend, watch TACoS like a hawk, cancel bad promos early, and learn from historical data. Use last 1-2 year’s data as your compass, keep Safety Stock and FBM offers as lifeboats, and your Prime Day 2025 should finish with higher rank, bigger baskets, and healthy margins—even after Amazon’s new promo fees.
Happy Prime Day!
