Before you open Seller Central: three checks

Almost every event submission error comes from something that was wrong before the form. Fix these three things first and the step-by-step becomes routine.

  1. Minimum price filled in your inventory. If the minimum price set on the ASIN is higher than the price the event requires, the product shows a red error when you submit — and you find out on deadline day.
  2. Reference price validated. It defines the "was" in the strikethrough price. A wrong reference ruins the deal experience and, in some cases, kills eligibility.
  3. User permission granted. If a promotion option doesn't show in the menu, it's almost always permissions: log in with the primary account user under Settings → User Permissions and grant access.

Creating deals (Best Deals and Lightning Deals)

  1. In Seller Central, go to Menu → Advertising → Deals.
  2. Click Create a new deal.
  3. Review the available options — including deals eligible for event campaigns, which are flagged on this screen.
  4. Select the product and the deal type, one at a time — or use the bulk download / management option for batches.
  5. Select the event period (this is where the deal stops being a standalone promotion and becomes an event submission).
  6. Set the deal's final price or the per-unit discount.
  7. If the ASIN has variations, select which ones participate and which one is featured.
  8. Click Submit deal.

The deal then shows in your dashboard, where you can still edit prices and quantities or cancel. After that comes the step almost everyone skips: create ads for the deal. A deal with no paid traffic at the start of the event relies only on organic placement — and that placement is contested.

Mind the durations: a Best Deal runs for days, and a Lightning Deal runs for a few hours with required, configurable inventory. Durations and deal fees change — check Seller Central for the current ones.

Creating coupons

  1. Menu → Advertising → Coupons.
  2. Click Create a new coupon.
  3. Type the product name or ASIN and select the products.
  4. Click Continue.
  5. Select the coupon dates — aligned with the event window.
  6. Set the discount, as a dollar amount or a percentage.
  7. Decide whether to limit it to one redemption per customer.
  8. Set the promotion budget — the cap that keeps the campaign from spending more discount than you planned.
  9. Set the promotion title (what the shopper reads).
  10. Set the audience targeting.
  11. Click Continue, review the information and click Submit.

The budget is the most underrated field on this screen. It's what makes the coupon the controlled-risk promotion in your calendar: if redemptions spike, the campaign stops on its own instead of eating the quarter's margin.

Creating Prime Exclusive Discounts and percentage-off promotions

Prime Exclusive Discounts are created under Menu → Advertising → Prime Exclusive Discounts. Percentage-off promotions use a form with these fields:

  1. Buyer purchases — what the shopper has to do to get the discount: spend a certain amount, buy a certain quantity, or simply get it.
  2. Purchased items — which products participate.
  3. Buyer gets — the size of the discount.
  4. Applies to — whether the discount applies to the items in the cart or to additional items.
  5. Set the budget, if offered.
  6. Tiers — set up tiered discounts. This is where you build the classic "10% off when you buy 2 and 15% off when you buy 3 or more".
  7. Select the start and end dates, covering the event window.
  8. Name the promotion.
  9. Choose the promo code: single-use, group, or no restrictions.
  10. Decide whether redemption is limited to one per customer.
  11. Fill in the detail page display text — it's what the shopper sees, so write the condition so it's understood in two seconds.
  12. Review the details and click Submit.

Percentage-off promotions can cover a broad product selection for long periods. Use them as a standing base layer, not as the headline of the event.

Co-funding: the deal Amazon helps pay for that almost nobody accepts

In the promotions hub, below the create buttons, some accounts see a block of co-funding opportunities that most sellers have never noticed — simply because they don't scroll down. It's the best thing that shows up there: Amazon suggests a promotional price and a reduced referral fee for that ASIN. Availability varies by marketplace and account.

Five things to know before you let one slip by again:

  1. The window is short and doesn't come back. In the flow we reviewed, the suggestion stays available for about 5 days. Once it's gone, no support case reactivates it — the opportunity simply expires.
  2. Put it on your calendar. The practical recommendation is to block one fixed morning a week to open the hub and check. There may be nothing; next week there may be something.
  3. After accepting, don't touch the listing. Any change, especially price, can take the deal down: the system reads it as the product leaving the rules that justified the promotional fee. Accepted? Secure inventory and leave it alone.
  4. Not every seller sees the block yet. The rollout is ongoing. And even with the button visible, product review and the fee reduction are at Amazon's discretion — it's not a guaranteed weekly suggestion.
  5. Account health is a prerequisite. A store with policy violations, a high late shipment rate or impacted account health isn't eligible for deals, let alone co-funding.

Email alerts and Seller Central notifications also arrive when there's a new suggestion — but don't rely on them alone. Deal notifications still fail, and checking manually once a week takes two minutes.

Submitting to the right event: the filter almost nobody finds

Still in the promotions hub, scrolling past co-funding, there's the events list. It shows the campaigns open for submissions — and that's where a promotion stops being standalone and gets tied to the event.

First come, first served for slots

The allocation rule is explicit and applies to everyone — Amazon 1P, managed sellers and marketplace sellers: whoever submits the deal first gets the slot. There's no queue by store size. That turns lead time into a direct competitive edge: the sooner your FBA shipment goes out, the sooner the deal is scheduled, the sooner ads go live.

How the calendar fits together

Big tentpole events — Prime Day, Prime Big Deal Days, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the holiday season — run alongside seasonal campaigns such as back-to-school. That means there's almost always more than one campaign available for the same ASIN in the same month.

A practice worth copying: the campaign doesn't start on event day. Opening the window a few days early works as a warm-up and, above all, gives you time to fix everything before the peak — replace the SKU that stocked out, renegotiate the deal that came with a new price suggestion, fix whatever is off. Whoever shows up on event day with pending fixes loses the whole day sorting them out.

The four errors that most often sink promotions

1. Minimum price error

The product shows in red when you submit. Cause: the minimum price set on the ASIN is higher than the price the event requires. Fix: open your inventory, search for the ASIN with the error and fill in or edit the minimum price.

2. Inconsistent reference price

Before submitting, validate the ASIN's reference price. It backs the strikethrough price and the perception of a real discount. A reference inflated in a last-minute rush is the fastest path to a rejected deal — or one that's approved and does nothing.

3. A promotion option doesn't show in the menu

It's not a bug, it's permissions. Log in to Seller Central with the primary account user, go to Settings → User Permissions and grant access to the user who will run promotions. Sort this out outside event week.

4. "My deal didn't show up" during a Prime event

The Prime event classic, and almost always a false alarm. Seller-created deals in these events are restricted to Prime members. If you checked your product page with a non-Prime account, you won't see the promotional price — even though sales are coming in normally.

Before opening a case: check with a Prime account. And before concluding the deal didn't go live, check your sales dashboard — here, symptom and cause are rarely what they seem.

Bonus: finding the button in the new Seller Central

With the interface migration, a lot moved without changing function. Two shortcuts that save time: bookmark direct links to the screens you use most, and ask Seller Assistant where to find what you're looking for — it takes you straight to the right screen, including creating a Best Deal.

How to build your event calendar

Activation lead times differ, and that difference sets the order of work:

  • Deals: event submissions have their own deadline — they're the first item on the schedule, weeks ahead.
  • Prime Exclusive Discounts: also have event deadlines; schedule them right after deals.
  • Coupons and percentage-off promotions: the most flexible, and so the natural candidates for a boost during the event if an ASIN is underperforming.

The practical order is: lock the target price per ASIN based on net profit → submit deals by the event deadline → schedule Prime Exclusive Discounts for the window → set up budgeted coupons as a boost layer → create ads pointing to the ASINs on deal.

How EcomVision helps

The hard part of an event isn't filling in the form — it's knowing what price each ASIN can take and what the promotion actually delivered. EcomVision's Net Profit and Margin calculates real results per ASIN (COGS, referral fee, FBA, returns, taxes), and the Promotions and Coupons dashboard tracks the cost and sales of each active promotion during the event, not a month later. For the ads that support the deal, Amazon Ads management keeps spend where it's converting while the peak lasts.

Update notice: Seller Central menu paths, fields and lead times change often and vary by marketplace. This step-by-step was originally written from the Seller Central flow in September 2026 — always confirm in your account's Promotions hub.

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