A new product has no reviews, and no reviews means no conversion. **Vine is Amazon's own early-reviewer programme**: you give units away, a selected group of reviewers receives them, and some of them post reviews.

**It is the fastest and cheapest way to get a new listing past zero.**

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-vine-explainer-daab517d.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? One hundred and fifty seconds on why the arithmetic favours Vine so heavily, taking the maximum units, and the margin distortion the giveaways create.*

## **Why the arithmetic favours it so heavily**

**The organic review rate is roughly 2–3% of orders.**

**So 30 organic reviews means selling 1,000–1,500 units** — which on a new product takes months you do not have, at a conversion rate depressed by the very absence of reviews you are trying to fix.

**Vine gets you there on 30 units.**

**Not all 30 reviewers post.** In practice **70–90% do**, so 30 giveaways produces roughly **20–25 reviews**. Still a completely different order of magnitude from 1,000 sales.

## **What it costs**

Amazon charges an enrolment fee per ASIN, banded by how many units you offer:

| Units offered | Fee |
|---|---|
| **1–2** | **Free** |
| **3–10** | **$75** |
| **11–30** | **$200** |

**Take the maximum.** The fee is flat across the 11–30 band, so offering 12 units and offering 30 units cost the same $200. There is no reason to offer fewer.

**The units themselves are free to the reviewer** and you receive no payout for them, so the real cost is the fee plus your landed cost on 30 units.

**Check the current fees before enrolling** — Amazon has changed this structure before and may again.

## **Enrolling**

1. **Advertising → Vine.**
2. **Enter the ASIN** of the new product.
3. **Begin enrollment.**
4. **Select the number of units** to offer.
5. **Confirm.**

**Do it per marketplace.** Vine runs in each marketplace separately, so a product selling in several can gather reviews in each — which matters, because reviews do not fully carry across.

## **One reporting trap worth knowing**

**Vine orders now appear as ordinary orders with a full promotion applied.**

**Which means your profit margin percentage will look dramatically worse than it is** for as long as the giveaways are running. Thirty units at full discount inside a low-volume month is enough to make a healthy product look like it is losing money.

**Do not react to that number.** It is the giveaway, not the product — see [**Where Your Margin Actually Goes**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/where-your-margin-actually-goes).

![Margin per product, with the Vine period visible](/kb-assets/shot-prod-table-6c206b.png)

**Being able to see the period a distortion belongs to is what stops it becoming a false alarm** — see [**Understanding Business Reports**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/understanding-business-reports). Reading a single blended margin figure for the month is how a Vine enrolment turns into a panic about pricing.

## **What Vine will and will not do**

**It will get you from zero reviews to twenty-odd**, which is the threshold where a listing starts converting like a real product.

**It will not fix a bad product.** Vine reviewers are not selected by you and are frequently critical. A product with genuine defects gets 20 reviews saying so, permanently, at the top of a brand-new listing.

**So make sure the product is right first** — see [**Fix the Product by Studying Competitors**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/fix-the-product-by-studying-competitors).

**And make sure the listing sets accurate expectations**, because a reviewer disappointed by the difference between the images and the object will say so — see [**Answer the Complaints in Your Content**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/answer-complaints-in-your-content).

## **Where it fits in a launch**

**Enrol at the start**, so reviews accumulate while you are building campaigns rather than after.

**Do not wait for reviews before starting PPC** — but do expect early conversion to be weak until they land, and read your launch data with that in mind. See [**Preparing a Launch**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/preparing-a-launch).

## **Common mistakes**

**Offering 10 units instead of 30**, and paying $75 for a third of the benefit when $200 buys the lot.

**Enrolling a product that is not ready**, and permanently attaching honest negative reviews to a new listing.

**Enrolling only in the US**, and leaving other marketplaces at zero.

**Panicking at the margin distortion** the giveaways create in reporting.

**Treating Vine as a substitute for a rating strategy.** It gets you to twenty reviews; everything after that is the ordinary work — see [**Why a Rating Drop Costs More Than It Looks**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/why-a-rating-drop-costs-more).

## **Related**

- [**Preparing a Launch**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/preparing-a-launch) — where enrolment sits in the sequence.
- [**Short-Term Rating Recovery**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/short-term-rating-recovery) — what to do once reviews exist.
- [**Where Your Margin Actually Goes**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/where-your-margin-actually-goes) — reading margin around a giveaway.