Do you need a Amazon Prime Membership?
In this page, you can check out all the benefits of Prime membership. I think the most attracting benefits include:
- 2-day shipping(Some items could be 1 day or even same-day delivery);
- Prime Video;
- Discount at Wholefoods
- Extra discount and promotions. I listed several promotions before, which is still effective: Amazon Promotion: Free 3 months Unlimited Music Plus Audible; Huge Amazon Promotion using Credit Cards points; Free Grubhub Plus Membership for Amazon Primer. Also, if you create a baby registry for you newborn babies, you can get 15% off if you are a prime.
- Prime Music and Reading
But the price is not cheap! $119 annually!(In this Novermber it will be $139) It is a huge spending, and if you are not sure about its value, I suggest you’d better sign up a free trial for 30 days.
Prime member link (Free trial for 30 days, then $139 per year or $14.99 per month).
If you are a student, you can have a 6 months Student prime trial for free!
If you are EBT or government assistance receipicents, yo can sign up a lower price prime membership: only $6.99 per month.
And if you really enjor the prime benefits and decide to subscribe for the full year, you can use the shopping portal to get cash back. For example, topcashback is offering $10 cash back if you sign up prime membership.
Credit Cards
Currently, there are 2 amazon co-brand credit cards offer 5% cash back on Amazon(and Wholefoods) if you are a prime member, otherwise you will get 3% cash back.
Chase:$ 200 Amazon gift cards as a sign-up bonus(no spending requirements)
American Express: $125 Amazon gift card as a sign-up bonus(no spending requirement)
Also in this post I discussed how to get extra discount if you have other credit cards: Huge Amazon Promotion using Credit Cards points
Gift Cards
You can buy amazon gift cards at many grocery stores and drug stores. If you have a credit card that offers a good cash back at these place, you can buy amzon gift card and use it to shop. For example, if you have American express blue cash preferred card, you can earn 6% cash back in the grocery store. So if you buy amazon gift card from there, it looks like you get the amazon gift card at 6% discount. Or you can buy amazon gift card at Korger for fuel points, which equals around 15% discount!
Shopping Portal
Amazon is a website. So everything for online shopping also works for amazon.com. I have a post to discuss it: How to Save Money for Online Shopping. Also, in this post, Double Killers for Online shopping Cash Back, I introduced an App Drop. This App offers 5 points per dollar spending on amazon(0.5% cashback). Because it tracks the spending through linkage of your credit card(Not click the link through the app), so you can triple dip the cashback. Let’s see you want to buy a kindle fire, you can find that topcashback has 8% cashback for kindle device. You can use a card that linked to Drop to shop, so you will earn: 1. credit card points;2. 8% cash back from topcashback;3 5 points per dollar from Drop. A stone kills 3 birds!