Guide to Saving Money at Amazon

• Amazon charges $12.99 per month for Amazon Prime. If you prepay for a full year, you pay $119, which is over $35 cheaper than paying by the month. If you've never had a free trial of Amazon Prime, you can get a 30-day trial by clicking here.
• Amazon offers Prime for just $5.99 per month for qualifying low-income customers with an EBT card. You must confirm eligibility before signing up for this offer, but it's the best discount on Prime if you can take advantage of it.
• For college students, Amazon offers Prime Student. They offer a 6-month trial of this service and after the trial you can pay $59 per year or $6.49 per month. Prime Student offers most of the same benefits of the regular Prime subscription, so if you're in school, take advantage of this offer.

  
  

Maximizing Amazon's Deals

• Having Amazon Prime is very important during Amazon's month-long Black Friday sale. They offer tens of thousands of limited quantity Lightning Deals and Prime members get 30-minutes of early access to most of these deals.
• While Amazon has thousands of deals at any given moment, they allow you to filter all their deals to find what you're looking for. On their Today's Deals page, you can use the filters to select specific categories, types of deals, price ranges, average reviews and much more.
• The Today's Deals page is also where you can see those upcoming Lightning Deals as well as Amazon's very popular Gold Box daily deals which become more numerous as Black Friday gets closer each year.
• Add items to your shopping cart and the "saved for later" list to keep track of prices. Each time you return to your shopping cart page, Amazon will display a message about any price drops (or increases) since your last visit.
• Use our Instant Deal Alerts mailing list. We'll email you when we find especially hot deals from Amazon and other online retailers. Join tens of thousands of your fellow shoppers who get these alerts. You can also follow us on Twitter for real-time deal updates.

Use the Best Credit Card

• Amazon offers their own cards: the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card and the Amazon Prime Store Card. Both offer 5% back at Amazon.com every day with no restrictions. The Visa card also gives 2% back at restaurants, gas stations and drugstores and 1% back on other purchases.
• While the Amazon card is good if you primarily shop on Amazon, there are other great cash back and rewards cards which can also be used on Amazon. For our list of recommended rewards cards, check out GottaCreditCard.com.
• Many credit cards allow you to pay with points on Amazon and often have promotions to encourage you to do this. Keep an eye on your promotional emails from your credit card issuer for these deals. American Express, Chase, Discover and Citi often offer discounts on Amazon purchases by using at least 1 reward point to pay for your Amazon purchase.

Take Advantage of Gift Card Offers

• Amazon frequently offers promotions offering free reward credit when you reload your Amazon gift card balance. There is currently a promotion offering a $5 reward when you reload your balance. This can only be done once per account.
• During November and December Amazon frequently offers either a free gift card for a free item such as a Gund teddy bear when you purchase a certain amount in gift cards. Look for these deals on GottaDEAL.
• Amazon offers Prime members 2% in rewards when they reload their gift card balance using a checking account instead of a credit card. This is Amazon passing on some of their savings from not having to pay credit card fees.
• Finally, many credit cards such as the popular Chase Freedom offer category bonuses at certain types of retailers such as office supply store or gas stations. You can purchase Amazon gift cards at these retailers and get bonus points or cash back from your credit card.

Use Sitewide Discount Coupons

• Amazon shoppers have reported receiving general use Amazon discount codes by changing their address on My Move. The coupons received have varied, but they tend to be 10% to 15% off with maximum spending ranging from $200 to as high as $1,000. This is definitely a YMMV offer.
• Create a baby registry! When you do, Amazon provides many benefits. One of the biggest is a 10% (15% for Prime members) completion discount on remaining items in your baby registry, with a maximum order of $5,000. More details can be found here.
• Amazon offers a similar discount for wedding registries. Sign up for a wedding registry here and after your wedding, you'll get 10% (20% for Prime) off a one time purchase up to $1,000. Get more details about this offer here.

A Few More Amazon Deal Tips

• If you have Prime, when checking out Amazon will usually offer you some kind of incentive to choose their slower Super Saver Shipping. This incentive is usually credits toward things like digital media, Amazon Pantry or Prime Now. If you don't need your item(s) right away, take advantage of these bribes.
• Know the 3 types of sellers on Amazon. Every page tells you who is selling the item and who is fulfilling the order. First, there are items that are sold and shipped by Amazon. Easy enough, right? Next are items sold by third party sellers that are shipped by Amazon. Great if you have Prime. Finally are 3rd party sellers who do the shipping themselves. These items don't qualify for Prime and may take longer to arrive.
• Sign up for Amazon Family if you have kids or are expecting. You'll get exclusive savings on items geared toward your kids and up to 20% off diapers and baby food if you have Prime and use Subscribe & Save.

Some Overlooked Amazon Sections

• If you have Prime, check out the new Prime Samples page. You can order samples of items such as food and beauty items, and then whatever you pay for the samples will be credited back the first time you order something from that brand on Amazon.
• Warehouse Deals is Amazon's outlet store for quality used items. Get discounts on open-box and previously used items, many of which are sold and shipped directly by Amazon.com which is useful if anything goes wrong.
• Amazon Handmade is a relatively new section of Amazon offering handcrafted products made by artisans around the world. This part of Amazon's site is great for finding unique items not sold anywhere else.
• Amazon Launchpad is focused on the brightest startup companies and the products they create. Many of these products were previously crowdfunded on Kickstarter or Indiegogo and you can now order these products directly.
• Amazon's Home Services portal lets you hire local professionals to handle tasks such as deep home cleaning, furniture assembly, TV wall mounting, yard work and much more. Look for frequent discounts on these jobs.