Millions of Americans are in love with shopping on Amazon.com. It’s terrifically convenient, and pricing often is lower than in brick-and-mortar stores.
However, if you know a few tricks, there are even bigger bargains to be found. Following are ways that die-hard Amazon shoppers shave even more money off their cart total.
1. Score free gift cards
One of the best ways to save on Amazon may be to go to another website. Rewards websites like Swagbucks.com offer various ways you can earn points that you can redeem for free Amazon gift cards.
To learn more about how this works, check out “5 Ways to Score Free Amazon Gift Cards.”
2. Use price-tracker sites
Regular Amazon shoppers know that prices at the online store fluctuate.
That’s where deal tracker sites come in handy. Websites such as CamelCamelCamel can show you historical price data, as well as send alerts when a price on a certain item reaches a preset amount.
To learn more, check out “2 Tools You Must Use When Shopping on Amazon.”
3. Join Amazon Prime
For heavy-duty Amazon buyers like me, Amazon Prime is the way to go. It costs as little as $99 for a one-year membership, but you get free two-day shipping with no minimum purchase required and access to a host of major freebies and discounts.
For example, you can borrow from an extensive Kindle e-book library for free and stream video for free. There’s also free streaming music and free unlimited cloud picture storage.
Aren’t sure you’re going to spend enough to justify shelling out $99? Sign up for the 30-day free trial.
4. Sign up for Amazon Family
One of the perks of a Prime membership is access to Amazon Family. It’s a collection of price breaks and other features for parents who are expecting a child or have a child age 5 or younger. It includes:
- Up to 20 percent off diapers and baby food
- A 15 percent baby registry completion discount
- Other offers and coupons
- Product recommendations based on your child’s age
Prime members can access Amazon Family by signing up. Basically, you tell Amazon your child’s gender and birthday or arrival date, and Amazon gives you a promo code to enter at checkout to receive Amazon Family discounts.
5. Join Prime Student
For college-age kids, there’s Amazon Prime Student.
This membership is essentially a reduced-price version of Amazon Prime. You get many but not all of the same benefits, plus exclusive deals and discounts for college students.
You can also get a six-month free trial of Prime Student, compared with the 30-day trial offered to Prime members.
To join Amazon Prime Student, you need a “.edu” email address.
6. Unearth the deep discounts
Every day can be like Black Friday on Amazon if you know where to look.
One Amazon webpage to bookmark is titled “Today's Deals.” There you will find multiple types of discounts, including:
- Deals of the day
- Lightning Deals
- Coupons
- Other types of savings and sales
You may also want to bookmark the Amazon Warehouse page, or remember that WarehouseDeals.com is a shortcut to the same page. It’s where you will find Amazon’s refurbished and open-box items.
7. Find freebies
Amazon often offers promotions that involve freebies. These free things may include, for example:
8. Subscribe & Save
If you want to ensure you never run out of toilet paper or laundry soap, choose the “Subscribe & Save” option when buying such items. Subscribe & Save is available for many household items.
Basically, it works like this: You agree to receive regular, automatic shipments of one or more products, and thereby lock in free shipping and a discount. The discount is as high as 15 percent, depending on how many items you subscribe to.
You can skip a shipment or cancel a subscription at any time.
What is your favorite way to save at Amazon? Share with us in comments below or on our Facebook page.
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