It’s no secret. Everyone shops on Amazon. Myself included. Amazon already has pretty good prices on almost anything you can think of. Even so, there are still a few ways to squeeze out a few more dollars in savings. Here’s a list of easy hacks and tricks that I’ve found to save you a little bit of extra money.
Everyone loves Amazon gift cards, especially when it’s what someone gives you for Christmas. But did you know there are ways to get Amazon gift cards for free (even if it’s not Christmas)?
There are several sites out there that allow you to do certain tasks in the exchange for points which you can trade in for Amazon gift cards. Some of these tasks include doing your regular online searches, taking surveys, and watching videos.
Swagbucks is one of these sites. You can earn points called “SB” by doing different tasks like watching videos or doing your regular searches. You can then redeem those points for Amazon gift cards.
Sign up through my link and you can get a $5 bonus when you earn your first 2,500 SB (roughly a $25 amazon gift card).
Some other similar sites I’ve heard of include Inboxdollars and Survey Junkie.
Another way to get Amazon gift cards is to just buy them at a discount. Sites like Raise.com and Cardpool.com let you buy gift cards at either discounted rates or will give you a little cash back.
This is a nice little way to get a small discount on your amazon purchases without having to do all that much. If you stack that with your credit card rewards you get from buying a gift card, that could lead to some nice savings.
Here’s how these sites work: users come to these sites to sell their gift cards for cash. These sites then turn around and sell them to users like you at a discount while taking a small cut. Everyone wins.
There’s one downside: When I last checked, Amazon gift cards were all sold out at both of these sites. I guess there’s high demand and low supply for these.
So you’ll probably have to setup a reminder for yourself to get notified when Amazon gift cards are up for sale. You will probably have to act quick though before someone else snatches up all the gift cards.
Alternatively, you could reload an Amazon gift card and get a $10 bonus. That’s pretty comparable to the type of discounts you can get on these gift card sites.
Rakuten has a list of Amazon deals and sales that you can check out. They have a little chrome extension that automatically checks if something you’re looking at is eligible for cash back rewards.
It’s also a great way to compare prices with other online retailers for something you’re looking for. Combine price comparisons with any cash back bonuses that Rakuten offers and you’ll have yourself a great way to find deals online.
If you sign up through my link, you will get a $10 bonus after your first purchase.
Honey is another site that can help you automatically check for coupons. You can use both Rakuten and Honey together to find the right coupons and get cashback at the same time.
You’ve probably seen this option for certain items while browsing Amazon. For certain items, you can subscribe to have it redelivered to you on a regular basis to receive a nice discount.
In my experience, it’s usually around 10-15% savings on repeat deliveries.This is nice if you’re ordering things that you use often like skin cream or your favorite snacks.
Amazon Goldbox is the place where Amazon lists all of their deals for the day. The deals cover pretty much everything that you would find shopping regularly on Amazon. They also have some subcategories for different types of deals they offer. I listed some of them below:
Amazon Coupons is exactly what it sounds like: A place where Amazon lists all of their coupons for a variety of different products. All you have to do is find a coupon you like, clip it, and apply it when you go buy that item (don’t forget that last part).
It’s a nice place to checkout if you’re shopping around for discounted items.
Amazon Renewed is a place where Amazon lists pre-owned, refurbished products that have been inspected and tested by their qualified suppliers to work and look like new.
Best of all, they come with the Amazon renewed guarantee. This guarantee means you’re eligible for a replacement or refund within 90 days if your product doesn’t work as you expected or doesn’t work at all.
So if you’re worried about buying something that’s broken, you always have that policy to fall back on.
Amazon Outlet is a place where Amazon sells overstocked Warehouse products at a discount.
It’s kind of like the clearance section at a brick-and-mortar retail store. All sorts of random stuff is marked down to a pretty low price because everything’s all stuff they’re trying to get rid of.
If you happen to be looking for something for something like home furniture, pet supplies, or a new device, it might be worth checking out Amazon Outlet for some deals.
Amazon Warehouse is a place to buy a bunch of pre-owned used and open box items at a discount.
Most of the items are things like tools, gadgets, electronics, and automotive parts, but they do have some household items departments like clothes and kitchen. They also have a Bargain Bin section where all items are marked down by 50% or more.
You can find some pretty good deals on medium priced items here. For example, I found this blender for $27.59, about $10 cheaper than the normal Amazon listing, but still works fine. In my experience, I’ve found that these deals often beat the deals that you can find with price comparison tools.
Sometimes tracking price changes can let you know when a good deal pops up. The best way that I found to do this is to use camelcamelcamel.
camelcamelcamel is a free Amazon price tracker that monitors millions of products online. They can also notify you when prices drop to help you find the best time to buy. They have a nice little browser extension to help you check price histories for any products on Amazon
Prices from third-party users as well as used and new prices are also included for you to compare. This extension makes comparing prices super convenient.
Just click on the extension and it will show you a small chart of the product’s price history. Here’s an example of what the price tracker chart looks like.
Some other sites that are pretty helpful with similar functionality are Keepa, and Tracktor
The Amazon Trade-In program lets you get an Amazon gift card in exchange for all sorts of items like devices, books, video games and more.
This is a great way to trade out old Amazon devices for newer models if you’re looking for an upgrade.
They accept trade-in items even if they were not purchased through Amazon. Just as long as your item matches the exact version displayed in the Trade-In search results.
This isn’t really a way to save money, but it’s a great way to give to charity at no extra cost to you.
Whenever you shop on smile.amazon.com, you will find the exact same prices and shopping experience as Amazon.com, but Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchase to the charity of your choice.
There’s a selection of over a million organizations to choose from to support. Just pick the products that have the tag “Eligible for AmazonSmile donation” to participate.
If you’re spending money on Amazon, why not get a free 3% or 5% cashback bonus? You can apply for one of Amazon’s rewards cards and start building up cashback rewards to pay for more purchases on Amazon.
One word of warning: make 100% sure you pay the balance in full every month before the due date. According to their interest rate policy, if you don’t pay your statement in full by the deadline, they will charge you interest for the full balance plus new purchases.
Unlike most other credit cards which only charge interest on the carry-over balance, this card will charge you interest on the full balance plus new purchases which would be still within the grace period. If you aren’t careful, the interest could easily offsets any cash back you might get. Not sure if it’s Amazon’s evil scheme or if it’s because they partnered with Chase Bank which supposedly is not the most ethical Bank to do business with.
The Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card gives you 3% back at Amazon.com and Whole Foods, 2% back at restaurants, gas stations, and drugstores, and 1% back everywhere else. You also get a free $50 gift card sign up bonus.
It’s pretty convenient to redeem the points. All you have to do is just use your rewards to pay for part or all of your purchase. There’s no minimum reward amount to redeem your points. So you’re pretty much just getting a 3% discount on everything you buy on Amazon.
If you’re a Prime member, you can apply for the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card. This card will give you 5% back at Amazon.com and Whole Foods Market, 2% back at restaurants, gas stations, and drugstores, and 1% back everywhere else. They also throw in a slightly bigger $70 gift card freebie when you sign up.
If you’re thinking about getting Prime just for this card, you will have to spend $5,950 per year to make the 2% increase of the prime rewards Visa card worth it (excluding all the other bonuses of prime membership). So the cashback rewards difference between the two cards isn’t a game changing difference, but is a nice boost if you have prime for other reasons (like free shipping).
The Amazon Prime Store Card is similar to the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Card, giving you 5% back on Amazon (only for Prime members). You also get $20 when you first sign up.
The upside is it’s easier to get approved if your credit score isn’t looking to great.
The downside: higher APR and more restrictions on what you are allowed to purchase with this card on Amazon. Another downside: you can only use it on Amazon.
Woot! is a daily deals site owned by Amazon. The nice thing about Woot! is they put in little Snippets of humor all over their site to make your shopping experience a little bit more fun.
They show you deals on all sorts of random stuff that you might be interested in. They even have a “Bag o’ Crap” (their words, not mine) full of random junk that you can buy once per 31 days.
If you don’t have Amazon Prime, bundling your items together to hit the $25 minimum is a good way to save on shipping fees. If you’re having a hard time reaching the $25 limit, one little trick is to buy gift cards for places you were planning on going to anyways to boost your cart value.
Amazon’s Bargain Finds it’s a place where they list discounted items that are priced at $15 or less. They have all sorts of stuff like clothing, kitchenware, jewelry, home furniture, and electronics. a lot of them are prime eligible and include a lot of household essentials.
Prime Wardrobe is a program for prime members where you can try out different clothing for men, women, kids, and babies. You get seven days to try up to 8 items on at home and to only be charged for the items you decide to keep. The best thing about Prime Wardrobe is shipping and returns are free.
Wikibuy is a site that compares other sellers’ prices and finds coupon codes for online shopping. They have a Chrome extension that will check prices automatically and notify you when they find a better offer. You can also set it to alert you when the price of the item you’re looking at drops.
Besides being a price checker, Wikibuy will also accumulate “Wikibuy Credits” as you shop which you can redeem for various items or gift cards. If you visit their website, it’s also a good way to check for deals.
Honey is pretty similar to wikibuy. Honey is also a free extension also compares prices with other retailers and automatically searches for coupons that might apply. According to their website, honey members get an average savings of $126 per year (that’s enough to cover Amazon Prime).
If you are planning on having a baby soon, the Amazon Baby Registry is a great way to save. It’s basically a wishlist for your friends and family so they know what to give you to prepare for your baby’s arrival.
You get free 365 day returns on gifts and you will also get a free welcome box filled with items for parents and babies valued up to $35. You can get everything left on your list with a 10% discount.
Prime members will get 15% discount and also have access to certain rotating exclusive offers.
If you’re planning for a wedding, the Amazon Wedding Registry is another great way to save. The Amazon wedding registry is a way to let your guests know what gifts you would like them to give to you for your wedding.
You also get easy 180-day returns on any wedding gifts. You and your guests also have the benefit of getting 5% cash back on big items. If you still have items leftover on your list, you will also get a 10% discount off on the remaining items.
Prime members get 20% off on leftover items on their list and free shipping on orders over $25.
If you ordered something and it turns it out doesn’t work or is noticeably damaged, don’t feel like you have to eat the lemons that life gave you. If you received a damaged or defective item, you can return your products through their Online Return Center within 30 days of receiving it.
Most of the time you’ll be able to get a refund or have a replacement sent to you. This has happened to me a couple of times and the customer service has always been very helpful to either refund or replace my purchase.
Amazon does have a guaranteed delivery date, but in my experience, packages will arrive late fairly often. When this happens, you can talk to their Late Delivery Customer Service.
In the past Amazon used to offer customers a free month of Amazon Prime if a package arrived late, but now they don’t do that anymore. These days at best, they will refund your shipping fee if a package doesn’t arrive by the guaranteed delivery date.
If you are a Prime member who already gets free shipping, they might give you between $5 and $10 in promotional credit. Important note: please be nice when you ask.
I personally like to do this one a lot. If you’re looking to buy things like headphones, protein powder, clothes, or towels, it’s definitely worthwhile to check out the prices on the different colors or flavors. Usually the less popular or overstocked colors, flavors, and sizes are priced lower than others.
Vipon and JumpSend are two websites that collect deals on all sorts of Amazon products for you to check out.
Originally these websites were designed to collect early reviews for fresh product launches. Due to changes in Amazon’s policies, these reviews are now optional.
Still, these sites give significant discounts of up to 50 or even 90 percent off on their products. From my tests, these discounts are not detected by wikibuy or honey and are exclusive to Vipon/Jump Send members.
One thing you have to be careful about when shopping for deals is fake reviews and counterfeits. Fakespot is a site that will analyze these reviews to help you make a better decision on buying something.
All you have to do is paste in the URL for the product and Fakespot will tell you how likely it is that the product you’re looking at is a fake.
This one’s pretty straightforward. Save on shipping fees and get other Prime member benefits with their free 1 month trial. All you need is a current valid credit card.
Here’s a little hack: sign up for a Discover it card and then use your card to sign up for an Amazon Prime free trial. You can apply through my link and get a free $50 credit card referral bonus after your first purchase. This card also has some nice cashback rates, especially for the first year for new cardholders.
One word of warning: if you sign up for the free Amazon Prime trial, you will be automatically upgraded to the paid subscription plan at the end of the trial. So make sure you set a reminder for yourself to unsubscribe if you really don’t want to pay for Amazon Prime.
If you’re a student you can get an even longer six month free trial of Amazon prime. After that, Prime Student is just $6.49 per month, half off the usual price of Amazon Prime.
You will also get exclusive discounts just for students ranging from Echo devices to video games to fashion. You can also get unlimited ad-free music for just $0.99 more per month.
Amazon Prime gives you all sorts of perks and saving opportunities that are available to non-prime members for $12.99 per month or $119 per year (cheaper if you are an EBT and Medicaid cardholder).
If you’re just thinking about the delivery cost ($5.99 per order under $25), you’ll have to order 20 items under $25 per year to break even with the annual plan. This is about 1-2 orders per month.
However, if you only use Amazon During certain times of the years like for holidays or birthday parties, it might be worth sticking with monthly plan for those few months of the year to save.
But Prime Membership isn’t just about the free shipping. You will also get several other benefits Like Prime video, ad free music streaming, unlimited photo storage, and unlimited reading in addition to other deals and discounts only available to prime members.
The simplest way to save and get the most value out of on Amazon Prime is to share it with people that you know such as family members or housemates. Amazon Household lets you do just that. You can easily add adults, teens, or children to share prime benefits and digital content at no extra cost.
Some shared benefits include:
Amazon Family is designed for prime members who are expecting or raising young kids ranging from newborns to tweens.
Parents will receive up to 20% off on diapers baby food and other family essentials. If you are expecting a baby you will also receive 15% off items in your baby registry.
You will also get personalized deals and recommendations based on your child’s age.
Most prime members will choose the standard free shipping that comes with Amazon Prime. However, if you are not in a hurry to get your items, you can choose the no rush shipping option to get $1.50 credit towards digital items.
This can be a good way to save up for some ebooks or movie rentals.
Amazon Prime Pantry lets Prime members shop for household essentials (like food, snacks, laundry detergent, pet food, etc.) for a flat $5.99 delivery fee if you buy enough items.
The prices might be the same or even a little bit higher than grocery stores near you, but it could save you a lot of time grocery shopping.
Prime members get unlimited photo storage and 5 GB video storage when they use Amazon Drive. If your computer is running out of space to store your photos and videos, this might be the place to check out.
If you need more space than that, they also have a 100 GB storage plan for $19.99 per year and a 1 TB storage plan for $59.99 per year.
Prime Video has a huge selection of movies and videos for you to watch for free with Amazon Prime. You can also rent or buy movies and TV shows not included with Prime Video or subscribe to their premium channels if you are looking for more.
They have some really good shows on there. Some of my favorites include Mr. Robot, The Boys, and Jack Ryan.
Amazon is always changing and updating their programs based on how well received they are and if they are turning a profit from it. Let me know if you find something in the list above that doesn’t work anymore and I’ll move it here.
So there you have it. 30+ hacks for some extra savings when you shop on Amazon. If I had to summarize all these tips, I would say compare prices where you can and check if there are any coupons or deals out there.
There are a number of free tools out there to help you do that including Rakuten, Wikibuy, camelcamelcamel, Vipon, and JumpSend. For the best deal, I suggest you try a combination of all of them to get the most cashback and the lowest prices.
If you’re looking on more general adivce on saving money and controlling your finances, check out some of my other posts:
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