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Amazon Prime is a subscription service which gives members access to various benefits while shopping on Amazon.
The service costs $139/year or $14.99/month and you can start with a free 30-day trial. It includes Prime Video, which you can free trial as a standalone membership for the same duration.
Prime is even more affordable if you’re a student or young adult between the age of 18-25 as your membership is half of what it costs a regular member and you get other perks as well.
Of the various benefits you can get from being a Prime member, the most valuable one is probably the free 2-day shipping on millions of items across the website. In some areas, free one-day shipping is even available.
Amazon Prime currently has a membership of over 230 million members and growing in the United States and around the world.
In this article, I’m going to show you the different benefits of being an Amazon Prime subscriber and how you can start your free 30-day trial.
Benefits of Becoming a Prime Member
There are many benefits you can get from being an Amazon Prime subscriber. If you’re wondering what else could there be besides free 2-day shipping, then you really need to read this because there is so much more.
Prime members get benefits related to shipping, shopping deals, video and music streaming, reading and more.
Here’s a look at the various perks you get as a Prime member.
Free Shipping Benefits
Free 2-day shipping is one of the benefits you get as a Prime member but it is only available to addresses in the United States and on eligible items on Amazon.
For eligible items, the selection is huge as Amazon is a huge marketplace with millions of items to choose from.
Free same-day delivery is available for addresses in eligible zip codes. Release-date delivery is also available on eligible pre-order items on their release date to some zip codes in the continental United States.
Shopping Benefits
There are many benefits and reward available for shopping on Amazon and their many departments as a Prime subscriber.
You can get exclusive savings when you buy stuff through:
- Whole Foods Market
- Amazon 4-star & Amazon Books stores
- Amazon Family (baby registry)
Also:
- Access to Prime Try Before You Buy – try on eligible clothing items and only pay for the ones you keep.
- In select regions you get free, fast delivery of Amazon Fresh items – meat, seafood, produce, snacks, household essentials and groceries. You get one or two hour delivery windows in some regions.
- 30-minute early access to Lightning Deals
$0 Delivery fees with 1 Year Free Grubhub+
Food delivery service, Grubhub has partnered with Amazon Prime to offer this perk for the first year of your Prime subscription.
With their Grubhub+ service, subscribers can enjoy free delivery from participating local restaurants when they order food through the app. You can connect your Prime membership to your Grubhub+ account and get free food delivery for 1 entire year.
You can read more about this offer on the Grubhub+ free trial page.
Prime Video Benefits
Unlimited video streaming is also a big perk when it comes to Prime, so much so that some people sign up just for this benefit only. For that reason, Prime Video has a standalone membership for $8.99/month starting with a 30-day free trial if you don’t want to pay for a full Prime subscription.
With Prime video, you can get unlimited streaming to thousands of movies and TV series including Amazon Originals, live TV and sports.
Amazon Channels is also a part of Prime Video that lets you add from over 150 premium channels such as Paramount Plus, A&E Crime Central, Starz and AMC Plus, all of them starting with a 7-day free trial.
You can read more about how a Prime Video free trial works here.
Other Streaming Benefits
For music, members get unlimited, ad-free access to hundreds of Prime Playlists and over 2 million songs for members in the US and Puerto Rico.
If this is not enough, you can join Amazon Music Unlimited which is available at a discount monthly price or an exclusive annual plan for Prime members.
Amazon Music Unlimited has over 70 millions songs and you can listen offline with unlimited skips and always ad-free.
If you’re a gamer, access to Prime Gaming gives you free games, in-game content and a free channel subscription on Twitch.tv every month.
Reading Benefits for Prime Members
Prime Members can borrow books, magazines and more from the Prime Reading catalog to read for free on their Fire tablet, Kindle or Kindle apps on iOS or Android.
While regular Kindle readers can pay a low price to download one new book from Amazons First Reads, Prime members get that download for free along with early access and exclusive prices when purchasing hardcover titles.
More Prime Benefits
Amazon Photos gives Prime members secure unlimited photo storage along with enhanced search and organization features in Amazon Drive.
And there’s membership sharing where two adults living in the same household can share some Prime benefits. You’d have to create an Amazon Household to be able to do this.
How To Start Your Amazon Prime Free Trial
Those are surely a lot of benefits beyond just free 2-day shipping. If you agree, then you may be considering getting on the Amazon Prime train.
It’s very easy to sign up. Chances are, you’ve probably bought something through Amazon already so you already have an account with your payment information saved. That’s half the setup already.
If not, then it’s still easy.
The button above will take you to the Prime landing page on Amazon. There you’ll be able to see a run-down of everything that’s available to Prime members, even more than what I’ve mentioned here already.
Click on the “Try Prime” button to start signing up. You’ll be asked to either log into your existing account or to create an account.
Once you’re logged in as either an existing customer or a new user, you’ll be asked to add your address for shipping and also add your billing information.
You can opt to pay monthly or pay annually. Amazon wouldn’t charge your card now since you’re doing a 30-day free trial. Instead, you’ll get everything from unlimited streaming to exclusive deals and free shipping benefits free for an entire month. If you decide you don’t want to continue, you can always cancel before the trial period is up and you wouldn’t get charged.
How Much is Amazon Prime After the Trial?
When you sign up for Prime, you’ll be able to select how you want to be billed – whether it’s monthly or annually or if you just want Prime Video.
The charges of course, do not apply until after the 30-day period is up.
Here’s what you’ll be expected to pay:
- Prime Video only – $8.99/month
- Prime monthly – $14.99/month
- Prime annually – $139/year
Discount pricing is available in special cases. For example, if you’re a student or 18-24 years of age, you’ll pay half price ($7.49) and get a 6-month free trial. And if you’re on any government assistance programs, you may qualify for a discount. You wouldn’t be able to use your EBT card though to sign up for Prime.
Should You Keep Your Prime Membership?
If you choose to join the 200 million members worldwide who have a Prime membership, you’re probably going to do it because you enjoy the perks. Keeping your membership after the free trial will depend on what you don’t want to lose.
Maybe you don’t shop that often online. You probably use Amazon a couple of times per year to buy odd items. You probably already enjoy the vast Netflix catalogue and have a Spotify premium account. If this is you then you may not find much value in keeping your Prime subscription.
However, you can add a lot of value to your life by continuing your membership after the 30-day trial period.
If you buy everything in stores, you can save time and possibly money having everything you need shipped to you when you need it. Shopping online is also very convenient and Prime members also get cash back when they shop with a qualifying Amazon Store card.
Prime Video also has titles not available elsewhere. They produce and stream original movies like Road House, Musica and the new teen romantic-comedy How to Date Billy Walsh. This is in addition to the the hundreds of Hollywood movies you can access for free.
You can also view TV series like Fallout and add premium channels to expand the amount of content you have access to.
It’s all about how you weigh the value that is being added by being a Prime subscriber.
The first month is free and you can easily cancel so you actually have nothing to lose by taking the free trial.
