How to Save 14% over Your Amazon.com Prime

If you’re in the photography/videography business, you probably spend a lot of money on gear… too much money.  And there’s a good chance you buy a lot of it on Amazon.com (and if not gear, well, then other stuff there).  And you’re probably an Amazon Prime user-- because who isn't?  This post is for you.

For the past couple of years I’ve been feeling like maybe, just maybe, Amazon Prime isn’t giving me the best deal.  And after some careful investigation, I’ve discovered that I can save about 14% using basically one simple trick: don’t join Amazon Prime.

If you’re skeptical, hear me out.  The first month I let my Prime account lapse, I tracked my spending. I monitored Amazon's Prime price, their non-Prime price, and how long shipping took for the items I bought.  In one month I purchased $565 of goods. On Amazon Prime it would have cost me $639.  That's roughly a 13% savings.  Add another $10/month savings from not paying for Prime and I've gotten a 14% discount on my purchases. I saved $95 in my first month.  Moreover, I didn't pay for shipping on any of the items.

The first item on this list is a pair of Moman LED lights.  Not only were they $14 less on Ebay, if I had bought them on Amazon I would have saved a dollar over their Non-Prime price, but paid $10 for my Prime membership. I did buy items 2 and 4 on Amazon, using their free shipping on purchases over $25 without Prime.  For these items, Amazon had the best deal.

To understand why Amazon Prime generally ends up costing you more, you need to understand Amazon’s business model. 

Obviously, the real goal of Amazon Prime isn’t to give you/me/the-consumer the best deal possible.  It’s to maximize their profit and dominance in the retail environment.  They do this a number of ways—but first let me point out their biggest deception:  they lead customers to believe that they have the lowest prices because they buy in huge quantities and don’t have a brick and mortar store with all the incumbent expenses.  While this is a factor, there are other more important techniques they use to separate you from the best deal. 

Amazon tells you what to buy.  When you search Amazon, you get a list of products that (weirdly) isn’t automatically ordered by price or customer reviews.  The order almost appears random… but of course it’s not.  Amazon knows exactly how far down the page most customers will scroll, so this top portion becomes prime real estate.  In this zone, you’ll find their own branded product (if they have one), and they also sell ranking spots—much like a Google search—to other retailers.  Add in a couple of the actual top selling/reviewed products and you’ve got their first two pages of search results.  If you're an Amazon retailer, you know the deal, but most consumers don't.  Amazon's  criteria for product order guides you to which products they want you to buy, and we—the consumer—pretty much go along with them.  If you want proof that there’s a whole separate eco-system of products on Amazon.com, search laterally, not vertically.  In other words, click on a product, then click on the recommendations/alternatives that are shown on that product page.  Do it again, and you’ll start seeing products that don’t appear in your initial search… unless you scroll six or seven pages in.  These buried products are often cheaper.  For example, I discovered the Moman LED lights, which are a clone of the popular Sokani x21 lamps.

Amazon Prime isn’t the cheapest Amazon Prime.  Another trick up their sleeve is that the Amazon Prime price on the product page isn’t always the cheapest Prime price.  If you consistently review the other buying options, you'll occasionally find another Amazon Prime dealer selling it for cheaper.

Amazon Prime products aren’t always the cheapest to begin with.  Somehow, I got it in my head that Amazon Prime was also the cheapest option.  Okay, Amazon put that thought there.  Remember, they control what products you see. Amazon.com tends to surround its products with more expensive and lower reviewed items.  Cheaper versions of, say, that can opener, exist much lower on the list.  

Amazon.com branded products are cheaper because they're killing off the competition.  If you search for a common tech product, like a USB cable, you often find that Amazon’s product is significantly cheaper than the competition.  Amazon.com's practice is to identify which products are selling best and then contract the manufacturer of the leading company and have them make an identical product.  They can sell these items cheaper because they have all the data, control the list order, and know that they’ll eventually force the competition out of that segment of the market.  And many of their competitors have higher prices because their forced to pay for ranking.

But let’s get back to how you can save 14% on your purchases.  If you don’t have Amazon Prime you’re not forced into the same product list (you’re forced into another one, but it doesn’t appear to be quite as rigorously controlled).  And without the easy convenience of Prime to lull me into sleep-buying, I found that I researched products better.  This not only meant I chose my items more wisely, but that I found cheaper prices.  I tended to do my product research on Amazon, but roughly 2/3rds of my buying elsewhere.  It's not that I buy nothing from them, I just look elsewhere first. It's also important to note that Amazon.com charges tax, now.  Adorama , on the other hand, offers free doesn’t charge tax to out of state buyers and shipping on most items.  B&H Photo will give you the tax amount back if you enroll in their program.  And Ebay only charges tax for purchases where the seller also resides in your state.  In the tech realm, those are three competitors that often have better deals.

So, the process in 5 easy steps:

1. Let my Prime membership expire without renewing
2. Think a week ahead on my purchases
3. Research my item on Amazon, YouTube, DuckDuckGo, and elsewhere
4. Compare the price at B&H, Adorama, Ebay, Newegg, and Google Shopping
5. Buy what's actually cheapest

One of the great things about this approach is that it doesn't rely on discounts, Black Friday, Cyber Monday or any other sale to work.  It an every day discount.

With Prime, what you’re really paying for (other than being brainwashed into buying the products Amazon wants to sell), is 2-day shipping.  Shipping isn't free because you paid $120 upfront.  Some folks would argue that they use way more than $120 worth of shipping in a year, so there is free shipping involved.  But for my purchases above, I never paid for shipping.  And on Prime items, you can get free shipping if your total sale is more than $25.  So the real question is, is it worth a 14% tax to have your item in 2 days?  I’ve found that the answer is usually “no.”  And if I want to feel better about my decision to cancel Prime, I can remember how poorly Amazon.com treats its workers, how many businesses it's bankrupted, and how it steals as much personal information on me and my family as they can.