A quick reminder, Wednesday July 15 is Amazon’s heavily promoted Prime Day, promising and hyping better than Black Friday in the middle of July. I have no idea what’s coming up. To participate, you have to be a Prime member or start a 30-day Prime Free Trial (very easy to cancel by computer by going to your Amazon account page).

We will start coverage of the madness at 3am ET on Wednesday and go from there. But I have to sleep at some point, so I can’t do 24×7 coverage 🙂 In the meantime, here are Ten Tips to Help You Prepare for Prime Day.

Amazon rarely hypes things like this, so it is possible we will get some good deals during their upcoming Prime Day on Wednesday July 15 in 2015. We won’t know until things start rolling out at 3am ET on Wednesday. Who knows, perhaps they are doing this as a giant stress test – to see how “elastic” their cloud is? 🙂 Regardless, here are some tips that could potentially help you prepare for the excitement/disappointment of July 15:

1. Only Prime members can participate. If you are not a Prime member, you can start a 30-day Free Prime Trial and join the party. To be on the safe side, don’t wait until the last minute to sign up. A high percentage of people stay on after a free trial, so Amazon appears to be happy to heavily encourage people to sign up for a free trial

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Amazon has scheduled July 15 (Wednesday in 2015) as Prime Day for Prime members. During that day, they promise “more deals than Black Friday. Prime members can shop exclusive deals from electronics, toys, video games, movies, clothing, patio, lawn and garden, sports and outdoor items and more.”. At least they are giving people time to travel back and recover from the San Diego Comic Con 2015 🙂

The offers will only be available to Prime members, but if you are curious and want to participate in the festivities without committing to a $100/year membership, you can start a 30 day Prime Free Trial.

Speaking of Prime, good until 7/12/15, Prime members can take $15 off an order of $50+ in Camera and Photo Gear

If you are an American Express credit card member, check the AMEX Offers of your account the next time you login over there. One of the offers floating is an automatic $50 statement credit if you make an online purchase at UniquePhoto.com or in-store (they have a store in Fairfield, NJ) of $250 or more. You have to manually opt-in for the offer by simply clicking the “Add to Card” button over there. You have to pay with the American Express card that you accepted the offer for (in case you have multiple cards linked to the same AMEX online account – make sure you pay with the one that accepted the offer!). There’s no coupon to enter.

The offer may not appear in everyone’s AMEX account, so there is a YMMV element to this. A new trend among credit card companies is to offer more targeted offers to customers based on a number of criteria (purchase history (eg similar or competing purchases) may be a factor, but I’m only guessing).

The good thing with AMEX Offers is that they send you a confirmation email once an eligible transaction that fulfilled an offer has been completed, so you do not twist in the wind wondering whether it worked or not.

The offer can be used once during this promotion period which ends 8/12/15. Full terms and conditions can be found over there when you click the “View Details” link.

This 2-day sale ended… The Best Buy website has launched a 2-day Camera Sale featuring a variety of items. The sale ends Thursday night. Among other things, you get a $60 Best Buy gift card with the flagship GoPro at $500. They have various DSLR and P&S bundles, accessories and such.