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:
- 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
- Empty your Amazon shopping cart. If you have items added for price-checking or bookmarking, make sure you empty it. If there are lightning deals flying at high speed, you don’t want to waste time doing shopping cart management. Unfortunately most retailers don’t offer a simple 1-click “empty cart” option. And then they wonder why politicians and regulators get involved and screw things up even more. But I’m digressing.
- Double-check your Amazon Payment Methods, Shipping Addresses, 1-Click settings, etc. If you are going to make changes, make them now and test them by buying free apps/ebooks or low price items. Don’t make big changes right before the madness begins.
- Tame your apps – if you have Windows Update or security software on auto-pilot, make sure you tame them, so they don’t decide to do a major update/scan while you are in the middle of it all. Likewise with mobile devices, perhaps an opportunity to do a culling, especially if you are like me and like to install new apps every 30 milliseconds 😉
- Have at least one backup device – computers love to go crazy at the most inopportune of times, make sure you have at least one backup option – charge laptops, Chromebooks, tablets, hotspots, etc the day before
- Inventory (verb) your current Camera and other gear. What you have, what you want, what you need, what is hanging by a thread, what you could sell/trade later to fund new purchases, etc
- Create a Depth Chart of desirable items. Sure a $3000 prime is nice, but mayhaps a manual Rokinon or Doug Flutie will do fine as well
- Research potential items of interest ahead of time. No one outside amazon knows what’s gonna be offered, but if there are a couple of items you would want to get if the price was right, make sure you have a decision ready, so you don’t miss out at crunch time because of Indecision 2015 Deliberations
- You have 15 minutes to complete checkout – with the Amazon Gold Box, once you add an item to your shopping cart, you have 15 minutes to complete the transaction. If you do not complete it during that time period, the offer ends for you. This is especially important if the item has a Waiting List or is close to 100% Claimed…
- … which brings us to the strategic Add-to-Cart. If you suspect something of potential interest is going to get scooped up within seconds, you may want to preemptively add it to the Cart and use the 15 minutes to make a decision. On the flip side of this, because many and more are doing this, even if an item shows “Join Wait List” initially, after the first 15 minutes, you may notice it becoming available again, or the percentage dropping. So pay attention to time and the listing. If you can be near the internet to babysit a “Wait List” there are reasonable chances to get it – unless the offer is something so good that most people will scoop it up and not abandon their shopping cart
What a great, helpful post. And fun, too. I, unfortunately, am not likely to make more than a modest purchase or two if I make any. I just got through purging my cache of mad money for an oh, so sweet deal: Olympus OM-D EM-10 with kit lens for $399. I had no idea this Amazon thing was coming up, of course. But maybe it’s just as well that I didn’t, because I’ve been lusting after that little beauty for some time, and for good reason. The way these things go, I’m sure I will see another oh, so sweet deal and feel a momentary pang of anguish.
Oh well, ce’est la vie. Non je ne regrette rien. 😉
If our 10-years-ago selves saw what prices we can pay now for today’s cameras, they’d be amazed at what we can get nowadays. Have fun with the E-M10 kit! Which reminds me to price check it 🙂
This Prime Day was a big surprise. Amazon is usually not hype-wagon like this. My crackpot theory is that they are doing this to test how much stress their cloud can take when the whole internet will be checking in. On a more practical level, they may want to scoop up as many new Prime free trial users, since a high percentage of free trials stick around. On my todo list is a post with all the benefits of Prime. But first I need to organize the .to-do list that is comprised of to-do lists that are themselves comprised of to-do lists.