- Let's see if we can help you answer the question today. And that question is, is Amazon Prime worth it? Is it worth me buying Amazon Prime? We will try and answer that today on Dotto Tech. Steve Dotto here, how the heck you doing this fine day? And I thought we would take a look at the benefits of Amazon Prime today because there are a lot. There's some that are really evident and there's some that are not quite so evident, that might make a difference whether or not you decide that Amazon Prime is worth the investment. But before we dive, in full disclosure, I am an Amazon Prime user. I use it here in Canada and some of the benefits might be a little bit different than they are in your country. So you'll just have to verify the benefits yourself before you choose to purchase. The other thing is if you do decide to sign up for Amazon Prime and you click through using the link that included in the description, then I will be compensated as an Amazon affiliate for you signing up. Just in the spirit of full disclosure. Now Amazon Prime, as you know, is primarily a club that allows you to get some extra benefits from Amazon, and the most relevant benefits are the free and fast shipping. When you go shopping on Amazon you'll see that little Prime badge next to a variety of different products. And for people who are Prime members, we typically look for that badge because it means A, you get free shipping, B, you get fast shipping and C, its probably a product that has a fairly good track record with Amazon in order for them to be part of the Prime program. Now Amazon doesn't sell all of their products themselves, they're a marketplace where there are thousands of companies selling their products through Amazon's website. And the quality of those vendors can vary from excellent to not so excellent. But overall you can expect that you're gonna get reasonable support, reasonable service and reasonable quality, if you're buying Amazon Prime product. There's a certain peace of mind that's attached to purchasing something with Amazon Prime, plus you get it super fast. I think that the free shipping, the one and two day free shipping, is probably the reason most of us are initially drawn to Amazon Prime. I know its the reason that I was first drawn to purchase Amazon Prime because I hated tryna figure out how much it was gonna cost me to ship it. 'Cause the shipping varied so much on different products that I would order, that the peace of mind of knowing that its going to be included, that made the Prime membership, kind of something, that I really was drawn to right at the beginning. But after I bought the membership I discovered all of the additional benefits, of which there are so many. One that probably has been the most delightful to me is the Amazon Prime video service, which is called Prime Video. Now you can download the app on your smartphone or tablet or on your computer, very similar to Netflix, with of course a completely different mix of content available. Amazon licenses a lot of existing content and I don't think that their licensed content quite compares with the value that you might get on a Netflix, which is far more aggressive as far as that's concerned. But Amazon does have some Prime properties they do license, as well, they have a lot of original series that they create themselves, which are proving to be very entertaining. They're winning all sorts of awards for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel for example. If we take a look at the Amazon originals here, if we go through the list here. Let me scroll down and take a look at the original series. Look at what they've got. They've got the Jack Ryan series, the Tom Clancy series. The Man in the High Castle, which is a very popular series, which is now and its, what it's, fourth or fifth season. That they've got, available of that. As I mentioned they have The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. They have the somewhat controversial Good Omens series, which is doing quite well. So they've got a lot of series that they've released and they're creating themselves. And you got to recognize the fact that Amazon is committed to this delivery platform and they're gonna continue to invest. There's gonna be lots of competition in the space. Apples getting into the space, of course, Netflix, Hulu, there's lots of other streaming services. But Amazon is a player, and having it included with your Prime membership for free, effectively, is a big bonus. As is Amazon's music service, especially if you use Alexa as your smart home device. Amazon Music, is again, a very good collection of music. There's no complete music collection, they've licensed a lot of songs. So for background music, enjoying listening to songs, Amazon Music is another option for you that's incorporated in the cost of your Prime membership. And every one of these things that we add on layers some additional value to your Amazon membership. Now I think those are the kind of the top level things that most people think about, shipping, video and music, as the main benefits that they get with the Prime membership. But the stuff that's kind of pleasant surprises, that's also included, Amazon Prime Reading, which i think is so cool. This one surprised the heck out of me. Amazon allows us to get access to quite a broad selection of best-selling books and good quality books for free. It's called Prime Reading and you can download a Kindle app onto your smartphone, onto your tablet, or if you have a Kindle reader you can use that of course. So it's pretty much device independent as far as reading these books. But if you take a look, as you scroll over, this is what books that they have available. But you see the price? It's $0 for Prime. The original Harry Potter, Michael Crichton book. We can go through and we can see non-fiction, fiction, science fiction and fantasy. French books, if you want, mysteries and thrillers. We've got a pretty broad selection of books. Now I will let you know right off the top, that most of this series of books, you'll often get the first book of a series of three or five or seven books. When they got multiple books in this series, you'll often get the first book in this series for free, seldom will you find all of the books in the series for free. For example you don't get all seven Harry Potter books, you only get the first book for free. But having said that its still great to decide whether or not you're interested in the book, and there's lots of standalone books available as well. Amazon Prime Reading, a really pleasant surprise from Amazon. The last benefit that I'm going to talk about in this video is one that, frankly, I'm surprised more people don't talk about or are not more aware of, and that is Amazon Photos. Amazon includes Amazon Photos in your Prime membership and the big difference between Amazon Photos, which is for backing up and storing and sharing your photos. The big difference between Amazon Photos and Google Photos, which is of course a very popular photo app, is this, unlimited, full resolution, photo storage with Prime. You don't have to compress your photos, they are the full resolution photos that you're backing up and it's unlimited. You have all of the ability to create albums, to share them, to create automatic syncing and have apps for your smartphone or your desktop computer. All of that is built into Amazon Photos as you would expect, but the key is it's full resolution. You don't have to compromise the quality of your photos at all in, so this is especially valuable for more serious photographers out there. Now before I wrap things up, depending on what geography you're in, you might have some additional benefits that are included in your Prime membership that I don't have access to. But as far as I'm concerned the benefits that I've outlined, the free and fast shipping, the extra deals, the extra pricing deals, the video, music, photos. I know I'm missing, oh, the reading. All of that combined to make Amazon Prime, as far as I'm concerned, great value. But you can decide for yourself, and now I think you know a little bit better. Would love to hear your thoughts. Are you using Amazon Prime? Did I miss your favorite feature in Amazon Prime? Let me know in the comments below and until next time Steve Dotto. Have fun storming a castle.
Amazon Prime seems to be about as ubiquitous these days as a Netflix subscription or having a Spotify account, but is it worth it?
What are the benefits of being part of Amazon's club?
Well, if you want a free 30-day trial to see for yourself consider signing up here (Affiliate Link);
Free 30-Day Amazon Prime Trial
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If you want to know more about the membership before you try it out, check out all these benefits!
Free and Fast Shipping on Reputable Items
Most notably being an Amazon Prime member means you have access to both free shipping on purchases on Amazon but also particularly fast shipping on those same items. Most of the time within 24 hours or so. This is rather common knowledge at this point but I think one thing doesn't get mentioned enough; if an item is eligible for Prime benefits, it's probably a reputable and reliable or at the very least very popular item.
It can be tough at times to differentiate what the good products are from the bad on Amazon when you might have literally thousands of options thrown at you on screen, and Prime eligibility is one good way to filter out what items you may want to take a second look at.
Not any old product can be part of the Prime program, the product and the company needs to have a pretty good track record with Amazon to be eligible. For example, all Prime-eligible retailers need to successfully complete a trial period with Amazon, which is a sort of stress-test, they need to store the items in their own warehouse and not at a third-party location, and they must commit to packaging and shipping items the same day they are ordered.
In short, there's a certain peace of mind when ordering a Prime-eligible item.
Amazon Prime Video
Included in your Prime Membership is free use of Amazon's video streaming service, Prime Video. Similar to Netflix Amazon licenses movies and TV shows to host on their platform but Amazon has also become a production studio now and has some Amazon Original programming such as Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series, The Man in the High Castle, and the show which has been sweeping the Emmy's; The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (I highly recommend all three!).
Amazon is committed to this platform now and into the future so it will never be a bad investment on your end.
Amazon Music
Just like Apple and Google, Amazon has a music streaming service that's included with your Prime membership and it is a particularly good platform to primarily useful if you have an Alexa device in your home as there are designed integration and compatibility between the two.
Amazon Reading
Less popular but, to me, just as valuable as Amazon Music and Prime Video is Amazon's e-book portal Amazon Reading.
Amazon Reading provides Prime members with a quite generous library of popular books, for free, to be used on Amazon's Kindle mobile app. Many of the books in a series will give you the first book in that series for free while the subsequent books will cost you, but this is still a great service for getting started with popular series to see if it's something you even want to spend your money on or not.
Knowing what you don't want to read is just as valuable as knowing what you do want to read!
Amazon Photos
Get ready for this.
As part of your Prime Membership, you have access to Amazon's photo storage cloud, Amazon Photos, and unlike Google Photos, you have unlimited full-resolution photo storage with Amazon.
No need to compress your photos and compromise their quality.
Twitch Prime
For those of you who enjoy watching streams on the popular gaming and variety streaming site, Twitch, you are given a free subscription to your favourite content creator every month on Twitch through your Prime membership. If you watch someone and you want to support them, you can subscribe, every month, for free to their channel and monetarily support them without paying yourself; Amazon pays them instead!
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that your Prime membership is only for free and fast shipping but the truth is Prime really is a club membership and Amazon is much more than just an online retailer now. Your membership to the Amazon club brings with it all sorts of benefits you likely never knew about, and will likely include many more in the future, now's as good a time as any to get in!
Until next time,
Have fun storming the castle!
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