New Amazon Prime Perk, Prime Photo, and is Prime Membership worth the cost?

Ever since Amazon raised their price for Amazon Prime membership from $79 to $99, and the minimum requirement for SuperSaver shipping from $25 to $35, they've been trying to add value to Prime membership to keep you subscribing.  They just added a new one: Prime Photo.  It's actually a very valuable benefit (I think so): unlimited free online photo storage in their Cloud Drive.  You can back up all of your photos in full resolution via either 1) web browser, 2) smartphone app or 3) desktop PC software.  I also installed the Prime Photo app on my tablet.

On your smartphone, both the iPhone or Android apps can be set to automatically upload your pictures as you take them, which means that if you phone is broken, lost or stolen, your pictures are safe.  In theory, you should get a similar benefit when you back up your phone, but photos take up so much room, I often can't complete a full backup. Now I'm going to back up my photos to Prime Photo and backup the rest of my iPhone (contacts, etc.) to the iCloud.  I was also able to install the app on my iPad, so I'm going to automatically save the photos that I take with that as well.

So now, let's sum up the current advantages to having an Amazon Prime account:

• Free 2-day shipping on over 20 million items.  I think this is THE most important benefit of Amazon Prime.
• Prime Music:  stream any number of Prime Music songs on to your computer, phone, tablet, etc. with no ads or pop-ups, for free. 
• Prime Photo:  unlimited photo storage in the Amazon Cloud drive
• Prime Instant Video:  Unlimited instant streaming of over 40,000 movies and TV episodes. 
• Kindle Lending Library: Borrow one Kindle Book per month from over 500,000 titles for free on any Kindle device with no due dates (you don't need a Kindle to read a Kindle book, fyi).
• Kindle First:  read next month's releases ahead of their release dates, for free.
• 30-minute early access to select Lightning Deals on Amazon, and new events on MyHabit.com
• Prime only promotions, i.e. half price on Fire TV stick, or 50% off your first Subscribe & Save item, and more sporadic offers during the year.

Let's treat the free 2-day shipping as the major benefit and the rest of the benefits as secondary perks. Is Prime worth it?  That's really the big question, isn't it.   Well, I'm a numbers person, so let's do the math.

Shipping charges for non-Prime members start at $3.99 on Amazon; let's round that up to $4.00 and round up the $99.00 membership fee up to $100.00, just because round numbers are easier to manipulate.  That means that if you purchase 25 items or more over the course of the year, you will save money on Amazon Prime (25 x $4 = $100) . (Of course, this is not an exact calculation, because many items on Amazon cost more than $3.99 to ship,  and some items, like SuperSaver orders over $35 or Subscribe & Save products, ship for free without a Prime account. But let's just guesstimate.)

Log into your Amazon account and click here to see how many items you purchased in 2013 (look in the upper left hand corner), and click here to see how many items you purchased in 2014.  Take an average of the two.  Did you buy more than 25 items on average per year on Amazon?  If you answered "yes" and assuming that most of those orders were less than $35, you would save money on shipping with a Prime membership. 

For me, Prime membership is still worth it, many times over. I average about 60 purchases over the course of the last two years and I don't want to have to worry about shipping charges when I come across a great deal, especially in great deal months like November and December.  I view my Prime membership the same way that I view my Costco membership:  an investment in saving money. 

Are you interested in trying Amazon Prime?  Just sign up for the free 30-day Prime Trial here.   If you don't think it's worth the money, you can always cancel it before the 30 days are up and pay nothing, or if you like it, you can go ahead and stay with the membership.  When your 30-day trial is up, your credit card will be charged $99.00 for your year long membership.  If you've decided that Amazon Prime is for you, a free trial is a great way to dip a toe into the Amazon Prime membership pool, rather than to dive in.

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