Amazon ‘s web sales are 5 times more than Walmart, Target, and Buy.com’s web sales combined. In fact, they are the number one E-Tailer in the world! You can find everything from groceries to electronics to movies to books. Shopping at Amazon can save you time and money if you shop smartly. Here are some tips how to save money on Amazon.

Amazon Price Tracker

If you use Google Chrome (which is by the way, my favorite browser) download the Amazon Price Tracker. I personally use Keepa Amazon Price Tracker. It’s free to download. What does it do? When you look up an item on Amazon, after the product description you will see a chart like below.

It automatically shows the prices that the item has been for the past three months. You can easily switch it to see all of the prices the item has ever been. This is a great tool to have! There is nothing worse than buying something and a week later it is on sale. With this tracker you know when an item is at its lowest price.

When you select the track the product setting you are able to put in your desired price and your email address. When the item reaches your price they email you! How do you know what price to select? I look at the lowest that the item has been in the past 3 months and use that as a guide.

Amazon Prime, Amazon Mom, and Amazon Student

Amazon offers a service called Amazon Prime. When you enroll in this service you receive free 2 day shipping, unlimited instant streaming for eligible movies and television shows and if you have a Kindle, you can borrow books from the Kindle library. If you need something shipped overnight then the shipping cost is only $3.99. There is a fee for joining Amazon Prime; however, everyone is eligible for a free 30 day trial. If you chose to keep your membership it is $79 per year. That comes out to only $6.58 per month. For my family, we order from Amazon quite a bit so it is worth it to us to save on shipping. For us, the instant streaming and being able to borrow books is an added bonus.

Amazon Mom is a service available to any mom, dad, grandparent or caregiver. Amazon Mom is free to sign up for and you receive the benefits of 20% off diapers and wipes and 3 months of free 2 day shipping with Amazon Prime. (You will not receive the instant streaming or Kindle Library benefits).

Amazon Student was created for college students and is available to those who have a .edu email address. It’s free to sign up! As an Amazon Student member you get 6 months of free 2 day shipping with Amazon Prime. After the 6 month trial period is over you can keep your membership (and get access to instant streaming and the Kindle Library) for only $39 per year! That’s a $40 savings! You get to keep your membership at the discounted rate for 4 years or you graduate whichever comes first.

Coupons and Subscribe and Save

Did you know Amazon offers coupons? Using Amazon’s coupons can be a great way to save!

Here is an example taken recently on a listing for Huggies Wipes (8 packs of 56 wipes). Currently they are on sale for $15.76 – a pretty decent deal at 47% off the list price of $29.71! But watch, because it will get better.

You will see circled in red is something called Subscribe and Save. Subscribe and Save is when you sign up to have a reoccurring delivery and in return you get a discount. Usually you get a 5% discount when you choose this option (in the example above since it is for a baby product and I am an Amazon Mom Member the discount is 20% for choosing this option! ) The great thing about Subscribe and Save is you can cancel your Subscribe and Save as soon as the item ships. That’s right. You can take advantage of the extra discount and as soon as you get your email from Amazon stating your order has been shipped go ahead and cancel! It just takes one click.

So if we were buying the wipes above you would click the subscribe and save option (circled in red on the right hand side). Then, see the green circle? Inside that is a $1.00 off coupon. Just click ‘clip this coupon’. That’s it.

Check out the savings:

Huggies Wipes (8 packs of 56) List price: $29.71

Sale price: $15.76

Subscribe and Save price: $12.61

After coupon: $11.61

That’s a total savings of $18.10!

Price Matching

Currently Target is price matching Amazon! This is great news because sometimes you can find coupons for movies and toys and being able to combine those coupons with Amazon’s low prices is awesome.

A few days ago I was able to price match to get this deal. The Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Stride to Ride Puppy (whew, that was a mouth full!) was at Target for $49.99. I price matched it to Amazon (who had it on sale for $33.99). I also had a manufacturer’s coupon for $10.00 off – so combining the two I got a great deal!

I picked up the puppy and took it to the customer service desk where I asked them to price match to Amazon. They pulled up the price of $33.99 and instantly discounted it for me. I ended up paying $23.99 for a $50 toy!

Note: As policies may change in the future, double check with your Target store to verify they price match to Amazon.

Amazon is a great place to save big on household supplies, gifts, items for the home and even food! Using these tips you now know how to save money on Amazon!

Make sure you sign up for our newsletter! It’s free! 🙂 Sign up here.

Posts on It’s a Fabulous Life may contain affiliate links.