Amazon Prime Days are here and that means you can take advantage of sales, deals and more and save a ton of money as you shop!
While Prime Days have a history of a history of being held over the slower retail shopping months of Summer, due to the COVID crisis, Amazon had to do some rescheduling. However, how perfect the timing is this time around to get a jump on your holiday shopping?! Last year, I put together an article on ways you can really take advantage of your Prime membership. And while most still apply, (the giveaways feature was discontinued this year), we wanted to add a couple of additional features that you can use during the Prime Day sales.
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
I have two more suggestions for you and then I will let you go to do the shopping you’ve been waiting all year for! One is if you shop through one of our Ibotta links (see graphic below) not only will you get a cashback bonus for signing up, but as of this writing, if you sign up for Amazon Prime through the Ibotta app, you can also get a $20 Amazon Gift card as well! (restrictions apply of course but not many!!) If you are already a Prime member, you can still go through Ibotta to get great cashback deals on Amazon devices , find free trial offers and more!
Finally, if you are feeling completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of sale items, why not go simple and snag an Amazon gift card? Simple, easy and you can even send one via email to someone so that they too can take advantage of Prime Days! Just click the graphic below to get started: Now if you haven't been able to tell, yes, Stuff We Find is an affiliate site of both Amazon and Ibotta. But if you've read our previous articles and follow our daily posts on Facebook, you know we love to share money saving tips and as the first article here in the Money Saving Stuff section says, "My Philosophy: Never Pay Retail". I live by that and this year of all years, saving money is so important. On another note, by shopping online we are also helping to save the USPS and that is a very personal project of mine. Not only through shopping on Amazon but also with the SWF Vintage Shops, helping to keep the USPS going is an added bonus to all of this! We hope you have a great time shopping over the next few days (who needs Black Friday?!)...please remember to follow us on Facebook for 4 posts a day goodies including crafts, food, laughs and well, lots and lots of STUFF! Thanks so much for hanging out with us! Happy Saving!!! :) ~ ~ ~ All StuffWeFind links to the shops, social, sites and more can be found all in one spot: linktr.ee/stuffwefind
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Image by Mudassar Iqbal from Pixabay
When Prime Day came and went this year, it got me thinking as to all the ways I've used my own Prime membership. I've been a member for a number of years now and I keep finding these "hidden" gems that I've come to use quite a bit and yet have found that some folks didn't realize was there. These are just extra ways to save money and even get some freebies out of it too!
As I said in the previous post, I HATE to pay retail. I also don't like to pay for memberships. But when I do, I try to use every feature I can to make the most of my money. So I was happily surprised when I came upon a few features I was unaware of until the last year or so. What surprised me the most is while talking to friends, they didn't know about them either! (and these people can Prime with the best of them!!) So let me share with you what I found...you may have discovered these yourselves already. Let us know how you like them and if you found any Prime goodies as well! Just a note about this piece: Unless otherwise specified, you MUST be a Prime member to take advantage of these services, including Prime day. But you can sign up for a FREE month and use everything just like a paid member to see if you really like it!
1. Prime Insider: First off, if you have a membership, this page is a must go-to. Prime Insider will let you know about upcoming deals, movies and shows coming to Prime Video, exclusive offers ane more. It's basically your Prime member home page and while you can click Prime Insider here, if you need to find it again, just look on the upper right hand side of any Amazon.com page, click "Prime" and you'll get info on how to get to your Insider guide.
2. Prime Reading: This has to be one of my favorite features ever. Prime Reading is a way to borrow books and magazines, most for an unlimited time, any time you want. These are absoutely FREE to read on either a Kindle, Fire Tablet, or Kindle app. You can borrow up to 10 at a time and when you're done with one, you just 'return' it and borrow something new! I love it for magazines. The rotate them monthly and because of this feature, I've discovered magazines I never knew existed! I also have kept two holiday ones for their cookie recipes. So while that may now limit me to 8 'borrows', that's ok. During the holiday time, I'll be glad I kept them!
For books, you can find titles both new and old. For example, you can read The Handmaid's Tale, Harry Potter and Divergent as well as new releases in biographies, business and non-fiction. For myself, I'm a big history buff and have found fantastic volumes both current as well as classics. Even such works by the Founding Fathers! (Great for a 4th of July read!) There's also great stuff for kids including comic books and you can also find titles with audible accompaniment. What you need to do in Prime Reading is really know how to explore and get the most out of it. When you first pull up the main page, it will give you featured titles in a few different genres like fiction; non-fiction; business; magazines; biographies. But there is just so much more and literally THOUSANDS of titles in many different areas to choose from. So make sure you hit the "see more" link at the top of each genre. From there you can go through the many titles and discover books and magazines that could keep you reading for 3 lifetimes! Summer reading list anyone??? Just one quick note...when searching on Prime Reading, just make sure you didn't flip over to Kindle Unlimited. This is a separate subscription service and is an entirely different deal. 3. Amazon Giveaways: This has to be my most favorite feature on Prime! Giveaways are literally hundreds of PAGES with THOUSANDS of chances to win products on Amazon. FOR FREE! Seriously!! How cool is that? There are so many different kinds of things to try and win, it's almost like an Amazon within an Amazon except this stuff is all FREE! So how does it work? Say you're an author with a new book and a website and you want to get the word out. You'd purchase a copy of your own book and add the giveaway to your site to offer your visitors a chance to win it. The same goes for companies, inventors or bloggers, etc with their own products. So when you go to the Giveways section on Amazon, all of these thousands of offers are now grouped for you to try and win. I've been doing these for over a year now and ok, so I haven't won anything yet, I still try all the time because you just never know! They are incredibly easy to enter. There's three ways to do so and each one is up to the individual who is running the giveaway. You can either just "tap a box" which is literally tapping an animated box to see if you've won; Watch a video: the average time on this is 15 seconds and usually a product demo of what you're trying to win; Follow the person doing the giveaway: this normally goes for authors. You follow their Amazon page for updates on their work. (Some authors do Kindle giveaways instead of their books!) You can also sign up for the Giveways email updates and every day more are added. You can also try to win the same product after 24 hours if you failed to win the first time. And there is a bonus! If you don't win, a major percentage of the giveaway items will offer you a tremendous discount on them once you've played as incentive to get you to still purchase it. Which is great around the holidays! So while you may not win, getting a 40% discount is still awesome!! (see example pic below--not all discounts are the same) It's a lot of fun and you can find almost anything within the Giveaways, the only thing I haven't been able to figure out yet is how to do a search within them...even just for a category. At the same time, I've discovered a whole lot of products through this that I didn't know existed. Try it out. You can do a couple at a time and who knows, you may get to win something really cool! 4.Amazon Smile: What an incredibly awesome feature this is! When you set your Amazon home page (either on your computer or browser like Safari or Chrome on your mobile device), a small portion of your purchases will go to your favorite charity. You just go to your Amazon home page. On the right where it says say, "Hello Christie, Account & Lists", mouse over it and in the drop down find "Your Amazon Smile" (or "Amazon Smile"). When you click on it you'll get a dashboard page that let's you choose your charity and eventually will show what you've earned, etc. Then once you're signed up and your charity is set, when you purchase through the Amazon Smile page, your donation will be recorded. Please note that you MUST shop through the Amazon Smile in order for the donation to take effect. The best part of this program is that you can choose from thousands of charities including LOCAL non-profits. While you can do a big named group like the American Red Cross or ASPCA, etc, you can also search your town and see if any local organizations are represented...and you can change it anytime. So maybe you pick one and when you hit a certain dollar limit, you switch it to another. I've done my local historical society, animal organizations, elementary schools and more. Be sure to try different searches as I've found if I use my city and state in the search, not many will come up, but when I just put the city, I get a few hundred of all kinds. Supporting local has never been easier! I hope this gives you some new ideas on how to use your Prime membership. There's certainly more to talk about, but that's for another day. Have a Very Happy Prime Day EVERY Day!!! I’m not going to sugarcoat this...the idea of paying retail makes me crazy. And in this day and age where there are all kinds ways to save, there really is no reason to lay out more money than you have to. While I use a number of sites, Chrome extensions and cashback apps, it’s the apps I go to first. So it just seemed natural for me to start this particular money saving micro blog with my 3 favorites. As I give you the information on these three, I’m also going to give you the referral links to each one to get you started. Also, using these links (click on their names) will also benefit both you and I and help support this site. I’m also throwing in some tips that I’ve picked up along the way and of course as future posts come up, there will be more information on these and other money savers that I use. All of these are super incredibly easy to use, but wanted to include the little things that will benefit you the most. Learned a lot of this stuff after using these over a few years so let me share it with you now so you don’t have to wait years to pick it up. Here we go! My top 3 are Ebates, Ibotta and TopCashBack. Ebates (now Rakuten): Rakuten is the queen mother of the cash back programs. They do the big stores, including Amazon, Walmart and Target. It's SUPER easy. You're going to shop online anyway, you just go to the site or the app first and click on the store and shop as normal. That's it. Now having said that, sometimes you do need to go into the different offers to see what's what as each store may offer different percentages back depending on department. To me, the best time to use it is during their big offer days. They will send you the emails and/or notifications to let you know when they do that and you can really score some major cash back deals. Just an example...Walmart can be as low as 1% but on everything (not just by department). But I've hit it on big offer days and gotten as much as 10-12% back. Also, Rakuten does four payouts per year. You can opt for a check, PayPal or if it's below a certain amount or not, they may even offer your cash back via gift card. If that's the case, then you get to choose where the card will come from (so you can score a card for a favorite place) AND 99% of the time, they will offer you more money back if you choose this option. So say you have $10 coming to you and they send you the gift card option. They will offer anywhere from 6-12 to choose from and you may have the opportunity to get up to say $15 instead of your $10. Btw, you can also link your payment cards (credit or debit) to your account and choose stores to link to it. For example, I linked Bed Bath and Beyond to my debit card through Ebates and then did a big shopping trip one time. I used one of their famous coupons and because I linked my card, got cashback on top of it. Once you link it, it's linked. You don't have to remember before each trip and they rotate them as well. So you can be on the lookout for new stores. They once did CVS; my holy grail.(look for future posts on CVS) I used my extra bucks, my extra care card sales, got cashback from ebates AND had scored a cashback deal from Bank of America. It was a good, good day. Before I forget, if you use Chrome or Safari, you can download the Ebates/Rakuten extension and when you go to a site that it offers cashback for, the icon will both light up and offer a drop down button that will let you know that they offer cashback and you just hit it to activate it and then just shop. So it catches you in time to make sure you don't lose out on an offer. Note: as of 5/13/2019 the name change from Ebates to Rakuten is new although they’ve always been a Rakuten company. I’m hoping, as many others are as well, that the name goes back to Ebates. Stay tuned. IBOTTA: Ibotta. Is. Awesome. You don't just use this for online shopping. This is my favorite for grocery shopping. You can go into your grocery store, pick your offers, upload your receipts to it and it's added to your account. Boom done.They have GREAT bonuses that add to the cash back. And to top it off, once you sign up, when you share your referral code code your friends are then added to your ‘team’ and the savings really add up!. Let me start by saying, no one can see what you shopped for so no worries there. Example of team earnings: Say my friend, my mother and I are part of a 'team'. When one of us shops and there is a team bonus, you'll just get a notice that say "Patti just scored $1.10 back at walmart" and her purchase goes towards the team bonus. Can get as much as $10 for team bonuses. Over Christmas they ran an awesome individual bonus offer. 8% back from Walmart.com, + a $5 gift card. They've never done that before. Came in handy for my next trip. lol Ibotta does online shopping and for the 'in person/receipt upload' shopping: groceries, liquor stores, restaurants and bars (including some delivery), convenience stores, travel sites, clothing, pharmacy, etc. Love love love this one and their bonuses can really add up. They have recently added the option to add your store loyalty cards as well. If you do that, there is no reason to upload the receipt and your store purchases are automatically scanned for their offers and then added to your account. Unlike Rakuten, you can cash out when you hit a $20 minimum. My Mom for Christmas, used it as a sort of savings account. She let it accumulate to almost $300 for the year and then cashed out to use as extra holiday shopping money. For me personally because I always need every little bit, I cash out as soon as I can. So it's up to you how you want to do it. TOPCASHBACK: My new favorite! So this one has jumped to the top for a couple of reasons: 1) they have a TON of online stores to choose from. 2) many times, they have a bigger cashback percentage on some of the sites I frequent. 3) no minimum for payout 4) they run really fun games where you can win money (and I have) I'll start with the games...this has become something I look forward to. It’s a lot of fun and I’ve discovered lots of new places to shop because of them. I will say this, the games can't be done on the app and have to be done on the site. No biggie. They post clues on their facebook page (or site page) that lead you to the page on their site of a vendor. So say the clue leads you to their Gap page. When you click on the page, a hummingbird (their logo) will fly across the page, you click on him and he gives you a present. It's either money, or an icon (collect all the icons in a series and win a cash prize) or a drawing entry. The best part of this game is that when you go to their facebook page, other members will post where other clues were found and you can find up to 5-10 a day. :D Game aside, you can cashout at any time. Their customer service is awesome and I recommend them the most for cvs.com purchases. Many times they offer 8% back instead of 2-4% on Rakuten. The only downfall with TopCashBack is that they don't do in person shopping and are strictly online and no bonuses but again, many times you can find some better deals and with no waiting for payout, it's a wash. However having said that, they do offer matching and for online shopping, this has turned into a major go-to for me. You can find higher offers for shops as well as the bonus of using their coupons along with the cash back offers which adds to the savings. (You can really luck out with these and many stores offer both the cashback AND coupons.) ~~~ There are other sites and apps I use as well but these are the top 3 I use the most and I thought this would be a great place to start off this particular micro-blog. If I'm looking for a particular item, I will go to all three first to see who has the better deal. Amazon is always a test of this. One site may be running a special one day deal while the other isn't. I know it sounds like a lot of trouble, but honestly, it's takes less than a minute to check and it will end up saving you some good money. Happy Saving! |
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