Amazon is joining in with subscription based services like Netflix and Hulu, and is offering a monthly subscription plan for its Prime video streaming service. Amazon is also offering a one-month free trial to new users.
In addition to the free streaming video service, users of Amazon’s Prime get access to free two-day shipping on product orders (amazing to have for the holidays—especially on a month-to-month basis), as well as access to the Kindle lending library.
I’ve been a member of Amazon Prime for a couple of years, and it was a great deal before they ever added the video streaming service. If you are a regular shopper at Amazon’s website, the $79 a year membership fee more than pays for itself in shipping charges. The video service is just icing on the cake. Very sweet icing to be sure, as Amazon is improving it all the time, continually expanding their selection of movies and television shows to better compete with the likes of Netflix and Hulu.
Amazon’s Instant Video app for the iPad is an excellent way to view Amazon’s video offerings.
I highly recommend Amazon Prime. It’s available for $79 a year, or $7.99 a month, which comes out to $95.88 per year, so if you’re already a regular user of Amazon, grab the yearly membership, you’ll be glad you did.
TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon has released a statement saying only this about the monthly Amazon Prime memberships: “We are always looking at ways to improve the shopping experience for our customers. We are testing a monthly Prime subscription. Beyond that, we don’t have anything further to offer.” So it’s possible that since this is a test of the monthly subs, they may pull the offer at any time. It might be a good idea to grab it while you can!
Sign up is easy, just go to Amazon.com and look for the “Join Prime” link in the upper right hand corner.
