Our favorite Amazon Prime Day hacks to get the best deals

Amazon Prime Day is coming up soon, and you’re going to want to be ready. We don’t have an official date yet, but a leaked report says the super sales will drop for Prime users all over the world on July 15th. That means everyone will be shopping, so you need to know our favorite Amazon Prime Day hacks to get the best deals; it’s going to be a busy day of shopping, price-tracking, and comparing.

Think of Amazon Prime Day as the Olympics of online shopping.

Like all athletes, you need to do some training and preparation. Here’s your guide.

1 Start a 30-day free trial with Amazon Prime if you don’t have an account already

Amazon Prime Day is only available to Prime customers, which makes sense. So start a 30-day free trial a few days before July 15th and you’ll have your account all set up.

2 Get the Amazon app so you can watch deals

There are a few benefits to using the Amazon app over a regular ol’ web browser. First, you can turn on notifications for certain items, and you’ll receive alerts when they go on sale or their prices are lowered. Also, in the past, the app has allowed users to see many Prime Day Lightning Deals—sales that last for a short period—before they’re posted on the site.

3 Bookmark the Prime Day deals page

If you’re not using the app, make sure to bookmark the page where all of the Prime Day deals get posted. You’ll probably want to check on it throughout the day, so having easy access helps.

4 Put items in your shopping cart ahead of time

If you know there’s something, especially an Amazon product, that you’ll definitely buy if it goes on sale, add it to your cart so you have it at the ready and don’t need to search for it when its price drops. Experts say that almost all Amazon products, like Fire tablets, Kindle e-readers, and Echoes, will likely all go on sale for Prime Day.

5 If you don’t want to use the Amazon app, use an outside site to track prices

You can use the popular sites CamelCamelCamel or Slickdeals to track product prices and get alerts when they drop. These sites will also let you compare prices of products from other retailers too, which is great since other places often have deals on Prime Day besides Amazon.

6 Ask Alexa to reveal deals early, and use it to shop

In years past, asking your Amazon Echo to reveal Prime Day deals can sometimes get you an early sneak peek at what’s on sale. According to a 2018 USA Today story, asking Alexa for Prime Day deals early can lead to some clues, but they’re not just straight-up given to you. “Alexa should reply with a cryptic message or poem to reveal deals several days early,” USA Today reported.

Voice-shopping with Alexa could also help you gain access to Prime Day deals early, since in 2017 Alexa unlocked a two-hour head start when people shopped using the Echo. It sounds like your favorite light-switcher can also become a pretty helpful personal shopper.

7 Use CamelCamelCamel to find out if you’re getting the best deal

Not only does CamelCamelCamel help you track the price of a certain product, but you can also check the sales history of a product so you know if you’re getting the best deal. The outside site will show you the highest and lowest prices of the item you’re looking at, and if it’s not the lowest possible price, you might want to wait to see if it gets further reduced.

8 Get prepared to score Prime Day’s bonus deals

There are a few semi-secret deals on Prime Day that not many people will know about, but you can find them all on Amazon's Prime Day guide if you dig. In the past, they’ve included deals like getting $10 off if you download and sign into the Amazon app for the first time, or getting an extra $5 discount on Prime Day deals when you look for items with the Camera Search on the Amazon App.

9 Get on the waitlist for sold out Lightning Deals

Lightning Deals get released every hour and they can sell out within minutes, but just because an item is sold out doesn’t mean it might not become available again. That’s because items are deleted from a person’s shopping cart after 15 minutes if the purchase isn’t completed. If you click the “Join Waitlist” button on Lighting Deal items that you want, you might get an alert if it becomes available after someone leaves it in their cart for too long.

Get ready people, it’s a jungle out there. Maybe that’s why it’s called Amazon.