Planning to shop Amazon’s 4th annual Prime Shopping Day? Do your research this weekend.

If you’re one of the 100 million Prime members ready to shop you may be gearing up for Amazon’s 4th annual Prime Shopping Day. The day and a half sale is expected to be bigger than ever. Amazon reportedly is charging sellers more to list items as “lightning deals”. According to CNBC Amazon normally charges sellers $500 to run a ‘lightning deal’ but for Prime Day 2018 they’ll charge them $750 which, the thinking goes, will lead to sellers to list only their very best deals.

According to the report, Amazon did not charge sellers anything to list items in 2015 and 2016.

If you’re going to be shopping there are a few things you can do ahead of time to increase your luck.

First, make a list of what you’re looking for and add them to your cart. You can  get a notification if anything in that cart gets added as a lightning deal. You can also watch a deal using the Amazon app, and get the notification as well.

To receive notifications go to the settings menu in the Amazon app. You’ll find it by tapping the three lines at the top left. Select notifications and then, turn on the option that says “your watched and waitlisted deals”.

Now when you’re in the Amazon app looking at lightning deals, you can select “upcoming” which will show all of the deals that start in the next several hours. When you see something you want, tap “watch this deal”. You’ll get a notification when that lightning deal is available.

You can also see those upcoming deals by searching for “Sneek Peak” in the search bar.

As you’re doing research on the products you want ahead of time, copy the URL of the item’s webpage and enter it into the search bar at the website www.camelcamelcamel.com

This website shows a price history for Amazon items so you’ll see the highest and lowest prices for the item. A Samsung computer screen I have my eyes on was selling for around $200 this time last year and is currently $150. Camelcamelcamel.com shows it was just $119 in April. It might be on sale for that price or even lower on Prime Day. You can also use camelcamelcamel to watch for price drops. If you were to set an alert for that monitor at $119, camelcamelcamel can send you a text message or email if it drops to that price.

You can also use a third-party app such as Amazon Price Alerts. This app allows you to search for and save items and receive notifications if and when the price drops.

 

Prime Day has “Black Friday” type prices but is only for Amazon Prime members. You can sign up for a free Prime trial that will let you shop for the deals on Monday-Tuesday. Sign up for a free 30-day trial here.

Here are some of my favorite gadgets of the year that just may go on sale Prime Shopping Day.

SANDMARC wide-angle lens kit for the iPhone

Logitech Harmony smart TV remote

Alexa devices will be priced at their lowest price of the year

Hue Smart Lightbulbs, the starter kit is a great first addition to smart homes

Rocketbook Everlast Notebook and Rocketbook Wave Notebook

PhotoSpring smart picture frame

Televisions

Anker wireless charging pad  for iPhone 8, X and Samsung Galaxy devices

Anker’s Roav Alexa enabled car charger

 

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