How to sign up for Amazon Prime

Amazon has announced that its annual Prime Day sales are scheduled for Monday, June 21 and Tuesday, June 22; and if you feel like it hasn't been a year since the last event - you're right, it hasn't. Last year, Prime Day fell on October 13 and 14, three months later than usual, due to the coronavirus pandemic. But this year, we're back on schedule, and as before, Amazon will lower the prices of many of its products for its Prime members.

If you're drawn to the freebies on offer, but haven't signed up for Amazon Prime, don't worry, Amazon makes it easy for you. (As you'd expect, it's the sorry seller who makes it hard for people to become new customers.)

In addition to providing access to Prime Day deals, Amazon has come up with a bunch of features to entice people to sign up for its Prime service. These include:access to Main Video, its video streaming service; free and faster delivery on purchases (with two-day delivery for many items and even same-day delivery for some); deals on Whole Foods Market shopping; Amazon Music Prime audio streaming (not to be confused with the more extensive Amazon Music Unlimited, which is an additional $7.99/month for Prime members); Top-notch gaming, which includes a free Twitch channel subscription; online photo storage; and Main Reading, which provides access to a library of comics, books, and magazines.

You can share your Prime account – and all of its features – with another adult. And you get a 30-day free trial, so you can try it out (along with Prime Day specials) to see if it's right for you.

Here's how to register.

Choose a plan

Go to https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime and click on the "See more plans" link.
Choose the plan you want. The basic plan lets you sign up for the service for $12.99/month or $119/year, which works out to just under $10/month. You can also sign up for Prime Video alone for $8.99/month, but you won't be able to participate in Prime Day.
If you are a student, click on the link that asks "Are you a student?" and sign up for Senior Student. You will get six months free trial subscription and after that you only have to pay $6.49 per month. You also get additional discounts, such as Showtime for 99 cents per month (for up to one year), Amazon Music Unlimited for 99 cents per month, and a two-month trial of Kindle Unlimited.
If you are on government assistance or using an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card, you can also sign up for less:$5.99 per month.
Is it your birthday soon? If you have a generous friend or relative, they may give you a Prime membership for three months ($39) or the whole year ($119).

Create an account

Once you have decided which plan you are going to use, you will need an Amazon account. If you don't already have one, you will need to register. Click "Try Prime", then "Create your Amazon account" and create one with your name, email and password. We strongly recommend that you also set up two-factor authentication for your account.
On the next page, Amazon will verify your account by sending what it calls an OTP (one-time password) to your email. Go to your email, copy the OTP, paste it into the Amazon page and click "Verify".
You will then be asked to enter your credit or debit card information.
And you're done!

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We should probably state the obvious:you can sign up for a Prime membership, take advantage of the 30-day free trial, then cancel it once the Prime Day sales end. But you can only do it once – and you might regret that decision next year when Prime Day returns.

Updated June 9, 2021 3:30 PM ET: This article was originally published on July 10, 2019 and has been edited to reflect updated information on Amazon Prime.