For those of you who have never heard of Amazon Prime before this is it in a nutshell. Prime is a $79/year* membership with Amazon that entitles you (and three members of your household) to unlimited free two-day shipping with no minimum order price on any product fulfilled by Amazon.com. If you are really impatient you can even get $4/item overnight shipping.

*Prime is free if you are a student or you buy diapers from Amazon.

“I usually get free Super Saver shipping anyway”

A lot of people I mention Prime to tell me that they already usually get free shipping at Amazon.com by waiting until they have $25 of items to buy. Here is why Prime is different and vastly superior though. First, you don’t have to figure out $25 of things to buy if you just need one $8 product. Second, Amazon doesn’t just have UPS/Fedex/USPS/etc ship the package quicker for Prime, they actually fulfill the order and get it to the shipper sooner.

Back in my pre-Prime days my Super Saver orders usually shipped 1-3 days after I placed my order. Now with Prime it almost always ships within 12 hours, usually less. Basically you get to cut in line just like people in the First-Class security line at the airport. So instead of waiting a few days to order, three days for fulfillment, and seven days for shipping it is now replaced by less than a day to fulfill and two-days or less to ship.

Many purchases can’t wait a week

There are a lot of things in life that I buy that I don’t need this very second which are impractical to wait a week or more to receive though. The Super Saver shipping may be fine for much of the typical Amazon.com fare (books, music, videogames) but it doesn’t work for these items. Here is a small sample of things I purchased in the last 12-months that arrived in two days that I wouldn’t have waited for:

• “Weed wacker” Trimmer String
• Electric Lawn Mower (seriously. It is an excellent mower btw)
• Refrigerator Water Filter
• Windshield Wiper Blades
• Car Engine Air Filter
• Coyote Urine Deer Repellent
• Batteries (AAA, AA, cordless phone)
• Garage Door Opener Remotes
• Marshmallow Roasting Sticks
• Many Kitchen Tools
• Printer Toner
• Pre-ordered Video Games delivered on their release day
• Many last minute gifts

The best part of getting all of this stuff delivered to my house? Each one of them would have required a 30-60 minute errand to go buy it, I could easily comparison shop and read product reviews, and Amazon.com was always cheaper than the brick-and-mortar store I would have driven to. So the member hip pays for itself and it gives me more free time to do other things that are more important/fun.

Do yourself a favor and sign-up for an Amazon Prime free one-month trial and see for yourself how much time and money you can save.

Increase Visibility

One of the biggest problems I believe AmazonMP3 is facing is that even amongst people who buy music online (mostly iTunes users) most haven’t ever heard of it. Anytime I mention AmazonMP3 to a friend of mine they are surprised that such a service even exists; they thought iTunes was the only option.

The value proposition is really strong for Amazon MP3: no DRM, files are compatible with all MP3 players, a large selection of music, a familiar company that most people already do business with, and prices that are generally lower than the competition. All of that doesn’t matter if you don’t know about it though.

Bundle With Other Amazon Products

Amazon should bundle MP3 downloads with every iPod or MP3 player. Three of the top six selling MP3 players aren’t iPods so they don’t have any default store, and seventeen of the top one-hundred selling electronics are MP3 players; it is a great opportunity to cross-sell.

They could vary the number of included tracks based of the price of the product. So the bargain $35 MP3 player might only come with two or three songs while a high end $500 MP3 player could come with an album or two; depending on the margins of course. This would be a differentiating factor versus other online stores for MP3 players, and would introduce most of these users to AmazonMP3 right off the bat. Amazon could even include free songs with other devices that play MP3s but aren’t “MP3 Players” such as cell phones, portable GPS units, game consoles, or even computers.

They should make MP3 purchases count toward free “Super Saver Shipping” and highlight it to certain users too. I know I would buy a few tracks to push my order over $25 instead of hunting down some cheap book or a 24-pack of pens.

Brick And Mortar

I think they need to go after the brick and mortar establishments as well. They could be selling AmazonMP3 gift cards at electronics stores, big box retailers, and supermarkets just like iTunes does. Although the cards would say AmazonMP3 they really should be redeemable for any purchase at Amazon.com. They could also extend the bundling concept to select retailers to include AmazonMP3 tracks with MP3 players. Amazon already has a commercial partnership with Target so why not start there?

What do you think? Would some legal free tunes entice you to buy an MP3 player at a certain store? Do you think you’d actually redeem the free MP3 tracks, and even make a future purchase?