Amazon Discount Finder Find hidden 75%-off deals & more

This hidden rulebook for giant web store Amazon has 13 top tricks to slash prices. This includes our Amazon Discount Finder Tool, which instantly finds secret 75%+ off bargains, including toys, cameras, clothes, TVs and more.

You can also track price reductions, grab free gift vouchers and escape delivery charges.

1. Don't assume Amazon's cheapest
Take 20 seconds to check elsewhere

The Amazon* business model is that it's a one-stop shop. It's tempting to do all your shopping in one easy sweep, but you can often undercut it.

In the same amount of time as it takes to search Amazon, you can use shopbots (shopping robots) that whizz through scores of internet retailers to find the cheapest price. Our MegaShopBot.com tool auto-searches the best of these for each category.

For a full guide to slashing the cost of buying anything and everything online, see the full 40 Online Shopping Tricks guide.

The same rule applies if you're buying Amazon Marketplace gear, where external sellers supply new and second-hand stuff. Always check if eBay* or similar sites sell it cheaper. See the 40 eBay Buying Tricks guide for more on this.

2. Find Amazon's secret bargain basement

Amazon often offers 75% and better reductions, yet it directs people to other areas, sending them to higher profit margin products instead.

There's a geeky way to manipulate Amazon's web links to display all heavily-reduced bargains. All you need to do is fiddle with Amazon web addresses to bring up lists of knock-down prices.

The problem is these are a faff to make yourself. So we've built the Amazon Hidden Discount Finder tool (above). It creates your own bespoke super-specific sub-department pages in seconds, where you choose the discount and if you want free delivery.

Top tips for using the Amazon Discount Tool

When searching for treasure, don't just look at the first page of bargains, try a few. Don't assume that just because it's discounted, it must be a good buy. Try higher percentage discounts for cheaper, smaller items and lower percentages for niche, expensive ones.

Not all items have free delivery, so just tick the tool's ‘Only show free delivery' box and do the search. Only items with free delivery will show, and Marketplace sellers, where delivery usually isn't free, are often excluded from the search.

Just because something is listed with a huge discount, it doesn't automatically make it a bargain (or worth buying).

Before you try the tool, here are some popular web addresses we made earlier:

3. Track past Amazon prices

Our hidden discount finder's proved hugely popular, yet, as we've warned, just because Amazon lists it as reduced, it doesn't make it cheap. Before you buy, plonk any item's Amazon URL (its web address) into CamelCamelCamel, which charts Amazon price changes, to show whether the 'was' price is realistic. The results can be fascinating.

First find hidden discounts with our Amazon Discount Tool, then just go to CamelCamelCamel and paste a specific product's Amazon URL in the search box. Hit the buttons to remove different seller types or drag the timeline to adjust the date range.

Try the browser plug-in

There are also nifty free Camelizer plug-ins for the Firefox and Chrome web browsers, which chart price changes while you visit Amazon.

Once you've downloaded a plug-in, go to an item's Amazon page and click the tiny camel in your browser's bottom right – the price chart should appear.

4. Monitor the perfect moment to buy

Amazon prices bounce up and down more than Jordan on a trampoline, and when they're cheap, they sell out quickly. CamelCamelCamel lets you enter your desired price and fires off an email when Amazon hits it.

Simply pop an item's URL into it, click the 'track' tab and enter the maximum price you want to cough up. You'll receive an e-mail when the price falls to that amount or lower.

Alternatively, Zeezaw works in a similar way. Just sign up, create a list with the max price you want to pay for Amazon items, and you'll receive emails when the price drops.

5. Not everything has free delivery

These days Amazon* offers free delivery as standard. The free 'super saver' option usually takes three to five days, but not all goods qualify. Some items do have a delivery charge, especially goods sold by Amazon Marketplace sellers, rather than Amazon itself.

Always check the top of the page states "your order qualifies for free delivery". If it doesn't, you'll pay.

6. Don't 'pay more by default'

While Amazon lists free delivery on some products, you have to select the 'super saver delivery' box at the checkout. If not, the default delivery option is expensive - one to two days first class.

7. Free next-day delivery trick

Handy for Christmas shopping, Amazon* is offering Prime newbies a free 1 month trial of its service. The service gets you free one-day delivery, rather than its slower free delivery. The beauty is you can sign up, order, then just cancel the trial before Amazon charges you.

This is especially useful if you time the trial to coincide with Christmas shopping to get parcels delivered speedily. Though only do this if you are super-organised and will remember to cancel. See the Free Amazon Prime Trial Instructions.

8. Get a free £30 Amazon voucher

The Freedom Rewards Barclaycard* gives 10,500 points, enough for a £30 voucher, when you're accepted and spend £500 on the card in the first three months. So do your normal spending on it and grab the freebie.

Always set a direct debit up to pay off in full, or the 18.9% representative APR interest will dwarf the gain. See Credit Card Freebies for a full how-to and the effect on your credit score as well as more freebies.

9. Earn Amazon vouchers with online surveys

If you're willing to give your views on topics like the Coalition, lingerie or the latest moisturiser, you could earn Amazon and other gift vouchers by doing online surveys. All you have to do is put the hours in filling in surveys online.

Dedicated survey do-ers earn £200ish a year from home. Several survey sites pay you in Amazon vouchers. For a full list of the top paying online survey sites, see the Earn from Survey Sites guide.

10. Students, save 5%

Students are about the only lucky chaps who can get a voucher code for an instant discount. You need a current National Union of Students Extra card to get 5% off (10% off clothing).

Just log onto the NUS website for a personal promotional code to paste into the gift voucher code box on Amazon every time you order. The reusable code should be valid for 12 months.

The discount only works on certain departments, including books, music, DVD, beauty and home. See a full list.

11. Tap into free cash with Amazon Associates

If you've a blog or website, set up a free account with Amazon Associates, a scheme where you earn Amazon vouchers for linking to the site.

Just follow the steps to add links and banners to your website. When someone clicks on Amazon from your site and makes a transaction, it's recorded and you're paid 5% commission, which you get in the form of cash or an Amazon discount. This rises to 10%, depending on how much you sell and what category it's in. (See a full list of payments.)

Amazon only pays out once your commission hits £25 or, for cash payouts, £50. Products bought by you personally won't count towards your commission, as anything ordered for delivery to your home address or paid for on a credit card registered there is excluded.

12. Use a cashback credit card

You can earn up to 5% every time you spend by using a cashback credit card, although always ensure you pay it off in full to avoid interest charges.

There's no conflict between using a cashback card and clicking through from charities (see below). This is because when you spend money, it's the cashback card, not the retailer giving some of it back, whoever it's spent with. For the current top payers, see the full Best Cashback Cards guide.

13. Earn charity funds

It's possible to give charities a boost at no extra cost to you. Simply click through to Amazon from a charity's special link, log in and click on the product you want.

When you grab something, it's recorded and Amazon pays the charity 5% of your purchase in cash – no small beer, especially as it costs you nothing.

Click through to Amazon from there BEFORE you put anything in your basket, otherwise the charities won't get the money. Charities that do this include the Royal National Institute of Blind People and Epilepsy Action.

If you work for a legit registered UK charity, add it to the Amazon Charity Clicks forum thread, so MoneySavers can help their favourite causes.