Nov. 6, 2012 at 10:50 AM ET
For $79 per year, an Amazon Prime membership lets you stream movies and TV shows from the Prime Instant Video library, gives you free two-day shipping on most items, and offers other perks. It's a fairly great value for most, especially those who shop on Amazon a lot.
But what if you're not ready to commit to an annual subscription, even after the free month trial?
You can sign up for a monthly plan.
As a reader of a typically Netflix-focused blog appropriately named Hacking Netflix noticed, Amazon appears to be testing out a monthly plan for Amazon Prime. Instead of $79 per year, you can choose to pay $7.99 per month. (Yes, this certainly does wind up costing you a bit more by the time 12 months pass.)
The $7.99 per month option doesn't seem to be appearing to all customers, but TechCrunch's Sarah Perez points out that some folks had luck snagging it by trying out different browsers or checking the Amazon Prime page while not logged into their accounts.
We have reached out to Amazon for more details about the new Prime membership option, but in the meantime, we suspect that the online retailer is testing it out in order to better compete against Hulu and Netflix, video streaming services whose offerings are comparable to those in the Prime Instant Video library. After all, even though they may wind up paying more over time, many folks seem to jump on a monthly subscription more quickly than an annual one.
Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
