Is Amazon Prime Still a Good Deal at $99? Let's Run Some Numbers

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Now that it costs $20 more, a look back through all of 2013's purchases to see if an Amazon Prime membership pays off

I've paid $79 per year for an Amazon Prime membership for the past five years or so, and I've always wondered how much (if any) it's saved me. Now that the price is going up to $99 a year, I thought I'd run through all my purchases from 2013 to see what the difference would have been if I hadn't shelled out for Prime last year.

Quick Prime primer: You pay Amazon (now) $99 a year, and in return, you get free two-day shipping on a vast selection of what Amazon sells, and you can step up to overnight shipping for $3.99 per item. Amazon also includes a Netflix-like streaming video service containing 40,000 movies and TV shows - some popular, most not. You also get the ability to digitally borrow half a million eligible Kindle books one at a time. More info here.

This is all very unscientific, back-of-the-napkin math, but here are some stats and assumptions about my 2013 orders.

Basic Stats:

• Total number of orders placed in 2013: 76
• Number of Subscribe-and-Save orders: 13
• Total number of shipments (orders + Subscribe-and-Save): 62
• Total number of orders totaling less than $35: 31

I placed 76 orders last year, but some of these orders were multiple different orders placed on the same day or Subscribe-and-Save orders, which are basically discounted subscriptions to items that get shipped out on a set schedule (paper towels, batteries, detergent and things like that).

So when the dust had cleared, I ended up getting 62 shipments last year. Of those shipments, exactly half were orders that totaled less than $35. Amazon offers free shipping if you spend $35 or more.

Extra Shipping Charges:

• Number of items overnighted at $3.99 per item: 5
• Number of non-Prime orders: 1
• Total 2013 shipment costs (Prime + extras): $104.44

I had five items overnighted at $3.99 per item ($19.95 total), I paid $79 for the membership, and I bought one item that wasn't eligible for Prime shipping. It was a t-shirt that carried $5.49 in additional shipping costs. I have no regrets about buying this shirt. None whatsoever.

So: $19.95 plus $79 plus $5.49 comes out to $104.44 - the total amount I paid for shipping last year on all my Amazon purchases.

Cost of Overnighting the Same 5 Items Without Prime:

• Pair of shoes: $18.98
• Wireless weather station: $18.98
• Wig I bought but never used: $18.98
• Another wig I bought but never used: $18.98
• Wireless keyboard: $20.97
• Total overnight shipping costs if not for Prime: $96.89

I would have incurred $96.89 worth of shipping costs just for the five items I chose to overnight. That's before even getting into how much I would have paid in shipping charges for orders totaling less than $35.

However, I can look you straight in the eye and tell you that there's no way I would have overnighted a single one of these items if I hadn't been able to do so for $3.99 apiece. I probably wouldn't have purchased any of these items from Amazon in the first place. The two wigs (see above photo) are my biggest regrets for several reasons, but I know deep down in the cockles of my heart that having them on-hand will someday pay off in spades. I didn't need to overnight either of them, though.

Standard Shipping Costs Without Prime:

Total standard shipping costs on orders under $35 if not for Prime: $112.15

I fudged the numbers a bit here: I had a few orders that were shy of $35 by less than a buck, and a smattering of orders staggered within a day of each other. In a non-Prime life, I would have found something dinky to make a $34 order clear $35 and I would have been more vigilant about placing larger orders that qualified for free shipping. So I didn't count those orders in my 2013 totals. But for the rest of the one-off, sub-$35 items I ordered, I would have paid around $112 in shipping costs.

Assumptions, Advice and Conclusion:

I'm surprised at how close these two realities are. In a Prime life, I paid $104.44 in shipping charges; in a non-Prime life, I would have paid $112.15 in shipping charges.

In my case, I actually have to think a bit about whether $99 is worth it. Prime was a no-brainer for me at $79, but if I buckled down and made sure to order things only in $35-and-up clumps, I could conceivably cut shipping costs out of the equation altogether. (I'd still pay $5.49 extra for that shirt - all day long. No regrets.)

What such a scenario doesn't take into account, of course, is that Prime offers two-day shipping, whereas standard shipping is listed at five to eight days. If you live in a populated area that's relatively close to an Amazon distribution center, however, I can tell you that a standard shipment generally shows up in three days. At least, that's been my case (I live in Boston).

It also doesn't take into account the free movies and TV shows, or the free Kindle books. You could make the argument that if Amazon has the same stuff you want to watch as Netflix does, you could save $8 a month on a Netflix membership and basically offset the yearly cost of Prime. I also happened to read more Kindle books this year thanks to my Prime membership, but I can't argue that I would have paid full price for any of them otherwise.

My colleague Brad Tuttle lays out 5 ways to skirt paying $99 for Prime, the least cumbersome being to sign up for an educational discount if you have a .edu email address, or being diligent about placing $35+ orders. I'll also add that you can share a full-price Prime membership with four other people (Prime members: see the "Invite a Household Member" section on this page), so round up four friends - sorry, "household members" - and everyone can chip in $20.

And now the big question: Will I be re-upping my membership at $99 this time around?

Yes. Yes, I will. Being able to pay $4 to overnight a wig I'll probably never use is worth it to me. So is not having to look around for stuff to pad a $34 order. The two-day shipping on everything else, coupled with the video and e-book extras is icing on the cake.

But finally running the numbers after all these years has left me feeling less like Prime is a must-buy, especially now that it costs $99. If the price goes up any higher, I think that'll be it for me.

Coupons.com founder Steven Boal says IPO timing was right

Teresa NovellinoUpstart Business Journal Entrepreneurs & Enterprises Editor Email |Twitter

The UpTake: Startups vying for supremacy in the discount space can certainly learn from Coupons.com founder and chief executive officer Steven Boal, who oversaw a successful IPO Friday. It was a long time coming, but he says the time was right.

Coupons.com founder Steven Boal had an initial public offering for his company Friday that was successful by all going-public measures: with a pop in price of nearly 100 percent after its public debut under the ticker symbol NYSE: COUP, it is a contender as one of the top IPOs so far in 2014.

After raising $168 million in its road show, shares of the coupon site jumped from $16 at the start of trading and closed at about $30 per share Friday, leaving the company with a valuation of $2.2 billion. It was a long time coming for Boal, a former Wall Street technology executive, who started the Mountain View, California-based company in 1998 during the dot-com boom when he was inspired by his father-in-law's penchant for clipping newspaper coupons and betted (correctly) that readers' eyes were going to shift to online news. Coupons.com may seem like an old fogey in the Internet discount world, but Boal is saying the timing felt right.

"We've been growing for 16 years and now we're operating at scale and working with our large clients and retailers in a much more meaningful way," he told Re-code after the IPO. "Bigger companies like the confidence of working with bigger companies and public companies. Institutionally, I think bigger companies don't like working with smaller companies. ... This gives them confidence that we are a long-term, financially healthy company."

Coupons.com survived the dot-com bust era, focusing on digital coupons for groceries and health and beauty products, making money each time the coupons are printed or downloaded, or when digital Discount are used online. Its current partners include big brands like Del Monte Foods, Campbell's Soup and Walgreen's, and it reports 1.3 billion coupon transactions last year, providing coupons through deals with 700 consumer packaged goods companies representing 2,000 brands.

Platformer Shoot 'em Up Hybrid 'Glorkian Warrior: The Trials of Glork' Launching Next Week

<Amazon Salesp>Back in late January, a trailer caught my eye for a game called Glorkian Warrior: The Trials of Glork, an upcoming iOS project that blended the comic stylings of James Kochalka with the video game chops of Pixeljam Games. Not only was it a mashup of two creative entities, but it was also a mashup of gaming genres, with traditional platforming gameplay mixed in with Galaga-style shoot 'em up action. Based on this trailer, it looks like a match made in heaven.

Well, if you're excited for Glorkain Warrior like I am, you'll be happy to know that the game has managed its way through the Apple approval process and is set to launch next week on March 13th. In addition to the game, James Kochalka has created a Glorkian Warrior graphic novel called 'The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza' which will be available on March 25th. I'm not a big comic person, but I'm actually quite stoked to pick up both the iOS game and the book to get the full Glorkian Warrior effect, and you can currently pre-order the graphic novel on Amazon prior to its launch date.

Be on the lookout for Glorkian Warrior: The Trials of Glork next week, and hit up our forums for some discussion.

Warning: These Rap Lyrics Could Put You in Jail

<reddit gone wildp>"Anything you say can be used against you in the court of law." These famous words are, of course, part of the Miranda warnings read by the police to suspects after being arrested.

But this warning apparently needs to be updated to advise people that not only will anything you say, but also any rap lyrics you write can be used against you, even if they were penned years before the crime at issue.

Those are the very facts of Vonte Skinner's case currently pending on appeal before the New Jersey Supreme Court. Skinner was charged with the 2005 attempted murder of Lamont Peterson who had been shot several times at close range.

Earlier this week oral arguments were heard regarding whether Skinner's rap lyrics were improperly admitted by the trial judge. Here's just a sample of 13 pages of Skinner's lyrics read by the prosecution to the jury:

I love bringin' heat and to beef melt ya' Jeep. Two to your helmet and four slugs drillin' your cheek to blow your face off and leave your brain caved in the street.

Yo, look in my eyes. You can see death comin' quick. Look in my palms, you can see what I'm gunnin' with. I play no games when it comes to this war shit. If death was a jacket, you would see how the floor fits.

You get the idea. Unsurprisingly, Skinner was convicted despite the weapon not being found and conflicting testimony identifying him as the shooter.

I saw first hand when I was a trial lawyer that a jury -and even a judge- could be swayed by any one piece of evidence. Cases could turn on what might otherwise be perceived as lesser piece of evidence. Consequently, a defendant's rap lyrics could be the very thing that sways a jury to reach a guilty verdict because the words unfairly portray the person as violent.

And in Skinner's case, the lyrics at issue were written well before the crime- with some as old as four years before the shooting. It's also undisputed that Skinner's lyrics neither mentions the victim nor recites facts similar to his case.

I'm not arguing that all lyrics, or other creative expressions by a defendant, should never be admissible. But they should be clearly tied to the facts of the case at hand. For example, it would've been proper to admit the lyrics if Skinner had written about having a beef with the victim.

As former New York homicide prosecutor Paul Callan explained via email: "Had Johnnie Cash been charged with actually shooting 'a man in Reno, just to watch him die' his song lyrics would be relevant and admissible at trial. Otherwise, unless the lyrics help to prove something important like motive or a unique method of killing, they should be inadmissible."

Criminal defense lawyer Seema Iyer, also a former prosecutor, echoed Callan's sentiments. Iyer felt strongly that the "probative value" of Skinner's lyrics was clearly outweighed by the unfair prejudice it caused him.

Here's the even more alarming news: The Skinner case is far from being unique. As the ACLU noted in a brief it filed with the New Jersey Supreme Court, they found 17 other cases where court's considered the admissibility of a defendant's rap lyrics. Astoundingly, judges ruled in favor of admitting the lyrics in 80 percent of those criminal trials. (A few were overturned on appeal.)

If criminal courts continue down this path, will comedians have to worry that their angry, ranting jokes may one day be used against them in a trial? Or what if country singer Carrie Underwood were on trial in the future for a violent act, would the court admit the lyrics of her 2005 song, " Before He Cheats," in which she sings: "Took a Louisville slugger to both headlights, slashed a hole in all four tires. Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats."

Michael Skolnik, editor in chief of the hip-hop focused publication Global Grind.com that spotlights hip hop culture, explained to me that rap lyrics should, "never be allowed as evidence in a court of law since the lyrics range from being metaphorical, to bragging, to literal to a form of escape."

Brown University Professor Tricia Rose, who the ACLU quoted in their brief, noted that rap is a form of expression with its own "artistic and poetic conventions" often featuring "metaphors and boasts," "overblown accounts" and "outrageous lies," with the goal being to weave a catchy and compelling story.

Let's be brutally honest: there's a racial component to rap lyrics being introduced into evidence. We can't ignore the reality that rap lyrics will be used almost exclusively in criminal trials with black defendants.

As Professor Rose instructively explained, "rap music is a black cultural expression that prioritizes Black voices from the margins of urban America." Brown noted that since its origins, rap music has, "articulated the pleasures and problems of Black urban life in contemporary America."

Michael Skolnik, editor in chief of the hip-hop focused publication Global Grind.com, also believes there's a racial aspect to these cases, pointing out that it's, "another example of the demonization of young black men for listening to rap music- or as in this case, writing rap music."

The New Jersey Supreme Court should rule that Skinner's lyrics are not admissible. The Court should also articulate clear guidelines for New Jersey trial judges that a defendant's' creative expressions-be they rap lyrics or a comic's jokes- should only be admissible if it's directly connected to the facts of the case. Anything less will result in innocent people being convicted of crimes based on their art, not on the law.

Amazon's War On The House Of Otto, Germany's $18 Billion Family

Michael Otto at his corporate headquarters in Hamburg, Germany. (Photo by Wolfgang Wilde For Forbes)

Michael Otto's family has been as omnipresent in German postwar retail as Wal-Mart, Sears and Target have in the U.S. So what does this 70-year-old patriarch of this $18 billion clan most want to talk about? A factory in Bangladesh.

With gusto he describes how he and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus hatched a plan to build a humane clothing factory, where all profits would go back into the community for schools and hospitals. At best, the Otto Group would recoup its initial investment. Immediately they faced red tape. Electricity would take five years. Officials wanted bribes. Otto refused to base a social business on a corrupt footing and walked away. "It's unbelievable," says Otto, pounding on his wooden desk in his corner office in Hamburg, Germany. "You would think the government must be happy somebody is building such a company and leaving the money in the country."

And then the man with the crown of white hair and piercing blue eyes stops, composes himself and apologizes for banging on the table: "It is extremely seldom that I bang on the table, because I think it must be possible to solve problems in a very human and civilized way."

Human and civilized. That's the Otto Group, which encompasses 123 companies (including America's Crate & Barrel) across 20 countries and expects revenue for the fiscal year ending in February to top $16.4 billion. Germans covet jobs with the firm. Its workers have never led a strike against the company, which instructs its managers not to work weekends or holidays. "The increase in burnouts is a problem because people are always on and they are always reacting," says Otto. "It is so important to relax."

For six decades such values have served the Otto family well. Today you can almost hear Jeff Bezos' famous braying laugh emanating from Seattle. The Otto way of doing business is up against the age of amazon, in which scale, brashness and speed rule. Otto thought he had digital retailing figured out: No entity sold more clothes online last year, and the Otto Group also operates the world's largest mail-order retail operation. But last year, for the first time, Amazon's sales in Germany ($10.5 billion) eclipsed Otto's ($9 billion). And the trend lines are far uglier: The Otto Group's sales are up 17% in Germany since the recession, while Amazon's have doubled since 2010.

It's worth noting that charges of poor work conditions led Amazon workers in its German distribution centers to strike last year. Which has set up something of a test: Can a family-owned retail giant run by a paternalistic billionaire compete with the efficiency-obsessed behemoths born of the cut-throat Internet?

The rise of the Otto clan mirrors that of Germany after the Second World War. Michael's parents, Werner and Eva, resettled from Berlin to what was euphemistically called West Prussia after the Nazis conquered Poland. Michael was born in Kulm an der Weichsel, a town the Poles call Chełmno. Before he was 2 the settlers had to flee back to Germany ahead of the encroaching Soviet army.

Surviving a 400-mile trek by horse cart, with occasional strafing from British bombers, the Ottos eventually settled in the Hamburg area but were by then separated. Michael lived with his mother, who struggled to make ends meet. He remembers going to bed hungry on many nights. On weekends he would visit his father, who attempted to launch a series of businesses, including a halting effort at making wooden shoes. In 1949 Werner tried something new, pasting pictures of 28 pairs of regular shoes into a 14-page catalog, and writing out the prices by hand. He duplicated the catalog 300 times and handed them out to other Hamburgers. Orders started coming in, and propelled by Germany's "economic miracle" in the 1950s, the company he called Otto grew into a leading German catalog business. By 1967 the company was distributing more than a million catalogs with 748 pages.

In the 1970s, when postal strikes and higher rates threatened operations, Otto started doing its own deliveries. Today its logistics company, Hermes, grosses $1.5 billion and competes fiercely with Deutsche Post DHL in parcel delivery. Its $690 million distribution center in Haldensleben, in formerly Communist East Germany, is one of Europe's largest warehouses, holding up to $1.4 billion worth of merchandise at peak times. About 40% of its revenue comes from delivering for non-Otto Group companies-including Amazon.

In 1965 Werner set up a separate commercial real estate business, ECE Projektmanagement, that's now Europe's biggest developer of American-style shopping malls and is today run by Michael's younger half-brother Alexander. (That business, which accounts for two-thirds of the family's net worth, ultimately insulates the Ottos' fortune from the whims of retail.)

Michael Otto joined the family's catalog business in 1971 at age 28. Though the family had become successful, he remained a product of his hardscrabble roots. He paid for his own college education by starting a real estate business, which gave him street smarts to go with his eventual doctorate in economics. He's still that way: He buys his suits off the rack, and while he has a direct line to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, helped Christo win permission to wrap the Reichstag in silver fabric and has a species of lemur named after him, he remains the prototypical northern German merchant, steeped in modesty and dignity. His favorite hobbies: gardening and traveling off the beaten path (he recently returned from a ten-day camping trip in Kazakhstan). "I have a good understanding how it is to be poor," he says. "I sometimes cannot understand how people who became successful seem to be a different person."

Otto's tenure at CEO, which began in 1981, came with one main priority: diversify internationally. By 1987 Otto had become the world's largest mail-order company, expanding into Spain, Italy, Britain and other markets. In the U.S. it has placed its bets on Chicago's Crate & Barrel after an initial foray buying the Spiegel catalog ended in bankruptcy. In 1998 Otto bought 81% of Crate & Barrel from its founders, Gordon and Carole Segal. The year before, the company had sales north of $400 million. Now annual sales are above $1.4 billion. Otto bought the remaining shares in 2011.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 boosted sales into Eastern Europe. Russia was a top priority, where Otto is the leading mail-order company with revenue of $750 million in 2013, up 12.3% from the year before.

Otto embraced technology early: In the mid-1990s, he teamed with Time Warner in an experiment in interactive television in Orlando, Fla. It failed, epically so, but it opened his eyes to the potential of the Internet. "The biggest mistake is not to make decisions or not to develop new concepts," he says.

Otto went online in 1995-the same year as Amazon and earlier than many German competitors. Today online sales are 60% of Otto Group's total; another 30% come from its 1,800 different catalogs and the rest from its 400 physical stores. Before stepping into the chairman role in 2007, Otto nurtured dozens of new brands, such as myToys, which was started 15 years ago in Berlin's multicultural Kreuzberg district. Its offices have Ping-Pong tables and big open spaces, Silicon Valley-style. It's Germany's biggest online toy store and operates in Europe and Russia, and has 13 stores. Sales were an estimated $535 million last fiscal year, up from $384 million in the prior year.

BusinessWest

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Best Buy Offering Free 16GB iPhone 5s With Trade-In of iPhone 4s or 5

Coupon Codes is introducing another special deal this weekend, offering a minimum of $150 for trade-ins of working iPhone 4s and iPhone 5 smartphones. Customers must buy a new smartphone with two-year contract on AT&T, Sprint or Verizon, however. The offer is good through the end of the day tomorrow, March 1. The chain has also reduced the price of the base 16GB iPhone 5s to $150 to match the buyback.

With a number of carriers moving away from two-year contracts for its customers -- instead focusing on non-subsidized, but cheaper, monthly plans -- it may be affecting the bottom line of retailers like Best Buy because plans like AT&T Next do not, in many cases, require customers to pay money up front.

For upgrade-eligible iPhone-owners looking to move to the iPhone 5s, this promotion could be an inexpensive way to do that.