Can Amazon Prime Day Revenue Jump to $15 Billion?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 15, 7:10AM EDT

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Can Amazon Prime Day Revenue Jump to $15 Billion? — © NoDerog / Getty Images

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Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) investors will benefit if Prime Day revenue jumps by a meaningful amount.
The event drives a vital part of the company’s quarterly e-commerce revenue.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) Prime Day will be on July 16 and July 17 this year. The event drives a vital part of the company’s quarterly e-commerce revenue. Last year, revenue from it reached $13.5 billion. Amazon’s investors will benefit if revenue can jump by a meaningful amount. A 10% improvement would drive $15 billion in revenue

Prime is Amazon’s delivery and streaming video service, and it generated about $40 billion last year. Amazon’s North America’s e-commerce revenue for the year was $352 billion. Prime members are much more likely to shop on Amazon than non-Prime members, and Prime Day is a period when Amazon adds Prime members. That means a strong Prime Day is crucial.

One question about Prime Day is whether Amazon and its third-party sellers make good margins. That is because discounts are so large in many cases. The “early shop” feature, which gives Prime members discounts before Prime Day starts, has discounts on some items as high as 50%. These could be loss leaders meant to get Prime members to shop early. Once they are on Amazon.com, prices on other items are discounted less or not at all.

Finally, Amazon is unusually clever about adding Prime members on Prime Day. If people want deals, they can sign up to be Prime members for free. “Start your free 30-day trial,” the promotion says. After that, the price jumps to $14.99 a month, or $139 for those who pay annually.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.