Once upon a time, Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving and the traditional apex of sales events — meant lining up in front of your favorite store along with thousands of other would-be customers, waiting for the stampede to begin. How old-fashioned! These days, many of us take the easy way out by shopping those sales from our couches. And Amazon, as might be expected, saves its best deals for members of its Prime program.

This year, Amazon’s Black Friday sale takes place on Friday, November 29th. Cyber Monday, when the deals concentrate on tech devices, will be Monday, December 2nd. If you’re interested in the goodies being offered but haven’t signed up for Amazon Prime, don’t worry — Amazon makes it very easy.

Besides giving access to Prime Day bargains, Amazon includes a bunch of features to entice people to sign up for its Prime service. These include access to its streaming video service Prime Video, which unfortunately is no longer ad-free, though you can pay extra for that; free and faster shipping on purchases (with two-day or one-day delivery for many items and even same-day delivery for some); discounts on a selection of Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods groceries; Amazon Music ad-free audio streaming (not to be confused with the more extensive Amazon Music Unlimited, which is an additional $9.99 per month for Prime members and $10.99 per month for non-members); Prime Gaming, which includes a free Twitch channel subscription; unlimited photo storage (along with 5GB of video storage); and Prime Reading, which gives you access to a rotating library of comics, books, and magazines as well as early access to a curated selection of new books. And most recently, Amazon has added discounts at BP and Amaco gas stations.

You can share your Prime account — and most of its features — with one other adult, too, along with up to four teens and four children. And you get a 30-day free trial, so you can try it (and the Prime Day specials) out.

We should probably mention the obvious: you can sign up for a Prime membership, take advantage of the free 30-day trial, and then cancel it once the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are over. But you can only do that once, so you won’t be able to use that trick next year when Prime Day comes around.

Update, November 1st, 2024: This article was first published on June 9th, 2021, and has been updated to reflect new information regarding Amazon’s Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale.