Five Essentials New Photographers Should Look for on Amazon Prime Day

Despite website struggles, this year's Amazon Prime Day broke sales records around the world. "Something went wrong on our end".

Amazon Prime Day is back once again for 2018, taking place today (Monday July 16) until midnight on Tuesday July 17. As such, all of the Prime Deal listings on the main page are gone until Amazon can sort out a fix for the crash.

Amazon Prime Day has been billed as the summer version of Black Friday, the one-day retail deal bonanza which takes places the day after Thanksgiving.

How big is Prime Day? The cheap-chic retailer promoted its own alt-Prime Day in the days leading up to Amazon's event, telling shoppers it "Offers Deals for All; No Membership Fee Required".

In the years since Prime Day was established in 2013 to celebrate the company's 20th anniversary, competitors to Amazon have also begun coinciding promotions. Doing so means that there will be no payments or charges to your account, but you are still able to enjoy Prime membership benefits for the 30 day trial period.

Amazon Prime Day 2018: Best deals so far including TVs, Fitbit and Echo Show

Prime Day best sellers worldwide were all Amazon devices - the Amazon Fire Stick, Alexa Voice Remote and the Echo Dot. Wall Street analysts said there were problems with executing sales for at least two hours, likely due to excessive the volume of user traffic.

The sale is only available to Amazon Prime members however, which costs £79 a year, and customers are advised to download the Amazon Prime app to make browsing the sale easier. For the first time, Amazon extended the sales event to be a day and a half this year.

That put Amazon in the doghouse with upset customers, many of whom have gone on social media to complain. The company didn't provide a number, but continued Prime membership growth is key to the company's long-term growth due to their spending patterns, buying about two times as much as non-Prime members, Moody's said.

Outside of Amazon-branded products, the Instant Pot, 23 and Me DNA test and the LifeStraw water filter were the best-selling items in the United States, while the Bosch cordless drill, Philips Hue light strip and Finish dishwasher tablets were purchased the most in the UK. At best, some Prime members found humor in the canine photos, but other shoppers were justifiably less amused they couldn't start bargain-hunting.