Much of the allure of Amazon.com has been the fact that you can order relatively few items with free shipping to your home in just a few days.<br />As TechCrunch reports , Amazon is now requiring online shoppers to spend at least $49 in order to qualify for free shipping, up from $35 previously.<br />Of course what Amazon is likely hoping is that the higher spending requirement will result in more customers opting to buy the e-commerce giant's Amazon Prime program.<br />The move by Amazon comes just a few weeks after the company reported 2015 net sales jumped 20% to $107 billion.