Top Ways to Earn Money With Amazon
If you’re ready for to explore ways to make money with Amazon, these are some of your best options.
In This Article
Top Ways to Earn Money With Amazon
1. Sell a product using Amazon’s FBA
2. Private Label Your Product
3. Retail Arbitrage
4. Work As a Warehouse Associate
5. Amazon Flex
6. Work from Home for Amazon
7. Become an Amazon Affiliate
8. Publish an eBook on Amazon
9. Join Mechanical Turk
10. Apply to Amazon Handmade
11. Sell Your Designs With Amazon Merch
12. CamperForce
1. Sell a product using Amazon’s FBA
FBA means fulfilled by Amazon, and as a seller, all you would need to do is ship your inventory of products to Amazon’s warehouse and they take care of shipping it for you.
Some merchants choose to ship out products themselves, in order to avoid hefty fees Amazon charges.
There are pros and cons of doing this, but if your product sells in high volume, it makes the most sense to ship via FBA.
Out of all the options listed in this article, becoming a seller has the greatest opportunity for you to cash in on extra income, but it also involves the most amount of research and uncertainty.
Before you start, you first need to have an understanding what it entails. You run the risk of losing money if you don’t do your due diligence first.
I’m speaking from first-hand experience on that one.
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Recap FBA Tips:
Research items that sell
Find a legit whole-sell company
Be patient4
Maintain records of inventory
If possible individual wrap and barcode your items prior to sending
2. Private Label Your Product
In order to avoid some of the competition on Amazon, many sellers have opted to private label their item, which means they are registering it on Amazon as their own.
The process for private labeling is more complicated than simply buying an item from Alibaba and selling it.
The upside to selling your own branded product on Amazon is that you always have full control for your listing and you can make changes to your product, if you need to.
Let’s say your customers complained about a particular feature of your product, you could then make modifications to it.
For example, let’s say you sold pencils, but noticed a lot of the negative reviews mentioned that they wished the eraser worked better, and that the pencil itself was wider, for better grip.
You can then take those recommendations from reviewers and craft your own pencil and get it trademarked.
3. Retail Arbitrage
This is the opposite of private labeling. Retail arbitrage simply means buying low and selling high. Some sellers make their entire living on just retail arbitrage and have carved out a lucrative niche for themselves.
A lot of sellers who do retail arbitrage try to avoid the cost of shipping (i.e. shipping from China is very expensive and eats into your profits), so they simply drive directly to the location and load up on cheap items they think will sell.
Therefore, many sellers spend a lot of time cruising through their local Walmarts to find the best and cheapest deals on just about anything.
They buy up as many items that are on clearance and then sell it on Amazon.
I heard a podcast on Side Hustle Nation where a couple made their full-time living on retail arbitrage on Amazon and made over a million dollars in sales every year.
Their strategy was pretty simple. They went to their local Walmart and use an app to scan items to see how much it’s selling for on Amazon (Check out this useful comparison of two of the best scanning apps from The Selling Family).
Then, they use their knowledge of what’s been successful in the past to decide whether they think it’ll be a product worth selling.
This couple went to the Walmarts near their home so often that they knew all the sales managers and would often be given a discount for buying up all of the video games, which sometimes involved purchasing hundreds of them at a time.
4. Work As a Warehouse Associate
If you’re in the proper location, you can apply to be a delivery warehouse associate for their fulfillment centers, sortation centers, delivery stations, Prime Now locations, Campus Pickup Points and customer service centers.
5. Amazon Flex
Sometimes when I order from Amazon, I notice plain-clothed delivery associates delivering my packages.
Amazon’s same-day delivery option for customers has sparked a need for more delivery help in various metropolitan areas. If you have a reliable car and a smartphone, consider delivering goods through Amazon Prime.
Amazon Flex currently pays anywhere from $18-25 per hour and you need to download the app and answer a few simple questions before you can get started.
They emphasize flexibility and availability of shifts, but the downside is there aren’t always opportunities in your area.
I have a friend who does this to earn extra income, and he says he often finishes his shift a few hours early, but still gets paid for the entire five hours, or pre-set hours.
Of course, this may not be true for everyone who delivers for Amazon, but it’s a nice to know you can finish early but still get compensated for the agreed upon time.
6. Work from Home for Amazon
If you want a job where you can be home-based, consider a spot on Amazon’s virtual customer service team, also known as Amazon’s Work-from-Home Customer Service Associate.
Virtual opportunities aren’t available everywhere but If you live in a certain area, you may be able to apply for Amazon’s “work-from-home” positions, given that you’re qualified and a right fit for the position.
The base pay on average is $20 an hour and full and part-time positions are only available in certain areas, however, you can filter your search by the work-from-home category and by location.
This is more of a seasonal position but has the potential to become a permanent.
There were all kinds of positions listed, such as customer service rep positions for those who speak a second language, other than English.
7. Become an Amazon Affiliate
Affiliate marketing is a brilliant way to make some passive income if you have a blog or website that generates a decent volume of traffic.
Become an Amazon affiliate and earn a commission by putting special affiliate links to various Amazon products on your site.
The idea is to promote products that align with your blog or website’s mission. So, if you have a website about how to travel efficiently, you may promote items such as packing cubes, sturdy suitcases or wrinkle-free clothing.
Each time someone who comes through your website clicks on the affiliate link, you’ll earn some money. You can earn anywhere from 4% to 8.5% of a sale.
Keep in mind that commissions are generally really low, which is why you need a significant amount of traffic to your site.
The more page views you have, the more chances are that the links will get clicks. No traffic means no chance that anyone will see those links to be clicked on.
8. Publish an eBook on Amazon
You can self-publish an ebook on Amazon, and each time you sell, Amazon takes a cut, ranging from 35-70 percent of the listing.
I know what you’re thinking: me? Write a book? That’s crazy, I don’t have time for that or even know where to begin!
Writing and publishing an ebook sounds unachievable, and I haven’t done this personally, but I know a lot about it because I’m an avid reader of ebooks from Amazon.
I subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. Membership is $9.99 a month. It’s given me an opportunity to not only read the eBooks and learn from them, but I’m also able to see what kind of content resonates with others on the site, through reading reviews.
Over the years, I’ve learned that you don’t need to create a potential Pulitzer Prize book in order to get published on Amazon.
Because it’s a self-publishing platform, anyone can do it, and many self-made authors have used Amazon to help strengthen their expertise in their particular subject matter.
You can write about and publish something you feel very passionately about. Many of the ebooks I’ve read aren’t very long either – a lot are under 100 pages and very consumable.
The quality of the ebooks I’ve purchased over the years is all over the place too, which tells me that anyone can do it.
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9. Join Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk, is a way to earn small amounts of money, completing easy, mindless tasks.
MTurk is a crowd sourcing marketplace that was created to bridge the gap between what a computer can’t do and what a human can. Amazon calls it “Human Intelligence Task.”
A Gizmodo review on MTurk said, “If you have a functional cerebral cortex, an internet connection and a few minutes to spare, you can pick up a handful of odd jobs and make a few bucks, pennies and nickels at a time.”
It includes data entry, transcription, categorizing, image recognition, to name a few.
You most likely won’t make a lot of money, but it’s easy to do and pretty much anyone who can do this.
10. Apply to Amazon Handmade
In addition to dominating the selling marketplace, if you make and sell handmade items, like bags or jewelry, you can try selling your wares on Amazon Handmade.
The marketplace directly competes with Etsy and eBay.
There are pros and cons to using Handmade. For one, the general reach is large, and their commission fee reflects that.
Handmade’s fees are much higher than Etsy, as they charge 15% commissions and a $1 minimum referral fee, while Etsy charges a 3.5% commission and 20-cent item listing fee.
Obviously, you’re paying a higher price for Amazon’s massive, worldwide audience, but your profit margins will be lower.
If you make and sell handmade items, you can apply to join Handmade, as long as your products fall under certain categories.
11. Sell Your Designs With Amazon Merch
I heard about this last year when my sister was exploring the Amazon dashboard and somehow stumbled upon it.
Basically, you can submit a t-shirt design for other merchants to purchase. It’s a great way to connect designers and people who need them to be made into shirts.
As with many selling caveats, it can be really competitive.
It probably won’t make you rich, and it’s possible you may not even sell any of your designs, but it also doesn’t cost anything for you to try, so if you’re creative and know how to make cool designs, it might be worth a shot.
Opportunities to sell a design may be closely tied to things that are timely or seasonal — remember those political shirts around the elections?
If you have an eye for riding the trends and understanding what might resonate with people, on a shirt, give it a shot.
12. CamperForce
Remember when the minimalist trend first started happening? People sold their homes and possessions and moved into a bus, tiny house, RV or van so they could hit the road and live anywhere they pleased.
That must’ve caught Amazon’s attention because they now offer a way for those people to make money, while on the road.
It’s called CamperForce and basically, you can earn money by helping Amazon pick, stow and receive merchandise orders.
It’s unclear just how much you can earn, but based on wages for other ways to make money with Amazon, it’ll most likely be decent.
You can earn overtime pay and bonuses based on your time worked. For example, if you stayed on for the entire holiday season, you’ll receive a bonus.
