If you’re considering making money online, Amazon is the best option to get started. Othere-commerce sites like Etsy, Shopify, eBay, Walmart etc., earn money by selling products online, whereas one can generate income on Amazon in many ways.
It is the biggest online marketplace that made $386 billion in 2020. The majority of revenue came via third-party sales. Besides offering wider ranges of products from clothes to electronics, books and more, Amazon provides opportunities for many entrepreneurs to make cash.
So, what can you do to step into the e-commerce boat? Here are the top ways for how to make money on Amazon 2021 easily. Though remember, you require a little hard work and consistency to make a few bucks.
How To Make Money on Amazon
Most people think of Amazon as a place to spend money only. However, there are several ways where you can make money too on this platform, whether you’re selling or not. It can be promoting the service through affiliate links, working for the company, advertising online, selling apps or handicraft items etc.
In order to sell on Amazon to millions of customers worldwide, sign up on the website for $39.99/month plus selling fees. Now, let’s dive into 16 proven ways to make money on Amazon online.
1. Sell Through Amazon FBA
Amazon FBA or Fulfillment by Amazon is a great way for earning money without worrying about packing, shipment and customer service. You only need to become an Amazon seller and send your products to itsfulfillmentcenter. The rest will be taken care of by FBA. Eventually, it saves your time and helps in business growth.
Additionally, for first-time FBA users, the new selection program offers free sponsored ads promotional clicks and free shipping to fulfillmentcenters. You may also receive free storage, free removal and free return procedure for a limited time on eligible items.
The other benefits with Amazon FBA are:
- The listed items on FBA are eligible for free shipping.
- Your products are also eligible for Amazon Prime free two-day shipping.
- FBA provides customer support day or night worldwide by managing customers’ inquiries, refunds and returns on your FBA products.
- List an unlimited number of products on FBA service.
- Selling from your own and other third-party sites, i.e., multi-channel fulfillment with Amazon picking, packing and shipping the products, are also possible.
- Offer discounts for repeat customers on eligible FBA products and no extra charge to expand your business even internationally.
- Only pay for the storage space and the orders Amazon fulfills.
- Get the fulfillment by Amazon revenue calculator to estimate your FBA fees and how much money you make on Amazon FBA.
2. Sell Private Label Brand Products
Creating and selling your private label products is the most profitable opportunity to earn cash on Amazon. Thanks to FBA, around 71% of sellers on Amazon make money via private label sales.
As a private label seller, you order products from the manufacturers, put your brand or logo with the help of a logo maker and sell them to the customer. Also known as brand creation or white-branding, it’s common in many retail stores like Walmart’s Great Value and Target’s Mainstays branding.
The main advantage of selling items under your brand is getting full control over your Amazon listing. Also, could you apply for Amazon Brand Registry to avoid counterfeiting issues?
Moreover, you can earn about $635-$1875/month/item from selling private label brands on Amazon. 56% of private sellers make $5,000 or more/per month in sales, whereas 59% have a marginal profit of over 16%. On the other hand, experienced private sellers (31%) can earn up to $50,000.
3. Earn Through Kindle Direct Publishing
Another effective way to make serious money on Amazon is publishing your own bookusing Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Besides the digital format, you can also print hard copies of the books via Amazon’s CreateSpace printing service.
The only complication in making money through Amazon KDP is you need to write interesting books in large volumes. Though you can earn with one or two best-selling books, volume is the real way to success.
Then again, there is no publisher or agent to promote your books. So, be prepared to do that by yourself. The best way to endorse self-published books is to offer free copies initially. To get further exposure, run Facebook ads and provide the link to your book’s Amazon page.
With KDP, you can have the following benefits:
- Publish eBooks and paperbacks for free.
- Get direct access to your book on Amazon and create a product details page.
- Get full rights of the books with KDP, which may not be possible with other traditional publishing houses.
- Expand the book’s availability around the globe.
Additionally, keep in mind the following three things to get people’s attention:
- Book cover.
- End material.
- Independent landing page.
A successful professional author earns up to $40,000 monthly from selling books on Amazon.
4. Turn Your Books Into Audiobooks
You can’t imagine how many opportunities there are to earn from Amazon. Such as with Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), you can sell your audiobooks online through Amazon retailers. Whether you’re an author, writer, narrator or independent publisher, ACX offers better and more lucrative benefits.
So, how to earn money with ACX on Amazon?
- ACX gives you full control over the audiobook’s production with a marketplace to bring all players together.
- Once the book is produced, approved by Rights holders (author/agent/publisher) and finally delivered to ACX, they distribute the audiobook through Amazon along with Audible and iTunes.
Now, let’s take a look at the production earnings and costs to get a clear idea. It’s categorized into three sections:
- Pay for production
- Earn 40% of retails for sale with exclusive royalty.
- Retain the right to distribute elsewhere and take 25% of retail sales.
- Pay your producer as a one-time fee for the production and get full royalties.
- Royalty share and royalty share plus
- Split the earnings with your producers and get 20% royalties on retail sales.
- You pay nothing and the producer gets the payment as an equal share from sales.
- Get access to a higher tire producer with a one-time payment.
- Do it yourself
- Earn 40% of retail sales on Amazon with exclusive distribution.
- Retain the right to distribute somewhere else and get 25% of retail sales.
- Or, deliver the finished audiobook to ACX and they’ll handle the distribution and payments.
5. Resell on Amazon by Real Arbitrage
Real arbitrage involves the process of buying discounted products from retailers like Walmart, Barnes & Noble or Target and resell them on Amazon at a profit. For example, you purchase an item from Walmart costs $10 and resell it on Amazon for $25. It’s cool, right?
Thus, you can avoid the importing costs from foreign countries. However, there are specific rules and fees to sell certain products via real arbitrage on Amazon. For this purpose, you can use the FBA revenue calculator to scan barcodes on the products, know the recommended price and Amazon fees.
But can you make money on Amazon with real arbitrage? Though it’s not illegal, it also isn’t for everyone. The process needs a lot of research and frequent visits to various local stores to pick items. If you have a car and can purchase items at cheap rates, maybe you’ll be able to make a good profit.
Moreover, real arbitrage is very competitive and hard to scale up the business. Still, you can earn monthly a few to couple hundred dollars by selling flipped items on Amazon.
6. Sell Wholesale on Amazon
Over 2 million third-party sellers around the world use Amazon’s sales platform in order to sell millions of various products to customers. And, 26% of sellers use a sales model known as wholesale.
Similar to private brand selling, the wholesale process involves purchasing bulk quantities of branded products from other manufacturers, distributors or suppliers and reselling them to consumers. However, wholesalers don’t need to create their own brand products like private branding. They just put their offers on the current price.
Further, 57% of wholesalers demand to profit within three months (or $3000-$4000/month). Though the competition is very high and the up-front cost can be expensive in wholesaling goods.
7. Get Paid Through Amazon Mechanical Turk
Thousands of Americans are making money on Amazon without selling anything. The easiest way is to join Amazon Mechanical Turk or MTurk program and get paid for completing tasks in spare time.
Although computing technology is improving in many ways, people can still do many tasks better than computers. The following works are available in MTurk:
- Image and video processing.
- Information collecting.
- Data verification and removal of duplicate content from the business listings.
- Data processing like translating content from one language to another, editing and transcribing audio content and rating the accuracy of search results.
The best thing about the program is you have the flexibility to work remotely and can be done quickly. But MTurk doesn’t pay much for a task. For instance, you may get 5 cents to complete a survey, but forfive surveys within a minute, they pay $15/hour.
Then again, this program works best for US citizens. Meanwhile, people outside of the USget payments in the form of Amazon gift cards.
8. Join Amazon Flex and Deliver Items
Do you have a vehicle? Then start earning extra cash with Amazon Flex. It’s their delivery service that you can join to deliver packages to the customers for Amazon. All you have to do is download the Amazon Flex app, schedule a block, make deliveries and get paid.
Generally, most Amazon drivers earn up to $18-$25 per hour. Additionally, you can maximize the earnings by taking instant offers in your extra time throughout the day. The actual income depends on your location, the time you took to complete the delivery, any tips and other factors.
9. Selling Apps on Amazon
One of the best ways to make money with Amazon is by selling apps on this platform. So, start building apps by choosing a monetization model that can meet your business goals along with the market’s demands.
There are three types of Amazon Appstore monetization tools:
- In-app Purchasing: Use in-app purchasing with secured, fast and hassle-free transactions. You can promote freemium services for the gaming app, for instance, and enhance the game. Customers will pay for extra features, new levels, lives and access to other exciting content.
- Advertising:Monetize the app and grow business with Amazon Publisher Services via advertising.
- Developer Promotions Console:Offer temporary discounts for the apps, games and in-app content with the Developer Promotions Console to increase customer spend.
Besides Amazon Appstore, you can further monetize the business through the below choices:
- App development services and APIs: Amazon’s suite of developer products and services also helps to make money. You can develop a new version of existing Android apps/games with their app submission API and securely connect to millions of Amazon customers. Eventually, you’ll earn up to 6% of the transaction fee.
- Sell Amazon HTML5 and web apps: Sell your HTML5 apps and mobile-optimized websites on the Amazon Web Appstore in 200 countries globally.
10. Become an Amazon Affiliate
If you run a blog or website with high traffic, it’s easy to become an Amazon affiliate. You need to recommend or provide links to your site or blog visitors about interesting and high-quality products available on Amazon and earn a referral fee.
For example, you can become an affiliate by referring links to Whey protein if you write reviews on health or fitness-related supplements.
But how can you make money from Amazon affiliates?
- Sign up for free to the Amazon associates (the affiliate program) in order to get special links for share.
- Advertise products to your customers.
- Get paid for recommending Amazon products.
Depending on the product, you can earn 4%-10% of the total price as an advertising fee when someone purchases from the referred link.
11. Become an Amazon Representative
Amazon currently has 1,298,000 full-time, and part-time employees and not all of them work from the headquarter in Seattle. In fact, Amazon has made it possible for many employees to work at their own pace.
If you also want to become a work-from-home Amazon representative, you may earn up to $30,000/year as a full-time employee. The job profile includes mostly customer service and data entry.
12. Join Merch by Amazon
Let’s figure out a killer way to make money on Amazon outside the app. With Merch by Amazon, you can now design branded products and Amazon will produce, sell and ship them. Consequently, you’ll earn a profit.
Basically, you put a design on t-shirts, coffee mugs or hats and Amazon sells them as their own product at no charge to you. Here’s how to earn money with Merch by Amazon:
- Create a Merch by Amazon account on their webpage.
- Design your product and upload your logo or artworkto their database.
- Set your own list price.
- Select color and write a short description.
Once a sale is made, Amazon creates the product, sells them and in return, you get paid. In addition, Merch by Amazon avails the following benefits:
- Earn the full royalty for each item sold. The payout depends on the product costing, tax and the company’s expense for service.
- No need to worry about worldwide product distribution, sales, logistics, shipping and customer support as Amazon takes care of these.
- Take your fans to the next level by incorporating their favorite imagery or game characters on daily wears.
As a merchantpreneur, you may make $1.50 per product listed on the Merch platform. However,the Amazon Merch designsare now limited to 50 that a seller can upload for a given time.
13. Trade-In Eligible Items
How about you get paid for used items on Amazon? The Amazon Trade-in program allows you to receive Amazon.com gift cards or credit in exchange for thousands of eligible products like video games, mobiles, electronics, Amazon devices etc. Though it’s not a technical way to make money on Amazon, it’s a great resource to buy more products.
Moreover, unlike other online trade-ins, Amazon offers instant credit if you meet the eligibility criteria. Then again, it provides free shipping onthe item, but you need to do the packaging.
Additionally, your item should be in good condition to get paid the highest value for the trade-in. In order to know which you can trade in, go to the Amazon Trade-in page and find eligible items listed there.
But if a device is not qualified, no problem. You can recycle the non-functional Amazon devices and accessories by Amazon’s certified recycler.
14. Sell Your Handcraft Items on Amazon Handmade
Do you love to create your own handcraft items? In addition to selling goods on Amazon, create a craft store and make more money on Amazon Handmade.
Customers nowadays are prone to purchase genuine handcrafted products to use or decorate their homes. As a result, artisans from more than 80 countries follow their passion and sell their craft on this platform.
So, if you’re ready to join, here’s the process to follow:
- Create a seller account first on Amazon for $39.99/month and complete the registration.
- Apply to join the artisan-only community. There is no hidden fee to create a shop.
- Get your artisan profile with a custom URL.
- List your items.
- Leverage programs to manage and grow the business.
Once you make a sale, Handmade will deduct15% as a referral fee.63% of artisans can make up to $1000/month/sale.
The categories like artwork, beauty & personal care, accessories, baby, clothing, jewelry, homecare, pet supplies etc., are available on Amazon Handmade.However, if you don’t see your category listed, perhaps Amazon doesn’t allow selling those. Such as food & groceries, digital or downloadable items and electronics arerecentlyunavailable in the Handmade store.
15. Sell a Professional Service on Amazon
Amazon is not only an e-commerce platform, but it also allows selling professional services to customers. Eventually, it’s a great way to make money on Amazon without products.
There are plenty of Amazon services available like,
- Amazon Home Services include high-quality service providers with easy-to-use tools.
- Pre-packaged services depend on customer requests for items bought from Amazon. For example, Home Theatre service, Assembly service and Appliance Installation service.
- Further, as a dog walker, music teacher, plumber etc., you can offer your services on Amazon to help people.
The market is full of competition, but at the same time, they’re willing to pay for any required service. Hence, it’s possible to scale your business withthe right approach through the Amazon service platform.
16. Work in Amazon’s Distribution or FulfillmentCenters
The main job of Amazon warehouse associates is to pick, pack, store and ship the items to the right destination. If you’re willing to make extra money from Amazon, start working at one of their distribution or fulfillmentcenters.
An Amazon associate can earn a minimum of $15/hour from working in the warehouse. As a full-time worker, the salary can be up to $30,000/year. Moreover, they also get additional benefits from the company.
Wrap Up
The above-mentioned ways are pretty amazing to generate a fair revenue stream on Amazon. Some of them may require to work hard, whereas few seem quite easy. Though, not all will make a huge profit for you.
By adopting one or two ways, you may quickly make money to pay for the tuition fee or short vacation. But as a matter of fact, all need the right attitude and consistency to work for Amazon. Otherwise, the platform has already given you many profitable opportunities to earn cash. You only have to get a hold of them and start the process.